thou wilt never be able to straighten the path. Place before it the following parable. A certain man had an ass, and as he was sitting upon it and journeying along, the animal would not go straight, but went first to this side of the road and then to that; and he took a stick and smote it. And the ass said, ‘Beat me not, and henceforward I will go straight.’ Now when he had gone a little further on, the man alighted from the ass, and placed the stick in [his] cloak-bag which was on it, but the ass knew not that the stick was on his back. And when the ass saw that its master was not carrying the stick, he began to hold him in contempt, and he walked among the crops; thereupon his master ran after him, and took the stick and beat him with it until he went straight. Now the belly of the body is even like unto the ass.”
522. A brother said to Theodore of Parmê, “Speak a word to me, for behold, I am about to perish.” And with great labour the old man said unto him, “I stand in danger myself, and what have I to say to thee?”
523. Abbâ Kêrîôn used to say, “I have performed more bodily labours than my son Zechariah, but I have not reached his measure of humility and silence.”
524. Abbâ Macarius used to say, “Guard thyself against freedom of word and deed, for it is meet for a monk not to permit his thought to be his judge in anything whatsoever.”
525. Mother Sarah used to say to her brethren, “It is I who am a man, and ye who are women.”
526. A brother asked Abbâ Poemen, “How can it be right for me to take good heed to my ways when I am sitting in my cell?” The old man said unto him, “For a season I was a man who had fallen into the mire up to my shoulders, and a basketful of gall hung from my neck, and I was crying out to God, ‘Have mercy upon me.’ ”
527. They used to say of the men who were in the cells “that their rules were so strict that during the night they slept four hours, and assembled for service four hours, and worked for four hours; that during the day they worked with their hands until the ninth hour, and that after that they prepared the small quantity of food which they ate, and if any man had anything to do in his cell he then did it. In this way they filled up their day.”
528. A brother asked Abbâ Sisoes, saying, “Why do not the passions depart from me?” The old man said unto him, “Because their possessions are in thee; give them their pledge (or security), and they will depart.”
529. On one occasion the fathers were summoned by the Archbishop Theophilus, and they went to Alexandria to him
