long years that I wait to be thrown to dogs; and I notice that in whatever monastery I come nearly all are younger than myself. When I consider this, I ponder upon death alone, I meditate upon my tomb; I do not withdraw the eyes of my mind from my tomb. Nor is my mind content to limit its fear and its consideration to the death of the body; for it is at once haled to judgment, and meditates with terror upon what might be its plea and defence. Wretched me! with what fountains of tears must I lament! I who have done every evil, and through my long life have fulfilled scarce one commandment of the divine law. For what evil have not I, miserable man, committed? Where are the vices, where are the crimes in which I am not implicated; I confess my life has fallen in a lake of misery; my soul is taken in its iniquities. Pride, lust, anger, impatience, malice, envy, gluttony, drunkenness, concupiscence, robbery, lying, perjury, idle talking, scurrility, ignorance, negligence, and other pests have overthrown me, and all the vices like ravening beasts have devoured my soul. My heart and my lips are defiled. I am contaminate in sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. And in every way, in cogitation, in speech or action, I am lost. All these evils have I done; and alas! alas! I have brought forth no fruit meet for repentance.
"One pernicious fault, among others, I acknowledge: scurrility has been my besetting sin; it has never really left me. For howsoever I have fought against this monster, and broken its wicked teeth with the hammer of austerity, and at times repelled it, I have never won the full victory. When, in the ways of spiritual gladness, I wish to show myself cheerful to the brethren, I drop into words of vanity; and when as it were discreetly for the sake of brotherly love, I think to throw off my severity, then indiscreetly my tongue unbridled utters foolishness. If the Lord said: 'Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted,' what judgment hangs over those who not only are slack at weeping, but act like buffoons with laughter and vain giggling. Consolation is due to those who weep, not to those who rejoice; what consolation may be expected from that future Judge by those who now are given to foolish mirth and vain jocularity? If the Truth says: 'Woe unto ye who laugh, for ye shall weep,' what fearful judgment shall be theirs who not only laugh themselves, but with scurrilities drag laughter from their listeners?"
The penitent saint then shows from Scripture how that our hearts ought to be vessels of tears, and concludes with casting himself at the feet of his beloved "father" in entreaty that he would interpose the shield of his holy prayers between his petitioner and that monster, and exorcise its serpentine poison, and also that he would ever pour forth
