The Surest Test of Truth

For I remember that when my youth moved me to attach myself to a companion, thoughts of this kind often mingled with our moral training and with the Holy Scriptures, so that we imagined nothing could be truer or more reasonable. But when we came together and began to bring out our ideas in the general discussion that was held, some of them were first marked by the others as false and dangerous, and then were soon condemned and declared harmful by common consent. Yet before, they had seemed to shine as if with a light poured in by the devil, so that they would easily have caused discord, had not the charge of the elders, kept like some divine oracle, restrained us from all strife. That charge was the one they had laid down almost with the force of a law: that neither of us should trust his own judgment more than his brother’s, if he wanted never to be deceived by the craft of the devil.