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BUT that description of the forgetfulness spoken of only has to do with
capital offences, which are also condemned by the mosaic law, the
inclination to which is destroyed and put an end to by a good life, and so
also the penance for them has an end. But for those small offences in
which, as it is written, "the righteous falls seven times and will rise
again" penitence will never cease. For either through ignorance, or
forgetfulness, or thought, or word, or surprise, or necessity, or weakness
of the flesh, or defilement in a dream, we often fall every day either
against our will or voluntarily; offences for which David also prays the
Lord, and asks for purification and pardon, and says: "Who can understand
sins? from my secret ones cleanse me; and from those of others spare Thy
servant;" and the Apostle: "For the good which I would I do not, and the
evil which I would not, that I do." For which also the same man exclaims
with a sigh "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body
of this death?" For we slip into these so easily as it were by a law of
nature, that however carefully and guardedly we are on the lookout against
them, we cannot altogether avoid them. Since it was of these that one of
the disciples, whom Jesus loved, declared and laid down absolutely saying:
"If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and His word is not in
us." Further for a man who is anxious to reach the heights of
perfection it will not greatly help him to have arrived at the end of
penitence, i.e., to restrain himself from unlawful acts, unless he has
always urged himself forward in unwearied course to those virtues whereby
we come to the signs of satisfaction. For it will not be enough for a man
to have kept himself clear from those foul stains of sins which the Lord
hates, unless he has also secured by purity of heart and perfect
Apostolical love that sweet fragrance of virtue in which the Lord delights.
Thus far Abbot Pinufius discoursed on the marks of satisfaction and the end
of penitence. And although he pressed us with anxious love to decide to
stay in his coenobium, yet when he could not retain us, as we were incited
by the fame of the desert of Scete, he sent us on our way.
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