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But since in the section in which we proposed to say something about
the strictness of fasting and abstinence, kindly acts and deeds of charity
seem to have been intermingled, again returning to our design we will
insert in this little book a noteworthy deed of some who were boys in years
though not in their feelings. For when, to their great surprise, some one
had brought to Abbot John, the steward in the desert of Scete, some figs
from Libya Mareotis, as being a thing never before seen in those
districts,--(John) who had the management of the church in the days of the
blessed Presbyter Paphnutius, by whom it had been intrusted to him, at
once sent them by the hands of two lads to an old man who was laid up in
ill health in the further parts of the desert, and who lived about eighteen
miles from the church. And when they had received the fruit, and set off
for the cell of the above-mentioned old man, they lost the right path
altogether--a thing which there easily happens even to elders-- as a thick
fog suddenly came on. And when all day and night they had wandered about
the trackless waste of the desert, and could not possibly find the sick
man's cell, worn out at last both by weariness from their journey, and from
hunger and thirst, they bent their knees and gave up their souls to God in
the very act of prayer. And afterwards, when they had been for a long while
sought for by the marks of their footsteps which in those sandy regions are
impressed as if on snow, until a thin coating of sand blown about even by a
slight breeze covers them up again, it was found that they had preserved
the figs untouched, just as they had received them; choosing rather to give
up their lives, than their fidelity to their charge, and to lose their life
on earth than to violate the commands of their senior.
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