Let us banish this custom from our tables. Yet are there some who teach it even to the poor! O monstrous! they make men in affliction play the jester. Why, where shall not this pest be found next? Already has it been brought into the Church itself. Already has it laid hold of the very Scriptures. Need I say anything to prove the enormity of the evil? I am ashamed indeed, but still nevertheless I will speak; for I am desirous to show to what a length the mischief has advanced, that I may not appear to be trifling, or to be discoursing to you on some trifling subject; that even thus I may be enabled to withdraw you from this delusion. And let no one think that I am fabricating, but I will tell you what I have really heard. A certain person happened to be in company with one of those who pride themselves highly on their knowledge (now I know I shall excite a smile, but still I will say it notwithstanding); and when the platter was set before him, he said, “Take and eat, children, lest your belly be angry!”373 And again, others say, “Woe unto thee, Mammon, and to him that hath thee not;”374 and many like enormities has jesting introduced; as when they say, “Now is there no nativity.”375 And this I say to show the enormity of this base temper; for these are the expressions of a soul destitute of all reverence. And are not these things enough to call down 132 thunderbolts? And one might find many other such things which have been said by these men. Wherefore, I entreat you, let us banish the custom universally, and speak those things which become us. Let not holy mouths utter the words of dishonorable and base men. “For what fellowship have righteousness and iniquity, or what communion hath light with darkness?” (2 Cor. vi. 14.) Happy will it be for us, if, having kept ourselves aloof from all such foul things, we be thus able to attain to the promised blessings; far indeed from dragging such a train after us, and sullying the purity of our minds by so many. For the man who will play the jester will soon go on to be a railer, and the railer will go on to heap ten thousand other mischiefs on himself. When then we shall have disciplined these two faculties of the soul, anger and desire (vid. Plat. Phædr. cc. 25, 34), and have put them like well-broken horses under the yoke of reason, then let us set over them the mind as charioteer, that we may “gain the prize of our high calling” (Philip. iii. 14.); which God grant that we may all attain, through Jesus Christ our Lord, with Whom, together with the Holy Ghost, be unto the Father, glory, might, and honor, now, and ever, and throughout all ages. Amen. 373 Δράξασθε, παιδία, μή ποτε ὀργισθῇ κοιλία. 374 οὐαί σοι, μαμωνᾶ, καὶ τῷ μὴ ἐχοντί σε. 375 ῎Αρτι οὐκ ἔστι γένεσις. vid. Suicer, Thesaurus, voc. γένεσις, n. 3. 244 Ephesians 4:32; 5:1