Chapter III.
How the juniors ought not to discuss the orders of the
seniors.
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.