At the Feet of the Fathers: St. John Cassian on the Devil’s Inability to Make You Sin

At the Feet of the Fathers

Monday, September 26, 2022

St. John Cassian

St. John Cassian, also known as John the Ascetic and John Cassian the Roman (c. AD 360 – c. AD 435), was a Christian monk revered in both the Western and Eastern churches for his theological writings on Christian Mysticism. (Christian mysticism embraces many ideologies, some heretical and some beneficial, such as the simple contemplation and meditation on Scripture). Cassian is noted for his role in bringing the concept and early practice of monasticism to the Medieval church.

Not Even the Devil Can Make You Sin

Let us now carefully consider whether God ever allows evil to be forced on his saints either by himself or by someone else.

And you will certainly find that this never happens. For another can never possibly force the evil of sin upon anyone who does not consent and who resists, but only on someone who admits it into himself through sloth and the corrupt desire of his heart.

When the devil had finally exhausted all his wicked devices trying to force upon the blessed Job this evil of sin—when he had not only stripped him of all his worldly goods, but also after that terrible and utterly unexpected calamity of bereavement through the death of his seven children, had heaped upon him dreadful wounds and intolerable tortures from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot—he tried in vain to make the stain of sin stick to him, because Job remained steadfast through it all, and never brought himself to consent to blasphemy.

-St. John Cassian, Conferences, 6.4