01-13# The Rule of our Holy Father Benedict. Chapter 2: What Kind of Man an Abbot Ought to Be. Continued.
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For in his teaching the abbot ought always to keep to that apostolic formula in which it is said: “Convince, entreat, rebuke”: that is to say, mingling according to circumstances gentleness with severity, let him show the sternness of a master, the affection of a father: that is to say, he ought to convince the undisciplined and restless almost harshly: but to entreat the obedient, the meek and the patient, that they progress still better. But the negligent and the haughty we admonish him to rebuke and correct. And let him not close his eyes to the sins of those who do amiss, but almost as soon as they begin to appear let him cut them off at the roots and master them, mindful of the judgment against Eli the priest in Silo. The more dignified and the intellectually minded let him correct by word at their first and second admonition; but the froward, the hard, the proud and the disobedient, let him coerce at the very first offence by the stripes of corporal punishment, knowing it is written: “A fool is not corrected by words”; and again: “Strike thy son with the rod and thou wilt free his soul from death.”
