The Twelve Books on the Institutes of the Cœnobia, and the Remedies for the Eight Principal Faults

Then after all this rigour of gospel severity, he now lays bare the reason why he put forward all these matters. “For we have heard that some among you walk disorderly, working not at all, but curiously meddling.” He is nowhere satisfied to speak of those who will not give themselves up to work, as if they were victims of but a single malady. For in his first Epistle he speaks of them as “disorderly,” and not walking according to the traditions which they had received from him: and he also asserts that they were restless, and ate their bread for nought. Again he says here, “We have heard that there are some among you who walk disorderly.” And at once he subjoins a second weakness, which is the root of this restlessness, and says, “working not at all;” a third malady as well he adds, which springs from this last like some shoot: “but curiously meddling.”