I have known those who, driven to feed on their own thoughts in solitude, have desperately cast themselves from cliffs or ripped up their own bodies, in the longing to escape from thoughts, from which one companion, one kindly voice, might have delivered them.

I have known those, too, who have been so puffed up by those very penances which were meant to humble them, that they have despised all means of grace, as though they were already perfect, and refusing even the Holy Eucharist, have lived in self-glorying dreams and visions suggested by the evil spirits.

One such I knew, who, in the madness?
of his pride, refused to be counselled by any mortal man--saying that he would call no man master: and what befell him?
He who used to pride himself on wandering a day's journey into the desert without food or drink, who boasted that he could sustain life for three months at a time only on wild herbs and the Blessed Bread, seized with an inward fire, fled from his cell back to the theatres, the circus, and the taverns, and ended his miserable days in desperate gluttony, holding all things to be but phantasms, denying his own existence, and that of God Himself.' Arsenius shook his head.
'Be it so.

But my case is different.

I have yet more to confess, my friend.