Nilus of Ancyra→Theodosius|c. 415 AD|nilus ancyra|From Ancyra|AI-assisted
To Theodosius the Deacon.
Do not be distressed, and for what reason: that, while you are being tried by so severe an illness, and the strength of your body has been loosened, the beast of pleasure wrestles against you all the more shamelessly. For we have learned from many most devout men who have experienced it, that to the demons who are the generals of the pleasures the demons who have been entrusted by the devil with the griefs and the birth-pangs take delight in giving help, and in cooperating, and in lending their aid; just as, to be sure, with the demons that pain and grieve us the demon of pleasure runs together, in order to wear down the man, and to estrange him from his loving thanksgiving toward God, and from his endurance, and from his long-suffering. For the demons, he says, help one another, conspiring together for the destruction of those who fall in with them, so that somehow the man may despair of his own salvation, having his reasoning thrown into confusion, may suffer one of the things he does not will, and may cease from calling upon God for salvation. But you yourself, having learned this, never cease calling upon the God who made you and who always provides for you.
Do not be distressed, and for what reason: that, while you are being tried by so severe an illness, and the strength of your body has been loosened, the beast of pleasure wrestles against you all the more shamelessly. For we have learned from many most devout men who have experienced it, that to the demons who are the generals of the pleasures the demons who have been entrusted by the devil with the griefs and the birth-pangs take delight in giving help, and in cooperating, and in lending their aid; just as, to be sure, with the demons that pain and grieve us the demon of pleasure runs together, in order to wear down the man, and to estrange him from his loving thanksgiving toward God, and from his endurance, and from his long-suffering. For the demons, he says, help one another, conspiring together for the destruction of those who fall in with them, so that somehow the man may despair of his own salvation, having his reasoning thrown into confusion, may suffer one of the things he does not will, and may cease from calling upon God for salvation. But you yourself, having learned this, never cease calling upon the God who made you and who always provides for you.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.