Preface

THE MOST LOWLY monk and priest John to the most saintly and honored of God, Father Cosmas the most holy Bishop of Maiuma, greetings in the Lord.

Being fully conscious of the limitations of my intelligence and of the insufficiency of my language, your Beatitude, I have hesitated to undertake a task exceeding my capabilities and to presume to enter into the Holy of Holies like some bold and foolhardy person, for I am wary of the danger that threatens those who attempt such things. The divine Moses, the lawgiver, withdrew from all sight of human things and abandoned the turbulent sea of life. He purified the eye of his soul by wiping away every material reflection, and only then did he become fit to receive the divine vision. Only then was he found worthy to behold the benevolent condescension of God the Word and His marvelous appearance in a bush and in immaterial fire, which, while it enkindled and burnt the tree and changed it into His splendor, did not consume or destroy it or alter its proper nature. He was the first to learn the name of Him who is and who truly is super-essential, and he was entrusted by God with the leadership of his own countrymen. Yet, if he considered himself as ‘having impediment and slowness of tongue’— and thus unable publicly to execute the divine will and to be appointed a mediator between God and man—then how am I, who am defiled and stained with every sort of sin, and who bear within myself the tumultuous seas of my conjectures, and who have purified neither my mind nor my understanding that they may serve as a mirror of God and His divine reflections; how am I, who have not sufficient power of speech to express such concepts, to utter those divine and ineffable things which surpass the comprehension of every rational creature? With these considerations in mind I have hesitated to undertake this book. Besides this, to tell the truth, I feared to accede to the request, lest I should incur ridicule on the double count of ignorance and of folly. The latter is quite serious, for the charge of ignorance may be excused—provided the ignorance is not from laziness; but to add to ignorance a false pretension to knowledge is serious, blameworthy, and quite unpardonable, and it is a sure sign of a greater, if not the greatest, ignorance. On the other hand, however, the fruit of disobedience is death, while the hu