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583. A brother asked an old man, “Whence come the temptations of fornication which attack me?” The old man said, “They come because thou eatest and drinkest largely, and because thou sleepest until thou art satisfied.”

584. Abbâ John used to say, “Whosoever talketh as much as he can with a woman, hath already committed adultery with her in his mind.”

585. On one occasion a certain brother came to Abbâ Muthues and asked him, saying, “Is calumny worse than fornication?” And the old man said, “Fornication is worse.” The brother said unto him, “How can this be?” And the old man said unto him, “Calumny is a wicked thing, but it receiveth healing quickly, and the calumniator repenteth, saying, ‘I have spoken evilly many times’; but fornication in the body is death in [its] nature.”

586. There was in Scete a certain monk who strove hard [against sin], and the Enemy sowed in him the remembrance of a certain woman with a beautiful face, and he troubled him greatly through her. And by the Providence of God a certain brother who came down from Egypt went to visit him, and it came to pass that whilst they were conversing together the brother who had gone to visit him said, “Such and such a woman is dead”; now she was the very woman the remembrance of whom was being stirred up in the monk. And when the other brother heard this, he rose up, and took his headcloth, and went up by night to Egypt, and opened her grave, and he smeared himself with the filthy and putrefying matter of the dead body of the woman, and then went back to his cell. And he set that thing of filth before his mind at all times, and he did battle with his thought, saying, “Behold thy lust, and that which thou didst require! Behold, I have brought it unto thee; take thy fill thereof.” And he used to torture himself with [the remembrance of] that filthy thing until the war which was in him was quieted.

587. One of the brethren asked Abbâ Zeno, now he had great freedom of speech with him, saying, “Behold, thou hast grown old, how is the matter of fornication?” The old man said unto him, “It knocketh, but it passeth on.” Then one of the brethren asked him, “What is the meaning of ‘It knocketh, but it passeth on?’ ” The old man said unto him, “Imagine now that one brought to thy mind the remembrance of a certain woman, and that thou didst say, ‘Oh,’ but that thou didst not allow it to go up in thy mind; [that is what ‘It knocketh, but passeth on’ meaneth]; now young men are excited by it.”

588. A brother asked Abbâ Theodore of Scete, saying, “The thought of