Letter 871

To Didymus the Reader [lector, a minor clerical office]. They suffer great loss, and endure much harm, who chatter on at length without profit and out of season, and who give their leisure to verbal contention, and who, by the great turmoil of their boastings, scatter the most brilliant mind, and roughen the smoothness of good sense, and drive away the indescribable workings of grace, and who, instead of presiding over the contemplation of the things that truly are, occupy themselves with the affairs of this present life and with the temptation of distraction.

Μέγα ζημιοῦνται, καὶ πολλὴν ὑπομένουσιν βλάβην οἱ πολλὰ φλυαροῦντες ἀκερδῶς, καὶ ἀκαίρως, καὶ τῇ λογομαχίᾳ σχολάζοντες, καὶ τῇ πολλῇ ταραχῇ τῶν κομπασμάτων σκορπίζοντες τὸν λαμπρότατον νοῦν, καὶ τραχύνοντες τὸ λεῖον τῆς φρονήσεως, καὶ ἐκδιώκοντες τὰς ἀνεκδιηγήτους ἐνεργείας τῆς χάριτος, καὶ ἀντὶ τοῦ προκαθέζεσθαι τῇ θεωρίᾳ, τῶν ὄντων βιωτικὰς πραγματείας, καὶ πειρασμὸν ποικιλίας ἐργαλοδοῦντες.