Letter 165

Isidore of PelusiumUnknown|isidore pelusium
From: Isidore of Pelusium, monk at Pelusium
To: Athanasius the Presbyter
Date: ~410 AD
Context: Isidore on the universality of moral failure and the equal availability of moral recovery.

Not only the uneducated and the rough-mannered fall into moral error. The educated, the well-trained, and those who have spent years learning the right things fall too — sometimes more spectacularly, because they had further to go.

This should not discourage anyone. If education and training are not sufficient protection, it is because the struggle is not primarily intellectual. It is a struggle of the will. And the will — educated or not — needs constant renewal. The recovery from failure is available to all who will seek it.

Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.