3. There are, as I said, three causes to
necessitate your presence, all of equal weight, ourselves, the pastor,
and the flock: come then, and according to the spirit of ministry
which is in you, assign to each its due, and guide your words in
judgment, so that we may more than ever marvel at your wisdom.
And how will you guide them? First by bestowing seemly praise
upon his virtue, not only as a pure sepulchral tribute of speech to him
who was pure, but also to set forth to others his conduct and example
as a mark of true piety. Then bestow upon us some brief counsels
concerning life and death, and the union and severance of body and
soul, and the two worlds, the one present but transitory, the other
spiritually perceived and abiding; and persuade us to despise that
which is deceitful and disordered and uneven, carrying us and being
carried, like the waves, now up, now down; but to cling to that which
is firm and stable and divine and constant, free from all disturbance
and confusion. For this would lessen our pain because of friends
departed before us, nay we should rejoice if your words should carry us
hence and set us on high, and hide distress of the present in the
future, and persuade us that we also are pressing on to a good Master,
and that our home is better than our pilgrimage; and that translation
and removal thither is to us who are tempest-tost here like a calm
haven to men at sea; or as ease and relief from toil come to men who,
at the close of a long journey, escape the troubles of the wayfarer, so
to those who attain to the hostel yonder comes a better and more
tolerable existence than that of those who still tread the crooked and
precipitous path of this life.