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GERMANUS: We very clearly and plainly see the proofs by which the signs
of infirmities are inferred, and the method of discerning diseases, i.e.,
how the faults which are concealed in us can be detected: for our every day
experience and the daily motions of our thoughts show us all these as they
have been stated. It remains then that as the proofs and causes of our
maladies have been exposed to us in a most clear way so their remedies and
cures may also be shown. For no one can doubt that one who has first
discovered the grounds and beginnings of ailments, with the approving
witness of the conscience of those affected, can best discourse on their
remedies. And so though the teaching of your holiness has laid bare the
secrets of our wounds whereby we venture to have some hope of a remedy,
because so clear a diagnosis of the disease gives promise of the hope of a
cure, yet because, as you say, the first elements of salvation are acquired
in the coenobium, and men cannot be in a sound condition in solitude,
unless they have first been healed by the medicine of the coenobium, we
have fallen again into a dangerous state of despair lest as we left the
coenobium in an imperfect condition we may not now that we are in the
desert succeed in becoming perfect.
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