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And so, sitting in their cells and devoting their energies equally to
work and to meditation, when they hear the sound of some one knocking at
the door and striking on the cells of each, summoning them to prayer or
some work, every one eagerly dashes out from his cell, so that one who is
practising the writer's art, although he may have just begun to form a
letter, does not venture to finish it, but runs out with the utmost speed,
at the very moment when the sound of the knocking reaches his ears, without
even waiting to finish the letter he has begun; but, leaving the lines of
the letter incomplete, he aims not at abridging and saving his labour, but
rather hastens with the utmost earnestness and zeal to attain the virtue of
obedience, which they put not merely before manual labour and reading and
silence and quietness in the cell, but even before all virtues, so that
they consider that everything should be postponed to it, and are content
to undergo any amount of inconvenience if only it may be seen that they
have in no way neglected this virtue.
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