first of all that they who come to Him are deserving of a cure on account of the faith which they exhibit. For this reason He exhibited the loneliness of one man, and the fervent faith and zeal of the other: for this reason He healed the one on the Sabbath, the other not on the Sabbath: in order that when you see them accusing and rebuking Christ on another day you may understand that they accused him on the former occasion also not because of their re- spect for the law, but because they could not contain their own malice. But why did He not first address Himself to the cure of the paralytic, but said, “Son! be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee?” He did this very wisely. For it is a habit with physicians to destroy the originating cause of the malady before they remove the malady itself. Often for example when the eyes are distressed by some evil humour and corrupt discharge, the physician, abandoning any treatment of the disordered vision, turns his attention to the head, where the root and origin of the infirmity is: even so did Christ act: He represses first of all the source of the evil. For the source and root and mother of all evil is the nature of sin. This it is which enervates our bodies: this it is which brings on disease: therefore also on this occasion He said, “Son! be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee.” And on the other He said, “Be- hold! thou art made whole, sin no more lest some worse thing happen unto thee,” intimating to both that these maladies were the offspring of sin. And in the beginning and outset of the word disease as the consequence of sin attacked the body of Cain. For after the murder of his brother, after that act of wickedness, his body was subject to palsy.723 For trembling is the same thing as palsy. For when the strength which regulates a living creature becomes weakened, being no longer able to support all the limbs, it deprives them of their natural power of direction, and then having become unstrung they tremble and turn giddy. 6. Paul also demonstrated this: for when he was reproaching the Corinthians with a certain sin he said, “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you.” Therefore also Christ first removes the cause of the evil, and having said “Son! be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee,” He uplifts the spirit and rouses the downcast soul: for the speech became an efficient cause and having entered into the conscience it laid hold of the soul itself and cast out of it all distress. For nothing creates pleasure and affords confidence so much as freedom from self-reproach. For where remission of sins is there is sonship. Even so at least we are not able to call God Father until we have washed away our sins in the pool of the sacred water. It is when we have come up from thence, having put off that evil load, that we say “Our Father which art in Heaven.” But in the case of the man who was infirm thirty and eight years why did He not act thus, but cured his body first of all? Because by that long period of time his sins had been exhausted: for the magnitude of a trial can lighten the load 723 The allusion is to Gen. iv. 12, where the words rendered in the English translation “a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be” are in the LXX. rendered στ™νων καὶ τρ™μων žσῃ, “groaning and trembling shalt thou be:” but our English version is the more correct. 298 Homily on the Paralytic Let Down Through the Roof.