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IF then anyone else delights in the recesses of the desert and would
forget all human intercourse and say with Jeremiah: "I have not desired the
day of man: Thou knowest," I confess that by the blessing of God's
grace, I also secured or at any rate tried to secure this. And so by the
kind gift of the Lord I remember that I was often caught up into such an
ecstasy as to forget that I was clothed with the burden of a weak body, and
my soul on a sudden forgot all external notions and entirely cut itself off
from all material objects, so that neither my eyes nor ears performed their
proper functions. And my soul was so filled with divine meditations and
spiritual contemplations that often in the evening I did not know whether I
had taken any food and on the next day was very doubtful whether I had
broken my fast yesterday. For which reason, a supply of food for seven
days, i.e., seven sets of biscuits were set apart in a sort of hand-
basket, and laid by on Saturday, that there might be no doubt when
supper had been omitted; and by this plan another mistake also from
forgetfulness was obviated, for when the number of cakes was finished it
showed that the course of the week was over, and that the services of the
same day had come round, and that the festival and holy day and services of
the congregation could not escape the notice of the solitary. But even if
that ecstasy of mind of which we have spoken should happen to interfere
with this arrangement, yet stall the method of the days' work would show
the number of the days and check the mistake. And to pass over in silence
the other advantages of the desert (for it is not our business to treat of
their number and quantity, but rather of the aim of solitude and the
coenobium) I will the rather briefly explain the reasons why I preferred to
leave it, which you also wanted to know, and will in a concise discourse
glance at all those fruits of solitude which I mentioned, and show to what
greater advantages on the other side they ought to be held inferior.
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