Homily VII. Recapitulation of former exhortations. Sin brought death and grief into the world, and they tend to its cure. Grief serviceable only for the destruction of sin. Remarks upon the passage, Gen. 1. 1. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” It is argued that God’s forethought for man in the work of creation affords grounds of comfort; and that mercy is shewn even in chastisement, as in the saying, “Adam, where art thou?” Concluding admonition on the avoidance of oaths. 1. Yesterday, I discoursed unto your Charity in many words, and upon many subjects; and if out of this variety, it be not possible for you to retain all, I wish more particularly to recall to memory the observation, that God hath implanted the affection grief in our natures for no other reason but because of sin, and He hath made this evident from actual experience. For whilst we are grieved and distressed through the loss of wealth; or by reason of sickness, and death, and the other evils that befall us, we not only reap no consolation from our sorrow, but we also increase the force of these calamities. But if we are in pain and sorrow1332 for our sins, we diminish the weight of sin; we make that little which is great; and very often we blot it all out entirely. Ye should continually remember this, I repeat, in order that ye may mourn for sin only, and for nothing besides; and the additional fact, that sin, though it brought death and sadness into our life, is again destroyed1333 by both these; which I have recently made evident. Therefore, let us fear nothing so much as sin and transgression. Let us not fear punishment, and then we shall escape1334 punishment. Even as the Three Children were not afraid of the furnace, and so escaped from the furnace. Such indeed it becomes the servants of God to be. For if those who were brought up under the Old dispensation, when death was not yet slain,1335 nor his “brazen gates broken down,” nor his “iron bars smitten in sunder;”1336 so nobly encountered their end,1337 how destitute of all defence or excuse shall we be, if, after having had the benefit of such great grace, we attain not even to the same measure of virtue as they did, now when death is only a name, devoid of reality. For death is nothing more than a sleep, a journey, a migration, a rest, a tranquil haven; an escape from trouble, and a freedom from the cares of this present life! 2. But here let us dismiss the subject of consolation; it is the fifth day we are engaged in speaking words of comfort to your Charity, and we might now seem to be troublesome. For 1332 St. Greg. Nyss. de Beat. iii. t. i. 781. 1333 Or. in funere Pulcheriæ, t. iii. 460. 1334 διαφευξόμεθα 1335 Hos. xiii. 14, which, however, is less clear in LXX. 1336 Ps. cvii. 16; Isa. xlv. 2. 1337 Or, “defied death,” κατετόλμησαν τῆς τελευτῆς. Homily VII 557 Homily VII