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JOHN: I should absolutely maintain that one and the same man could not
attain perfection in both lives unless I was hindered by the example of
some few. And since it is no small matter to find a man who is perfect in
either of them, it is clear how much harder and I had almost said
impossible it is for a man to be thoroughly efficient in both. And if this
has ever happened, it cannot come under any general rule. For a general
rule must be based not on exceptional instances, i.e., on the experience of
a very few, but on what is within the power of the many or rather of all.
But what is attained to here and there by but one or two, and is beyond the
capacity of ordinary goodness, must be kept out of general rules as
something permitted outside the condition and nature of human weakness, and
should be brought forward as a miracle rather than as an example. Wherefore
I will, as my slender ability allows, briefly intimate what you want to
know. The aim indeed of the coenobite is to mortify and crucify all his
desires and, according to that salutary command of evangelic perfection, to
take no thought for the morrow. And it is perfectly clear that this
perfection cannot be attained by any except a coenobite, such a man as the
prophet Isaiah describes and blesses and praises as follows: "If thou turn
away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy own will in my holy day, and
glorify Him, while thou dost not thine own ways, and thine own will is not
found to speak a word: then shalt thou be delighted in the Lord, and I will
lift thee up above the high places of the earth, and will feed thee with
the inheritance of Jacob thy father. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken
it." But the perfection for a hermit is to have his mind freed from all
earthly things, and to unite it, as far as human frailty allows, with
Christ: and such a man the prophet Jeremiah describes when he says:
"Blessed is the man who hath borne the yoke from his youth. He shall sit
solitary and hold his peace, because he hath taken it upon himself;" the
Psalmist also: "I am become like a pelican in the desert. I watched and
became as a sparrow alone upon the housetop." To this aim then, which we
have described as that of either life, unless each of them attains, in vain
does the one adopt the system of the coenobium, and the other of the
hermitage: for neither of them will get the good of his method of life.
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