34. Jeremiah also bewails his birth in these
words: “Woe is me, my mother! Why hast thou borne me
a man of contention in all the earth? I have not benefited
others, nor has any one benefited me, my strength hath
failed.” Jer. xv. 10 [LXX.]. If, then,
holy men shrink from life whose life, though profitable to us, is
esteemed unprofitable to themselves; what ought we to do who am not
able to profit others, and who feel that it, like money borrowed at
interest, grows more heavily weighted every day with an increasing mass
of sins?