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BEWARE therefore lest at any time you take again any of those things
which you renounced and forsook, and, contrary to the Lord's command,
return from the field of evangelical work, and be found to have clothed
yourself again in your coat which you had stripped off; neither sink
back to the low and earthly lusts and desires of this world, and in
defiance of Christ's word come down from the rod of perfection and dare to
take up again any of those things which you have renounced and forsaken.
Beware that you remember nothing of your kinsfolk or of your former
affections, and that you are not called back to the cares and anxieties of
this world, and (as our Lord says) putting your hand to the plough and
looking back be found unfit for the kingdom of heaven. Beware lest at
any time, when you have begun to dip into the knowledge of the Psalms and
of this life, you be little by little puffed up and think of reviving that
pride which now at your beginning you have trampled under foot in the
ardour of faith and in fullest humility; and thus (as the Apostle says)
building again those things which you had destroyed, you make yourself a
backslider. But rather take heed to continue even to the end in that
state of nakedness of which you made profession in the sight of God and of
his angels. In this humility too and patience, with which you persevered
for ten days before the doors and entreated with many tears to be admitted
into the monastery, you should not only continue but also increase and go
forward. For it is too bad that when you ought to be carried on from the
rudiments and beginnings, and go forward to perfection, you should begin to
fall back from these to worse things. For not he who begins these things,
but he who endures in them to the end, shall be saved.
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