426 WORKS OF ST. CHRYSOSTOM. [HOMILY VI. When you approach to take bodily food, you wash your hands and your mouth, but when you draw nigh to this spiritual food, you do not cleanse your soul, but approach full of unclean- ness. But you say, Are not the forty days fastings sufficient to cleanse the huge heap of our sins? But of what use is it, tell me? If wishing to store up some precious unguent, you should make clean a place to receive it, and a little after having laid it up, should throw dung upon it, would not the fine odor vanish? This takes place with us too. We make ourselves to the best of our power worthy to approach ; then we defile ourselves again ! What then is the good of it ? This we say even of those who are able in those forty days to wash themselves clean. Let us then, I beseech you, not neglect our salvation, that our labor may not be in vain. For he who turns from his sins, and goes and commits the same again, is " like a dog that returneth to his vomit." (Prov. xxvi. n.) But if we act as we ought, and take heed to our ways, we shall be thought worthy of those high rewards, which that we may all obtain, God grant through the grace and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom, &c. HOMILY VI. i TIMOTHY ii. 1-4. " I exhort therefore that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and accept able in the sight of God our Saviour; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowl edge of the truth." [R. V. : who willeth that all men should be saved, &c.] THE Priest is the common father, as it were, of all the world ; it is proper therefore that he should care for all, even as God, Whom he serves. 1 For this reason he says, " I exhort therefore that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men." From this, two advantages result. First, hatred towards those who are without is done away ; for no one can feel hatred towards those for whom he prays : and they again are made better by the prayers that are offered for them, and by losing their ferocious disposition towards us. For nothing is so apt to draw men under teaching, as to love, and be loved. Think what it was for those who persecuted, scourged, banished, and slaughtered the Christians, to hear that those whom they treated so barbarously offered fervent prayers to God for them.2 Ob serve how he wishes a Christian to be superior to all ill-treatment. As a father who was struck on the face by a little child which he was carry ing, would not lose anything of his affection for it ; so we ought not to abate in our good will towards those who are without, even when we are stricken by them. What is "first of all"? It means in the daily Service ; and the initiated know how this is done every day both in the evening and the morning, how we offer prayers for the whole world, for kings and all that are in authority. But some one perhaps will say, he meant not for all men, but for all the faithful. How then does he speak of kings ? for kings were not then worshipers of God, for there was a long succession of ungodly princes. And that he might not seem to flatter them, he says first, "for all men," then " for kings " ; for if he had only mentioned kings, that might have been suspected. And then since the soul of some Christians might be slow 3 at hearing this, and reject the exhortation, if at the celebration of the holy Mysteries it was necessary to offer prayers for a heathen king, he shows them the advantage of it, thus at least to reconcile them to the advice, " that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life " ; as much as to say, Their safety is a security to us ; 4 as also in his Epistle to the Romans, he exhorts them to obey their rulers, "not for wrath but for conscience sake." (Rom. xiii. 5.) For God has appointed government for the public good. When therefore they make war for this end, and stand on guard for our security, were it not unreasonable thatwe should not offer prayers for their safety in wars and dangers? It is not therefore flattery, but agree able to the rules of justice. For if they were not preserved, and prospered in their wars, our affairs must necessarily be involved in confusion and trouble ; and if they were cut off, we must either serve ourselves, or be scattered up and down as fugitives. For they are a sort of bul- 1 <3 ieparai. 2 This is urged by Tertullian, Apol. i. 30, and Address to Scapula, 2. See also St. Justin, M. Apol. i. 23. VOLQKOiV, 4 See on Rom. xiii. 6, Horn, xxiii.