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I know of one, who thinks himself a monk, and what is worse flatters
himself on his perfection, who had been received into a monastery, and when
charged by his Abbot not to turn his thoughts back to those things which he
had given up and renounced, but to free himself from covetousness, the root
of all kinds of evil, and from earthly snares; and when told that if he
wished to be cleansed from his former passions, by which he saw that he was
from time to time grievously oppressed, he should cease from caring about
those things which even formerly were not his own, entangled in the chains
of which he certainly could not make progress towards purifying himself of
his faults: with an angry expression he did not hesitate to answer, "If you
have that with which you can support others, why do you forbid me to have
it as well?"
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