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ALTHOUGH many of the saints who are taught by your example can scarcely
emulate the greatness of your perfection, with which you shine like great
luminaries with marvellous brightness in this world, yet still you, O holy
brothers Honoratus and Eucherius, are so stirred by the glory of those
splendid men from whom we received the first principles of monasticism,
that one of you, presiding as he does over a large monastery of the
brethren, is hoping that his congregation, which learns a lesson from the
daily sight of your saintly life, may be instructed in the precepts of
those fathers, while the other has been anxious to make his way to Egypt to
be edified by the sight of these in the flesh, that he might leave this
province that is frozen as it were with the cold of Gaul, and like some
pure turtle dove fly to those lands on which the sun of righteousness looks
and to which it approaches nearest, and which abound with the ripe fruits
of virtues. As a matter of course the greatness of my love wrings this from
me; viz., that considering the desire of one and the labour of the other, I
should not decline the danger and peril of writing, if only to the one here
may be added authority among his children, and from the other may be
removed the necessity of such a journey. Further since neither the
Institutes of the coenobia which we wrote to the best of our ability in
twelve books for Bishop Castor of blessed memory, nor the ten Conferences
of the fathers living in the desert of Scete, which we composed somehow or
other at the bidding of Saints Helladius and Leontius the Bishops, were
able to satisfy your faith and zeal, now in order that the reason for our
journey may be also known, I have thought that seven Conferences of the
three fathers whom we first saw living in another desert, might be written
in the same style and dedicated to you, in which whatever has been in our
previous works perhaps obscurely explained or even omitted on the subject
of perfection, may be supplied. But if even this is not enough to satisfy
the holy thirst of your desires, seven other Conferences, which are to be
sent to the holy brethre living in the islands of the Stoechades, will,
I fancy, satisfy your wants and your ardour.
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