See how I spoke of the impending ruin of the state. I spoke of its impending ruin. I did not suppress it.” When he spoke in truth he was not silent as to its ruin; when in flattery, he promised that it should abide for ever. 11. Let us not then faint, my Brethren: an end there will be to all earthly kingdoms. If that end be now, God knoweth. For peradventure it is not yet, and we, through some infirm- 434 ity, or mercifulness, or misery, are wishing that it may not be yet; nevertheless will it not therefore some day be? Fix your hope in God, desire the things eternal, wait for the things eternal. Ye are Christians, Brethren, we are all Christians. Christ did not come down into the flesh that3373 we might live softly; let us endure rather than love the things present; manifest is the harm of adversity, deceitful is the soft blandishment of prosperity. Fear the sea, even when it is a calm. On no account let us hear in vain, “Let us lift up our hearts.” Why place we our hearts in the earth, when we see that the earth is being turned upside down? We cannot but exhort you, that ye may have something to say and answer in defence of your hope against the deriders and blasphemers of the Christian name. Let no one by his murmuring turn you back from waiting for the things to come. All who by reason of these adversities blaspheme our Christ, are the “scorpion’s” tail. Let us put our egg under the wings of that Hen of the Gospel, which crieth out to that false and abandoned city, “O Jeru- salem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen her chickens, and thou wouldest not!”3374 Let it not be said to us, “How often would I, and thou wouldest not!” For that hen is the Divine Wisdom; but assumed flesh to accommodate Itself to its chickens. See the hen with feathers bristling, with wings hanging down, with voice broken, and tremulous, and faint, and languid, accommodating herself to her little ones. Our egg then, that is, our hope, let us place beneath the wings of this Hen. 12. Ye have noticed, it may be, how a hen will tear a scorpion in pieces. O then that the Hen of the Gospel would tear in pieces and devour these blasphemers, creeping out of their holes, and inflicting hurtful stings, would pass them over into Her Body, and turn them into an egg. Let them not be angry; we seem to be excited; but we do not return curses for curses. “We are cursed, and we bless, being defamed, we entreat.”3375 But “let him not speak of Rome, it is said of me: O that he would hold his tongue about Rome;” as though I were in- sulting it, and not rather entreating the Lord for it, and exhorting you all, unworthy as I am. Be it far from me to insult it! The Lord avert this from my heart, and from the grief of my conscience. Have we not had many brethren there? have we not still? Does not a large portion of the pilgrim city Jerusalem live there? has it not endured there temporal afflictions? but it has not lost the things eternal. What can I say then, when I speak of Rome, but that is 3373 Ad delicias. 3374 Matt. xxiii. 37. 3375 1 Cor. iv. 12, 13. 904 On the words of the Gospel, Luke xi. 5, ‘Which of you shall have a friend,…