Finding the Roots of the Faults

I thought it right to put these things into this little work of mine, so that we might learn about the force of temptations and the order of the sins that hurt an unhappy soul, not only by reasoning but also by examples, and so might be more careful to avoid the snares and many deceits of the enemy. The Egyptian fathers bring these things forward without reserve. By telling them as men who are still enduring them, they lay open and bare the combats with all the vices, those they actually suffer themselves and those the younger ones are sure to suffer. So when they explain the illusions that arise from all the passions, those who are only beginners and fervent in spirit may know the secret of their own struggles. Seeing them as in a mirror, they may learn both the causes of the sins that trouble them and the remedies for them; and taught in advance about the coming of future struggles, they may learn how to guard against them, or to meet them and fight them. [a]

Skillful physicians are used not only to heal diseases already present but also, by wise skill, to head off future ones and prevent them with their prescriptions and healing medicines. In the same way these true physicians of the soul, through spiritual conferences, destroy in advance, like some heavenly antidote, the sicknesses of the soul that would arise. They do not let them gain a foothold in the minds of the younger monks, as they lay open to them the causes of the passions that threaten them and the remedies that will heal them.