fair to sell with [other] brethren a few things, and I saw anger drawing nigh unto me, and I left the things and fled straightway.”
495. Abbâ John the Less used to say, “On one occasion when I was going up on the Scete road with some palm leaves I heard a camel speaking words to me, and he was about to make me angry, but I straightway left the palm leaves and fled.”
496. The same old man when he was in the harvest [field] heard a brother speaking to his companion in anger, saying, “Come hither,” and straightway he left the harvest and fled.
497. A brother asked an old man, “Why is it, when I am performing my little services of prayer and praise, that I sometimes see in myself that there is nothing lacking in my heart, and that I do not wish it?” The old man said unto him, “How then can a man appear to love God?”
498. Abbâ John the Less said unto the brethren who were with him, “Although we be little folk in the eyes of men, let us consider how we may be held in honour before God.”
499. They used to say that Abbâ Patrâ and Abbâ Ampîkôs were close and affectionate friends, and that when the old men were eating in the church, and they were urging them to come to the table of the fathers, it was only with hard work that Abbâ Patrâ would go by himself; and after he had eaten, Abbâ Ampîkôs said unto him, “How didst thou dare to go to the table of the old men?” Abbâ Patrâ said unto him, “If I had sat with you the brethren would have honoured me as an old man, and they would have required it of me to be the first to say the blessing, and I might have thought in my mind that I was greater than you all. But since I went to the fathers I am the least of you all, and I am abased, and I think in my thoughts that I am nothing.”
500. On one occasion a brother committed sin in the church, and the priest drove him out therefrom, and there was there a man of discretion whose name was Bessarion, and he also arose and went out of the church, and said, “If ye have judged that this man who hath committed only one offence is not fit to worship God, how very much less fit am I, who have committed many sins, to do so?” And the old man said, “ ‘Woe be unto him that is without more than unto him that is within,’ that is to say, ‘Woe be unto him that is [within him that is without!’] Now this is what I would say, When a man in the world findeth a cause [of complaint] against a man who liveth a life of silent contemplation, or who hath departed from the world, this is a [cause of] judgement and of a fall unto him who giveth him reason [for complaint]. Take the greatest possible care then, O monk, not to commit sin, lest
