If I call to mind your former empty mode of life, when you were rolling in riches and had abundance of petty mundane reputation, I shudder; then you were followed by a mob of flatterers, and had the short enjoyment of luxury, with obvious peril and unfair gain; on the one hand, fear of the magistrates scattered your care for your salvation, on the other the agitations of public affairs disturbed your home, and the continuance of troubles directed your mind to Him Who is able to help you.  Then, little by little, you took to seeking for the Saviour, Who brings you fears for your good, Who delivers you and protects you, though you mocked Him in your security.  Then you began to train yourself for a change to a worthy life, treating all your perilous property as mere dung, and abandoning the care of your household and the society of your wife.  All abroad like a stranger and a vagabond, wandering through town and country, you betook yourself to Jerusalem. cf. note on Letter xlii. p. 145.  Maran, Vit. S. Bas. cap. xii., regards this implied sojourn at Jerusalem as unfavourable to the genuineness of the letter; but supposing the letter to be genuine, and grounds to exist for doubting Basil to have spent any long time in the Holy Land, there seems no reason why “Jerusalem” may not be taken in a figurative sense for the companionship of the saints.  See also Proleg. on Basil’s baptism.  There I myself lived with you, and, for the toil of your ascetic discipline, called you blessed, when fasting for weeks you continued in contemplation before God, shunning the society of your fellows, like a routed runaway.  Then you arranged for yourself a quiet and solitary life, and refused all the disquiets of society.  You pricked your body with rough sackcloth; you tightened a hard belt round your loins; you bravely put wearing pressure on your bones; you made your sides hang loose from front to back, and all hollow with fasting; you would wear no soft bandage, and drawing in your stomach, like a gourd, made it adhere to the parts about your kidneys.  You emptied out all fat from your flesh; all the channels below your belly you dried up; your belly itself you folded up for want of food; your ribs, like the caves of a house, you made to overshadow all the parts about your middle, and, with all your body contracted, you spent the long hours of the night in pouring out confession to God, and made your beard wet with channels of tears.  Why particularize?  Remember how many mouths of saints you saluted with a kiss, how many bodies you embraced, how many held your hands as undefiled, how many servants God, as though in worship, ran and clasped you by the knees.