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WHEREFORE if, as we believe, the cause of God has drawn you to try to
copy our knowledge, you must utterly ignore all the rules by which your
early beginnings were trained, and must with all humility follow whatever
you see our Elders do or teach. And do not be troubled or drawn away and
diverted from imitating it, even if for the moment the cause or reason of
any deed or action is not clear to you, because if men have good and simple
ideas on all things and are anxious faithfully to copy whatever they see
taught or done by their Elders, instead of discussing it, then the
knowledge of all things will follow through experience of the work. But he
will never enter into the reason of the truth, who begins to learn by
discussion, because as the enemy sees that he trusts to his own judgment
rather than to that of the fathers' he easily urges him on so far till
those things which are especially useful and helpful seem to him
unnecessary or injurious, and the crafty foe so plays upon his presumption,
that by obstinately clinging to his own opinion he persuades himself that
only that is holy, which he himself in his pig-headed error thinks to be
good and right.
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