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FURTHER, it is those who are perfect and purified from all faults who
ought to seek the desert, and when they have thoroughly exterminated all
their faults amid the assembly of the brethren, they should enter it not by
way of cowardly flight, but for the purpose of divine contemplation, and
with the desire of deeper insight into heavenly things, which can only be
gained in solitude by those who are perfect. For whatever faults we bring
with us uncured into the desert, we shall find to remain concealed in us
and not to be got rid of. For just as when the character has been improved,
solitude can lay open to it the purest contemplation, and reveal the
knowledge of spiritual mysteries to its clear gaze, so it generally not
only preserves but intensifies the faults of those who have undergone no
correction. For a man appears to himself to be patient and humble, just as
long as he comes across nobody in intercourse; but he will presently revert
to his former nature, whenever the chance of any sort of passion occurs: I
mean that those faults will at once appear on the surface which were lying
hid, and, like unbridled horses diligently fed up during too long a time of
idleness, dash forth from the barriers the more eagerly and fiercely, to
the destruction of their charioteer. For when the opportunity for
practising them among men is removed, our faults will more and more
increase in us, unless we have first been purified from them. And the mere
shadow of patience, which, when we mixed with our brethren, we seemed
fancifully to possess, at least out of respect for them and publicity, we
lose altogether through sloth and carelessness.
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