One of the brethren asked me, "Tell us one of the visions you see."

And I said to him, "A sinner like me does not ask God that he may see visions: for that is against His will, and is error….Hear all the same about a great vision. If you see a man pure and humble, it is a great vision. For what is greater than such a vision, to see the Invisible God in a visible man, His temple?"

- Pachomius c. 292-346

Quoted by Derwas Chitty, The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestian Monasticism Under the Christian Empire (St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1966), p.28.