Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume XI/John Cassian/The Twelve Books/Book X/Chapter 14

Chapter XIV.

How manual labour prevents many faults.

so he loses no time in at once applying a suitable remedy to the incentive to so many faults, and laying aside that apostolic power of his which he had made use of a little before, he adopts once more the tender character of a good father, or of a kind physician, and, as if they were his children or his patients, applies by his healing counsel remedies to cure them, saying: &#8220;Now we charge them that are such, and beseech them by the Lord Jesus, that working with silence they would eat their own bread.&#8221; The cause of all these ulcers, which spring from the root of idleness, he heals like some well-skilled physician by a single salutary charge to work; as he knows that all the other bad symptoms, which spring as it were from the same clump, will at once disappear when the cause of the chief malady has been removed.