Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts
Ecclesiastes 10:11
There are 2 footnotes for this reference.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 251, footnote 1 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)
To Rusticus. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3489 (In-Text, Margin)
... or associate with. Nor must you turn aside your heart unto words of evil lest the psalmist say to you: “Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother’s son,” and lest you become as “the sons of men whose teeth are spears and arrows,” and as the man whose “words were softer than oil yet were they drawn swords.” The Preacher expresses this more clearly still when he says: “Surely the serpent will bite where there is no enchantment, and the slan derer is no better.”[Ecclesiastes 10:11] But you will say, ‘I am not given to detraction, but how can I check others who are?’ If we put forward such a plea as this it can only be that we may “practise wicked works with men that work iniquity.” Yet Christ is not deceived by this device. It ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 11, page 313, footnote 1 (Image)
Sulpitius Severus, Vincent of Lerins, John Cassian
The Works of John Cassian. (HTML)
The Conferences of John Cassian. Part I. Containing Conferences I-X. (HTML)
Conference II. Second Conference of Abbot Moses. (HTML)
Chapter XI. The words of Abbot Serapion on the decline of thoughts that are exposed to others, and also on the danger of self-confidence. (HTML)
... manifest. And so, as the old man declared, said he, the sway of that diabolical tyranny over me has been destroyed by the power of this confession and stilled for ever so that the enemy has never even tried to force upon me any more the recollection of this desire, nor have I ever felt myself seized with the passion of that furtive longing. And this meaning we see is neatly expressed in a figure in Ecclesiastes. “If” says he “a serpent bite without hissing there is no sufficiency for the charmer,”[Ecclesiastes 10:11] showing that the bite of a serpent in silence is dangerous, i.e., if a suggestion or thought springing from the devil is not by means of confession shown to some charmer, I mean some spiritually minded person who knows how to heal the wound at once ...