6.6

Truly I tell you, my children, that this vessel in which we dwell is a source of destruction for us and is a house full of wars. I tell you with certainty that every person who is enticed by his pleasures, overthrown by his own thoughts, and embraces what the evil one has sown in his heart—rejoicing in these things, receiving them in his mind as though they were great mysteries, and justifying himself in what he does—has a soul that lives together with evil spirits and counsels with them toward evil. His body also becomes a storehouse of the dreadful things he hides within himself. The demons will prevail over such a person because he has not exposed them before everyone.

Do you not yourselves know that their traps are not of such a kind that, once we recognize them, we can simply flee from them? Even if you search, you will not find their sin and iniquity bodily manifest. For it is the soul that receives their wickedness in the body; when it has received it, then, if it wishes, it punishes openly through this body in which we dwell.

Now therefore, my children, let us give them no place. Otherwise we shall stir up the wrath of God against ourselves, and they will mingle in our houses and laugh at us. They know that our destruction comes from our neighbor, just as our life also comes from our neighbor. For who has ever seen God and, seeing Him, rejoiced with Him over so great a thing within himself, so that He would not flee from him but would remain with him as he dwells under so great a burden? Or who has ever seen the devil fighting against us, preventing us from receiving good things, opposing us, and standing in some hidden bodily place, so that by seeing him beforehand he could flee from him? They dwell in hiddenness, but we make them manifest through better deeds.