Mammon's Cave:  FQ II.vii

Introduction

1.  Book I:BookII::Grace:Nature?

2.  "Like race to runne" (II.i.32).

3.  What is temperance?

        * Temperance, continence, intemperance, self-indulgence

4.  What must the temperate man resist?

5.  What does Guyon's name mean?

The Cave of Mammon

6.  What does Mammon's name mean?  And what Bible verses relate to him?

        * Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:1-3; I Corinthians 10:13; I Timothy 6:10; Matthew 6:23;

            I Corinthians 2:9; Matthew 6:19, 23; John 1:38-39; Acts 12:10

7.  How do stanzas 3-4 and 29 comment on Mammon?

8. What do you make of Milton's comment, particularly in light of the possibility of curiosity?  Here it is: 

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister'd vertue, unexercis'd & unbreath'd, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortall garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.  Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather:  that which purifies us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary.  That vertue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evill, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank vertue, not a pure; her whitenesse is but an excrementall whiteness; which was the reason why our sage and serious Poet Spencer , whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas, describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon, and the bowr of earthly blisse that he might see and know, and yet abstain.  (Areopagitica)

9.  Key concepts:  curiosity, microchristus, felix culpa.

10.  What specific temptations does Guyon resist?  See stanzas 8, 18, 32, 50.

        * Treasure:  avarice, 32, 38

        * Philotime:  ambition

        * Garden of Proserpina (tree, silver seat):  impiety

11.  Three figures suggest (directly or indirectly) the proper orientation to the deity:  Tantalus, Pilate, Socrates.  How do they underscore Guyon's problems?

12.  Guyon's faint:  A transition from classical to Christian temperance (see II.viii.5).