related the fact of this journey somewhat as a boast when he was declaring abroad and revealing his labours in order that he might stimulate those who were living lives sluggish and indolent in respect of spiritual excellence, and when he said, “I went up to Jerusalem (Galatians 1:18) that I might see Cephas (Peter),” not that he was denying the spiritual excellence of Peter of which he had received [information] by report, but because he was longing for converse with him also. [Now, if this Paul had need of converse with Peter], how much more did I, who am a debtor of ten thousand talents, need to do this (i.e., to visit the holy men), for the sake of the benefit, not for the sake of any good which I could do them but for the sake of the advantage which I the sinful man should myself gain? And moreover, the things which writers have written down about the holy Fathers, I mean Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, and Elijah, and the other saints, were not composed and narrated to glorify them, but that those who should peruse them might profit thereby.
Therefore, O chaste and believing man, Lausus, thou servant of God, knowing these things, and having also instructed thyself in many others, be convinced by our discourse also and let the matters thereof be laid up in thy God-fearing mind as in a secure storehouse which is not wont to be disturbed by evil things of divers kinds, either visible or invisible, and which only constant prayer and the converse which concerneth the service of the soul can make to be moved.
For many of these brethren who in the fear of God won spiritual excellence, and who waxed great in ascetic labours and lovingkindness, and who were famed (or boasted) because of their perfect chastity and virginity, and who protracted to great length their meditations upon the Holy Scriptures, and placed their trust upon [their] strenuousness in spiritual doctrine, were never held to be worthy of the state of impassibility, because they served with a mind which possessed not discretion and employed only the form of the fear of God, and because they were diseased with the love of external converse, wherefrom are produced all vices which enter [into a man] from without, and which eradicate that which is the mother of the service which taketh place in the soul.
Be strong, therefore, in all wisdom, and nourish not thy soul in the riches which thou hast made (or gotten), having made them sufficiently little by means of the gifts to those who are needy, so that the ministration which ariseth therefrom may perfect the service of excellence, for [this] cometh into being neither through any urging whatsoever, nor through the foolish thoughts of any form whatsoever for the sake of vainglory. And
