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Longer Rules

St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925

Rule 48: That We Must Not Interfere with the Arrangements of the Superior But Attend to…

To prevent any one falling easily into such a vice of doubt to his own damage and that of the rest, this must be the general rule among the brethren, that no one at all interfere with the arrangements of the Superior or trouble himself about what is done except those who are next to the Superior in rank and understanding.¹ These he will necessarily employ for counsel and deliberation on the common welfare, obeying the admonition of him who said: “Do everything with counsel.”² For if we have entrusted the management of our souls to him, as one who will give account to God, it is absolutely unreasonable that a man should be mistrustful in trivial matters and both be himself filled with absurd suspicions against his brother and give occasion to the rest to be the same. Wherefore lest this should happen, let each remain in the state in which he was called, and having given himself wholly to care for what belongs to him, let him not interfere in the other arrangements, but imitate the holy disciples of the Lord, of Whom, though the matter of the Samaritan woman might cause suspicion, “yet no man said: What seekest thou, or Why speakest thou with her?”³

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