How Can Those Who Left Too Soon Be Cured?

By what treatment can help be given to us, or to others who are weak in this way and have got only this far? We had received little instruction in the way of the coenobium when we began to aim at living in solitude, before we had got rid of our faults. By what means will we be able to acquire the constancy of an unshakable mind and the immovable steadfastness of patience, we who all too soon gave up the common life of the coenobium, and left the schools and training ground for these exercises, in which our principles ought first to have been thoroughly schooled and perfected? How, then, can we now, while we live alone, gain perfection in long-suffering and patience? Or how can conscience, that searcher of inward motives, find out whether these virtues are present in us or lacking, so that, cut off as we are from the company of men and not provoked by any of their irritations, we may not be deceived by false notions and imagine that we have gained that unshakable peace of mind? [a]