De Patientia

I confess before the Lord God that I am venturing rashly enough, if not indeed shamelessly, to compose a treatise on patience, for the practice of which I am altogether unfit, being a man possessed of no good at all — seeing that those who undertake the demonstration and commendation of any quality ought first to be found practising that quality themselves, and to direct the steadiness of their admonition by the authority of their own conduct, lest their words should blush at the failure of their deeds. And would that this blushing might serve as a remedy, so that the shame of not displaying what we go about urging upon others might become the master that teaches us to display it — except that the magnitude of certain goods, as also of certain evils, is unbearable, so that to grasp and to practise them the grace of divine inspiration alone is at work. For what is the highest good is chiefly with God, nor does any other dispense it than he who possesses it, as he sees fit for each. And so it will be a kind of consolation to discourse upon that which it is not granted me to enjoy, after the manner of the sick, who, while they have no health, do not know how to keep silent about the blessings of health. So I, most wretched of men, ever fevered with the heats of impatience, must needs sigh and call out and hold forth upon that health of patience which I do not possess, while I call to mind, and in the contemplation of my own weakness reflect, that the good soundness of faith and the health of the Lord's discipline do not easily come to anyone unless patience sits at his side. Such precedence has God assigned it over his concerns, that no one can fulfil a single precept, or perform a single work pleasing to the Lord, who is a stranger to patience. Its goodness even those who live outside it honour with the title of the highest virtue. The philosophers indeed, who are reckoned creatures of some wisdom, ascribe so much to it that, although among themselves they are at variance through the various passions of their sects and the rivalries of their opinions, yet, mindful in common of patience alone, to this one thing they have entrusted the peace of their pursuits. Upon it they conspire, into it they enter into league, after it in their affectation of virtue they strive with one mind, and to it they make all their parade of wisdom defer. A great testimony to it this is, when it even advances the empty disciplines of the world to praise and glory. Or is it rather an injury, when a divine thing is bandied about among secular arts? But let those look to it who will presently be ashamed of their wisdom, demolished and disgraced along with the world.

To us the authority for the practice of patience is delegated, not by some human affectation shaped by the stupor of a dog-like equanimity, but by the divine ordinance of a living and heavenly discipline, which sets before us God himself as the first example of patience — he who scatters the bloom of this light equally upon the just and the unjust, who suffers the offices of the seasons, the services of the elements, the tributes of all creation, to come to the worthy and the unworthy alike, bearing with the most ungrateful nations, who adore the mockeries of the arts and the works of his own hands, who persecute his name together with his household, who day by day grow more insolent in luxury, in greed, in iniquity, in malice — so that by his very patience he discredits himself in their eyes. For many on this account do not believe in the Lord, because for so long they do not know him to be angry with the world.

And this aspect of divine patience, to be sure, may perhaps be estimated as something distant, as it were from on high. But what of that other, which has walked among men, openly upon the earth, in a manner laid hold of by the hand? God suffers himself to be conceived in a mother's womb, and waits; and once born he endures to grow up; and grown to manhood he is not eager to be acknowledged, but is moreover full of self-abasement, and is baptized by his own servant; and the assaults of the tempter he repels with words alone, when from being Lord he becomes a teacher, instructing man how to escape death, having been schooled, that is, in the perfect forbearance of pardoning offences. He did not strive, he did not cry out, nor did anyone hear his voice in the streets; the bruised reed he did not break, the smoking flax he did not quench. For the prophet had not lied — nay, it was the very attestation of God, who placed his own spirit in the Son with all patience. No one who wished to attach himself to him did he fail to receive; no man's table or roof did he despise; on the contrary, he himself ministered to the washing of his disciples' feet. He did not spurn sinners, nor tax-gatherers; he was not even angry with that city which had refused to receive him, although his disciples too had wished that heavenly fires be brought down upon so insolent a town; the ungrateful he healed, to those who plotted against him he yielded. This were too little, did he not also keep his very betrayer at his side, and refrain from openly denouncing him. But when he is handed over, when he is led away like a beast to the victim — for thus he opens his mouth no more than a lamb under the power of him who shears it — he, to whom legions of angels, had he but willed it, would have come at a single word from heaven, did not approve even of one disciple's avenging sword. The Lord's patience was wounded in Malchus. And so he both cursed for the future the work of the sword, and by the restoration of health gave satisfaction to him whom he himself had not injured — through patience, the mother of mercy. I say nothing of his being crucified, for to this end he had come. Yet was there need, in submitting to death, of insults too? But he wished, as he was about to depart, to be sated with the pleasure of patience. He is spat upon, scourged, derided, clothed in foul garments, crowned with fouler. Wondrous the constancy of his equanimity! He who had purposed to lie hidden in the figure of a man imitated nothing of man's impatience. From this above all, you Pharisees, you ought to have acknowledged the Lord; patience of this kind no man would have accomplished. Such and so great proofs — whose very magnitude is among the nations a ground for disparaging the faith, but among us a reason and a building-up — prove plainly enough, not by the Lord's words alone in commanding, but also by his sufferings in enduring, to those to whom it is given to believe, that the patience of God is his very nature, the effect and excellence of an inborn property.

Therefore, if we see that all upright and well-disposed servants conduct themselves according to their master's temper — since indeed the art of deserving well is compliance, and the discipline of compliance is obedient submission — how much more does it behove us to be found mannered after our Lord, being the servants, that is, of the living God, whose judgement upon his own turns not upon the fetter or the cap of freedom, but upon eternity, of either punishment or salvation? To avert which severity, or to invite which liberality, there is need of as great a diligence of compliance as are the very things which either his severity threatens or his liberality promises. And yet we exact obedience not only from men bound by servitude or by any other right as debtors of compliance, but even from cattle, even from beasts, understanding that they have been provided and handed over by the Lord for our uses. Shall then the things which God has put beneath us prove better than we in the discipline of compliance? In short, they acknowledge it, who obey. Do we hesitate to give ear to him to whom alone we are subject, the Lord, that is? But how unjust it is, how ungrateful too, that what you obtain from others through another's indulgence you should not repay out of yourself to that very one through whom you obtain it! No more need be said of the compliance owed by us to the Lord God; for the knowledge of God sufficiently understands what is incumbent upon it. Yet, lest we should seem to have inserted the matter of compliance as something foreign, compliance itself too is derived from patience. Never does the impatient man comply, nor is anyone patient without taking delight in it. Who then would discourse at large upon the goodness of God in this respect, which the Lord, the demonstrator and acceptor of all good things, carried about in himself? And to whom, again, could it be doubtful that all good, because it pertains to God, is to be pursued with the whole mind by those who pertain to God? By which considerations, readily and as it were in a short summary of prescription, both the commendation and the exhortation to patience are established.

Nevertheless, it is not idle, because not unfruitful, to carry forward our discussion of the things necessary to faith. No talkativeness in edification is unseemly, if ever talkativeness be unseemly. And so, if the discourse is about some good, the matter demands that we also review the contrary of that good. For you will the better illuminate what is to be pursued, if you set forth correspondingly what is to be shunned. Let us therefore consider impatience — whether, just as patience is born and found in God, so its adversary is born and found in our adversary — that from this it may appear how fundamentally it is opposed to faith. For what has been conceived by the rival of God is surely not friendly to the things of God. The discord of the works is the same as that of the authors. Moreover, since God is the best and the devil, on the contrary, the worst, by their very diversity they testify that neither does anything for the other, so that no more can any good seem to us to be produced by evil than any evil by good. The birth of impatience, then, I detect in the devil himself, even then when he bore it impatiently that the Lord God had subjected all the works he had made to his own image, that is, to man. For he would not have grieved, had he endured it, nor would he have envied man, had he not grieved; he grieved because he had assuredly not borne it patiently. What that angel of perdition was first — wicked or impatient — I scorn to inquire, since it is plain that either impatience took its beginning with malice, or malice took its omen from impatience, and that thereafter they conspired together and grew up inseparable in the one bosom of their father. But, taught by his own experiment what might help toward sinning, through that very thing which he had first felt, by which he had first entered upon transgression, he summoned man into the same crime by driving it into him. The woman, the moment she was approached by him, was — I would not say rashly — breathed upon, through that very colloquy of his, with a spirit infected with impatience. So utterly would she never at all have sinned, had she preserved patience under the divine prohibition. What of this — that she did not endure even when approached alone, but with Adam, not yet her husband, not yet owing her his ear, she is impatient even of keeping silence, and makes him a transmitter of that which she had drawn from the evil one? So another man too perishes through the impatience of another; and presently man himself perishes too, through his own impatience committed on both sides, both with regard to God's forewarning and with regard to the devil's circumvention, not enduring to keep the one and to refuse the other. Hence the first of judgement, whence the origin of sin; hence God began to be angry, whence man was led on to offend. Thence in God the first patience, whence the first indignation, who then, content with a curse alone, tempered the violence of his vengeance upon the devil. Or what crime before this admission of impatience is imputed to man? He was innocent, and a close friend of God, and a tiller of paradise. But once he had fallen under impatience, he ceased to relish God, he ceased to be able to endure heavenly things. Thenceforward man, given over to the earth and cast out from the eyes of God, began easily to be usurped by impatience into everything that would offend God. For at once that impatience, conceived from the seed of the devil, by the fruitfulness of malice brought forth a son, Anger, and when he was born trained him in its own arts. For that very thing which had plunged Adam and Eve into death it taught the son also: to begin with murder. In vain should I ascribe this to impatience, if that Cain, the first murderer and the first fratricide, bore with equanimity and without impatience the rejection of his offerings by the Lord; if he was not angry with his brother; if, in short, he killed no one. Since then he could not kill except in anger, nor be angry except through impatience, he demonstrates that what he did through anger must be referred to that from which anger was prompted, namely through these, as it were, cradle-beginnings of impatience then in its infancy. But what great increases soon followed? And no wonder. If it sinned first, the consequence is that, being first, it is therefore the sole womb of every transgression, pouring out from its own source the various veins of crimes. Of murder, indeed, it has been said. But anger, produced from the very beginning, refers whatever causes it afterward finds for itself to impatience as to its origin. For whether a man commits that crime out of enmity or for the sake of plunder, the prior thing is that he becomes impatient either of hatred or of greed. Whatever drives him, it is impossible that it should be carried through without impatience of its object. Who has undergone adultery without impatience of lust? And even if among women that selling of chastity is brought about by a price, it is surely ordered by an impatience of despising gain. These are, as it were, the principal sins against the Lord. For — to put it briefly — every sin is to be ascribed to impatience. Impatience is the evil of good. No one is unchaste who is not impatient of chastity, nor wicked who is not impatient of uprightness, nor impious who is not impatient of piety, nor unquiet who is not impatient of quiet. To become evil, each man will be unable to persevere in being good. Such a viper-brood of transgressions, then — why should it not offend the Lord, the reprover of evils? Or is it not manifest that Israel too always sinned against God through impatience? Thenceforward, when, forgetful of the heavenly arm by which it had been dragged out from the Egyptian afflictions, it demands of Aaron gods to be its leaders; when it pours out the contributions of its gold into an idol — for it had impatiently endured the so necessary delays of Moses while he conferred with the Lord. After the rain of manna for food, after the watery train that followed from the rock, they despair of the Lord, not enduring three days' thirst. For this impatience too is reproached to them by the Lord. And, not to range over every instance, never did they fail to perish by transgressing through impatience. And how did they lay hands upon the prophets, except through impatience of hearing? and upon the Lord himself, through impatience even of seeing? But had they entered upon patience, they would have been set free.

So very much is it the thing which both follows upon and goes before faith. In short, Abraham believed God, and was reckoned righteous by him; but it was patience that proved his faith, when he was bidden to immolate his son — by way, I will not say of a temptation, but of a figurative attestation of his faith. For God knew the man whom he had reckoned righteous. So grave a command — which not even the Lord was pleased to have carried out — he both patiently heard, and, had God willed it, would have fulfilled. Deservedly, then, was he blessed, because he was also faithful; deservedly faithful, because he was also patient. So faith, illuminated by patience, when it was sown among the nations through the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, and brought grace in over the Law, set patience as its helper over the enlarging and fulfilling of the Law, since this alone had hitherto been wanting to the teaching of righteousness. For of old men exacted eye for eye and tooth for tooth, and repaid evil with evil at interest. For there was not yet patience on earth, because there was not yet faith. Doubtless, meanwhile, impatience enjoyed the occasions of the Law. It was easy, while the Lord and master of patience was absent. But after he had come upon the scene and had ordered the grace of faith with patience, now it is not permitted even to provoke with a word, nor even to speak foolishly, without peril of judgement. Anger is forbidden, tempers are restrained, the wantonness of the hand is checked, the venom of the tongue is removed. The Law has found more than it lost, Christ saying, Love your enemies, and bless those who curse you, and pray for your persecutors, that you may be sons of your heavenly Father. You see what Father patience gains for us? In this one principal precept the whole discipline of patience is comprised, since not even to do harm deservedly is permitted.

And now, as we run through the causes of impatience, the other precepts too will answer to it in their proper places. If the mind is roused by the loss of household property, it is admonished in almost every place to despise the world by the Scriptures of the Lord; nor does any greater exhortation to the contempt of money lie ready to hand than that the Lord himself is found amid no riches. He always justifies the poor, condemns the rich beforehand. Thus he has provided beforehand a disdain of wealth as a remedy against the patience-trying loss of it, showing, by his casting away of riches, that the injuries done to them too are not to be reckoned. What therefore there is least need for us to covet, since the Lord did not covet it either, we ought not to bear ill when it is curtailed or even taken away. The spirit of the Lord, through the apostle, has pronounced covetousness the root of all evils. Let us not interpret it as established only in the coveting of what belongs to another; for what seems to be ours too is another's; nothing indeed is ours, since all things are God's, whose we ourselves also are. And so, if when affected by loss we feel impatiently, grieving for the loss of what is not our own, we shall be detected as akin to covetousness. We seek what is another's when we bear ill the loss of what is another's. He who is roused by impatience at loss, by setting earthly things before heavenly, sins from his neighbour against God. For he shakes the spirit which he received from the Lord for the sake of a worldly thing. Gladly therefore let us lose earthly things, and guard the heavenly. Let the whole world perish, provided I gain patience. Indeed, the man who has resolved not to bear steadfastly some trifling thing taken from him, whether by theft or by force or even by his own slackness, I do not know whether he could easily, and from the heart, himself lay a hand on his own property in the cause of almsgiving. For who, who cannot bear at all to be cut by another, himself draws the knife upon his own body? Patience in losses is a training for bounty and for sharing. It does not grieve him to give who does not fear to lose. Otherwise, how shall the man who has two tunics give one of them to the naked, unless he be the same who can offer his cloak too to the one who takes away his tunic? How shall we make ourselves friends out of Mammon, if we love it so much that we cannot bear its loss? We shall perish along with what is lost. What do we find here, where we have something to lose? It belongs to the heathen to bring impatience to all losses, who perhaps set money before the soul. For indeed they do so, when out of greed for gain they ply the lucrative perils of merchandise upon the sea; when for money's sake they do not hesitate to undertake, even in the forum, things from which they need fear no condemnation; when at last they hire themselves out to the games and the camp; when along the road they go robbing in the manner of beasts. But we, according to the diversity by which we differ from them, ought to lay down, not the soul for money, but money for the soul — whether of our own accord in bounty, or patiently in losing it.

Though we bear the very soul, the very body, exposed in this world to the injury of all men, and undergo with patience the injury done to it, shall we be wounded by the nibbling of lesser things? Far be from the servant of Christ such defilement, that the patience prepared for greater temptations should give way in trifles. If anyone tries to provoke you with the hand, the Lord's admonition is at hand: To him who strikes you, he says, upon the face, turn the other cheek also. Let wickedness be wearied out by your patience. Whatever that blow be, constrained by pain and insult, it gets a heavier thrashing from the Lord. You beat that wicked man harder by enduring; for he will be beaten by him for whose sake you endure. If the bitterness of the tongue should break out into curse or reviling, look to the saying: When they have cursed you, rejoice. The Lord himself was accursed in the Law, and yet he alone is blessed. Therefore, as servants, let us follow the Lord and be cursed patiently, that we may be able to be blessed. If I should listen with too little equanimity to some impudent or wicked saying against me, I must needs either return in turn the like bitterness, or be tortured by a mute impatience. When therefore, being cursed, I curse back, how shall I be found to have observed the teaching of the Lord, by which it was handed down that a man is defiled, not by the defilements of vessels, but by those things which are uttered from the mouth? Likewise: that there awaits us the charge of every vain and superfluous word. It follows then that what the Lord forbids us, that same he admonishes us to suffer with equanimity from another. I will add something of the pleasure of patience. For every injury, whether inflicted by tongue or by hand, when it has struck against patience, will be discharged with the same outcome as some dart aimed at and blunted upon a rock of most steadfast hardness. For it will fall there idle and fruitless of effect, and sometimes, rebounding upon him who hurled it, will rage with reciprocal force. Surely one wounds you for this reason, that you may grieve, because the wounder's profit lies in the grief of the wounded. Therefore, when by not grieving you have overturned his profit, he himself must needs grieve at the loss of his profit. Then you not only depart unhurt — which alone too is enough for you — but moreover both delighted at the frustration of your adversary and avenged by his grief. This is the usefulness and the pleasure of patience.

Not even that kind of impatience is excused in the loss of our own people, where some assertion of grief pleads its cause. For there must be set before it the regard for the apostle's declaration, who says: Be not grieved at the sleep of any, like the nations, who lack hope. And rightly. For believing the resurrection of Christ, we believe in our own also, for whose sake he both died and rose again. Since therefore it is established concerning the resurrection of the dead, there is no room for grief at death, no room either for impatience of grief. For why should you grieve, if you do not believe he has perished? Why should you bear impatiently that one is withdrawn for a time whom you believe will return? It is a departure that you take to be death. He who goes before is not to be mourned, but plainly to be longed for. That longing too must be tempered by patience. For why should you bear immoderately that one has gone away whom you will soon follow? Moreover, impatience in such a case both bodes ill for our hope and prevaricates against our faith. And we wound Christ when we do not receive with equanimity those summoned away by him, as though they were to be pitied. I desire, says the apostle, now to be received and to be with Christ. How much better does he show his longing! If then it is the longing of Christians, and we grieve impatiently when others have attained it, we ourselves are unwilling to attain it.

There is also another, the supreme goad of impatience: the lust of vengeance, doing business either for glory or for malice. But glory is everywhere empty, and malice is never not hateful to the Lord — and in this place most of all, when, provoked by another's malice, it sets itself higher in the carrying-out of vengeance, and, requiting the wickedness, doubles what was once done. Vengeance, in the judgement of error, seems a solace of grief; in the judgement of truth, on the contrary, it is convicted of malignity. For what difference is there between the provoker and the provoked, except that the one is caught earlier in the misdeed, but the other later? Yet each, in the eyes of the Lord, is guilty of injuring a man — the Lord who both forbids and condemns all wickedness. In a misdeed there is no reckoning of order, nor does position distinguish what likeness joins together. Absolutely therefore is it enjoined that evil is not to be repaid with evil. An equal deed has an equal desert. How shall we observe this, if, holding it in disdain, we shall not be in disdain of vengeance? And what honour shall we offer to the Lord God, if we arrogate to ourselves the right of self-defence? We who are rotten, vessels of clay! When our slaves take to themselves vengeance upon their fellow-servants, we are gravely offended; and those who have offered us their patience, as mindful of their lowliness, of their servitude, cherishing the right of their master's honour, we not only approve, but make for them a fuller satisfaction than they would have presumed for themselves. Is this then in danger of failing us in a Lord so just in estimating, so powerful in carrying out? Why then do we believe him to be a judge, if not an avenger too? This he promises us, saying: Vengeance is mine, and I will repay — that is, Patience for me, and I will requite patience. For when he says, Do not judge, lest you be judged, does he not demand patience? For who will not judge another, save he who will be patient of not defending himself? Who judges in order to pardon? And even if he should pardon, yet he has indulged the impatience of the judge, and has taken away the honour of the one judge, that is, of God. But how many such mishaps was impatience of this kind wont to run into? How often has it repented of defending itself? How often has its insistence been found worse than the very cases it took up? Since impatience knows how to carry through nothing it undertakes without a rush, and nothing done in a rush has not either given offence or collapsed or gone headlong. Now if you defend yourself too lightly, you will rage; if too abundantly, you will be burdened. What have I to do with vengeance, the measure of which I cannot govern through the impatience of grief? But if I rest upon patience, I shall not grieve; if I shall not grieve, I shall not desire to be avenged.

After these principal materials of impatience, marshalled as best we could, why should we wander among the rest — those at home, those abroad? Broad and diffused is the operation of the Evil One, hurling the manifold incitements of the spirit, now tiny, now very great. But the tiny ones you may despise for their pettiness, to the very great ones you should yield in view of their excess. Where the injury is smaller, there is no necessity for impatience; but where the injury is greater, there the more necessary is the remedy of injury, namely patience. Let us strive, then, to endure the things inflicted by the Evil One, that the rivalry of our equanimity may baffle the enemy's zeal. But if we ourselves bring certain things upon ourselves, whether through imprudence or even of our own accord, let us equally undergo with patience the things we impute to ourselves. And if we believe that some things are visited upon us by the Lord, to whom rather than to the Lord should we display patience? Nay more, he teaches us even to give thanks and to rejoice at the honour of a divine chastisement. Those whom I love, he says, I chastise. O blessed that servant, upon whose correction the Lord is intent, whom he deigns to be angry with, whom he does not deceive by dissembling his admonition! On every side, then, we are bound by the duty of administering patience, in whatever quarter, whether by our own errors or by the snares of the Evil One, we come up against the Lord's admonitions. Great is the reward of that duty, namely happiness. For whom did the Lord call happy, except the patient, when he said: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven? Surely no one is poor in spirit save the humble. And who is humble save the patient? Since no one can subject himself without first the patience of that very subjection. Blessed, he says, are they that weep and mourn. Who bears such things without patience? And so to such are both consolation and laughter promised. Blessed are the meek. By this title, surely, the impatient cannot at all be reckoned. Likewise, when he marks the peacemakers with the same title of happiness and calls them sons of God, are the impatient any kin to peace? A fool would think so. But when he says, Rejoice and exult, as often as they shall curse and persecute you, for your reward is very great in heaven — this surely promises not the exultation of impatience, because no one will exult in adversities unless he has first despised them; and no one will despise them unless he has practised patience.

As regards the discipline of peace, most pleasing to God — who that is born of impatience at all will forgive his brother even once, not to say seven times, but seventy times seven? Who, in directing a lawsuit against his adversary, will settle the matter by agreement, unless he has first cut away grief, hardness, bitterness — the poisons, that is, of impatience? How will you forgive and be forgiven, if you are tenacious of injury through the absence of patience? No one whose mind has been wrenched against his brother will complete his offering at the altar, unless he has first returned to patience by reconciling himself with his brother. If the sun set upon our anger, we are in peril. It is not permitted us to remain a single day without patience. But since patience governs every form of saving discipline, what wonder that it also ministers to repentance, accustomed to come to the aid of the fallen, when, the marriage being dissolved — yet only from that cause for which it is permitted that either husband or wife be supported in the perseverance of widowhood — it awaits, it longs for, it begs the repentance of those who will one day enter upon salvation? How much good it confers on both! The one it does not make an adulterer; the other it amends. So too in those exemplary parables of the Lord, patience is present to the saints. The straying sheep the shepherd's patience seeks and finds. For impatience would easily have despised a single one. But patience undertakes the labour of the search, and the patient burden-bearer carries home, moreover, upon his shoulders the abandoned sinner. That prodigal son too the father's patience both receives and clothes and feeds, and excuses before the impatience of his angry brother. He therefore is saved who had been lost, because he entered upon repentance. Repentance does not perish, because it found patience. For love, the highest sacrament of faith, the treasure of the Christian name, which the apostle commends with all the powers of the Holy Spirit — by what but the disciplines of patience is it schooled? Love, he says, is magnanimous: so it takes up patience. It is beneficent: it does no harm to him whom it loves. It does not envy: that indeed is proper to patience. Nor does it savour of insolence: it has drawn its modesty from patience. It is not puffed up, it does not trample: for that does not pertain to patience. Nor does it seek its own, if it offers what is its own, provided it profit another. Nor is it incited: but then what would it have left to impatience? Therefore, he says, love endures all things, bears all things — surely because it is patient. Deservedly then will it never fail; for the other things will be emptied out, will be brought to their consummation. Tongues, knowledge, prophecies are exhausted: faith, hope, love remain — faith, which the patience of Christ brought in; hope, which the patience of man awaits; love, which patience accompanies with God as its teacher.

Thus far concerning patience as something simple and uniform, and established only in the mind, although I labour at the same patience also, in many ways, in the deserving well of the Lord through the body — inasmuch as it was produced by the Lord himself in the strength of the body too, since indeed the governing mind readily shares with its dwelling the things brought in by the spirit. What then is the business of patience in the body? First of all, the affliction of the flesh — a sacrifice that placates the Lord through the offering of humiliation — when it pours out before the Lord squalor along with meagreness of food, content with simple fare and the pure drink of water, when it joins fastings to these, when it grows familiar with ash and sackcloth. This patience of the body commends prayers, gives force to entreaties; this opens the ears of Christ our God, scatters his severity, draws forth his clemency. Thus that king of Babylon, having offended the Lord, when for seven years he had been an exile from human form in squalor and filth, by the immolated patience of his body both recovered his kingdom and — what is more desirable for a man — gave satisfaction to God. And now, if we set forth the loftier and more blessed degrees of bodily patience: this same patience procures also for holiness the continence of the flesh. It both keeps the widow, and seals the virgin, and lifts up the voluntary eunuch to the kingdoms of heaven. What comes from the virtue of the mind is perfected in the flesh. The patience of the flesh does battle, finally, in persecutions. If flight presses upon it, the flesh campaigns against the hardships of flight. If imprisonment too come first, there is the flesh in chains, the flesh in the stocks, the flesh on the ground, and in that poverty of light, and in that endurance of the world. But when it is brought forth to the trial of blessedness, to the occasion of a second baptism, to the very ascent to the divine throne, there is nothing there of more avail than the patience of the body. If the spirit is willing, but the flesh, without patience, is weak — where is the salvation of the spirit and of the flesh itself? But when the Lord says this of the flesh, pronouncing it weak, he shows of what it has need to be strengthened — namely of patience, against every apparatus prepared for subverting the faith or for punishing it — that it may most steadfastly endure scourges, fire, the cross, beasts, the sword, which the prophets, which the apostles by enduring overcame.

By these powers of patience Isaiah is sawn asunder, and does not keep silent about the Lord; Stephen is stoned, and begs pardon for his enemies. O most blessed too was that man who wiped out every kind of patience against every force of the devil! — whom neither the herds driven off, nor those riches in cattle, nor sons carried away in one onslaught of ruin, nor finally the torment of his own body in its wounds, shut out from the patience and faith yielded to the Lord; whom the devil, with all his powers, smote in vain. For he was not called away from the regard for God by so many griefs, but stood as an example and testimony to us, in spirit as in flesh, in mind as in body, of patience to be carried through — so that we may give way neither at the losses of worldly things, nor at the losses of our dearest, nor even at the afflictions of the body. What a bier did God build for the devil in that man? What a standard did he raise from the enemy to his own glory, when that man, at every bitter message, uttered nothing from his mouth but, Thanks be to God, when he execrated his wife, already wearied out by his ills and urging him to depraved remedies? Why did God smile, why was the Evil One cut to the quick, when Job scraped off with great equanimity the foul overflow of his sore, when, in sport, he called back the little creatures bursting forth from it into the same hollows and pastures of his re-dug flesh? And so that workman of God's victory, having blunted all the darts of temptation with the breastplate and shield of patience, both presently recovered from God the soundness of his body, and possessed, doubled, what he had lost. And if he had wished his sons too to be restored, he would have been called a father again. But he preferred to have them given back to him on that day. So much joy, secure thus concerning the Lord, did he defer. He endured now a voluntary bereavement, that he might not live without some patience.

So thoroughly fit a guarantor of patience is God. If you deposit injury with him, he is the avenger; if loss, he is the restorer; if grief, he is the physician; if death, he is the raiser-up. What is permitted to patience, that it should have God for its debtor! And not undeservedly. For it guards all his decrees, it is present at all his commands. It fortifies faith, governs peace, assists love, instructs humility, awaits repentance, signs the confession of sins, rules the flesh, preserves the spirit, bridles the tongue, restrains the hand, treads down temptations, drives away scandals, brings martyrdoms to their consummation, consoles the poor, tempers the rich, does not overstrain the weak, does not consume the strong, delights the faithful, invites the Gentile, commends the slave to his master and the master to God, adorns the woman, approves the man; it is loved in the boy, praised in the youth, looked up to in the old man; in every sex, in every age, it is beautiful. Come now, let us grasp its very face and bearing too. Its countenance is tranquil and placid, its brow unclouded, contracted by no wrinkle of grief or anger; its eyebrows relaxed equally to a glad measure, its eyes cast down through humility, not through unhappiness; its mouth sealed with the honour of silence; its colour such as belongs to the carefree and the guiltless; the frequent motion of its head against the devil, and a menacing laugh; for the rest, its raiment about the breast white, and close-fitting to the body, as of one who is neither puffed up nor disquieted. For the spirit of patience sits upon a throne, most mild and most gentle, which is not gathered into a whirlwind, does not grow black with cloud, but is of a tender serenity, open and simple — which Elijah saw the third time. For where God is, there too is his nursling, namely patience. When therefore the Spirit of God descends, patience accompanies him inseparably. If, then, we do not admit it together with the Spirit, will it abide in us always? Nay, I do not know whether it would persevere any longer. Without its companion and minister it must needs be distressed in every place and time. Whatever its enemy inflicts, it will not be able to endure alone, lacking the instrument of endurance.

This is the rationale of patience, this its discipline, this its working — heavenly and true, that is, Christian — not like that patience of the nations of the earth, false and shameful. For, that even in this matter the devil might rival the Lord, as it were on quite equal terms (except that the very diversity of evil and good is equally matched in magnitude), he has taught his own too a patience of their own: that one, I mean, which subjects to the power of their wives husbands who are venal for a dowry or who traffic in pandering; which, in the hunting after legacies, endures every labour of a forced compliance with feigned affections; which, by submission of its liberty, addicts to the belly the workmen of the belly through degrading patronages. Such pursuits of patience the nations know, and they seize the name of so great a good for foul operations; patient toward rivals and the rich and those who invite them to table, they live impatient toward God alone. But let them look to their own patience and that of their president, beneath whom the fire awaits. As for us, let us love the patience of God, the patience of Christ; let us repay to him that which he himself paid out for us. Let us offer the patience of the spirit, the patience of the flesh — we who believe in the resurrection of the flesh and of the spirit.