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Shorter Rules

St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925

Rule 296: How Shall the Soul Be Persuaded that It is Pure from Sin?

When a man recognises in himself the disposition of David who said: “I hated iniquity and loathed it,”² or if he recognises that he has fulfilled in himself the apostle’s command: “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, the which is idolatry; for which things sake cometh the wrath of God³⁴⁵— to which extending such a judgment against every sin he added: “upon the sons of disobedience “—so as to be able to say: “AD crooked heart did not cleave to me: when the wicked man left me, I did not know him.” Again a man knows himself to have such a disposition if even towards sinners he possesses the same fearful sympathy as the Saints had. So David spake: “I saw foolish men and melted away because they kept not thy words”’; and the apostle says: “Who is weak and I am not weak? who is made to stumble and I burn not?’ For if, according to the true reckoning, the soul is better than the body, and we see that in the case of the body we loathe and abominate all filth, and the sight of any tearing or damage brings tribulation and grief to the soul, how much more does it follow that sinners cause him who loves Christ and the brethren to suffer what we have spoken of, when he sees the soul of sinners wounded as if by wild beasts and devoured and showing as it were a mattery discharge and corruption? Thus David says: “My iniquities have gone over my head: like a heavy burden they have been loaded upon me. My wounds stunk and were corrupt because of my folly, I was miserable and bowed down completely. The whole day I went with sad countenance.”⁶ And the apostle says: ‘The sting of death is sin.”⁷ When therefore a man recognises his soul to be thus affected either because of his own sins or those of others, as we said to begin with, then he may feel convinced that he is pure from sin.:

Notes

Ps. cxix. 163.
Col. 111. 5; 6.
Ps.ci. 3; 4.
Ps. cxix. 158.
Cor. xi. 29.
Ps. xxxviii. 4-6.
1 Cor. xv. 56 add ἐστιν after ἁμαρτία *. “ Ps. xxxii. 5. Bas. agrees with 8A in small divergences from Sw.’s (B) text.