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The Twelve Books of John Cassian on the Institutes of the Coenobia, and the Remedies for the Eight Principal Faults · Book V. Of the Spirit of Gluttony

Chapter XXV

Page 378 of 1,144

Of the abstinence of one old man who took food six times so sparingly that he was still hungry.

When one of the elders was pressing me to eat a little more as I was taking refreshment, and I said that I could not, he replied: "I have already laid my table six times for different brethren who had arrived, and, pressing each of them, I partook of food with him, and am still hungry, and do you, who now partake of refreshment for the first time, say that you cannot eat any more?"

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Volume 11, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (1890–1900). Public domain. Text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.