A Pious and Useful Admonition Concerning the Brothers of the Rosy Cross

The mind focused on many things is less attentive to individual ones. original: "Pluribus intentus minor est ad singula sensus." A common medieval psychological maxim stating that multi-tasking diminishes focus.

Indeed, that very ancient verse could even be brought to bear on this sentiment:

A stone rolled here and there does not become mossy. original: "Non fit hirsutus lapis hinc & inde volutus." This is the Latin equivalent of the proverb "A rolling stone gathers no moss."

2. It could be denied that they devote themselves to the liberal arts The traditional seven subjects of a classical education: grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy., since according to the poet Ovid:

Poems require the writer's seclusion and leisure. original: "Carmina secessum scribentis, & otia quærunt." From Ovid's Tristia 1.1.41.

For which purpose the ancients said: D O T H I S original: "HOC AGE." A Roman command used during religious sacrifices to ensure attendants focused solely on the ritual; here it means total concentration on one's work.; by which they meant that no one should be delighted by or distracted by the business of others. But now these associates, according to their own publication, care for almost everything, and thus are so concerned with the affairs of others: for which purpose also—and so that they may fish out and explore everything—it is so probable that they travel much, that one could say it is the truth.

3. Studies are acquired with great labors and vigils, according to that [saying] of the Poet:

As a boy, he bore and did many things, he sweated and he shivered. original: "Multa tulit fecitq; puer, sudauit & alsit." From Horace's Ars Poetica 413, describing the physical and mental discipline required for artistic mastery.

Now, however, they do not seem to labor in the liberal arts, inasmuch as they are not even able to, since they [are] not in a fixed place