One of the elders used to say, "Whatever a man shrinks from let him
not do to another. Dost thou shrink if any man detracts from thee?
Speak not ill of another. Dost thou shrink if any man slanders
thee, or if any man takes aught from thee? Do not that or the like
to another man. For he that shall have kept this saying, will find
it suffice for his salvation."

"The nearer," said Abbot Muthues, "a man approaches God, the more he
will see himself to be a sinner."

Abbot Sisois, when he lay dying, begged to live a little longer,
that he might repent; and when they wondered, he told them that he
had not yet even begun repentance. Whereby they saw that he was
perfect in the fear of the Lord.

But the most startling confession of all must have been that wrung
from the famous Macarius the elder. He had been asked once by a
brother, to tell him a rule by which he might be saved; and his
answer had been this:--to fly from men, to sit in his cell, and to
lament for his sins continually; and, what was above all virtues, to
keep his tongue in order as well as his appetite.

But (whether before or after that answer is not said) he gained a
deeper insight into true virtue, on the day when (like Antony when
he was reproved by the example of the tanner in Alexandria) he heard
a voice telling him that he was inferior to two women who dwelt in
the nearest town. Catching up his staff, like Antony, he went off
to see the wonder. The women, when questioned by him as to their
works, were astonished. They had been simply good wives for years
past, married to two brothers, and living in the same house. But