able actions: and if he sees anything good, he1032 has no firmness, no fixedness. Such is the present life. It is full of dreams, and of phantasy. Riches are a dream, and glory, and everything of that sort. He who sleeps sees not things that are and have a real subsistence, but things that are not he fancies as things that are. Such is vice, and the life that is passed in vice. It sees not things that are, that is, spiritual, heavenly, abiding things, but things that are fleeting and fly away, and that soon recede from us. But it is not sufficient to watch and be sober, we must also be armed. For if a man watch and is sober, but has not arms, the robbers soon dispatch him. When therefore we ought both to watch, and to be sober, and to be armed, and we are unarmed and naked and asleep, who will hinder him from thrusting home his sword? Wherefore showing this also, that we have need of arms, he has added: Ver. 8. “Putting on the breastplate of faith and love: and for a helmet the hope of salva- tion.” “Of faith and love,” he says. Here he glances at life and doctrine. He has shown what it is to watch and be sober, to have “the breastplate of faith and love.” Not a common faith, he says, but as nothing can soon pierce through a breastplate, but it is a safe wall to the breast;—so do thou also, he says, surround thy soul with faith and love, and none of the fiery darts of the devil can ever be fixed in it. For where the power of the soul is preoccupied with the armor of love, all the devices of those who plot against it are vain and ineffectual. For neither wickedness, nor hatred, nor envy, nor flattery, nor hypocrisy, nor any other thing will be able to penetrate such a soul. He has not simply said “love,” but he has bid them put it on as a strong breastplate. “And for a helmet the hope of salvation.” For as the helmet guards the vital part in us, surrounding the head and covering it on every side, so also this hope does not suffer the reason to falter, but sets it upright as the head, not permit- ting anything from without to fall upon it. And whilst nothing falls on it, neither does it slip of itself. For it is not possible that one who is fortified with such arms as these, should ever fall. For “now abideth faith, hope, love.” (1 Cor. xiii. 13.) Then having said, Put on, and array yourselves, he himself provides the armor, whence faith, hope, and love may be produced, and may become strong. Ver. 9. “For God appointed us not unto wrath, but unto the obtaining of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us.” Thus God has not inclined to this,1033 that He might destroy us, but that He might save us. And whence is it manifest that this is His will? He has given His own Son for us. So does He desire that we should be saved, that He has given His Son, and not merely given, but given Him to death. From these considerations hope is produced. For do not despair of 1032 Or “it.” 1033 [The altered text gives, “has not called us to this.”—J.A.B.] 641 1 Thessalonians 5:1,2