訓教不嚴 Slack Teaching Is the Masters Fault
古人云：『訓教不嚴師之惰，學問無成子之罪。』汝等既有誠心，可去焚香來拜了天地，我先傳你些神力，然後可授武藝。」古人云：『训教不严师之惰，学问无成子之罪。』汝等既有诚心，可去焚香来拜了天地，我先传你些神力，然后可授武艺。」
逐句解 Line by line
As the ancients said, "Instruction not strict is the master's idleness; learning that comes to nothing is the pupil's fault."
A quotation inside a quotation, and the punctuation shows it. The couplet is lifted almost word for word from the Three Character Classic, the primer every literate Chinese child memorised for six centuries — which makes it about the most familiar sentence Pilgrim could possibly have chosen. 子 is zǐ here, the pupil or son, the noun rather than the light suffix. He is quoting a schoolbook at three schoolboys.
Since you have sincere hearts, go and burn incense and bow to heaven and earth. I shall first pass on to you some divine strength, and after that the arts can be taught."
And here is the solution, which nobody has seen coming: he will give them the strength first. 神力, divine strength, is a thing that can be transmitted rather than trained, and 傳 is the verb for handing on a teaching. 拜了天地, bowing to heaven and earth, is the rite that makes anything binding — it is what a couple does at a wedding.
Pilgrim quotes the Three Character Classic, which is roughly the equivalent of quoting a nursery rhyme, and he quotes it accurately. The couplet divides the blame for a failed education between master and pupil, which is exactly the risk he has just described.
Then he solves the problem in a way no ordinary teacher could. The boys cannot lift the weapons, so he will change the boys. What has been framed for two pages as a question about instruction turns out to be a question about bodies.
The rite he sends them off to perform is the one that seals a marriage. Bowing to heaven and earth is how you make a bond that cannot be walked away from, and that is what taking a master was understood to be.