3. A certain man in the Gospels once pried
into the marriage feast Matt. xxii. 12. The same passage is applied to
Baptism in Cat. iii. 2., and took an
unbecoming garment, and came in, sat down, and ate: for the
bridegroom permitted it. But when he saw them all clad in
white See Cat. xxii. 8 and
Index, “White.”, he ought to have assumed a garment of the
same kind himself: whereas he partook of the like food, but was
unlike them in fashion and in purpose. The bridegroom, however,
though bountiful, was not undiscerning: and in going round to
each of the guests and observing them (for his care was not for their
eating, but for their seemly behaviour), he saw a stranger not
having on a wedding garment, and said to him, Friend, how camest
thou in hither? In what a colour The Greed word
(χρῶμα) is used by Ignatius
in the beginning of his Epistle to the Romans of a discolouring
stain.! With what a conscience! What
though the door-keeper forbade thee not, because of the bountifulness
of the entertainer? what though thou wert ignorant in what fashion thou
shouldest come in to the banquet?—thou didst come in, and didst see the
glittering fashions of the guests: shouldest thou not have been
taught even by what was before thine eyes? Shouldest thou not
have retired in good season, that thou mightest enter in good season
again? But now thou hast come in unseasonably, to be unseasonably
cast out. So he commands the servants, Bind his feet,
which daringly intruded: bind his hands, which knew not
how to put a bright garment around him: and cast him into the
outer darkness; for he is unworthy of the wedding torches Compare § 1, note
6.. Thou seest what happened to that
man: make thine own condition safe.