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AND when we arrived there, God gratified our wishes, and had brought
about the arrival of that most blessed and excellent man Bishop
Archebius, who had been carried off from the assembly of anchorites and
given as Bishop to the town of Panephysis, and who kept all his life
long to his purpose of solitude with such strictness that he relaxed
nothing of the character of his former humility, nor flattered himself on
the honour that had been added to him (for he vowed that he had not been
summoned to that office as fit for it, but complained that he had been
expelled from the monastic system as unworthy of it because though he had
spent thirty-seven years in it he had never been able to arrive at the
purity so high a profession demands); he then when he had received us
kindly and most graciously in the aforesaid Thennesus whither the business
of electing a Bishop there had brought him, as soon as he heard of our wish
and desire to inquire of the holy fathers even in still more remote parts
of Egypt: "Come," said he, "see in the meanwhile the old men who live not
far from our monastery, the length of whose service is shown by their bent
bodies, as their holiness shines forth in their appearance, so that even
the mere sight of them will give a great lesson to those who see them: and
from them you can learn not so much by their words as by the actual example
of their holy life, what I grieve that I have lost, and having lost cannot
give to you. But I think that my poverty will be somewhat lessened by this
zeal of mine, if when you are seeking that pearl of the Gospel which I have
not, I at least provide where you can conveniently procure it.'
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