372. A brother asked Abbâ Amônîs, saying, “How ought a man to act when he wisheth to begin some [kind of] work, or when he wisheth to go or to come, or to go from one place to another, so that action may be according to the will of God, and may be free from the error of devils?” The old man said unto him, “He must first consider in his mind and see the motive of that which he wisheth to do, and whence it cometh, and if it be from God or Satan, or from the man himself, and then let him do the work [which he contemplateth], but let him flee from going and coming, and from going from one place to another. If he [acteth] not [thus] he will finally become a laughing-stock for the devils. But afterwards let him pray and beseech God that that work which is His he may do, and then let him begin the work, and afterwards he may boast in God.”
373. He also said, “Bear with every man in such a way that God may also bear with thee.”
374. The disciple of Abbâ Ammon told the following story:—One night the old man came out and found me lying down in the courtyard of the cell, and he stood up above me, and with lamentation and tears said, “Where is the mind of this brother who can thus lie down (or sleep) without care?”
375. There was a certain priest in Thebaïs whose name was Dioscurus, and he was the spiritual father of many monks, and at the time when they were about to receive the Holy Mysteries he used to say to the brethren, “Take thought and see lest any man among you have been snared by the phantom of a woman during the night, and he be so bold as to receive the Holy Mysteries. Now the emissions which occur as the result of a phantom are not caused by the desire of a man, but take place independently thereof, for they happen naturally, and are due to the excess of matter [in the body], and they do not, therefore, lead [a man] into subjection to sin. But the phantoms which arise from the desire are the sign of an evil wish. For it is meet that the monk should be superior to the law of nature, and that he should not be found with the smallest impurity of body, but that he should waste the body and humble it, and should not permit any superfluity of matter to be found therein. Work out plans, then, that thou mayest cut off [the superfluity of] matter by means of a long period of fasting, for if we do not thus it will in cite the other lusts to come upon us; and it is not meet that a monk should be occupied with the lusts which rise up in him daily. And if we do not thus, in what way are we different from those who live in the world? For we have observed that men of this kind often make themselves to be remote from
