your letters, them will I send to bring your liberality unto Jerusalem. And if it be meet that I go also, they shall go with me. Now I will come unto you when I shall pass through Macedonia: for I shall pass through Macedonia. And it may be that I will abide, yea, and winter with you, that ye may bring me on my journey whithersoever I go. For I will not see you now by the way; but I trust to tarry a while with you, if the Lord permit. But I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost.”415 In the Acts of the Apostles also it is written, that such things as are necessary for food were provided for the future, on account of an impending famine. For we thus read: “And in these days came prophets down from Jerusalem to Antioch,416 and there was great rejoicing. And when we were gathered together,417 there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world: which came to pass in the days of Claudius Cæsar. Then the dis- ciples, every one according to his ability, determined to send relief to the elders for the brethren which dwelt in Judæa, which also they did by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.”418 And in the case of the necessaries presented to him, wherewith the same Apostle Paul when setting sail was laden,419 food seems to have been furnished for more than a single day. And when the same apostle writes, “Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working420 with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth;”421 to those who misunderstand him he does not seem to keep the Lord’s precept, which runs, “Behold the fowls of the air; for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns;” and, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin;” while he enjoins the parties in question to labour, working with their hands, that they may have something which they may be able to give to others also. And in what he often says of himself, that he wrought with his hands that he might not be burdensome;422 and in what is written of him, that he joined himself to Aquila on account of the similarity of their occupation, in order that they might work together at that from which they might make a living;423 he does not seem to have imitated the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. From these and such like passages of Scripture, it is sufficiently apparent that our Lord does not disapprove of it, when one looks after such things in the ordinary way that men 415 1 Cor. xvi. 1–8. 416 Not in the original Greek or Vulgate, but implied in the preceding context. 417 Not in the original Greek or Vulgate, but implied in the preceding context. 418 Acts xi. 27–30. The clause shows much divergence from the Vulgate in construction. 419 Acts xxviii. 10. 420 Operans; Vulgate, operando. 421 Eph. iv. 28. Unde tribuere cui opus est; Vulgate, unde tribuat necessitatem patienti. 422 1 Thess. ii. 9; 2 Thess. iii. 8. 423 Acts xviii. 2, 3. 131 Chapter XVII