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But we must not imagine that anyone slips and comes to grief by a
sudden fall, but that he falls by a hopeless collapse either from being
deceived by beginning his training badly, or from the good qualities of his
soul failing through a long course of carelessness of mind, and so his
faults gaining ground upon him little by little. For "loss goeth before
destruction, and an evil thought before a fall," just as no house ever
fails to the ground by a sudden collapse, but only when there is some flaw
of long standing in the foundation, or when by long continued neglect of
its inmates, what was at first only a little drip finds its way through,
and so the protecting wails are by degrees ruined, and in consequence of
long standing neglect the gap becomes larger, and break away, and in time
the drenching storm and rain pours in like a river: for "by slothfulness a
building is cast down, and through the weakness of hands the house shall
drop through," And that the same thing happens spiritually to the soul
the same Solomon thus tells us in other words, when he says: "water
dripping drives a man out of the house. on a stormy day." Elegantly then
does he compare carelessness of mind to a roof, and to tiles that have not
been looked after, through which in the first instance only very slight
drippings (so to speak) of the passions make their way to the soul: but if
these are not heeded, as being but small and trifling, then the beams of
virtues will decay and be carried away by a great tempest of sins, through
which "on a stormy day," i.e., in the time of temptation, the devil's
attack will assail us, and the soul will be driven forth from the abode of
virtue, in which, as long as it preserved all watchful diligence, it had
remained as in a house that belonged to it.
And so when we had heard this, we were so immensely delighted with our
spiritual repast, that the mental pleasure with which we were filled by
this conference outweighed the sorrow which we had experienced before from
the death of the saints. For not only were we instructed in things about
which we had been puzzled, but we also learnt from the raising of that
question some things, which our understanding had been too small for us to
ask about.
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