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THE blessed Joseph, whose instructions and precepts are now to be
set forth, and who was one of the three whom we mentioned in the first
Conference, belonged to a most illustrious family, and was the chief
man of his city in Egypt, which was named Thmuis, and so was carefully
trained in the eloquence of Greece as well as Egypt, so that he could talk
admirably with us or with those who were utterly ignorant of Egyptian, not
as the others did through an interpreter, but in his own person. And when
he found that we were anxious for instruction from him, he first inquired
whether we were own brothers, and when he heard that we were united in a
tie of spiritual and not carnal brotherhood, and that from the first
commencement of our renunciation of the world we had always been joined
together in an unbroken bond as well in our travels, which we had both
undertaken for the sake of spiritual service, as also in the pursuits of
the monastery, he began his discourse as follows.
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