{"author":"Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)","date_end":1894,"date_label":"1894 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain)","date_start":1894,"edition_year":1894,"edition_year_basis":"Original NPNF Series II Volume XI title and copyright, 1894; transcription physical printing year unknown","id":"ws-library-full-note:24e8596810302f61ba43:cite_note-6","is_genuine_commentary_verified":false,"license_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Reusing_Wikisource_content","public_import_allowed":true,"publication_location":"source-library","record_type":"editorial-footnote","references":[],"rights_approved":true,"section":"Chapter VII.; original source section: Chapter 7; original book/conference: III. Conference of Abbot Paphnutius., editorial note cite_note-6","semantic_kind_reviewed":false,"source_context":["Wherefore it will not be of much advantage to us that we have made our first renunciation with the utmost devotion and faith, if we do not complete the second with the same zeal and ardour. And so when we have succeeded in this, we shall be able to arrive at the third as well, in which we go forth from the house of our former parent, (who, as we know well, was our father from our very birth, after the old man, when we were “by nature children of wrath, as others also,”) and fix our whole mental gaze on things celestial. And of this father Scripture says to Jerusalem which had despised God the true Father, “Thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother a Hittite;” and in the gospel we read “Ye are of your father the devil and the lusts of your father ye love to do.” And when we have left him, as we pass from things visible to things unseen we shall be able to say with the Apostle: “But we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved we have a habitation from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,” and this also, which we quoted a little while ago: “But our conversation is in heaven, whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus, who will reform the body of our low estate made like to the body of His glory,” and this of the blessed David: “For I am a sojourner upon the earth,” and “a stranger as all my fathers were;” so that we may in accordance with the Lord’s word be made like those of whom the Lord speaks to His Father in the gospel as follows: “They are not of the world, as I am not of the world,” and again to the Apostles themselves: “If ye were of this world, the world would love its own: but because ye are not of this world, therefore the world hateth you.” Of this third renunciation then we shall succeed in reaching the perfection, whenever our soul is sullied by no stain of carnal coarseness, but, all such having been carefully eliminated, it has been freed from every earthly quality and desire, and by constant meditation on things Divine, and spiritual contemplation has so far passed on to things unseen, that in its earnest seeking after things above and things spiritual it no longer feels that it is prisoned in this fragile flesh, and bodily form, but is caught up into such an ecstasy as not only to hear no words with the outward ear, or to busy itself with gazing on the forms of things present, but not even to see things close at hand, or large objects straight before the very eyes. And of this no one can understand the truth and force, except one who has made trial of what has been said, under the teaching of experience; viz., one, the eyes of whose soul the Lord has turned away from all things present, so that he no longer considers them as things that will soon pass away, but as things that are already done with, and sees them vanish into nothing, like misty smoke; and like Enoch, “walking with God,” and “translated” from human life and fashions, not “be found” amid the vanities of this life. And that this actually happened corporeally in the case of Enoch the book of Genesis thus tells us. “And Enoch walked with God, and was not found, for God translated him.” And the Apostle also says: “By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death,” the death namely of which the Lord says in the gospel: “He that liveth and believeth in me shall not die eternally.” Wherefore, if we are anxious to attain true perfection, we ought to look to it that as we have outwardly with the body made light of parents, home, the riches and pleasures of the world, we may"],"source_library_url":"/library/24e8596810302f61ba43/#ws-library-full-note:24e8596810302f61ba43:cite_note-6","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Nicene_and_Post-Nicene_Fathers:_Series_II/Volume_XI/John_Cassian/Conferences_of_John_Cassian,_Part_I/Conference_III/Chapter_7#cite_note-6","translator":"Rev. Edgar C. S. Gibson (M.A.)","verification":{"proof_file":"raw/review/source-library-note-batch-0060/proof-records.jsonl","proof_file_sha256":"5ab7515afe3bdd69d27d5f8dcf7a632bd04e61bfac727cfe98b438bd75cdb4ce","proof_record_id":"ws-library-full-note:24e8596810302f61ba43:cite_note-6"},"verified":true,"work":"Conferences of John Cassian, Part I","work_id":"ws-npnf2-11-cassian-f12d9718427e1844f04b"}