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| Chapter XXIV. How Abbot Piamun chose to hide his abstinence.
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Chapter XXIV.
How Abbot Piamun chose to hide his abstinence.
Finally Abbot
Piamun2047
| 2047 On Piamun see the
note on XVIII. i. | after
twenty-five years did not hesitate to receive some grapes and wine
offered to him by a certain brother, and at once preferred, against his
rule, to taste what was brought him rather than to display his
abstinence which was a secret from everybody. For if we would also bear
in mind what we remember that our Elders always did, who used to
conceal the marvels of their own good deeds, and their own acts, which
they were obliged to bring forward in Conference for the instruction of
the juniors, under cover of other persons, what else can we consider
them but an open lie? And O that we too had anything worthy which we
could bring forward for stirring up the faith of the juniors! Certainly
we should have no scruples in following their fictions of that kind.
For it is better under the colour of a figure like that to tell a lie
than for the sake of maintaining that unreasonable truthfulness either
hide in ill-advised silence what might be edifying to the hearers, or
run into the display of an objectionable vanity by telling them
truthfully in our own character. And the teacher of the Gentiles
clearly teaches us the same lesson by his teaching, as he chose to
bring forward the great revelations made to him, under the character of
some one else, saying: “I know a man in Christ, whether in the
body or out of the body I cannot tell, God knoweth, caught up even unto
the third heaven: and I know such a man, that he was caught up into
paradise and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for man to
utter.”2048
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