Psalms 142:3

In this way in which I was walking, they have hidden a snare for me. The vices are near to the virtues. In whatever way anyone wishes to walk, in that way they set snares: whether in fasting, or in almsgiving, or in the other virtues.

When my spirit was failing within me. If the evil spirit that was choking Saul does not fail from us, the Lord cannot know our paths. And what are the paths of the righteous? Righteousness, good works, an upright life, chastity, self-restraint, and other things like these.

There was a certain old man who used to live in the desert that is called Scete, and he had a disciple who lived with him; now this [latter] brother was adorned with the spiritual excellences of every kind that befit those who are in subjection to old men, and he was exceedingly conspicuous for his obedience, which was the greatest of all his virtues. And he was sent to the village continually by the old man to sell their work and to bring back whatsoever was needed for their habitation, and that brother, without any compulsion whatsoever, performed every command that the old man gave him with zeal and diligence. Now when the enemy of righteousness, the foe of the human race, and especially of the orders of the monks, that is to say, Satan, the opponent of all virtues and the hater of the upright life of the children of humankind, saw that this brother was overcoming and bringing to naught all his crafty designs by the might of his simple obedience, which was full of discretion, he made a plan to lay two snares for him in the path of his spiritual excellence, even as it is said concerning him in the psalm, as it were by the mouth of those who cultivate spiritual excellence and who walk in the way of righteousness, "In the way of my steps have they hidden snares for me." Now the two snares were these: The first consisted in making that brother to pursue fornication, and the second was in making him to fall into disobedience; and the enemy, in his cunning, expected that the brother would not only be caught by one of these, and so become involved in both, but also that deliverance from the one would be found to be the occasion for his falling into the other, for he saw that he was being sent continually to Egypt by his master [on the business] of the work of their hands and of the matter of their need.