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JOHN: To those who are really seeking relief, healing remedies from the
true Physician of souls will certainly not be wanting; and to those above
all will they be given who do not disregard their ill-condition (either
because they despair of it, or because they do not care about it), nor hide
the danger they are in from their wound, nor in their wanton heart reject
the remedy of penitence, but with an humble and yet careful heart flee to
the heavenly Physician for the diseases they have contracted from ignorance
or error or necessity. And so we ought to know that if we retire to
solitude or secret places, without our faults being first cured, their
operation is but repressed, while the power of feeling them is not
extinguished. For the root of all sins not having been eradicated is still
lying hid in us, or rather creeping up, and that it is still alive we can
tell by these signs. For instance, if, when we are living in solitude we
receive the approach of some brethren, or any very slight tarrying on their
part, with any anxiety or fretfulness of mind, we should recognize that an
incentive to the most hasty impatience is still existing in us. But if when
we are hoping for the coming of a brother, and from some cause he perhaps
delays a little, our mental indignation either silently blames his
slowness, and annoyance at this inconvenient waiting disturbs our mind, the
examination of our conscience will show that the sin of anger and vexation
is plainly still remaining in us. Again, if when a brother asks for our
book to read, or for some other article to use, his request annoys us, or
a refusal on our part disgusts him, there can be no doubt that we are still
entangled in the meshes of avarice or covetousness. But if a sudden thought
or a passage of Holy Scripture brings up the recollection of a woman and we
feel that we are at all attracted towards her, we should know that the
fire of fornication is not yet extinguished in us. But if on a comparison
of our own strictness with the laxity of another even the slightest
conceit tries our mind, it is clear that we are affected with the dreadful
plague of pride. When then we detect these signs of faults in our heart, we
should clearly recognize that it is only the opportunity and not the
passion of sin of which we are deprived. And certainly these passions, if
at any time we were to mingle in the ordinary life of men, would at once
start up from their lurking places in our thoughts and prove that they did
not then for the first time come into existence when they broke out, but
that they were then at last made public, because they had been long lying
hid. And so even a solitary can detect by sure signs that the roots of each
fault are still implanted in him, if he tries not to show his purity to
men, but to maintain it inviolate in His sight, from whom no secrets of the
heart can be hid.
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