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FOR apart from that loss, which we have said that a monk incurs who
wants in light-mindedness to pass from one pursuit to another, there is a
risk of death that is hence incurred, because at times things which are
rightly done by some are wrongly taken by others as an example, and things
which turned out well for some, are found to be injurious to others. For,
to give an instance, it is as if one wished to imitate the good deed of
that man, which Abbot John is wont to bring forward, not for the sake of
imitating him but simply out of admiration for him; for one came to the
aforesaid old man in a secular dress and when he had brought him some of
the first fruits of his crops, he found some one there possessed by a most
fierce devil. And this one though he scorned the adjurations and commands
of Abbot John, and vowed that he would never at his bidding leave the body
which he had occupied, yet was terrified at the coming of this other, and
departed with a most humble utterance of his name. And the old man
marvelled not a little at his so evident grace and was the more astonished
at him because he saw that he had on a secular dress; and so began
carefully to ask of him the manner of his life and pursuit. And when he
said that he was living in the world and bound by the ties of marriage, the
blessed John, considering in his mind the greatness of his virtue and
grace, searched out still more carefully what his manner of life might be.
He declared that he was a countryman, and that he sought his food by the
daily toil of his hands, and was not conscious of anything good about him
except that he never went forth to his work in the fields in the morning
nor came home in the evening without having returned thanks in Church for
the food of his daily life, to God Who gave it; and that he had never used
any of his crops without having first offered to God their first fruits and
tithes; and that he had never driven his oxen over the bounds of another's
harvest without having first muzzled them that his neighbour might not
sustain the slightest loss through his carelessness. And when these things
did not seem to Abbot John sufficient to procure such grace as that with
which he saw that he was endowed, and he inquired of him and investigated
what it was which could be connected with the merits of such grace, he was
induced by respect for such anxious inquiries to confess that, when he
wanted to be professed as a monk, he had been compelled by force and his
parents' command, twelve years before to take a wife, who, without any body
to that day being aware of it, was kept by him as a virgin in the place of
a sister. And when the old man heard this, he was so overcome with
admiration that he announced publicly in his presence that it was not
without good reason that the devil who had scorned him himself, could not
endure the presence of this man, whose virtue he himself, not only in the
ardour of youth, but even now, would not dare to aim at without risk of his
chastity. And though Abbot John would tell this story with the utmost
admiration, yet he never advised any monk to try this plan as he knew that
many things which are rightly done by some involved others who imitate them
in great danger, and that that cannot be tried by all, which the Lord
bestowed upon a few by a special gift.
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