5. This good shepherd was the result of his
wife’s prayers and guidance, and it was from her that he learned
his ideal of a good shepherd’s life. He generously fled
from his idols, and afterwards even put demons to flight; he never
consented to eat salt with idolators: united together with a bond
of one honour, of one mind, of one soul, concerned as much with virtue
and fellowship with God as with the flesh; equal in length of life and
hoary hairs, equal in prudence and brilliancy, rivals of each other,
soaring beyond all the rest, possessed in few respects by the flesh,
and translated in spirit, even before dissolution: possessing not
the world, and yet possessing it, by at once despising and rightly
valuing it: forsaking riches and yet being rich through their
noble pursuits; rejecting things here, and purchasing instead the
things yonder: possessed of a scanty remnant of this life, left
over from their piety, but of an abundant and long life for which they
have laboured. I will say but one word more about them: they have
been rightly and fairly assigned, each to either sex; he is the
ornament of men, she of women, and not only the ornament but the
pattern of virtue.