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Homily IV.
An exhortation to the people respecting fortitude and patience, from the examples of
Job and the Three Children in Babylon. The Homily concludes with an address on the
subject of abstaining from oaths.
1. Blessed be God! who hath comforted your sorrowing souls, and stayed your agitated
spirits! For that ye have received no small consolation is evident by the desire and readiness
to listen which ye are now showing. For it is impossible that a soul in anguish, and oppressed
with the cloud of despondency, should have power to hear with readiness anything that is
spoken. But I see you are attending to us with much good will, and with an intense earnest-
ness; and that you have shaken off gloomy thoughts, and put aside the sense of present dis-
tress, in your affectionate desire of listening. For this cause, I thank God heartily together
with you, that the calamity has not overmatched your philosophy; nor fear relaxed your
vigour; nor tribulation quenched your alacrity; nor danger dried up your zeal: nor the fear
of men overcome the desire for God; nor the difficulty of the times overthrown your earn-
estness; nay, so far from overthrowing, it has strengthened it; so far from slackening, it has
given it more intensity; so far from quenching, has kindled it the more. The forum is indeed
empty, but the church is filled; the former supplies material for melancholy, the latter is an
occasion of joy and spiritual gladness! When therefore, beloved, you betake yourself to the
forum, and the sight of the solitude calls forth a groan, fly back to thy Mother, and
straightway she will console thee with the multitude of her offspring and will show thee the
chorus of the Brethren complete, and will drive away all thy despondency! For in the city
we are as earnestly longing to see human beings, as those who inhabit the deserts; but when
we take refuge in the church, we are straitened for room by the multitude. And as when the
sea is in uproar, and rendered furious by the violent tempest, fear compels all to fly for refuge
from without into the harbour; so also now, the waves of the forum, and the tempest of the
city, drives together every one from all sides into the church, and by the bond of love knits
the members close to one another.
2. Let us then give thanks to God even for these things, that we have reaped so much
fruit from the tribulation; that we have received so great an advantage from the trial. If there
were no trial, there would be no crown; if there were no wrestlings, there would be no prize;
if there were no lists1189 marked out, there would be no honours; if there were no tribulation,
1189 σκ€μματα, elsewhere translated “arena,” see Fabr. Ag. ii. 7. Græv. viii. 1963, he quotes St. Ephraim De
Luctâ Spirituali. In luctaminibus hujus sæculi, &c. Ed. Rom. Gr. Lat. iii. 577, Voss. p. 371. “The most perfect
combatants are ever to be found fearless and active within the lines (scamma), but the timid and feeble fly this
way and that before they begin to strive, and for their great softness and laziness will not exert themselves in the
scamma. Now the scamma, beloved brethren, is the central place in which the wrestlers strive;” this may explain
œλκωνται, p. 18; see also Voss’s note, p. 123.
Homily IV
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Homily IV