Chapter XXVIII.
The lesson and example which Abbot John when dying left
to his disciples.
When
the same old man, as one
who was readily going to depart to his own, was lying at his last gasp,
and the brethren were standing round, they implored and intreated that
he would leave them, as a sort of legacy, some special charge by which
they could attain to the height of perfection, the more easily from the
brevity of the charge: he sighed and said, “I never did my own
will, nor taught any one what I had not first done
myself.”