'No one presumes to teach an art till he has first, with intent meditation, learnt it. What rashness is it, then, for the unskillful to assume pastoral authority, since the government of souls is the art of arts! ...And yet how often do men who have no knowledge whatever of spiritual precepts profess themselves physicians of the heart, though those who are ignorant of the effect of drugs blush to appear as physicians of the flesh!'
Gregory the Great, The Book of the Pastoral Rule and Selected Epistles of St Gregory I (Ed. James Barmby), p.59.
