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I THOUGHT it well to insert these things in this little work of mine,
that we might learn, not only by reason, but also by examples, about the
force of temptations and the order of the sins which hurt an unfortunate
soul, and so might be more careful in avoiding the snares and manifold
deceits of the enemy. For these things are indiscriminately brought forward
by the Egyptian fathers, that by telling them, as those who are still
enduring them, they may disclose and lay bare the combats with all the
vices, which they actually do suffer, and those which the younger ones are
sure to suffer; so that, when they explain the illusions arising from all
the passions, those who are but beginners and fervent in spirit may know
the secret of their struggles, and seeing them as in a glass, may learn
both the causes of the sins by which they are troubled, and the remedies
for them, and instructed beforehand concerning the approach of future
struggles, may be taught how they ought to guard against them, or to meet
them and to fight with them. As clever physicians are accustomed not only
to heal already existing diseases, but also by a wise skill to seek to
obviate future ones, and to prevent them by their prescriptions and healing
draughts, so these true physicians of the soul, by means of spiritual
conferences, like some celestial antidote, destroy beforehand those
maladies of the soul which would arise, and do not allow them to gain a
footing in the minds of the juniors, as they unfold to them the causes of
the passions which threaten them, and the remedies which will heal them.
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