How Can Those Who Went Out Uncured Be Healed?

We see very clearly and plainly the proofs by which the signs of weakness are inferred, and the method of recognizing diseases, that is, how the faults hidden in us can be detected. Our everyday experience and the daily movements of our thoughts show us all these things just as they have been stated. It remains, then, that just as the proofs and causes of our ailments have been laid open to us so very clearly, their remedies and cures may also be shown. For no one can doubt that whoever has first uncovered the grounds and beginnings of ailments, with the approving witness of the conscience of those afflicted, is best able to speak about their remedies. [a]

The teaching of your holiness has laid bare the secrets of our wounds, and this lets us venture to hope for a remedy, because so clear a diagnosis of the disease holds out the hope of a cure. Yet, as you say, the first elements of salvation are acquired in the coenobium, and men cannot be sound in solitude unless they have first been healed by the medicine of the coenobium. So we have fallen back into a dangerous despair: since we left the coenobium in an imperfect state, we fear that we may not now, in the desert, succeed in becoming perfect.