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IN solitude also it does not cease from pursuing him who has for the
sake of glory fled from intercourse with all men. And the more thoroughly a
man has shunned the whole world, so much the more keenly does it pursue
him. It tries to lift up with pride one man because of his great endurance
of work and labour, another because of his extreme readiness to obey,
another because he outstrips other men in humility. One man is tempted
through the extent of his knowledge, another through the extent of his
reading, another through the length of his vigils. Nor does this malady
endeavour to wound a man except through his virtues; introducing hindrances
which lead to death by means of those very things through which the
supplies of life are sought. For when men are anxious to walk in the path
of holiness and perfection, the enemies do not lay their snares to deceive
them anywhere except in the way along which they walk, in accordance with
that saying of the blessed David: "In the way wherein I walked have they
laid a snare for me;" that in this very way of virtue along which we are
walking, when pressing on to "the prize of our high calling," we may be
elated by our successes, and so sink down, and fall with the feet of our
soul entangled and caught in the snares of vainglory. And so it results
that those of us who could not be vanquished in the conflict with the foe
are overcome by the very greatness of our triumph, or else (which is
another kind of deception) that, overstraining the limits of that self-
restraint which is possible to us, we fail of perseverance in our course on
account of bodily weakness.
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