The Five Causes of Monastic Action

There is an island near Alexandria, situated on the northern part of the lake called Maria, where the most experienced member of the Gnostic community lives alone; he determined that all things performed by the monks are performed for five reasons: through God, through nature, through habit, through necessity, and through the works of the hands.

He also said again that virtue is one in nature, but is shown through the powers of the soul; for the light of the sun is formless, he says, but it takes shape through the doors through which it enters.

Another of the monks said, 'For this reason I cut away pleasures, so that I might trim the opportunities of the passion'; for I know him always fighting for the sake of pleasures and driving away my mind and my knowledge by disturbing them. And one of the elders said that love does not know how to keep the boundaries of filth or of material things. He himself says, 'I do not know, being deceived twice by the same thing by demons.' All...