"One day Abba Arsenius consulted an old Egyptian monk about his own thoughts. Someone noticed this and said to him, 'Abba Arsenius, how is it that you with such a good Latin and Greek education, ask this peasant about your thoughts?' He replied, 'I have indeed been taught Latin and Greek, but I do not know even the alphabet of this peasant.'"
Collection systématique XV.7 (SC 474, p. 286) = Abba Arsenius 6 (PG 65, col. 89). The desert Christian: sayings of the Desert Fathers: the alphabetical collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975), 51. The heading is from the Journal of George Fox (at 1646; cf. 1647).
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