be at peace one with another, and visit each other, and bear each other’s burdens, and do not partake of God’s creatures alone,116 but give abundantly of them to the needy. For some through the abundance of their food produce weakness in their flesh, and thus corrupt their flesh; while the flesh of others who have no food is corrupted, because they have not sufficient nourishment. And on this account their bodies waste away. This intemperance in eating is thus injurious to you who have abundance and do not distribute among those who are needy. Give heed to the judgment that is to come. Ye, therefore, who are high in position, seek out the hungry as long as the tower is not yet finished; for after the tower is finished, you will wish to do good, but will find no opportunity. Give heed, therefore, ye who glory in your wealth, lest those who are needy should groan, and their groans should ascend to the Lord,117 and ye be shut out with all your goods beyond the gate of the tower. Wherefore I now say to you who preside over the Church and love the first seats,118 “Be not like to drug-mixers. For the drug-mixers carry their drugs in boxes, but ye carry your drug and poison in your heart. Ye are hardened, and do not wish to cleanse your hearts, and to add unity of aim to purity of heart, that you may have mercy from the great King. Take heed, therefore, children, that these dissensions of yours do not deprive you of your life. How will you instruct the elect of the Lord, if you yourselves have not instruction? Instruct each other therefore, and be at peace among yourselves, that119 I also, standing joyful before your Father, may give an account of you all to your Lord.”120 Chap. X. On her ceasing to speak to me, those six young men who were engaged in building came and conveyed her to the tower, and other four lifted up the seat and carried it also to the tower. The faces of these last I did not see, for they were turned away from me. And as she was going, I asked her to reveal to me the meaning of the three forms in which she appeared to me. In reply she said to me: “With regard to them, you must ask another to reveal their meaning to you.” For she had appeared to me, brethren, in the first vision the previous year under the form of an exceedingly old woman, sitting in a chair. In the second vision her face was youthful, but her skin and hair betokened age, and she stood while she spoke to 116 I have translated the Vat. Reading here. The Greek seems to mean, “Do not partake of God’s creatures alone by way of mere relish.” The Pal. Has, “Do not partake of God’s creatures alone joylessly, in a way calculated to defeat enjoyment of them.” 117 [Jas. v. 1–4.] 118 Those that love the first seats, omitted in Æth. [Greek, τοῖς προηγουμένοις τῆς ἐκκλησίας καὶ τοῖς πρωτοκαθεδρίταις. Hermas seems, purposely, colourless as to technical distinctions in the clergy; giving a more primitive cast to his fiction, by this feature. Matt. xxiii. 6; Mark xii. 39; Luke xi. 43, xx. 46.] 119 [Rom. ii. 21; 1 Thess. v. 13.] 120 [Heb. xiii. 17.] 28 Vision Third. Concerning the Building of the Triumphant Church, and the…