A Twofold Attack

And so the true Christian athlete who wants to compete by the rules in the contest for perfection should hurry to drive this disease, too, out of the hidden places of his soul. He should fight against this most evil spirit of acedia on both fronts, so that he neither falls pierced through by the arrow of sleep nor is driven out of the monastery’s enclosure, even under some pious excuse or pretext, and leaves as a runaway. [a]