them. Thus is it also at this moment with the Church: the fire has laid hold on every part. We seek the honors that come from man, we burn for glory, and we hearken not to Job when he saith, “If like Adam (or after the manner of men) I covered my transgressions By hiding mine iniquity in my bosom, Because I feared the great multitude.”279 Behold ye a virtuous spirit? I was not ashamed, he saith, to own before the whole multi- tude my involuntary sins: And if he was not ashamed to confess, much more were it our duty to do so. For saith the prophet, “Set thou forth thy cause, that thou mayest be justified.” (Isa. xliii. 26.) Great is the violence of this evil, everything is overturned by it and annihilated. We have forsaken the Lord, and are become slaves of honor. We are no longer able to rebuke those who are under our rule, because we ourselves also are possessed with the same fever as they. We who are appointed by God to heal others, need the physician ourselves. What further hope of recovery is there left, when even the very physicians themselves need the healing hand of others? I have not said these things without an object, nor am I making lamentations to no purpose, but with the view that one and all, with our women and children, having sprinkled ourselves with ashes, and girded ourselves about with sackcloth, may keep a long fast, may beseech God Himself to stretch forth His hand to us, and to stay the peril. For need is there indeed of His hand, that mighty, that marvelous hand. Greater things are required of us than of the Ninevites. “Yet three days,” said the prophet, “and Nineveh shall be over- thrown.”280 (Jonah iii. 4.) A fearful message, and burdened with tremendous threat. And how should it be otherwise? to expect that within three days, the city should become their tomb, and that all should perish in one common judgment. For if, when it happens that two children die at the same time in one house, the hardship becomes intolerable, and if to Job this of all things seemed the most intolerable, that the roof fell in upon all his children, and they were thus killed; what must it be to behold not one house, nor two children, but a nation of a hundred and twenty thousand buried beneath the ruins! 102 Ye know how terrible a disaster is this, for lately has this very warning happened to us, not that any prophet uttered a voice, for we are not worthy to hear such a voice, but the 279 Job xxxi. 33, 34. The verses in the Sept. stand thus: Εἰ δὲ καὶ ἁμαρτὼν ἀκουσίως ἔκρυψα τὴν ἁμαρτίαν μου. Οὐ γὰρ διετράπην πολυοχλίαν πλήθους, τοῦ μὴ ἐξαγορεῦσαι ἐνώπιον αὐτῶν [but Chrysostom quotes only these words: εἰ καὶ ἁμαρτὼν ἀκουσίως διετράπην πολυοχλίαν. The Hebrew is quite different, as shown in ren- dering of Rev. Ver. (above).—G.A.] 280 [The Septuagint has yet three days, &c., ἔτι τρεῖς ἡμέραι κ.τ.λ. So Chrysostom quotes it. The Hebrew text and the Rev. Ver., following it, have forty days.—G.A.] 190 Ephesians 4:4