Letter 151

151. To Eustathius, the court physician

If there is any benefit in my letters, then never let any interval pass without writing to me and rousing me in turn to write. For my own part, I plainly grow happier when I receive letters from men of understanding who love the Lord; and if you too find anything in me worth your attention, that is for you, the readers, to judge. If I were not carried off by the multitude of my occupations, I would not deny myself the constant gladness that comes from writing. But you, whose cares are fewer, soothe me with your letters as often as you can. For wells too, they say, become better for being drawn upon. Yet your counsels drawn from medicine seem to me to go almost beside the point, since it is not I who apply the knife, but those who have become useless and fall away of their own accord.

Now there is the saying of the Stoic: since, he says, things do not come about as we wish, let us wish them as they come about. But I, for my part, do not accept that we should make our judgement conform to circumstances; though I do not condemn a man for doing, against his will, something that necessity demands. For neither do you physicians wish to cauterize the sick man or otherwise to cause him pain; yet often you consent to it, yielding to the gravity of the disease. Nor do sailors willingly throw their cargo overboard, but to escape shipwreck they submit to the jettison, preferring a life of poverty to death. So you must believe that I too bear painfully, and with countless laments, the separation from those who fall away; bear it nonetheless. For to the lovers of truth nothing is more precious than God and the hope set upon Him.