The World Is the Mother of Wickedness and the Host of Robbers
The Wise Man: O, in what manner do you show me that you love me, and how do you prove yourself (by your mistaken reckoning) worthy of love, when every man happens to know and truly recognize that your friendship resembles those robbers called in Latin philetes latrones, that is, „robbers in the guise of friends,” who go out to meet the traveler on the road and greet him with sweet words, as though they were good men, and become his companions on the way, seeking only the chance, should it fall to hand, to kill him and destroy the poor wayfarer, who suspects nothing at all and goes on his way without guarding himself against them in the least. And so, at the fitting time and place, they deliver that wretched man to ruin and death like an innocent lamb, shedding blood without mercy. And yet those robbers are better than you, and you are worse than they, for they kill the body, while you kill the soul.
The World Is Worse Than Robbers, For Robbers Kill the Body, But the World Kills the Soul
The World: Oh, woe is me, how can you compare me to robbers, to murderers, to wicked men? By that measure, how could I not liken you to fools and to men without reason? Come, judge for yourself — do I behave as thieves do? For robbers seek to take from a man all he has and strip him bare, while I do no such thing; rather, I fill those who dwell in me abundantly with all things, and I strive that nothing should be lacking to them.
The Latin phrase the Wise Man cites as witness — philetes latrones, „robbers in the guise of friends” — names precisely the mechanism by which the world works: it does not attack from the front, but joins the traveler as a companion on the road, winning his trust for the very purpose of striking him unguarded. It is the same portrait Saint Paul draws of the enemy: „Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14). The robber on the road betrays himself by his weapon; the robber that is the world hides precisely in sweet speech and companionship — which is why he is harder to recognize, and why the Wise Man judges him the more dangerous of the two.
The Wise Man’s judgment is no rhetorical exaggeration but follows strictly the word of the Savior: „Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt 10:28). The robber on the road takes the passing life, but leaves the soul free to go to judgment unstained by his deed; the world, by contrast, sheds no blood, but pours poison into the will, the mind, the desire — and man dies without even knowing he has been struck. Saint Isaac the Syrian calls this kind of death „the sleep of the soul”: more terrible than bodily death, because the one asleep still believes himself alive.
The Lord Himself uses the figure of the thief to distinguish the voice that saves from the one that steals: „The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (Jn 10:10). This is why the World’s defense — that she takes nothing, but rather fills those who dwell in her abundantly — does not overturn the Wise Man’s judgment but confirms it: the robber who fills the hand while emptying the soul is more cunning than the one who empties both at once. The parable of the rich fool shows exactly this abundance turned snare: „Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee” (Lk 12:20). The world’s abundance leaves the body wanting nothing, but leaves the soul starved for God, without man noticing the want until his final hour.
Saint John Chrysostom warns that flattery is more dangerous than open enmity, precisely because the flattered man does not defend himself; and Abba Dorotheos of Gaza teaches that the discernment of spirits requires exactly the vigilance the World here calls „a narrow mind” — a sure sign, he says, that the cunning one is most offended precisely when he is recognized. The watchful man is not deceived by the fact that the robber walks unarmed and speaks fair words: the Apostle Peter calls for the same watchfulness as against a roaring lion, „seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pt 5:8) — even then, especially then, when he comes clothed in the guise of a friend.
