In the fifth Conference we also read: “Of these eight faults then, although they are different in their origin and in their way of affecting us, yet the six former; gluttony, fornication, covetousness, anger, dejection, accidie, have a sort of connexion with each other, and are, so to speak, linked together in a chain, so that any excess of the one forms a starting point for the next. For from superfluity of gluttony fornication is sure to spring, and from fornication covetousness, from covetousness anger, from anger, dejection, and from dejection, accidie. And so we must fight against them in the same way, and with the same methods: and having overcome one, we ought always to enter the lists against the next. For a tall and spreading tree of a noxious kind will the more easily be made to wither if the roots on which it depends have first been laid bare or cut; and a pond of water which is dangerous will be dried up at once if the spring and flowing channel which produce it are carefully stopped up. Wherefore in order to overcome accidie, you must first get the better of dejection: in order to get rid of dejection, anger must first be expelled: in order to quell anger, covetousness must be trampled under foot: in order to root out covetousness, fornication must be checked: and in order to destroy fornication, you must chastise the sin of gluttony. But the two remaining faults; vainglory and pride, are connected together in a somewhat similar way
828 St. John Cassian, The Conferences 5.4 (NPNF II/11:340) amended.
829 St. John Cassian, The Conferences 5.6 (NPNF II/11:341–342).
as the others of which we have spoken … into these two we are in danger of falling when we have proved victorious, and above all after some splendid triumph.”830