Sophia Scriptura

Ethics

Christian conduct and moral teaching generally.

Passages that substantially address this topic, in date order.

  • Didache 1.1Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · There are two ways, of life and of death.
  • Didache 1.2Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · The way of life: love God and neighbor, and do not do to others what you would not want done to you.
  • Didache 1.3Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Bless and pray for enemies, and love those who hate you.
  • Didache 1.4Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Turn the other cheek, go the second mile, and do not demand back what is taken.
  • Didache 1.5Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Give freely; those who receive without need will answer for it.
  • Didache 1.6Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Give with care, knowing to whom you give.
  • Didache 2.1Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · The second commandment begins.
  • Didache 2.2Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Commandments against murder, adultery, abuse of boys, sexual immorality, theft, magic, abortion, and infanticide.
  • Didache 2.3Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · No perjury, false witness, slander, or grudges.
  • Didache 2.4Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Do not be double-minded or two-faced in speech.
  • Didache 2.5Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Let your words be true and matched by deeds.
  • Didache 2.6Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Do not be greedy, hypocritical, or arrogant, or plot against your neighbor.
  • Didache 2.7Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Hate no one; reprove some, pray for others, and love some more than your own life.
  • Didache 3.1Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Flee evil and all that resembles it.
  • Didache 3.2Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Anger and jealousy lead to murder.
  • Didache 3.3Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Lust, foul talk, and roving eyes lead to sexual sin.
  • Didache 3.4Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Omens, spells, astrology, and magical purifications lead to idolatry.
  • Didache 3.5Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Lying and love of money lead to theft.
  • Didache 3.6Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Grumbling leads to blasphemy.
  • Didache 3.7Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Be meek, for the meek will inherit the earth.
  • Didache 3.8Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Be patient, merciful, and gentle, and revere God's words.
  • Didache 3.9Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Be humble and keep company with the humble.
  • Didache 3.10Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Accept what happens as good, since nothing happens without God.
  • Didache 4.2Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Seek the company of fellow believers daily.
  • Didache 4.3Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Make peace and judge fairly.
  • Didache 4.4Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Do not waver in doubt.
  • Didache 4.5Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Do not be eager to take but slow to give.
  • Didache 4.6Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Give from your earnings as a ransom for your sins.
  • Didache 4.7Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Give without hesitation or grumbling; God will repay.
  • Didache 4.8Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Share everything with fellow believers, as you share in immortal things.
  • Didache 4.9Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Discipline your children and teach them the fear of God from youth.
  • Didache 4.10Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Do not treat slaves harshly, since God is over both master and slave.
  • Didache 4.11Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Slaves are to obey their masters with reverence.
  • Didache 4.12Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Hate hypocrisy and all that displeases the Lord.
  • Didache 5.1Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · The way of death: a catalogue of sins.
  • Didache 5.2Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Those on the way of death oppress the poor and kill children.
  • Didache 6.2Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Bear the Lord's whole yoke if you can; otherwise do what you can.
  • Didache 6.3Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Keep food rules as you can, but never eat food offered to idols.
  • Didache 11.12Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Ignore a prophet who asks for money for himself.
  • Didache 12.2Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Help travelers, but only for two or three days.
  • Didache 12.3Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Settlers with a trade must work for their food.
  • Didache 12.4Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Find work for settlers without a trade.
  • Didache 12.5Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Those unwilling to work are exploiting Christ.
  • Didache 13.4Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Without a prophet, give the firstfruits to the poor.
  • Didache 13.7Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Give a firstfruit of money, clothing, and all possessions.
  • Didache 14.2Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Be reconciled before joining the gathering.
  • Didache 15.3Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Correct one another peacefully; shun the unrepentant.
  • 1 Clement 2.1Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · The Corinthians were humble, generous, and attentive to Christ's words and sufferings.
  • 1 Clement 2.5Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · They bore no grudges.
  • 1 Clement 2.6Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · They hated division and shared one another's failings.
  • 1 Clement 2.7Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · They were always ready to do good.
  • 1 Clement 2.8Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · God's commandments were written on their hearts.
  • 1 Clement 3.2Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Pride bred jealousy, strife, and disorder.
  • 1 Clement 3.4Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Jealousy, through which death entered the world, has driven out peace.
  • 1 Clement 4.7Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Jealousy led to fratricide.
  • 1 Clement 6.4Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Jealousy has destroyed cities and nations.
  • 1 Clement 13.1Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Be humble, boasting only in the Lord, and remember Jesus's teaching.
  • 1 Clement 13.2Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Jesus's sayings on mercy, forgiveness, and judgment.
  • 1 Clement 14.3Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Be kind, as God is kind.
  • 1 Clement 16.17Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · If the Lord was so humble, how much more should we be.
  • 1 Clement 19.1Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · The humility of the saints has benefited every generation.
  • 1 Clement 21.8Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Children should be raised in Christ's discipline.
  • 1 Clement 30.1Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · As God's holy portion, flee slander, impurity, drunkenness, rebellion, adultery, and pride.
  • 1 Clement 30.2Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.
  • 1 Clement 30.3Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Be humble and self-controlled, justified by deeds, not words.
  • 1 Clement 30.4Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Much talk does not make one righteous.
  • 1 Clement 30.5Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Do not use many words.
  • 1 Clement 30.6Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Seek praise from God, not self.
  • 1 Clement 30.7Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Let others testify to our good deeds.
  • 1 Clement 30.8Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Arrogance marks the cursed; humility, the blessed.
  • 1 Clement 33.1Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Faith is no excuse for idleness; hurry to do good.
  • 1 Clement 33.7Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · The righteous and God himself are adorned with good works.
  • 1 Clement 33.8Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Do the work of righteousness with all your strength.
  • 1 Clement 34.1Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · The good worker has confidence before his employer.
  • 1 Clement 34.2Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Be eager to do good.
  • 1 Clement 34.4Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Do not be idle in good works.
  • 1 Clement 35.5Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Keep your mind on God and cast away all sin.
  • 1 Clement 35.6Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Those who do or approve of these sins are hateful to God.
  • 1 Clement 35.8Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · The hypocrite's sins.
  • 1 Clement 38.2Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Strong and weak, rich and poor, wise and humble should serve one another without boasting.
  • 1 Clement 48.6Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · —the greater one is, the humbler one should be.
  • 1 Clement 49.1Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Love keeps Christ's commandments.
  • 1 Clement 49.5Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · A hymn to love, which unites, forgives, and makes perfect.
  • 1 Clement 53.5Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Moses's great love for his people.
  • 1 Clement 55.1Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Pagan rulers gave their lives or went into exile for their people.
  • 1 Clement 55.2Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Christians have given themselves up to free or feed others.
  • 1 Clement 59.4Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Intercession for the afflicted, the sick, the hungry, and prisoners.
  • 1 Clement 62.2Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Summary of the letter: faith, repentance, love, self-control, and concord.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 2.2Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Faith's helpers: fear, endurance, patience, self-control.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 3.3Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · The true fast: justice, freeing the oppressed, feeding the hungry.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 3.5Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · God will answer those who show mercy.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 4.10Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Do not live in isolation; gather and seek the common good.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 10.4Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Birds of prey stand for people who live by robbing others.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 10.6Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · The hare stands for corrupters of boys.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 10.7Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · The hyena stands for adulterers and corrupters.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 10.8Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · The weasel stands for those who commit impure acts with the mouth.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 18.1Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · The Two Ways: light and darkness, with their angels.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 19.2Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Love, fear, and glorify God; hate hypocrisy.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 19.3Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Be humble; plot no evil against a neighbor.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 19.4Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · No sexual immorality, adultery, or abuse of boys; be gentle and forgiving.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 19.5Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Love your neighbor; do not kill a child by abortion or after birth; teach children to fear God.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 19.6Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Do not covet; keep company with the humble; accept what comes as from God.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 19.7Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Slaves respect masters; masters must not treat slaves harshly.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 19.8Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Share everything; guard the tongue; keep pure.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 19.9Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Be generous; cherish those who teach you God's word.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 19.10Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Remember the judgment; seek the saints; work to save souls or give for your sins.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 19.11Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Give without grumbling; keep the teaching unaltered; judge justly.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 19.12Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Make peace, confess sins, and pray with a clean conscience.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 20.1Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · The way of darkness: a list of vices leading to eternal death.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 20.2Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Those on the way of darkness oppress the poor and kill children.
  • Epistle of Barnabas 21.2Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · An appeal to the well-off to do good to those among them.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 1.2 (26.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Faith, fear of God, and self-control lead to life.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 2.1 (27.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Be simple and innocent like little children.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 2.2 (27.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Do not slander or listen to slander.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 2.4 (27.4)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Give to everyone in need without hesitation.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 2.5 (27.5)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Receivers answer to God for why they took.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 3.1 (28.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Love truth, for the Lord who dwells in you is true.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 3.5 (28.5)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · From now on speak only truth, and you will live.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 4.1.1 (29.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Keep purity; let no thought of another's wife enter your heart.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 4.1.2 (29.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Even the thought is sin; the deed brings death.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 4.4.3 (32.3)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Keep purity, and the Shepherd will dwell in your house.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 5.2.8 (34.8)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Put on patience; mastering anger helps keep all the commandments.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 6.2.5 (36.5)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Anger, excess, lust, greed, and pride are signs of the evil angel.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 8.2 (38.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Refrain from evil, never from good.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 8.3 (38.3)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · A list of vices to refrain from.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 8.5 (38.5)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · More vices: theft, lying, greed, deceit, vanity.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 8.9 (38.9)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The chief goods: faith, fear of God, love, concord, truth, endurance.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 8.10 (38.10)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Works of mercy: care for widows and orphans, hospitality, patience, restoring the fallen.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 10.1.4 (40.4)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Those absorbed in worldly business cannot understand divine things.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 12.1.2 (44.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Evil desire is wild and consumes the worldly.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 12.2.1 (45.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Chief evil desires: another's spouse, wealth, food, drink, luxury.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 12.3.1 (46.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Serve good desire by righteousness, truth, faith, and gentleness.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 1.1 (50.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Christians live as foreigners; why build up possessions here?
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 1.6 (50.6)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Keep only what is sufficient and be ready to leave.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 1.8 (50.8)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Instead of fields, buy afflicted souls; care for widows and orphans.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 1.9 (50.9)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · God made you rich to serve the needy; such property awaits you in heaven.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 1.11 (50.11)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Do not covet; do your own work and be saved.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 2.5 (51.5)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The rich is poor in prayer; the poor is rich in prayer. The rich support the poor.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 2.7 (51.7)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Rich and poor each serve God with what they have.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 4.5 (53.5)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Bear fruit; avoid too many business affairs.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.1.5 (54.5)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The true fast is to avoid evil and keep God's commands.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.3.7 (56.7)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · On a fast day eat only bread and water, and give the money saved to widows, orphans, or the needy.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.7.1 (60.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Keep your flesh pure so that the Spirit may bear witness to it.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.7.2 (60.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Defiling the flesh defiles the Spirit.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 6.5.5 (65.5)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Every indulged vice is a harmful luxury.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 8.7.6 (73.6)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · God's commandments concern humility, not rank.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 8.9.1 (75.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Two-thirds dry sticks are believers who grew rich and proud and lived like pagans.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.13.8 (90.8)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · They were seduced by the women in black and stripped off the virtues.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.15.2 (92.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The twelve virgins are Faith, Self-control, Power, Patience, Simplicity, Innocence, Purity, Cheerfulness, Truth, Understanding, Concord, and Love.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.15.3 (92.3)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The twelve women are Unbelief, Incontinence, Disobedience, Deceit, and eight other vices.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.20.1 (97.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The thorny mountain: the rich and the overbusy.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.20.2 (97.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The rich avoid fellow believers for fear of being asked for help.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.23.4 (100.4)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · If God forgives those who confess, how can a sinner hold a grudge?
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.24.2 (101.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The simple and generous who share with all without hesitation.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.30.4 (107.4)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The round stones are believers whose wealth dimmed them but who stayed faithful.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.30.5 (107.5)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · God trimmed their wealth, leaving enough to do good.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.31.4 (108.4)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The baptized must keep simplicity, forgive offenses, and heal divisions.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9.32.2 (109.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Return your spirit to God whole, as you received it.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 10.3.2 (113.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The virtues remain only in a pure house.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 10.4.2 (114.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Everyone should be rescued from hardship.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 10.4.3 (114.3)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Failing to rescue the desperate makes one guilty of their blood.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 10.4.4 (114.4)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Do good now, before the tower is completed and you are shut out.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 1.1.2 (1.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Seeing Rhoda bathing, Hermas wishes he had such a wife.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 1.1.8 (1.8)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Even an evil desire in the heart is a great sin.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 1.2.4 (2.4)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Such a thought is sinful even for a tested servant of God.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 1.3.1 (3.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · God is angry because Hermas failed to correct his family.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 2.3.1 (7.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Hermas must forgive his family and stop neglecting them.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.6.3 (14.3)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Cracked stones are those who keep grudges behind a show of peace.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.6.5 (14.5)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Round stones are the rich, who deny the Lord in persecution to keep their wealth.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.6.6 (14.6)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The rich become useful to God only when their wealth is cut away.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.8.4 (16.4)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The second is Self-control, daughter of Faith.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.8.7 (16.7)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Each virtue is born from the one before, from Faith to Love.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.9.2 (17.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Share food with the needy; do not consume in excess alone.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.9.4 (17.4)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Not sharing harms those who have.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.9.5 (17.5)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Help the hungry now, before it is too late.
  • Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.9.6 (17.6)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The groans of the poor will rise to God against the proud rich.
  • 2 Clement 3.4Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · We confess Christ by obeying him wholeheartedly.
  • 2 Clement 4.3Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Confess Christ by works of love, purity, and generosity.
  • 2 Clement 5.6Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Live holy lives and do not desire worldly things.
  • 2 Clement 6.1Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · No one can serve God and money.
  • 2 Clement 6.4Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · This age urges vice; the coming age renounces it.
  • 2 Clement 6.9Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · If even the righteous cannot save others, we must keep our baptism pure.
  • 2 Clement 8.4Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Do God's will, keep the flesh pure, and receive eternal life.
  • 2 Clement 8.6Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Keep the flesh pure and the seal of baptism unstained.
  • 2 Clement 9.3Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Guard the flesh as God's temple.
  • 2 Clement 10.1Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Pursue virtue and flee vice and ungodliness.
  • 2 Clement 11.1Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Serve God with a pure heart and trust his promise.
  • 2 Clement 12.5Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · “Neither male nor female”: brothers and sisters without lustful thoughts.
  • 2 Clement 13.1Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Repent, and live so that outsiders do not blaspheme God's name.
  • 2 Clement 13.4Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Outsiders laugh when Christians fail to love even their friends.
  • 2 Clement 14.3Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Keep the flesh pure, the copy, to share in the Spirit, the original.
  • 2 Clement 15.1Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Following this counsel on self-control saves both hearer and preacher.
  • 2 Clement 16.2Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Master evil desires, and share in the mercy of Jesus.
  • 2 Clement 16.4Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Almsgiving, fasting, prayer, and love: almsgiving lightens sin.
  • 2 Clement 17.2Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Help the weak and admonish one another so that all are saved.
  • 2 Clement 18.2Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · The preacher confesses he is a sinner still striving for righteousness.
  • Apocalypse of Peter (Akhmim fragment) 24Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Adulterous women hang by their hair, and their partners by their feet, over the mire.
  • Apocalypse of Peter (Akhmim fragment) 26Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Women who procured abortions sit in filth, struck by fire from the children they aborted.
  • Apocalypse of Peter (Akhmim fragment) 30Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · The pitiless rich roll on red-hot stones.
  • Apocalypse of Peter (Akhmim fragment) 31Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Usurers stand in a lake of pus, blood and boiling mire.
  • Apocalypse of Peter (Akhmim fragment) 32Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Those who practised same-sex intercourse are cast down from a cliff again and again.
  • To the Ephesians 8.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Because they act in Christ, even the Ephesians' bodily actions are spiritual.
  • To the Ephesians 10.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Answer hostility with gentleness, humility, and prayer.
  • To the Ephesians 10.3Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Imitate the Lord, who suffered wrong more than anyone, and remain pure.
  • To the Ephesians 14.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Faith is the beginning of life and love its goal; together they are of God.
  • To the Ephesians 14.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Christians are known by their deeds, not their words.
  • To the Ephesians 16.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Those who destroy households will not inherit God's kingdom.
  • To Polycarp 4.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · The bishop must care for widows and oversee everything in the church.
  • To Polycarp 4.3Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Slaves and masters should both avoid pride; slaves should seek God's freedom rather than church-funded release.
  • To Polycarp 6.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Christians are soldiers of God, armed with baptism, faith, love, and endurance, and rewarded for their works.
  • To the Smyrnaeans 6.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · The false teachers show no love or care for those in need.
  • To the Trallians 8.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Avoid quarrels that give outsiders reason to blaspheme God's name.
  • To the Philippians 2.2Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · God will raise us as he raised Christ if we do his will, love what he loved, and refuse to repay evil for evil.
  • To the Philippians 2.3Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Polycarp quotes Jesus's teaching on not judging, on forgiving, and on the blessedness of the poor and the persecuted.
  • To the Philippians 3.3Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Faith is the mother of us all, followed by hope and led by love, and whoever loves has fulfilled the commandment of righteousness.
  • To the Philippians 4.1Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Love of money is the root of every trouble, so believers should arm themselves with righteousness and first learn to keep the Lord's commandment themselves.
  • To the Philippians 4.2Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Wives are to be taught to live in faith, love, and purity, to cherish their husbands, and to raise their children in the fear of God.
  • To the Philippians 4.3Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Widows are to pray constantly and avoid slander and greed, knowing that they are God's altar and that God sees every secret thought.
  • To the Philippians 5.1Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Because God is not mocked, believers must live worthily of his commandment.
  • To the Philippians 5.3Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Young men must live pure lives, because the sexually immoral will not inherit God's kingdom, and they must be subject to the presbyters and deacons; the virgins must keep a pure conscience.
  • To the Philippians 6.2Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Those who ask forgiveness must forgive, since all will stand before Christ's judgment seat.
  • To the Philippians 10.1Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Stand firm and follow the Lord's example, loving one another and despising no one.
  • To the Philippians 10.2Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Do good without delay, since almsgiving delivers from death, and live blamelessly so that the Lord is not blasphemed.
  • To the Philippians 10.3Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Woe to anyone who brings the Lord's name into contempt; teach and practice sober living.
  • To the Philippians 11.1Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Polycarp grieves over Valens, a presbyter at Philippi who misused his office, and warns the church against greed.
  • To the Philippians 11.2Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · A leader who cannot control his own greed cannot teach others, for greed is idolatry and the saints will judge the world.
  • To the Philippians 12.1Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Polycarp trusts the Philippians' knowledge of Scripture and reminds them to be angry without sinning and not to let the sun go down on their anger.
  • To Diognetus 5.6Anonymous · ca. 150–200 (disputed) · They marry and have children, but do not abandon infants.
  • To Diognetus 5.7Anonymous · ca. 150–200 (disputed) · They share meals, but not beds.
  • To Diognetus 5.10Anonymous · ca. 150–200 (disputed) · They obey the laws and live above them.
  • To Diognetus 10.4Anonymous · ca. 150–200 (disputed) · Loving God, one becomes an imitator of his kindness.
  • To Diognetus 10.5Anonymous · ca. 150–200 (disputed) · Imitating God is not domination or wealth.
  • To Diognetus 10.6Anonymous · ca. 150–200 (disputed) · Whoever carries others' burdens and gives to the needy imitates God.
  • Apology 15Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · The Christians descend from Christ, the Son of God born of a virgin, crucified, risen, and ascended; they know the true God and live by his commandments in purity, justice, and love.
  • Epistle of the Apostles 18Anonymous · ca. 140-170 · Christ gives the apostles a new commandment to love and obey one another, to love their enemies, and to do to no one what they would not have done to them.
  • Epistle of the Apostles 24Anonymous · ca. 140-170 · Christ affirms that every body will rise with its soul and spirit, rebukes the apostles' doubt, and bids them keep his commandments on the narrow way.
  • Epistle of the Apostles 38Anonymous · ca. 140-170 · Christ blesses those who rebuke sinners without partiality and endure poverty and persecution, and pronounces woe on those who scorn them.
  • Epistle of the Apostles 43Anonymous · ca. 140-170 · Christ interprets the parable of the ten virgins: the wise are faith, love, joy, peace, and hope; the foolish, virtues that slept in believers who did not keep his commandments.
  • Epistle of the Apostles 46Anonymous · ca. 140-170 · Christ bids the apostles preach without fear of the rich, and says that one who is not rich but gives to the needy will be called a benefactor.
  • Epistle of the Apostles 47Anonymous · ca. 140-170 · Christ commands that a sinning neighbour be rebuked, warns that flatterers and the flattered alike will be punished, and promises impartial judgment.
  • Epistle of the Apostles 48Anonymous · ca. 140-170 · Christ gives the rule for correcting a brother who sins: alone, then before two or three, and finally treating him as an outsider.
  • Epistle of the Apostles 49Anonymous · ca. 140-170 · Christ forbids believing or spreading slander against a brother, and speaks of the judgment that will separate grain from chaff.
  • First Apology 14Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Converted from immorality, magic, greed, and hatred, Christians now live in self-control, share their goods, and pray for enemies.
  • First Apology 15Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Christ's teaching on purity, divorce, celibacy, repentance, love of enemies, generosity, and trust in God.
  • First Apology 16Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Christ taught patience, truthfulness without oaths, worship of God alone, and that only those who do his will are true Christians.
  • First Apology 27Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Christians do not expose infants, who are often raised for prostitution; the pagans do the vices they falsely charge to Christians.
  • First Apology 29Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Christians marry only to raise children or remain continent; one young man even sought castration to prove Christian chastity.
  • First Apology 39Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Isaiah's prophecy of swords into plowshares is fulfilled: the twelve apostles went out, and Christians now die rather than lie or fight.
  • First Apology 43Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Prophecy does not mean fate; humans have free choice, so reward and punishment are just.
  • First Apology 44Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · God gave humans free choice; the philosophers borrowed from Moses, so there are “seeds of truth” among all.
  • Acts of John 29Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · John urges Lycomedes to paint his soul with the colours of the virtues instead of a portrait of the body.
  • Acts of John 32Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · In the theatre John begins his sermon to the Ephesians on the care of the soul, wealth and poverty.
  • Acts of John 35Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · John's sermon warns the vain, adulterers, the miserly, the wrathful and the drunken of their end.
  • Acts of John 36Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · John ends his sermon with warnings of judgment and heals all the sick; he then proposes to visit the temple of Artemis.
  • Acts of John 49Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · John stops the fleeing parricide, who confesses that he meant to kill the woman, her husband and himself.
  • Acts of John 54Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · John rebukes the young man's self-mutilation and accepts his repentance; the Smyrnaeans invite John; and John answers a priest who scorned him for watching a partridge.
  • Acts of John 69Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · John describes the soul that remains faithful to the end, unlike those that fall away.
  • Acts of John 81Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · Drusiana asks that Fortunatus be raised too; Callimachus objects, and John teaches that evil is not to be repaid with evil.
  • Acts of Paul and Thecla 5Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · In Onesiphorus's house Paul breaks bread and begins a series of beatitudes in praise of chastity and self-control.
  • Acts of Paul and Thecla 6Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · Paul's beatitudes continue, ending with a blessing on the bodies of virgins.
  • Second Apology 3Justin Martyr · ca. 150–160 · Christians do not kill themselves, since that would defy God's purpose for the human race; but when questioned they will not lie.
  • Second Apology 6Justin Martyr · ca. 150–160 · God delays the final judgment for the sake of the Christians; humans and angels act by free choice, not by fate, as the Stoics wrongly teach.
  • Second Apology 9Justin Martyr · ca. 150–160 · The threat of eternal punishment is not a scare tactic: without judgment there would be no God who cares, and no virtue or vice.
  • Second Apology 11Justin Martyr · ca. 150–160 · Death is a debt all must pay; like Heracles choosing Virtue in Xenophon's story, Christians choose the hard road to true happiness.
  • Justin, Fr. 10Justin Martyr · ca. 150-165 · As bodies cast shadows, so God's justice necessarily repays each person according to his choices.
  • Justin, Fr. 13Justin Martyr · ca. 150-165 · Living well means living by the truth, which requires understanding the nature of things.
  • Justin, Fr. 15Justin Martyr · ca. 150-165 · Yielding to the passions is slavery; mastering them is freedom.
  • Justin, Fr. 16Justin Martyr · ca. 150-165 · Not sinning is best, being punished is second best, and the unpunished wrongdoer is most wretched.
  • Sibylline Oracles 7.81ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · The Sibyl prescribes a prayer with water poured on fire in memory of Christ's baptism, and hospitality to the poor stranger with a threefold prayer.
  • Sibylline Oracles 8.11ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · The Sibyl foretells Rome's universal rule and the final fire, and names love of money as the beginning of all evils.
  • Sibylline Oracles 8.21ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · The Sibyl condemns the love of gold as the source of impiety, war, and broken families, which makes even marriage a matter of gold.
  • Sibylline Oracles 8.31ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · The Sibyl condemns the rich who plunder the poor and foretells a heavenly blow that will raze proud Rome.
  • Sibylline Oracles 8.181ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · The Sibyl describes the shameless and greedy men of the last days and the falling of the stars.
  • Sibylline Oracles 8.391ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · God condemns worship of dead kings as gods, and declares that he set before men the two ways of life and death.
  • Sibylline Oracles 8.401ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · God teaches that man is his image, and that the true sacrifice is a bloodless table: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and helping the afflicted.
  • Sibylline Oracles 8.481ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · The Sibyl says that Christians, kin of Christ's heavenly race, love God and neighbour and do not approach temples or honour images with libations, flowers, lamps, or offerings.
  • Sibylline Oracles 8.491ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · The Eighth Book ends: instead of incense and blood sacrifice, Christians are bidden to praise the imperishable God, begetter of all, with pure hearts, love, generous hands, and psalms.
  • On the Sole Government of God 4Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · God is not won by costly sacrifices but by righteousness; Philemon and Plato are quoted.
  • On the Sole Government of God 6Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Gods with human passions, taught by men and given to adultery, cannot be lords of all; one must embrace the one true name before the Judge.
  • Discourse to the Greeks 1Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · The author left Greek ways because Homer's heroes are slaves of lust, deceit, and madness.
  • Discourse to the Greeks 4Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Greek festivals breed excess and licentiousness; Greeks condemn in their families what they honour in their gods.
  • Discourse to the Greeks 5Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · The Greeks should come to the divine Word, who makes mortals immortal by driving the passions from the soul and restoring it to its Maker.
  • Sentences of Sextus 1Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · A faithful man is a chosen man.
  • Sentences of Sextus 13Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Every member of the body that urges you to act against chastity is to be cast away; for it is better to live without one member than to be punished with it.
  • Sentences of Sextus 64Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Strive not to seem righteous, but to be righteous; for it is certain that he who wants to seem is not truly so.
  • Sentences of Sextus 89Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Such as you wish your neighbour to be to you, be such yourself to your neighbours.
  • Sentences of Sextus 106Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Love everyone who is of the same nature as you; but love God even more than your soul.
  • Sentences of Sextus 179Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · What you do not want to suffer, do not do either.
  • Sentences of Sextus 213Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Pray that you may be able to do good to your enemies.
  • Sentences of Sextus 228Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Those whose God is common and the same Father are impious unless their possessions too are common.
  • Sentences of Sextus 233Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Know that you are an adulterer even if you have thought of adultery; and let the same reckoning hold for you about every sin.
  • Sentence 1 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · A faithful person is an elect person.
  • Sentence 13 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Cast away every member of the body that persuades you not to be self-controlled; for it is better to live self-controlled without the member than with the member to your ruin.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 10.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Trypho dismisses the rumors and says he has read the Gospel, whose commands seem impossible to keep.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 12.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The true Sabbath is a life of repentance; the true circumcision is of the heart.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 14.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · True washing is of the soul from anger, greed, and envy; the unleavened bread signifies leaving old sins.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 14.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · New leaven means new works.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 23.5Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Women cannot be circumcised, yet can be righteous; so circumcision is only a sign.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 85.7Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Christ commanded love of enemies, which Isaiah also proclaimed.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 88.5Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · God made angels and men free; he rewards and punishes accordingly.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 93.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · All peoples know naturally that adultery, fornication, and murder are wrong.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 93.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · All righteousness is summed up in the two great commandments.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 93.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Righteousness is twofold: toward God and toward neighbor.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 95.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · All humanity is under the law's curse.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 96.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Christians pray for their enemies, as Christ taught.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 102.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · God made angels and men free and judges them while preserving their freedom, as at Babel.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 105.6Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Matt 5:20.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 110.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Christians have beaten swords into plowshares; each sits under his own vine, that is, is faithful to his own wife.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 124.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Humans were made capable of becoming “gods” and sons of the Most High, but fall like Adam and Eve.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 134.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Justin criticizes rabbis who permit polygamy by appealing to the patriarchs.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 140.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · No one is evil by God's fault, but by his own.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 141.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · God made angels and men free; sin is their own responsibility.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 141.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · God foresees but does not cause sin; forgiveness comes through repentance, not mere knowledge of God.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 141.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Even David was forgiven only after repentance.
  • Dialogue with Trypho 141.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · David's fall shows that the patriarchs' marriages were not license; Justin criticizes polygamy.
  • Martyrdom of Polycarp 10.2Anonymous · ca. 156–160 · Polycarp was willing to explain himself to the governing authority, but not to the mob.
  • Oration to the Greeks 11Tatian · ca. 165–172 · The Christian is free of ambition, greed, and fear of death; death came through human free will and sin, not through fate or God.
  • Oration to the Greeks 22Tatian · ca. 165–172 · The pantomime actor, playing gods and heroes on stage, teaches vice to the audience, including children.
  • Oration to the Greeks 23Tatian · ca. 165–172 · Tatian condemns athletic contests and, far more, the gladiatorial games, in which the rich buy men to be killed for entertainment.
  • Oration to the Greeks 28Tatian · ca. 165–172 · Human laws contradict each other, allowing among some peoples what others forbid, such as incest and pederasty.
  • Oration to the Greeks 34Tatian · ca. 165–172 · The Greeks honor with statues tyrants, fratricides, adulterers, and prostitutes, while despising the Christian way of life.
  • To Autolycus 1.2Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · God is seen only by the eyes of a pure soul; sin clouds them, as rust clouds a mirror.
  • To Autolycus 2.34Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The pagans worship images of dead men; God gave the law and the prophets so that people might know the one God and live righteously.
  • To Autolycus 3.6Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Plato's community of wives and the incest and sodomy taught (so Theophilus says) by Epicurus and the Stoics show that the charges of immorality belong to the philosophers.
  • To Autolycus 3.9Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Christians confess one God, who governs all things by providence and gave the holy law of the Ten Commandments through Moses to Israel and, through them, to the world.
  • To Autolycus 3.10Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Because Israel had been strangers in Egypt for 430 years, God's law commanded them not to oppress strangers.
  • To Autolycus 3.12Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The prophets, speaking by the one Spirit, agree with the law in teaching justice, mercy, and care for the poor, the orphan, and the widow.
  • To Autolycus 3.13Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Scripture forbids unchastity even in thought; the Gospel forbids lustful looks, marrying a divorced woman, and divorce except for sexual immorality.
  • To Autolycus 3.14Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Christians are taught to love their enemies, to do good without boasting, and to obey and pray for the authorities.
  • To Autolycus 3.15Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Christians, who may not even watch gladiatorial shows or immoral plays, cannot be guilty of promiscuity or cannibalism; their life is marked by chastity, monogamy, righteousness, and the rule of God.
  • Fragment 9Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 170–200
  • Fragment 39Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 170–200
  • A Plea for the Christians 11Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · Christian teaching is shown by its fruit: even uneducated Christians love their enemies, do not retaliate, and love their neighbors, as the philosophers do not.
  • A Plea for the Christians 12Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · Christians live pure lives because they expect God's judgment and know the Father, Son, and Spirit; those who deny judgment are called pious, but Christians are not.
  • A Plea for the Christians 32Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · Christians are forbidden even lustful looks and keep their “brothers and sisters” chaste, even in the kiss of greeting.
  • A Plea for the Christians 33Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · Christians marry only for children, many remain celibate, and marriage is for life: divorce and remarriage, and even remarriage after a spouse's death, are condemned as adultery.
  • A Plea for the Christians 34Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · Those who accuse Christians of vice practice prostitution and pederasty themselves; the real cannibalism is their violence against defenseless Christians.
  • A Plea for the Christians 35Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · Christians cannot be murderers: they will not even watch gladiatorial shows, and they condemn abortion and the exposure of infants as murder.
  • On the Resurrection of the Dead 22Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · The virtues themselves (courage, self-control, prudence, justice) belong to the whole person, body and soul, and cannot be exercised by a soul alone.
  • Martyrdom of Peter (Greek Acts of Peter) 4Anonymous · ca. 180–200 · Agrippa's four concubines, taught by Peter, refuse him, and he threatens them and Peter.
  • 2Anonymous · 180 (17 July) · Speratus says the Christians have done no wrong.
  • 2Anonymous · Greek rendering of the Latin Passion; date uncertain · Speratus says the Christians have done no evil.
  • Acts of Peter (Vercelli) 3Anonymous · ca. 180–200 · Paul celebrates a eucharist of bread and water, an adulteress is struck down, he exhorts the new believers, prays, and is escorted to the harbour to sail for Spain.
  • Acts of Peter (Vercelli) 17Anonymous · ca. 180–200 · Peter tells how in Judea he exposed Simon's theft of the rich widow Eubula's gold, which led to Eubula's conversion and Simon's flight.
  • Acts of Peter (Vercelli) 28Anonymous · ca. 180–200 · Simon fails to raise the dead Nicostratus while Peter raises him and refuses vengeance on Simon; the crowd honours Peter, gifts pour in for the poor, and Peter accepts money from a woman of ill repute as owed to Christ.
  • Fragment 6Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd–early 3rd century · Freedom from disturbance is the most precious thing, and Job, who bore scorn and wrong with patience, is its model.
  • Fragment 7Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd–early 3rd century · Three fragments: alms should be given with discernment to the worthy; the gospel word is like a mustard seed whose growth, the Church, shelters angels and souls; and Christ, born of the Virgin, is like a pearl, light shining through a body.
  • Fragment 11Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd–early 3rd century · Sayings ascribed to Clement: souls longing for God rise to his bosom at death; all souls, even of the ungodly, are immortal and the wicked suffer endless punishment; do not listen to slander; and the believer is justified not by mere abstention but by purity of thought.
  • Fragment 12Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd–early 3rd century · Sayings ascribed to Clement on prompt repentance, on the instability of a soul that alternates between mourning and pleasure, on flattery and true praise, on moderation, on reproof and knowledge, and on doing good rather than merely avoiding evil.
  • Fragment 15Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd–early 3rd century · Sayings ascribed to Clement on flattery, moderation in using necessities, eating little and remembering death, and the rule that Christians must not correct sin by force, since only freely chosen goodness is true goodness.
  • Adumbrations on 1 John, paragraph 6Clement of Alexandria · original ca. 200; Latin translation 6th century · On 1 John 2:5–7: the perfect man of understanding does good through love rather than fear or hope of reward; the old commandment is that of the law and prophets, ‘God is one.’
  • Adumbrations on 1 John, paragraph 10Clement of Alexandria · original ca. 200; Latin translation 6th century · On 1 John 4:18: love is the perfection of the believer.
  • Fragment 7 (Hypotyposes 5; on Gal 5:24)Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd-early 3rd century
  • Fragment 17 (Hypotyposes 7; on 1 Tim 5:8)Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd-early 3rd century
  • Fragment 62 (Sacra Parallela 301)Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd-early 3rd century
  • Fragment 64 (Sacra Parallela 304)Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd-early 3rd century
  • Fragment 66 (Sacra Parallela 314)Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd-early 3rd century
  • Fragment 44 (Exhortation to Endurance, or To the Newly Baptized (Clement's precepts))Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd-early 3rd century · A set of precepts for a newly baptized Christian on quiet conduct, speech, prayer, temperance, trust in God, and endurance in illness.
  • Fragment 45 (Letters; Sacra Parallela 311)Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd-early 3rd century · Serving a righteous person is a privilege for the one who serves.
  • Fragment 47 (Letters; Sacra Parallela 313 (on wealth and poverty))Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd-early 3rd century · God allows both wealth and poverty so that people may do good to one another.
  • Fragment 53 (Uncertain origin; Anastasius of Sinai, Question 14, on almsgiving (Stromata 4))Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd-early 3rd century · Alms should be given with discernment to the devout, as a farmer sows good soil.
  • Fragment 55 (Uncertain origin; catena on Matthew 10:16)Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd-early 3rd century · Christians should be as shrewd in doing good as the serpent is in doing evil.
  • The Instructor 1.1.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Clement introduces the Word as Exhorter, Instructor, and Teacher: having converted us, he now trains our conduct and heals our passions.
  • The Instructor 1.1.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Word will also be the Teacher of doctrine, but as Instructor he first guides practice by precept and by good and bad examples.
  • The Instructor 1.1.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · As the body needs a physician before it can work, the soul needs the Instructor to heal its passions before it can be taught.
  • The Instructor 1.3.9Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · We must love the Word in return and imitate him, the sighted guide in our darkness, so that God's image and likeness may be fulfilled in us.
  • The Instructor 1.4.10Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Men and women have the same virtue, the same Instructor, and the same salvation; in the age to come the distinction of sex no longer matters.
  • The Instructor 1.7.55Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The famous tutors of antiquity failed to form their pupils' character; the Persian princes learned only archery and grew up in incest and license.
  • The Instructor 1.8.65Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Reproof, rebuke, and admonition are like surgery, medicine, and diet for the soul; like a general, the Word punishes for the good of those he leads.
  • The Instructor 1.10.94Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Praise and blame are both necessary medicines: blame for the hardened, praise for the willing; Scripture warns the young against the company of sinners.
  • The Instructor 1.10.95Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Ezekiel's portrait of the righteous man outlines the Christian life that leads to eternal life.
  • The Instructor 1.12.98Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Jesus, who formed, regenerated, and instructs the human being, shows us the true life; imitating him, we are transformed toward God's image and likeness and learn a simple, self-sufficient life.
  • The Instructor 1.12.99Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Christ's instruction is for peace, not war; it needs no luxury, and it forms a noble disposition that shows itself in every part of daily life.
  • The Instructor 1.12.100Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Word is Savior because he heals with rational medicines; we owe him gratitude, and must contemplate God, live by the truth, and make our words match our deeds.
  • The Instructor 1.13.101Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Sin is whatever is contrary to right reason (the Word); obedience to the Word is faith, and produces right action.
  • The Instructor 1.13.102Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Sin makes man like the beasts; right action (duty) is obedience to the Word's commands, leading to eternal rest in God, and the Christian life is a system of such rational actions.
  • The Instructor 1.13.103Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Lord's commandments, written down as spiritual precepts, direct both this life and the eternal life; Clement will outline the latter from Scripture.
  • The Instructor 2.1.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Book 2 begins the practical instruction with the body: others live to eat, but the Christian eats to live, cleansing the soul's eye and purifying the flesh.
  • The Instructor 2.1.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Food is for life, not pleasure; simple food gives health and strength, while elaborate cookery breeds disease.
  • The Instructor 2.1.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Gluttons search the world for delicacies, spending their lives around the kitchen.
  • The Instructor 2.1.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Gluttony has no limit; the belly will be destroyed; and those who call their lavish dinners agapai (love feasts) profane the holy name of love.
  • The Instructor 2.1.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Simple food makes people stronger and wiser; true love (agapē) is heavenly food, never failing, and must not be dragged down to the level of banquets.
  • The Instructor 2.1.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The law hangs on love of God and neighbor; the church's supper is a sign of love, not love itself, for God's kingdom is not food and drink.
  • The Instructor 2.1.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The church's common meal should serve love and be plain and moderate; gluttony makes human beings like beasts, crawling on their bellies like the serpent.
  • The Instructor 2.1.8Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Isaiah condemns the feasting of those who say “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”; Christians avoid food offered to idols, not from fear but for conscience's sake and for the weak.
  • The Instructor 2.1.9Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Food is indifferent in itself, but Christians must not eat at the table of demons or cause the weak to stumble; they should use God's gifts as masters and seek the heavenly food.
  • The Instructor 2.1.10Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Christians may accept invitations and eat what is set before them, giving thanks, but should avoid gluttony, refrain for the sake of the weak, and not eat with a brother who lives immorally.
  • The Instructor 2.1.11Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Paul and the Pythagoreans say abstaining from meat and wine is good; eating meat is not sin, but gluttonous table manners make people like pigs and dogs.
  • The Instructor 2.1.12Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Excess in food is the clearest vice; Paul rebuked the Corinthians whose common suppers shamed the poor.
  • The Instructor 2.1.13Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Christians should eat with decorum, not talk with their mouths full, and do all to God's glory, as the Lord's simple meal of bread and fish shows.
  • The Instructor 2.1.14Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The fish Peter caught stands for simple, God-given food and for putting away greed; not everything permitted is profitable, and God, who feeds the birds, provides our needs.
  • The Instructor 2.1.15Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Simple foods such as bulbs, olives, vegetables, milk, cheese, and fruit are healthy; the risen Lord ate broiled fish; the glutton is ruled by a “belly-demon.”
  • The Instructor 2.1.16Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Matthew ate no meat and John the Baptist ate locusts and honey; but Peter's vision shows that food is indifferent, and the middle way is best.
  • The Instructor 2.1.17Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The mean is having what is necessary; the law's food restrictions trained the Jews in frugality by breaking the habit of luxury.
  • The Instructor 2.1.18Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Plato condemned the luxurious life, as David's simple distribution of bread shows; those whose god is the belly face destruction.
  • The Instructor 2.2.20Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · To drink Christ's blood is to share his incorruption: the mingling of the cup and the Word is called the Eucharist, which sanctifies body and soul. The young should for the most part avoid wine, which inflames desire.
  • The Instructor 2.2.21Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The impulses of youth must be cooled by water; grown men should take their midday meal dry, since excess drink shows incontinence.
  • The Instructor 2.2.22Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Water should be drunk in moderation; wine may be taken sparingly in the evening, and the elderly may drink more freely, but always within the limits of a clear mind.
  • The Instructor 2.2.23Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Wine in moderation helps health and good humor; it should be mixed with plenty of water, both being God's gifts.
  • The Instructor 2.2.24Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Excess wine confuses speech and sight, as in Pentheus's drunken vision of two suns, and leads to anger, folly, and every kind of fall.
  • The Instructor 2.2.25Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Word should be present especially at banquets, to keep them from drunkenness; wisdom is the art of living and must accompany us always.
  • The Instructor 2.2.26Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The drunkard is a ridiculous and pitiable sight; we should shape ourselves so as not to become such a spectacle.
  • The Instructor 2.2.27Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Drunkenness is defined and condemned; Proverbs shows the drunkard in rags, full of woes, with the livid eyes of a corpse, dead to the Word.
  • The Instructor 2.2.28Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Proverbs warns against drunkenness, likening the drunkard to a pilot lost in a storm at sea, whose mind is shipwrecked on pleasure.
  • The Instructor 2.2.29Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Paul forbids drunkenness; Christ changed water into wine but did not permit drunkenness; wine is a symbol of his blood; drink only to meet need, keeping the soul dry and clear.
  • The Instructor 2.2.30Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Seeking rare imported wines is a sign of incontinence; for the self-controlled one local wine, the gift of one God, is enough.
  • The Instructor 2.2.31Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Drink with decorum, slowly and without gulping; do not show off in drinking, for wine has ruined many.
  • The Instructor 2.2.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Encratites, who reject wine, are answered by the Lord's example; women should drink modestly and not expose themselves, and all should behave as in the Lord's presence.
  • The Instructor 2.2.34Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Drunkards have their reason in their belly, like the astrologers' “headless” figure; Noah's drunkenness is recorded as a warning; enough wine is enough.
  • The Instructor 2.3.35Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Gold and silver cups, costly vessels, and luxurious furniture are useless and harmful; the time is short.
  • The Instructor 2.3.36Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Paul's teaching on living “as though not” applies all the more to luxury; the Lord bids us sell our goods and follow him, possessing only faith, confession, and kindness.
  • The Instructor 2.3.37Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Riches end in Hades; household goods should be judged by usefulness, not costliness, since a plain knife, basin, lamp, or bed serves just as well.
  • The Instructor 2.3.38Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Lord ate simply, reclined on grass, washed feet with a towel, and asked for water in a clay jar; a Christian's goods should suit a single, simple life.
  • The Instructor 2.3.39Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Wealth ill-used is vice's citadel and love of money the root of all evils; luxury extends even to golden chamber pots. True wealth is freedom from desire, and wisdom is bought only with the Word.
  • The Instructor 2.4.40Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Revels and all-night drinking parties with flutes, dances, and cymbals have no place at a Christian feast; we should walk decently as in the day.
  • The Instructor 2.4.41Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Flutes and pipes suit beasts and idolaters, and sensual music corrupts; the instruments of Psalm 150 are to be understood spiritually as the tongue, mouth, body, and church.
  • The Instructor 2.4.43Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · At meals Christians should love God through thanksgiving and psalms and their neighbor through good conversation; singing to the lyre or cithara, as David did, is not blameworthy.
  • The Instructor 2.5.45Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Jesters and buffoonery have no place among Christians: speech is the fruit of character, and ridiculous speech comes from a ridiculous character.
  • The Instructor 2.5.46Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Laughter is natural but must be moderated: a smile befits the self-controlled, while loud laughter is the mark of the fool.
  • The Instructor 2.5.47Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · One should be neither a loud laugher nor sullen, but thoughtful; a smile must suit the occasion and the company.
  • The Instructor 2.5.48Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Laughter is a danger to the young; wine makes the foolish laugh and dance, loosens the tongue into foul speech, and exposes hidden character.
  • The Instructor 2.6.49Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Christians must avoid and discourage foul speech, which defiles; the Instructor guards the ears with chaste words like wrestlers' ear-guards and turns the eyes to good things.
  • The Instructor 2.6.50Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Paul forbids foul and foolish talk; we will give account for every idle word; keeping company with the righteous guards ears and eyes.
  • The Instructor 2.6.51Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Hate evil and cling to good; avoid shameful sights, words, and deeds, as Noah's sons covered their father's nakedness.
  • The Instructor 2.6.52Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Instructor cuts off sin at its root, forbidding foul words as the path to foul deeds; the body and marriage are not shameful, only their misuse; idle chatter must also be avoided.
  • The Instructor 2.7.53Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Mockery at meals breeds enmity and is sinful; better to keep silent; and the young should generally stay away from banquets.
  • The Instructor 2.7.54Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Wisdom warns against dining and drinking with married women; if women must be present they should be modestly dressed, and men should keep their eyes and posture decorous.
  • The Instructor 2.7.55Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · At table the self-controlled eat little and slowly, do not reach first or linger long, and sit decorously.
  • The Instructor 2.7.56Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The self-controlled leave meals early; the apostles avoided serving tables and forbade idol offerings, blood, strangled things, and sexual immorality; drunkenness brings both foolish laughter and tears.
  • The Instructor 2.7.57Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Elders may tease the young gently in ways that teach modesty; but mockery should be passed over in silence, for it is dangerous.
  • The Instructor 2.7.58Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Speech should be measured to the listener: the old may speak at feasts, the young briefly when asked; the voice should be neither loud nor inaudible.
  • The Instructor 2.7.59Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Avoid contentious argument and immoderate speech; a measured voice befits the self-controlled, as Odysseus's rebuke of the babbling Thersites shows.
  • The Instructor 2.7.60Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Wisdom forbids idle chatter even in prayer; at table Christians should avoid rude noises and habits, and behave with calm and decorum, for the Christian belongs to peace.
  • The Instructor 2.8.61Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Garlands and perfumes are unnecessary; the sinful woman who anointed Jesus's feet honored him with what she had, and her perfume symbolizes his teaching spreading to the ends of the earth.
  • The Instructor 2.8.64Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Aristippus argued that perfume does not harm a man any more than a horse; but for rational beings such indulgence is blameworthy, and luxury invents endless perfumes.
  • The Instructor 2.8.65Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Some cities banished perfumers; Christians should smell of goodness and of Christ, anointed with the Spirit as Christ himself was anointed.
  • The Instructor 2.8.66Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Some mild perfumes may be allowed to women, but in excess they smell of the funeral; perfume can make men effeminate.
  • The Instructor 2.8.67Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · As luxury is shut out of taste, so it must be shut out of smell; the incense the High Priest offers is spiritual, the fragrance of love; plain oil is enough for the body.
  • The Instructor 2.8.68Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Some fragrances have medicinal uses and may be used as remedies; but pleasure without usefulness belongs to the character of a courtesan.
  • The Instructor 2.8.69Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Moderate use of ointment for health is allowed, as Sirach commends the physician and perfumer; but lavish perfume is effeminate, and even makes hair gray sooner.
  • The Instructor 2.8.70Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Garlands belong to revels; flowers are best enjoyed in the meadow and by sight, glorifying the Creator, not worn on the head where they chill it and give no pleasure.
  • The Instructor 2.8.71Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Flowers and beauty fade; the Christian's crowns are spouse, marriage, and children, and Christ is the crown of the church; flowers have medicinal properties but garlands are for revelers.
  • The Instructor 2.8.72Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The early Greeks did not use garlands; Christians avoid them because they are dedicated to idols and used in the service of demons.
  • The Instructor 2.8.76Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Perfumes made from flowers have medicinal value, and all these things were created for our good use; the godly may enjoy flowers' scent but should not wear garlands.
  • The Instructor 2.9.77Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Before sleep we should bless God and call on the Word; luxurious bedding is harmful as well as self-indulgent, and plain level beds are healthier.
  • The Instructor 2.9.78Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Neither luxury nor Cynic hardship: Christians should sleep on a simple, moderately firm bed, as Jacob slept with a stone for a pillow and saw the heavenly vision.
  • The Instructor 2.9.80Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Wisdom and Paul call us to watchfulness and sobriety as children of the day; light food and discipline keep us wakeful, and the inner light should be turned within.
  • The Instructor 2.9.81Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Overeating brings heavy sleep and clouds the soul, as Lot's drunken sleep shows; Christians should rise at night to study, work, or spin, and not sleep by day.
  • The Instructor 2.10.83Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The aim of marital intercourse is children, and in begetting a human being cooperates with God; seed must not be wasted in unnatural acts. Moses's prohibition of the hare and the hyena was read as a symbolic ban on pederasty and adultery.
  • The Instructor 2.10.84Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Clement agrees with the moral meaning of the prohibition but rejects the belief that animals change their sex: seasonal changes in birds alter color and voice, not nature.
  • The Instructor 2.10.85Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The hyena does not change sex or have both sexes; its supposed female organ is only a fleshy growth, a mark of its lust.
  • The Instructor 2.10.86Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The hyena's perversion is a picture of unnatural lust; Plato called pederasty beastly, and Paul condemns unnatural relations as dishonorable passions.
  • The Instructor 2.10.87Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Nature itself, by the structure of the body, forbids homosexual acts and other unfruitful intercourse; Jeremiah's “hyena's den” condemns idolatry.
  • The Instructor 2.10.88Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The hare's constant mating was read as a symbol; the prohibition of eating it teaches abstinence from excessive intercourse, intercourse with pregnant women, homosexual acts, pederasty, and adultery.
  • The Instructor 2.10.89Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Moses forbade sexual immorality, adultery, and the corruption of boys openly; the punishment of Sodom was written as a warning to us.
  • The Instructor 2.10.90Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · We should regard boys as sons and other men's wives as daughters, and control the sexual organs with modesty; nature permits marriage for procreation, not excess or relations with youths.
  • The Instructor 2.10.91Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Plato, learning from Moses, forbade sowing where seed cannot grow; the law forbids homosexual intercourse and adultery; sexual union is lawful only with one's own wife.
  • The Instructor 2.10.92Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Seed must not be wasted; Moses forbade intercourse during menstruation, and Clement holds that intercourse during pregnancy is also wrong, since pleasure alone, even in marriage, is not a lawful aim.
  • The Instructor 2.10.93Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The organs of generation, which God created, are not shameful to name; during pregnancy nature is at work and should not be disturbed; lust breeds many passions, and Scripture prays to be delivered from them.
  • The Instructor 2.10.94Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Whether to marry at all is a real question; even within marriage intercourse is not to be used freely, since, as Democritus said, it exhausts the body.
  • The Instructor 2.10.95Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Marriage is to be accepted, for God wills humanity to multiply, but not for licentiousness; intercourse not aimed at children outrages nature.
  • The Instructor 2.10.96Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Marriage aims at children; abortion, used to hide sexual immorality, destroys humanity with the embryo; the married should not have intercourse by day, the time for prayer, reading, and good works.
  • The Instructor 2.10.97Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Marital intercourse should be occasional and modest, at night after the day's prayers, and marked by dignity toward one's wife; love founded on lust soon fades and turns to hate.
  • The Instructor 2.10.98Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Licentious speech must not even be named among Christians; intercourse is risky except for procreation, and adultery leads to death.
  • The Instructor 2.10.99Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Even pagan poetry condemns adultery and homosexual acts; those who sin in darkness forget that God's eyes see all, as Sirach, Isaiah, and Heraclitus say.
  • The Instructor 2.10.100Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The light within us is not overcome by darkness; the fornicator is dead to God; modesty must never be put off, and in the resurrection the pure flesh will put on incorruption like the angels.
  • The Instructor 2.10.101Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Word dwells in us as in a temple, which sexual sin defiles; the fate of those who sinned at Peor is a warning, and Sirach warns against following desires.
  • The Instructor 2.10.102Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Sexual desire must be ruled; only the married may sow, at the right time; and the Lord's words about ravens and lilies teach that we need not care for costly food or clothing.
  • The Instructor 2.10.103Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The lilies are clothed by God; Christians are told not to seek “what” they will eat, that is, dainties and luxury, which the nations seek, but plain food, which the Father knows we need.
  • The Instructor 2.10.104Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · If the Lord removes anxiety even about food and clothing, he condemns cosmetics and finery all the more; the “grass” thrown into the oven is the crowd that loves display.
  • The Instructor 2.10.105Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The rich man in purple and Lazarus illustrate the fate of the lovers of finery; Sparta allowed ornaments only to courtesans, while effeminate Athenians wore gold.
  • The Instructor 2.10.106Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Love of finery is idolatry of a mere image of beauty; clothing is needed only to protect the body against cold and heat.
  • The Instructor 2.10.107Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Since clothing serves a need common to men and women, it should be similar for both; women may have softer fabrics, but not silks and transparent fabrics that reveal the body.
  • The Instructor 2.10.108Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Dyed clothing is useless and suggestive; white suits those pure within, as Daniel's vision of the Ancient of Days and the martyrs' white robes in Revelation show.
  • The Instructor 2.10.109Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Embroidered and dyed clothing is for display; Scripture forbids boasting in clothing; the faithful are clothed with incorruption; a wife who loves finery falls away from God and her husband, like Eriphyle.
  • The Instructor 2.10.110Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Prodicus pictured virtue in white and vice in gaudy clothes; the queen's golden robes in Psalm 45 are the church's adornment of faith, in which Christ shines like gold.
  • The Instructor 2.10.111Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Women's clothing may be soft but not ornate; it is shameful to spend wealth on covering the body, which Adam covered with leaves; wool is only sheep's hair.
  • The Instructor 2.10.112Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · John the Baptist wore camel's hair and ate locusts and honey, and Elijah wore a sheepskin: examples of frugal, simple life.
  • The Instructor 2.10.113Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Isaiah went naked and barefoot and Jeremiah wore only a loincloth; trailing robes are pretentious; the Lord's long robe signifies the Scriptures, and he is clothed with light.
  • The Instructor 2.10.114Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Women should not bare any part of the body; Scripture commands the head to be veiled; purple clothing draws the eyes of men and inflames vanity.
  • The Instructor 2.10.115Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Costly purples and fine linens make their wearers worth less than their clothes; the foolish pursue what seems good instead of what is truly good.
  • The Instructor 2.11.116Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Ornate sandals with gold, jewels, and erotic inscriptions show vanity; footwear should be chosen according to nature.
  • The Instructor 2.11.117Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Shoes are for protection; women should wear plain shoes, while men may go barefoot; John the Baptist's words about the Lord's sandal strap show plain footwear.
  • The Instructor 2.12.118Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Precious stones and pearls fascinate the foolish like fire fascinates children; the true pearl is Christ, the pure Word, through whom the flesh, reborn in water, becomes precious.
  • The Instructor 2.12.119Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The jeweled walls of the heavenly Jerusalem are symbols of the apostles and the Spirit; those who read them literally as an excuse for luxury do not understand God's will.
  • The Instructor 2.12.120Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · God gives necessities openly and hides luxuries; all things are made for sharing, and the loving person says “Why should I not share?”; spending on people is better than on jewels.
  • The Instructor 2.12.121Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Costly things are for no one's pride; ornaments should be thrown away, since true beauty is inner virtue: justice, self-control, courage, and godliness.
  • The Instructor 2.12.122Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Love of finery teaches deceit; women loaded with gold chains are like rich prisoners in fetters.
  • The Instructor 2.12.123Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Gold ornaments are chains and even the bonds of Aphrodite's adultery; serpent-shaped jewelry recalls the serpent that deceived Eve.
  • The Instructor 2.12.124Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Clement quotes Aristophanes's long comic catalogue of women's clothes, cosmetics, and jewelry.
  • The Instructor 2.12.125Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Women waste their wealth on burdensome ornaments; the Lord called the hoarding rich man a fool; Apelles mocked a pupil who painted Helen rich instead of beautiful.
  • The Instructor 2.12.126Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Hebrews melted their women's ornaments into the golden calf; the prophets condemn ornaments as the trappings of idolatry and unfaithfulness.
  • The Instructor 2.12.127Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Christian women should reject courtesan-like adornment and be adorned with good works.
  • The Instructor 2.12.128Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Natural beauty needs no ornament and ugliness is only exposed by it; Christian women should embrace simplicity, which is sufficiency, born of justice.
  • The Instructor 2.12.129Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Christian woman's jewelry should be generosity, good works, modesty, self-control, and wisdom; the ears should not be pierced for earrings but opened to true teaching.
  • The Instructor 3.1.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Knowing oneself leads to knowing and becoming like God; desire, shape-shifting like Proteus, degrades the human being, but the one in whom the Word dwells has true beauty and is made like God.
  • The Instructor 3.1.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · God freed the flesh and adorned it with immortality; love is true beauty, as Paul describes it; the Lord himself had no outward beauty, but showed the true beauty of goodness and immortality.
  • The Instructor 3.2.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Adorned women who neglect the soul are like Egyptian temples: magnificent outside, but with only a cat or crocodile in the inner shrine.
  • The Instructor 3.2.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Made-up women are like Egyptian temples: behind the curtain of cosmetics is no image of God but a harlot and the serpent; love of finery turns wives into courtesans.
  • The Instructor 3.2.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Women who spend the day on cosmetics destroy their natural beauty and health and dishonor the Creator, as even the comic poet Menander said.
  • The Instructor 3.2.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Made-up women are idle ornaments who ruin households and marriages, as the comic poets mock with their catalogue of a woman's toilet.
  • The Instructor 3.2.8Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Cosmetics made of vile substances deserve contempt; even the comic poet Alexis ridicules women's tricks to disguise their bodies.
  • The Instructor 3.2.9Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The testimony of pagan writers is followed by Scripture: cosmetics betray a sick soul, and Proverbs warns against drinking from a strange river, the adulterous woman or heresy.
  • The Instructor 3.2.10Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Love of finery is insatiable and blind like Wealth itself; women who adorn themselves to be seen betray adultery, and Jeremiah calls their beautifying vain.
  • The Instructor 3.2.11Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Animals rejoice in their natural beauty, but women seek artificial beauty with cosmetics and mirrors, like masks; Christians should look at the unseen, not the seen.
  • The Instructor 3.2.12Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Moses forbade images; God chose David for his heart, not his looks; Abraham left all his wealth to follow God; only Esther adorned herself rightly, to save her people.
  • The Instructor 3.2.13Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Paris's finery and effeminate luxury seduced Helen and brought the Trojan War: without an Instructor to check desire, adornment ruined two continents.
  • The Instructor 3.2.14Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · One who is untrained should not take the reins; the fallen angels, lured by fading beauty, and the Shechemites who outraged Dinah, are warnings.
  • The Instructor 3.3.15Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Men too have caught the disease of luxury, dressing effeminately and removing their body hair in public shops, betraying adultery and perversion.
  • The Instructor 3.3.16Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Men who shave and dye their hair try in vain to cheat age and death; old age is venerable, and God himself is called the Ancient of Days with hair white as wool.
  • The Instructor 3.3.17Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Only God can make hair white or black; dyeing gray hair counterfeits his work; Christians are to put off the old man, not their gray hair, and men should not groom themselves like women.
  • The Instructor 3.3.18Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Men who wear gold ornaments are effeminate; God made woman smooth and gave man a beard as a sign of strength and rule, crowned in age with gray hair.
  • The Instructor 3.3.19Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The beard is a sign of manhood older than Eve, who was taken from Adam's side; to remove it is to transgress nature; smoothing marks the effeminate and the adulteress.
  • The Instructor 3.3.20Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Every hair is numbered by God and Christ dwells in us; public depilation is indecent and unnatural; those predestined to be conformed to Christ's image should not disfigure the body.
  • The Instructor 3.3.21Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Licentiousness is everywhere: prostitution of women and boys, homosexual acts, and, because of the exposure of infants, fathers unknowingly committing incest with their own children in the brothels.
  • The Instructor 3.3.22Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The laws permit prostitution and trade in human beings for pleasure; Moses forbade it, and his prophecy of a land filled with sexual immorality has come true.
  • The Instructor 3.3.23Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The old Roman laws punished effeminacy; the beard is natural beauty, anointed like Aaron's; effeminate men betray their character by their dress, walk, and look, as Sirach says.
  • The Instructor 3.3.24Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Men who pluck their bodies yet pamper their heads are effeminate; even barbarians like Celts and Scythians wear their hair untended and live frugally.
  • The Instructor 3.3.25Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Nomads live simply, even drinking their animals' blood, which Christians may not touch; human blood shares in the Word; the Lord calls us to be stripped of luxury, carrying only the tree of life.
  • The Instructor 3.4.26Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The rich keep crowds of slaves for every luxury: cooks, cupbearers, handsome boys, hairdressers, and eunuchs serving as procurers.
  • The Instructor 3.4.27Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The true eunuch is one who does not wish to indulge; Samuel warned that a king would take daughters as servants; rich women neglect housework for idle and corrupting company.
  • The Instructor 3.4.28Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Rich women parade in litters, visit temples and diviners, and learn love charms that destroy marriages, trading purity for shame.
  • The Instructor 3.4.29Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Scripture warns against letting just anyone into the house; rich women surround themselves with effeminate men who are servants of adultery and lewdness.
  • The Instructor 3.4.30Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Rich women keep pets, dwarfs, and freaks, yet neglect widows, the old, and orphans, exposing their own babies while raising birds; Christ counts what is done for the least as done for him.
  • The Instructor 3.5.31Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Rich women's baths are furnished with luxury and gold vessels, where they dine and drink and display their wealth to attract lovers.
  • The Instructor 3.5.32Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Women who will not undress before their husbands bathe naked in mixed public baths or before their slaves, feeding lust.
  • The Instructor 3.5.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Mixed bathing exposes lust; men should set an example of modesty; we should respect others and ourselves, and above all the Word, who is present everywhere.
  • The Instructor 3.6.34Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Wealth should be used worthily and shared; stripped of finery, masters are no different from slaves; the good man stores up treasure in heaven by giving to the poor.
  • The Instructor 3.6.35Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Wealth is like a snake, dangerous unless handled with knowledge; the true riches are virtue and wisdom; the rich man is the one who gives, not the one who keeps.
  • The Instructor 3.6.36Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Only the good, the Christians, can possess true goods: righteousness and the Word; the one who asks God receives, so the godly possess all things.
  • The Instructor 3.7.36Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Chapter 7 opens: luxury wandering into pleasure is a shipwreck.
  • The Instructor 3.7.37Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The life of the belly is unworthy of human nature, made by the Beautiful One; love of pleasure and wealth makes it hard to enter the kingdom; luxury only feeds thieves.
  • The Instructor 3.7.38Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Elijah's simple meal and the Lord's command to carry no purse teach frugality: Christians should share, give up excess possessions and servants, and travel light, household and all.
  • The Instructor 3.7.39Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Husband and wife should travel together with frugality; the body is the measure of possessions; generosity is the staff for the road to heaven, and like a well it refills as it gives.
  • The Instructor 3.7.40Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The one who has the Word lacks nothing; the just live not by bread alone but by the Word, the bread of heaven; this wealth inherits God's kingdom.
  • The Instructor 3.8.41Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Frugality trains Christians to endure persecution, having no fatherland on earth; examples teach virtue, as Penelope's faithfulness and the Spartans' drunken Helots did.
  • The Instructor 3.8.44Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The destruction of Sodom for its luxury, adultery, and pederasty is an instruction to us, as Jude teaches with the examples of Israel in the desert and the fallen angels.
  • The Instructor 3.9.46Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · There are four reasons for bathing; pleasure is ruled out, women may bathe for cleanliness and health and men for health only; too much bathing weakens and ages the body.
  • The Instructor 3.9.47Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Bathing should be moderate and occasional, not luxurious; above all the soul must be washed by the Word, lest we be like the whitewashed tombs the Lord condemned.
  • The Instructor 3.9.48Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The best washing is spiritual, cleansing the inside first, as the Lord taught and Isaiah prophesied; the body can be washed with plain water.
  • The Instructor 3.10.49Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Young men should exercise in the gymnasium; women should exercise in spinning, weaving, and housework, like the woman of Proverbs 31, Sarah, and Rachel.
  • The Instructor 3.10.50Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Scripture gives examples of humble work: Rachel pastured sheep and Jacob tended Laban's flocks; men may wrestle, play ball, walk, hoe, draw water, and chop wood.
  • The Instructor 3.10.51Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Reading aloud and plain wrestling are good exercise, not for rivalry or show; in exercise as in everything, the mean between idleness and excess is best.
  • The Instructor 3.10.52Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Humble self-help and service to others, like Abraham serving his guests, are good exercise; fishing is allowed, but the better fishing is catching people through baptism.
  • The Instructor 3.11.53Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Soft clothing and gold need not be wholly forbidden, but the Instructor, as charioteer, must rein in the passions; Christians should wear plain white clothing, witnessing by good conduct among the Gentiles.
  • The Instructor 3.11.54Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The self-controlled have plain, seemly dress; the law of leprosy, where the one wholly white is clean, and Plato's preference for white teach simplicity.
  • The Instructor 3.11.55Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · White and simple dress reflects a pure character; plain undressed wool keeps warm in winter and suits an easy, sufficient life.
  • The Instructor 3.11.56Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Women may wear softer but plain clothing; Christians should put on Christ; ears should not be pierced; whoever thinks gold adorns him is worth less than gold.
  • The Instructor 3.11.57Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Women may wear a gold ring only as a seal for household goods; a wife with an unchaste husband may adorn herself to please him alone, while gently leading him to simplicity.
  • The Instructor 3.11.58Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Dignity comes from removing excess; husbands should entrust the household to their wives; men may have a signet ring for sealing only; freedom lies in the soul, not in ornaments.
  • The Instructor 3.11.59Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Christians should live freely as God's adopted children; a man's signet ring should be worn on the little finger and engraved with a dove, fish, ship, lyre, or anchor, not idols or weapons.
  • The Instructor 3.11.60Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Christians should not engrave lovers on their rings; men should keep short hair and a beard, not shaved bare, as the psalmist praises Aaron's anointed beard.
  • The Instructor 3.11.61Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Hair should be cut only as needed, the moustache trimmed with scissors, and the beard left alone for its dignity; a distinctive appearance helps keep people from sinning.
  • The Instructor 3.11.62Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Short hair toughens a man's head; women should tie their hair simply with a plain pin, since elaborate braiding damages the hair and makes them fearful of spoiling it.
  • The Instructor 3.11.63Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Wigs are godless: when the presbyter lays on hands in blessing he blesses someone else's hair; wives who wear false hair deceive their husbands and shame Christ; gray hair should not be dyed.
  • The Instructor 3.11.64Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · True beauty is first the soul's, adorned by the Spirit with the virtues; bodily beauty comes from health, temperate food, and drink, not cosmetics.
  • The Instructor 3.11.65Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Exercise produces genuine beauty by using up the surplus of food through heat; in an idle body food is not properly absorbed.
  • The Instructor 3.11.66Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Idleness breeds excess and lust, which exercise dissolves; those made in God's image should not dishonor him with cosmetics; wives should adorn themselves with modesty and the hidden beauty of the heart.
  • The Instructor 3.11.67Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Women's true adornment is their own handiwork and household care, in which husband, children, and God rejoice; the valiant woman of Proverbs is a crown to her husband.
  • The Instructor 3.11.68Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Women should correct theatrical postures, walks, and voices; Proverbs warns of the harlot's honeyed lips; Samson was defeated by a harlot, but Joseph by his chastity defeated Potiphar's wife.
  • The Instructor 3.11.69Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Affected, mincing walks are the mark of catamites and courtesans; the harlot's steps do not lead to life.
  • The Instructor 3.11.70Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The eyes must be guarded, for ogling is adultery with the eyes; the Lord says to cut out the offending eye; the eye is the lamp of the body, revealing what is within.
  • The Instructor 3.11.71Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Paul commands us to put sexual immorality to death, but some women flaunt themselves with mastic, pins, and painted faces, like the foolish woman in Proverbs who calls to passers-by.
  • The Instructor 3.11.72Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Proverbs warns against the adulteress's stolen waters, which lead to Hades; Isaiah threatens the vain daughters of Zion with humiliation.
  • The Instructor 3.11.73Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Mistresses should keep their maidservants chaste, for a servant's license reflects on her mistress; walking should be dignified, not showy, and no sign of softness should appear in a man.
  • The Instructor 3.11.74Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Masters should treat servants with fairness and kindness, as Peter teaches; Zeno's portrait of the modest, manly young man is a good model.
  • The Instructor 3.11.75Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Men should not idle in barbershops and taverns or gamble; only good company benefits, as the prohibition of pork symbolically teaches avoidance of swinish people.
  • The Instructor 3.11.76Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The food laws allegorically teach us to avoid plunderers and keep company with the righteous, who ruminate on the Word; Christians should not attend the games and theaters, which are full of disorder and lust.
  • The Instructor 3.11.77Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The shows inflame lust and fill the mind with shameful images; spectacles that kill without pity, waste wealth, and provoke riots are not harmless play.
  • The Instructor 3.11.78Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Every believer must pursue the true philosophy of loving God and neighbor; even the unlettered can hear, for faith's book is love, and one can live in the world in a godly way.
  • The Instructor 3.11.79Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Buyers and sellers should name one honest price without oaths; Christ drove the dishonest from the temple; men and women should come to church modestly, and women should be veiled at prayer.
  • The Instructor 3.11.80Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Christians should be at all times what they appear in church; instead many change like the octopus, returning from worship to love songs, drinking, and revelry.
  • The Instructor 3.11.81Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Those who say “let us eat and drink” are already dead to God, and Paul excludes such sinners from the kingdom; love is shown by goodwill, not by the church kiss, which should be holy and restrained.
  • The Instructor 3.11.82Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · A kiss is not love, for love of God is keeping his commandments; greetings should be quiet and inward, and one should turn away from gazing at women.
  • The Instructor 3.11.83Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · One can sin by looking as well as touching, so Christians must guard their eyes and avoid even suspicion, as Paul and Sirach teach.
  • The Instructor 3.12.84Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Husbands should show restraint toward their wives before the servants; the greatest bond of marriage is self-control, sweeter than gold or power.
  • The Instructor 3.12.85Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Good precepts are to be welcomed even from pagan wisdom; Christians, redeemed by Christ's blood, should leave pagan vices behind, fenced in by the cross, and live in good order.
  • The Instructor 3.12.86Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Instructor speaks sternly for our salvation, desiring repentance rather than death; earthly goods are named after the true goods that God has prepared for us.
  • The Instructor 3.12.87Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Instructor now gives a summary of Scripture's commandments, leaving interpretation to the Teacher; he leads the child on the way of salvation to the treasures of wisdom revealed through law, prophets, Christ, and the Spirit.
  • The Instructor 3.12.88Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The whole law is summed up in the Golden Rule and the two great commandments, but the Instructor will set out the commandments in detail.
  • The Instructor 3.12.89Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Decalogue, signified by the letter iota (ten), and Isaiah's call to wash and do justice sum up the commandments; good works themselves are prayer acceptable to God.
  • The Instructor 3.12.90Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · God hears the one who acts justly; the fast God chooses is freeing the oppressed and feeding the hungry, and the sacrifice he wants is a broken spirit and a heart that glorifies him.
  • The Instructor 3.12.91Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Scripture teaches forgiveness, honesty for soldiers and tax collectors, impartial judgment, love that covers sins, and giving Caesar his due and God his.
  • The Instructor 3.12.92Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Scripture condemns liars and the conceited, blesses the humble and merciful, and commands love of enemies and faith in prayer; servants must be treated as equals before God.
  • The Instructor 3.12.93Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Servants should be corrected, not punished; the Lord condemns love of glory, welcomes the repentant sinner, and counts every kindness to the needy as done to himself.
  • The Instructor 3.12.94Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The law of Moses was written on stone, the law of the apostles on hearts; the Instructor now gives the apostolic commands, beginning with Ephesians on truth, anger, and kindness.
  • The Instructor 3.12.95Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The apostolic household code: wives, husbands, children, fathers, slaves, and masters; then Paul's exhortations to walk by the Spirit, bear burdens, be at peace, pray, and speak graciously.
  • The Instructor 3.12.96Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · More apostolic counsels: train for godliness, serve believing masters faithfully, give generously, love sincerely, pray constantly, and practice hospitality.
  • The Instructor 3.12.98Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Instructor hands us over to the Teacher; the church is the school and Christ the Bridegroom its only Teacher, the propitiation for the world's sins, whom we know by keeping his commandments.
  • Exhortation to the Greeks 2.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Homer's majestic Zeus was an adulterer, Heracles a seducer, and the goddesses too were adulteresses; such gods make immorality a model.
  • Exhortation to the Greeks 4.49Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Hadrian made a god of his beloved Antinous; true beauty is kept pure, not violated.
  • Exhortation to the Greeks 4.59Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Christians refuse even to hear songs of the gods' adultery, for they carry God's image in themselves and are God's chosen people.
  • Exhortation to the Greeks 4.60Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Many decorate their bedrooms and signet rings with pictures of the gods' sexual escapades.
  • Exhortation to the Greeks 4.61Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Lewd images are the theology of the pagans; Christians renounce even seeing and hearing such things, for the eyes and ears can commit adultery.
  • Exhortation to the Greeks 10.93Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Let us repent and desert to God; the inheritance of those who serve the Lord is a treasure no moth or thief can touch.
  • Exhortation to the Greeks 10.97Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Alexander, deified in life, died at Babylon; God is perfectly just, and nothing is more like him than a just person.
  • Exhortation to the Greeks 10.108Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Even the old should turn to God and become like children; the citizen of heaven follows God's laws, written in the commandments and on the heart.
  • Exhortation to the Greeks 10.109Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Truth is harsh medicine but heals; it is near us, in hands, mouth, and heart, and we will outgrow custom as children outgrow toys.
  • Exhortation to the Greeks 11.117Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Word, who regenerates human beings and makes them God's temple, calls them to purify that temple and offer themselves to God.
  • Against Heresies 1.6.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Valentinians say that church members need good works to be saved, but that they themselves, being spiritual by nature, are saved whatever they do.
  • Against Heresies 1.6.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Irenaeus charges the Valentinian “perfect” with eating idol food, attending games, and seducing or taking other men's wives.
  • Against Heresies 1.6.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Valentinians call church members simple and claim grace as their own possession, saying that the spiritual must practise the mystery of conjunction and need no works.
  • Against Heresies 1.24.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Basilides held that only the soul is saved, treated idol-meat and lust as indifferent, and gave names to the 365 heavens.
  • Against Heresies 1.25.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Carpocratians hold that souls must pass through every kind of action, however vile, before being freed, misreading Jesus' parable of the adversary.
  • Against Heresies 1.25.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Irenaeus doubts the Carpocratians practise what their writings teach: a secret tradition that all but faith and love is morally indifferent.
  • Against Heresies 1.31.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Cainites teach that salvation requires passing through every shameful deed, done in the name of the angel who prompts it.
  • Against Heresies 2.32.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Lord's commands, which forbid even evil thoughts, refute the heretics' claim that they must experience every kind of deed.
  • Against Heresies 2.32.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · If they had to experience every work, they should learn every art; instead they pursue only pleasure and stand self-condemned.
  • Against Heresies 3.12.14Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Jerusalem council's letter to the Gentile believers shows that the apostles knew no other God, only the new covenant of freedom.
  • Against Heresies 3.23.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Cain, unlike Adam, ignored God’s warning, killed his brother, and answered God insolently, and so was himself cursed.
  • Against Heresies 4.2.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The parable of the rich man and Lazarus first teaches that no one should live in luxury and forget God.
  • Against Heresies 4.4.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The one Lord who makes both wheat and chaff will separate them; man, being free, is himself the cause of becoming wheat or chaff.
  • Against Heresies 4.12.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ took the great commandment of love from the law rather than bringing a new one, which shows he came from the God of the law.
  • Against Heresies 4.12.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The same great commandments of love in law and gospel show one author of both covenants.
  • Against Heresies 4.12.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ set the commandments of the law before the rich young man as steps into life and called him to give to the poor and follow him, as Zacchaeus did.
  • Against Heresies 4.13.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ’s sayings in the Sermon on the Mount extend and fulfil the natural precepts of the law rather than abolishing them, against Marcion.
  • Against Heresies 4.13.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The law trained slaves through external things; the Word freed the soul, removing the chains but increasing the free person’s devotion.
  • Against Heresies 4.13.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ deepened the law’s commands (no lust, no anger, giving all, loving enemies) so that freedom brings greater love and glory, not separation from God.
  • Against Heresies 4.16.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The righteous fathers had the Decalogue written in their hearts; when it was forgotten in Egypt, God gave it by voice and fed Israel with manna to train them again.
  • Against Heresies 4.16.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Decalogue made man glorious by giving him God’s friendship; spoken by the Lord himself, it remains, extended but not abolished by Christ’s coming.
  • Against Heresies 4.16.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ cancelled the laws of servitude but widened the natural precepts, so that the free must answer even for words and thoughts.
  • Against Heresies 4.17.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Jeremiah, Isaiah, Zechariah, and David show that God wanted obedience, mercy, and justice rather than sacrifices.
  • Against Heresies 4.18.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God accepted Abel’s offering and not Cain’s because sacrifice does not sanctify; a pure conscience sanctifies the sacrifice.
  • Against Heresies 4.24.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Paul laboured more than the other apostles because the Gentiles, unlike the Jews, had first to be taught to leave idols and to learn the moral law.
  • Against Heresies 4.27.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · An elder taught that the Scriptures’ own rebukes suffice for the sins of the ancients, such as David’s with Bathsheba and Solomon’s idolatry in old age.
  • Against Heresies 4.27.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The sins of Israel in the desert were written as warnings to Christians, who sin against the same God.
  • Against Heresies 4.27.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The same God who punished Israel’s sinners judges Christians: the sexually immoral, idolaters, and the unjust will not inherit the kingdom, and he will avenge his elect.
  • Against Heresies 4.28.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · In the new covenant both faith and the demands of conduct are greater, and the punishment of unbelief is eternal, not temporal.
  • Against Heresies 4.30.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Israel’s taking of the Egyptians’ goods was just and a type; Christians too live on goods acquired from pagans, who owe them far less than Egypt owed Israel.
  • Against Heresies 4.30.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christians enjoy the peace and goods of the Roman world; using what came from pagans for almsgiving builds God’s tabernacle in us.
  • Against Heresies 4.36.6Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The wedding garment is the righteousness on which the Spirit rests; the same God calls the unworthy in kindness and judges those who despise his gift, and all men, even rulers, are his.
  • Against Heresies 4.37.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God made men and angels free to choose; those who keep the good he gave are rewarded, and those who despise it are justly judged.
  • Against Heresies 4.37.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Since all share the same nature and can choose good or evil, praise and blame are just, and God gave counsel through the prophets.
  • Against Heresies 4.37.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Lord’s many exhortations to watchfulness and obedience show that man is free, and that God counsels but does not compel.
  • Against Heresies 4.37.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Paul’s “all things are lawful, but not all are expedient” and the apostolic exhortations presuppose free will, given to man in the likeness of a free God.
  • Against Heresies 4.37.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Faith too is a free act, as the Lord’s words about believing and his lament over Jerusalem show.
  • Against Heresies 4.37.6Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · A goodness imposed by nature without choice would be neither prized nor enjoyed, and would win no crown.
  • Against Heresies 4.37.7Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The kingdom is won through struggle, and God permitted man’s apostasy so that man, schooled by contrast and contest, might grow to maturity and see God.
  • Against Heresies 4.39.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Man learned good and evil by experience, so that, knowing the bitterness of disobedience, he might choose obedience to God with firm judgment.
  • Against Heresies 4.39.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Those who refuse God’s work are the cause of their own imperfection, as the blind are of their darkness, since God compels no one.
  • Against Heresies 4.41.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · As disobedient sons are disinherited, so those who disobey God cease to be his sons and are called by the names of beasts, of Sodom, and of the devil, though they could repent.
  • Against Heresies 5.6.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The body is the temple of God and the members of Christ, so to deny its salvation is blasphemy; God will raise it by his power.
  • Against Heresies 5.8.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The spiritual are those whose body and soul receive the Spirit and live by him; the fleshly are those who serve their desires.
  • Against Heresies 5.8.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The prophets compare those who live irrationally to horses and beasts.
  • Against Heresies 5.10.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · As grafting changes the fruit but not the wood, the Spirit changes man’s works but not his flesh; Paul rejects the lusts of the flesh, not its substance.
  • Against Heresies 5.11.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Paul names the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, showing that “flesh and blood” means those who live by the flesh, while the name of Christ and the Spirit save.
  • Against Heresies 5.11.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Bearing the earthly image means doing the works of the flesh; bearing the heavenly means being washed in Christ’s name and receiving his Spirit, which changes conduct, not the body.
  • Against Heresies 5.12.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The same flesh that died is what Christ came to give life to; Paul bids us put to death not our bodies but the lusts of the flesh.
  • Against Heresies 5.22.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ’s answers in the temptation teach humility and trust in God’s gifts; the devil’s promise of the kingdoms was a lie, since all is ruled by God.
  • Against Heresies 5.24.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The kingdoms of the world are appointed by God, not the devil, as Proverbs and Paul teach of earthly rulers and as Christ showed by paying the tax.
  • Against Heresies 5.24.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God established human government and the fear of the sword to restrain violence among fallen men; rulers who act justly are blameless, but unjust ones will perish.
  • Against Heresies 5.24.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Since authorities are ordained by God, who gives good or bad rulers as the people deserve, the devil can only deceive men into forgetting the true God.
  • 4Anonymous · ca. 180–185 · Apollonius distinguishes true repentance from apostasy.
  • 6Anonymous · ca. 180–185 · Christians do not swear, but honor and pray for the emperor.
  • 26Anonymous · ca. 180–185 · Christians die daily to pleasure and guard eyes and ears.
  • 37Anonymous · ca. 180–185 · A summary of Christ's moral teaching and Christian hope.
  • Fragment 2 (from the letter to Victor)Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 190 · Irenaeus says that one who can do good to his neighbors and does not will be counted a stranger to the Lord's love.
  • Prophetic Extracts 9.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · God mixes fear with his goodness for our benefit, like a physician or a father.
  • Prophetic Extracts 9.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Scripture approves the rod; the Lord and apostles lived in fear and toil.
  • Prophetic Extracts 9.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · A believer's illness may be God's correction for past sin, protection from future sin, or a permitted attack for his good or as an example to others.
  • Prophetic Extracts 11.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The elders were distressed when they did not suffer bodily, fearing that unpunished sins would be punished all at once hereafter.
  • Prophetic Extracts 11.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Fear not bodily illness but sin, the sickness of the soul, since the body is grass and outward goods pass away.
  • Prophetic Extracts 12.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Seek God's kingdom and all else will be added.
  • Prophetic Extracts 12.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Christ limits both our busyness and our anxiety: worry adds nothing to our life.
  • Prophetic Extracts 12.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · God knows what we need; he wants us emptied of worldly cares and filled with care for him.
  • Prophetic Extracts 12.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · As faith enters, unbelief leaves; so the soul must not only be emptied,
  • Prophetic Extracts 12.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · but filled with God; an emptied soul is neither good nor evil, which is nothing.
  • Prophetic Extracts 12.8Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · An emptied soul left empty invites the unclean spirit back,
  • Prophetic Extracts 12.9Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · with seven others; so the soul emptied of evil must be filled with God, and then the seal of baptism guards it for God.
  • Prophetic Extracts 15.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · saying such cases need prayer. The believer is forgiven by the Lord; the one who has attained knowledge no longer sins and so forgives himself the rest.
  • Prophetic Extracts 18.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · God's power creates, gives growth, saves each believer suitably, and governs seasons and elements.
  • Prophetic Extracts 19.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Freed from the spirit of slavery and adopted through love, he keeps the commandments out of love and cries “Abba, Father.”
  • Prophetic Extracts 20.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Love rules the willing, fear the unwilling; but the fear that instructs leads to Christ and saves.
  • Prophetic Extracts 22.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The soul moves itself, so God's grace asks for its willingness as its contribution to salvation.
  • Prophetic Extracts 22.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · To have is to receive; to receive, one must desire; to keep it, one must practice.
  • Prophetic Extracts 22.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · God gave the soul free choice: he shows the good, and the soul chooses and keeps it.
  • Prophetic Extracts 24.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Caesar stands for the temporary ruler of this world, whose image is the old, earthy man.
  • Prophetic Extracts 24.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · We render to Caesar the earthy image we bore, and to God what is God's; each passion is like a stamp on us.
  • Prophetic Extracts 24.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Now the Lord stamps us with faith and other virtues, so that we bear the heavenly image.
  • Prophetic Extracts 27.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The mature Christian is not jealous of knowledge; out of love he may even share it with an unworthy but persistent inquirer.
  • Prophetic Extracts 28.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Knowledge is needed for the soul's training and character; as there is no faith without instruction, there is no understanding without knowledge.
  • Prophetic Extracts 30.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The life of the true knower is free of every evil deed, word, and thought, as Crete is free of dangerous beasts.
  • Prophetic Extracts 31.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The mature Christian is blessed not for long life but for a good life worthy of eternal life; he has grieved no one
  • Prophetic Extracts 31.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · except to correct the wounded by the word, sweet and stinging like honey.
  • Prophetic Extracts 31.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · With all passion cut away, he lives by the best part of the soul, freed for adoption as God's son.
  • Prophetic Extracts 33.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Kindled by that light and striving to become like it, we become true Israelites of light.
  • Prophetic Extracts 33.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Christ calls friends and brothers those who seek to become like God.
  • Prophetic Extracts 34.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Holy places receive visions and voices, but the purified person is worthy of all divine teaching and power.
  • Prophetic Extracts 35.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · As pleasure is release from pain, knowledge is the removal of ignorance.
  • Prophetic Extracts 35.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The most ignorant think they know most, as the soundest sleepers think they are awake.
  • Prophetic Extracts 35.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Blessed are those who wake from this sleep to the light and truth.
  • Prophetic Extracts 36.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Whoever would have an obedient disciple must combine faith with desire, training and testing the truth of doctrines for himself;
  • Prophetic Extracts 36.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · only when prepared should he engage others' questions, as fledglings first exercise in the nest.
  • Prophetic Extracts 37.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The virtue of the mature Christian is gentle, blessed, contemplative and practical, making him a divine image through love.
  • Prophetic Extracts 37.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The beautiful, contemplated above by wisdom, is practiced here through self-control and righteousness, as angelic service in the body.
  • Prophetic Extracts 39.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · An elder taught that there are punishments for evil words, and that women who adorn their hair for immorality are punished by the power set over hair, which gave Samson his strength.
  • Prophetic Extracts 41.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Scripture says exposed infants are given to a guardian angel to be raised, and will be like the long-faithful.
  • Prophetic Extracts 45.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Patience is sweet for its fruit; the self-controlled struggle with passion, but when virtue becomes settled one is united with the Holy Spirit beyond mere self-control.
  • Prophetic Extracts 46.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Passions are called “spirits” by their tendency, not their substance.
  • Prophetic Extracts 46.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The soul that takes on various vices is said to take on spirits.
  • Prophetic Extracts 47.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Christ commands not giving up possessions but managing them without attachment; and God's providence extends beyond those living in the flesh.
  • Prophetic Extracts 48.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Apocalypse of Peter says aborted infants are given to a guardian angel, to receive knowledge and a better dwelling.
  • Prophetic Extracts 49.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Apocalypse of Peter says that the congealed milk of mothers who killed their children breeds beasts that devour them, teaching that punishments arise from sins.
  • Prophetic Extracts 50.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · An elder taught that the unborn is a living being: an angel of birth brings the soul into the womb at conception.
  • Prophetic Extracts 50.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · When angels announce births to barren women they introduce the souls in advance; John leaped in the womb as a living being.
  • Prophetic Extracts 50.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Barrenness occurs when no soul is introduced to make the seed conceive.
  • Prophetic Extracts 60.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Those turned by fear to faith and righteousness endure forever.
  • Prophetic Extracts 61.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · “Your servant” means every saved person, God's servant by obedience.
  • Prophetic Extracts 62.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Hidden faults are thoughts contrary to right reason, alien to the righteous.
  • Prophetic Extracts 65.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · “Coming up into the heart” means the good purpose wins out.
  • Excerpts from Theodotus 52.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The flesh is the “adversary” of the Gospel, Paul's warring law, and the strong man to be bound.
  • Excerpts from Theodotus 52.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · We should make peace with this adversary on the way, not feeding it with sin but putting it to death, so that it dissolves rather than enduring in the fire.
  • Excerpts from Theodotus 73.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Man, weak and inclined to evil, sides with his enemies, and so suffers more.
  • Excerpts from Theodotus 85.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · We must put on the Lord's armor, which quenches the devil's darts.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 1.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Those who flatter the rich with praise are servile.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 1.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Flatterers of the rich are impious, because they give to human beings the glory that belongs to God alone.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 1.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Flatterers are treacherous, because they inflame the pride that wealth already produces, when they should cut it away; the exalted will be humbled.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 1.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The truly loving course is to help the rich toward salvation, by prayer to God and by teaching that leads them to the truth and to good works.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 1.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Prayer needs perseverance to the end of life, and conduct needs a steady will to keep all the Savior's commandments.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 2.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · There are several reasons why salvation seems harder for the rich.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 2.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Some rich people, hearing that a camel passes through a needle's eye more easily, despair of salvation and give themselves entirely to this world.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 2.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Others understand the saying rightly but neglect the good works needed for salvation.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 2.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Clement is speaking about rich believers, not about unbelievers; those who love the truth and the brethren have a duty toward them.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 3.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christians should neither despise nor flatter the rich, but first free them from despair by showing that the kingdom is open to them if they obey the commandments.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 3.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Once freed from groundless fear, the rich should be taught what works and dispositions lead to the hoped-for salvation.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 3.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The rich should think of their situation as athletes think of theirs.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 3.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · An athlete who despairs never competes, and one who hopes but does not train never wins.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 3.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The rich believer should neither exclude himself from salvation nor expect it without effort.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 3.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The rich believer should train under Christ, with the new covenant as food and the commandments as exercise, so as to win the crown of heaven at the last trumpet.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 7.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The first lesson for life is to know the one, eternal, good God.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 7.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Knowing God, who truly is and gives being to all, is the unshakable foundation of life.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 7.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Not knowing God is death; knowing, loving, and becoming like him is the only life.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 8.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The rich young man had kept the law from youth, which is admirable, since it is easy for the old to be blameless but hard for the young.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 9.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Jesus loves the man for keeping the law but says he is still imperfect with respect to eternal life.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 10.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · “If you wish” shows that the man was not yet perfect and that he was free to choose; the choice is man's, the gift is God's.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 10.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · God does not force salvation but gives it to those who desire and ask for it.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 10.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The man who had kept the whole law could not add the one thing Christ offered, and went away vexed.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 10.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · He did not truly want life, but only the appearance of good will.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 10.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Like Martha, busy with many things, the man could not attend to the one necessary thing, which Mary chose.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 10.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ told the rich man to leave his many concerns and hold to the grace that gives eternal life.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 11.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Why did the man abandon Christ and his own hope?
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 11.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · “Sell your possessions” does not mean throwing money away, but banishing from the soul its attachment and anxious desire for wealth.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 11.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Mere poverty is not a virtue; otherwise all beggars, even those ignorant of God, would be the most blessed.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 11.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Renouncing wealth is not new: pagan philosophers did it for leisure or fame.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 12.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · What Christ commands that is new is not giving up property, which others did, but stripping the soul of its passions and uprooting what is alien to it.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 12.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The philosophers who gave up wealth often grew proud and vain, so their souls were worse, not better.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 12.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ would not command what harms the life he promises.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 12.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Someone can give up wealth and still crave it, suffering both its loss and regret.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 12.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · One who lacks necessities is inevitably distracted from higher things by the struggle to obtain them.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 13.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · It is better to have enough and to help others; if no one had anything, no one could share.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 13.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Complete renunciation would contradict the Lord's other commands.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 13.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The Lord commands us to make friends with wealth and store up treasure in heaven.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 13.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · No one could feed the hungry or clothe the naked, as Christ commands on pain of judgment, if he had nothing himself.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 13.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ stayed with rich tax collectors like Zacchaeus and Levi without telling them to give up their money, but only to use it justly.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 13.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ declares salvation to Zacchaeus's house and commands the rich to share with the needy.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 13.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · If Christ commanded both giving to the needy and giving up all money, he would contradict himself; wealth that benefits others should not be discarded.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 14.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Possessions and money are prepared by God as material and tools for good use.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 14.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · An instrument is only as good as the skill of the one who uses it.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 14.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Wealth is an instrument.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 14.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Wealth serves either justice or injustice; the blame lies not with it but with the human mind that chooses how to use it.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 14.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The mind has free will; one should destroy not one's possessions but the passions that prevent their good use.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 14.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The command to sell all one's possessions refers to the passions of the soul.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 15.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Since outward things are good or bad according to the soul's use, Christ's command must refer to the inner passions, not to outward goods.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 15.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · One who gives up wealth can still be rich in passions, which continue to choke the reason.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 15.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Such a person discards what is indifferent and keeps the real source of vice, which poverty inflames.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 15.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Only harmful possessions must be renounced, not those that can be used well.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 15.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Wealth managed wisely and piously benefits; external things themselves do no harm.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 15.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ allows external goods and commands us to put away what misuses them.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 16.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The passions are the deadly wealth; the soul stripped of them can hear Christ's call to follow him.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 16.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ is the way for the pure in heart; God's grace does not enter a soul full of worldly desires.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 16.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The rich man who holds his wealth as God's gift for the sake of others, is not its slave, and could lose it calmly, is the “poor in spirit” whom Christ blesses.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 17.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The one who carries wealth in his heart instead of God's Spirit, always wanting more, cannot desire the kingdom; where one's mind is, there is one's treasure.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 17.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ speaks of a good and an evil treasure in the heart.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 17.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · As there are different kinds of treasure among us,
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 17.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · So there is a good and a bad wealth, one to be gained and one to be discarded; and poverty is blessed when it is spiritual.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 17.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Matthew specifies “poor in spirit” and hunger for righteousness; those poor in the other sense, without God, are wretched.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 18.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Salvation depends not on external wealth but on the soul's virtues: faith, hope, love, knowledge, gentleness, humility, and truth.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 18.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Bodily beauty does not save or condemn; using the body purely saves, and destroying God's temple destroys.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 18.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Neither beauty nor strength decides one's fate; the soul that uses the body is responsible.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 18.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · A strong man can obey the command to turn the other cheek, and a weak man can break it.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 18.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The poor can be drunk with desires, and the rich can be sober and pure.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 18.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Since the soul lives by virtue and dies by vice, it is saved when poor in the passions wealth brings and killed when rich in them.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 18.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Our final destiny depends on the soul's disposition: obedience and purity, or transgression and vice.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 19.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · True wealth is wealth of virtues; counterfeit wealth is outward possession, which passes away.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 19.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · There is a genuine poverty, of spirit, and a counterfeit one, of worldly goods.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 19.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ, rich toward God, tells the one rich in passions to give up the alien possessions of the soul, so as to become pure in heart and see God.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 19.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · “Selling” them does not mean exchanging one kind of wealth for another.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 19.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · In place of the passions one must bring in the divine wealth of dispositions that follow God's commandments.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 19.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · By exchanging the passions for spiritual wealth, one gains treasure in heaven.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 20.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The rich young man, not understanding that one can have wealth and not be possessed by it, went away, making the difficult impossible for himself.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 20.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · It is difficult but not impossible for the rich to be saved, if they turn to spiritual wealth and learn to use indifferent things well.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 20.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The disciples were frightened too, though they had already left their few nets and boats.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 20.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The disciples understood that the Lord spoke in a parable with deep meaning.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 20.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The disciples, though poor, knew their passions were not yet mastered, so they despaired like the rich man.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 20.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Salvation belongs to souls free from passion and pure, which is why the disciples feared.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 21.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · What is impossible for man is possible with God: by one's own effort alone freedom from passion is unattainable,
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 21.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · but God gives strength to the willing, withdrawing his Spirit from those who grow slack; God saves by grace those who choose, not by force.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 21.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The kingdom belongs not to the lazy but to those who seize it; God gladly yields to those who hold on to him steadfastly.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 21.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Peter, first of the disciples, for whom Christ paid the tax, quickly grasped the saying.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 21.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Peter says they have left everything; if he meant his few possessions, that would be little to boast of.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 21.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · But if they have given up the passions of the soul and follow Christ, they are among those enrolled in heaven.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 21.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · To follow Christ is to strive for his sinlessness and perfection, shaping one's soul by him as by a mirror.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 22.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Jesus promises a hundredfold to those who leave everything for his sake.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 22.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Nor should we be troubled by the harder saying about hating one's family.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 22.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The God of peace, who commands love of enemies, does not command hatred of family.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 22.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · If enemies must be loved, family must be loved all the more; otherwise the two sayings would contradict each other.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 22.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · They do not conflict: the same disposition loves the enemy without revenge and puts Christ above one's father.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 22.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · One saying removes hatred; the other removes excessive deference to family,
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 22.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · if it hinders salvation: a godless relative who blocks one's faith must not be followed.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 23.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Picture a trial: a godless father demands obedience against the law of Christ.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 23.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Having heard both sides, choose salvation: whatever any relative says, let Christ, who fights for you, prevail.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 24.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · If one can master one's wealth, Christ does not take it away; but if it masters you, cast it off.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 24.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Whatever causes one to stumble, even an eye or life itself, must be given up for Christ's sake, to be saved in the life to come.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 25.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ does not call only the poor and homeless; he called rich men and pairs of brothers who were of one mind with him.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 25.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The hardest persecution comes from within, from a soul tormented by godless desires and passions until it despairs of life and despises God.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 25.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Inner persecution is worse, since it is always present and cannot be escaped.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 25.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · One carries this enemy everywhere; outward fire tests, but inward fire kills.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 25.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · If possessions or family bring this inner war, leave them, find peace, and choose Christ, the advocate of the soul, above all.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 26.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ does not exclude the rich because of their wealth, if they obey God's commands and look to him like sailors to a good helmsman.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 26.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · There is no wrong in having earned a living before faith, or in being born by God's providence into a wealthy family.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 26.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · If birth into wealth excluded one from life, God would be unjust.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 26.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · If wealth caused death, why would God have made it grow from the earth?
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 26.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The rich man who is modest, self-controlled, and seeks God alone
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 26.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · is truly poor and free before God; otherwise the camel will pass through the needle sooner than he enters the kingdom.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 27.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The plain meaning of the parable teaches the rich neither to despair nor to throw their wealth away, but to learn how to use it and gain life.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 27.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Let us consider what hope Christ offers the rich and how it can be realized.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 27.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ names love of God with all one's soul and strength as the greatest commandment,
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 27.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · and rightly, since it concerns God the Father, through whom all things exist and to whom the saved return.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 27.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Loved by God first, we can repay him only with love, which gives incorruption; the more we love God, the more deeply we enter into him.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 28.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · is love of neighbor as oneself; so God is to be loved above oneself.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 28.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Asked who one's neighbor is,
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 28.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan, not by defining the neighbor as a fellow Jew.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 28.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The neighbor is the one who shows mercy; Christ says, “Go and do likewise,” for love produces good works.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 29.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Both commandments are about love: first to God, second to neighbor.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 29.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ must be loved equally with God, and he is loved by those who do his will and keep his commandments.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 29.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ requires not words but doing his will.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 30.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · After loving Christ comes caring for his disciples, since Christ counts what is done to them as done to him.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 30.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ blesses those who fed, gave drink to, and welcomed him in the needy.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 30.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The righteous ask when they did these things for him.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 30.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The King answers that what they did to the least of his brothers,
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 30.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · they did to him; and those who neglected them are condemned as having neglected him.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 30.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Whoever receives Christ's disciples receives him.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 31.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ calls his disciples children and little ones and forbids despising them, since their angels see the Father's face.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 31.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The least disciple in the kingdom is greater than John the Baptist.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 31.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Whoever gives even a cup of water to a disciple will not lose his reward.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 31.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ says to make friends by means of unrighteous mammon,
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 31.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Wealth kept only for oneself is unrighteous, but it can be used righteously by relieving those destined for the Father's eternal dwellings.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 31.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ commands us not to wait to be asked, but to seek out the worthy,
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 31.8Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Paul says God loves a cheerful giver, who gives generously without grumbling.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 31.9Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Better still is the Lord's “Give to everyone who asks”; and beyond even this, to seek out the worthy without waiting to be asked,
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 32.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Giving buys an eternal dwelling: a divine exchange of perishable things for incorruption.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 32.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The rich should spare no effort to buy the heavenly kingdom.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 32.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Why delight in jewels and houses, which fire, time, earthquakes, and tyrants destroy?
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 32.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The poor believer, imitating God, gives the heavenly kingdom in return for small gifts.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 32.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Beg the poor to accept your gift, for the command is on the giver.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 32.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ says “make friends,” and friendship, like faith and endurance, needs long care, not one gift.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 33.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The Lord gives the kingdom for the sake of his friends, and to the friends of his friends.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 33.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Do not judge who is worthy; it is better to help the unworthy too than to miss the worthy.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 33.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · By testing too closely one may neglect God's friends and incur punishment; by giving to all one surely finds some who can intercede with God.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 33.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Do not judge; the measure you give will be given back to you,
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 33.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · running over; be open-hearted to all God's disciples, without contempt for their bodies,
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 33.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Do not reject the poor, ugly, or weak: their body is only an outward form, and within them dwell the Father and the Son who died and rose for us.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 34.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The redeemed rich man should enlist a different army: pious old men, orphans, and gentle widows.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 34.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The poor believers helped by the rich become their bodyguards, whose prayers, laying on of hands, and exorcisms protect them.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 35.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Each of these poor believers serves: some pray for you, some comfort, teach, or admonish, and all love you sincerely.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 35.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Their loving service is sincere and truthful, for they believe they serve God and the King of the ages dwelling in the rich believer.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 36.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · All believers are noble, but some are more elect: hidden saints who shun recognition, whom Christ calls the light of the world and salt of the earth.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 36.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · These saints are God's seed, image, and heirs, sent into the world as sojourners.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 37.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Christ gave his life for each of us and asks us to do the same for each other; how then can we hoard perishable goods from our brothers?
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 37.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · John says that whoever does not love his brother is a murderer, a child of Cain, cut off from the vine and awaiting the fire.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 38.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Learn Paul's more excellent way: love, which does not seek its own but spends itself on the brother.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 38.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Scripture's praise of love: it covers sins, casts out fear, endures all things, never fails, and is the greatest of faith, hope, and love.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 38.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Faith and hope end when God is seen and promises are fulfilled, but love grows to fullness.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 38.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Whoever grows in love and repents sincerely can repair past sins.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 38.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · No one should despair after learning who the rich man is
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 39.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · who has no place in heaven; and one who has sinned after baptism, through ignorance or weakness, should not think God has condemned him forever.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 39.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The Father gladly receives every truly repentant son; true repentance means uprooting the sins one has condemned in oneself.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 39.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · There is great joy in heaven over one repentant sinner.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 39.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · God desires mercy and the sinner's repentance, and will wash scarlet sins white as snow.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 39.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Only God forgives sins, and the Lord commands us to forgive our repentant brothers daily.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 39.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · God, the Father of mercies, patiently awaits those who turn back, which means ceasing from sin and not looking back.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 40.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · God forgives past sins; future ones each person must avoid; repentance is condemning past deeds and asking the Father, who alone can undo them, for forgiveness.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 40.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The end is decisive: a good life that ends in vice is wasted, while a bad life can be redeemed by later repentance.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 40.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Recovery from sin, like recovery from long illness, needs great care.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 40.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Repentance means abandoning each sin, restoring what was stolen, and curbing the passions, so as to be reconciled before one's death.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 40.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Deep-rooted passions cannot be cut off at once, but with God's power, prayer, brotherly help, repentance, and practice they are overcome.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 41.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The rich man should take a man of God as a spiritual guide, respecting and heeding one who speaks frankly to heal him.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 41.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · As eyes sometimes need stinging treatment, so the soul needs correction.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 41.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Continual pleasure blinds the soul that will not be moved by frank rebuke.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 41.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Heed the spiritual guide's anger, grief, and pleas.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 41.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · His intercession is pure if he is honored as God's messenger and grieves only for the rich man's sake; this is sincere repentance.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 42.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · To show that true repentance brings hope, Clement tells a true story about the apostle John.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 42.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Left to himself too soon, the young man was corrupted by idle companions, first by feasts, then by robbery.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 42.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Like an unbridled horse he plunged into ever greater crimes.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 42.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Despairing of salvation, he formed a band of robbers and became its most violent chief; later John was called back.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 42.10Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · John mourned, reproached himself for his choice of guardian, and rode off at once to find the young man.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 42.11Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The robbers' outpost captured John, who did not resist,
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 42.12Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · and demanded to be taken to their leader, who fled in shame when he recognized John.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 42.13Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The aged John ran after him, pleading as a father, offering to die for him and assuring him of hope in Christ.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 42.14Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · The young man stopped, threw down his weapons, wept, and embraced John, baptized a second time by his tears, hiding his blood-stained right hand.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 42.15Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · John assured him of Christ's forgiveness, kissed his right hand, and restored him to the church through prayer, fasting, and teaching: an example of true repentance.
  • Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 42.18Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · Whoever repents now will not regret it at death or fear the judgment; whoever refuses forgiveness has only himself to blame.
  • Miscellanies 1.1.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The teacher must examine his motives, seeking only his hearers' salvation, as Paul did; hearers too must not come from curiosity or for material gain.
  • Miscellanies 1.1.9Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · A speaker can judge his hearers like the soils of the parable; a writer dedicates his work to God, seeking only the readers' salvation and no reward, giving freely as he has received.
  • Miscellanies 1.6.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Mathematical studies train the mind, purify the soul from the senses, and prepare it to see truth; good education improves good natures, as Proverbs' ant and bee show.
  • Miscellanies 1.6.34Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Prayer and the care of the soul need knowledge: goodness comes by learning, not by nature alone; the gifted can fall through neglect, the less gifted rise by education; God made us sociable and just.
  • Miscellanies 1.6.35Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · One can believe without letters, but understanding the faith requires learning; education makes virtue easier to attain and guards against deception by the sophists.
  • Miscellanies 1.6.36Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Anaxarchus says much learning helps the wise and harms the babbler; wisdom knows the right moment; Hesiod's epithets describe the true sage.
  • Miscellanies 1.8.42Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato followed reason alone and blamed those who trust opinion without knowledge; people lose the truth unwillingly through deception, force, or enchantment, but none of these can drive out real knowledge.
  • Miscellanies 1.10.46Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ spoke and gave thanks before breaking bread, so that we might eat “rationally”; good speech and good deeds belong together, and each person should serve by his own gift.
  • Miscellanies 1.11.54Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Instruction needs loving reproof; the upright seek knowledge of God; God's kingdom is in power, not persuasive words; knowledge that puffs up is not truth, but love builds up.
  • Miscellanies 1.17.82Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Against critics who say God is the cause of evil because he did not prevent it, Clement argues that a cause acts, while the one who does not prevent does nothing; otherwise the shield, not the arrow, would be blamed for a wound.
  • Miscellanies 1.17.83Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The devil, free to repent or to steal, is the cause of the theft, not God; praise, blame, reward, and punishment are just only because the soul is free.
  • Miscellanies 1.17.84Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Sin begins in choice and mistaken belief, and it is in our power to avoid it; “all who came before me are thieves” refers to the false prophets the devil mixed among the true, like tares among wheat.
  • Miscellanies 1.17.85Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The false prophets stole the name of prophet; they served the devil, the father of lies, yet spoke some truths, as Hermas says; God orders all things for good.
  • Miscellanies 1.17.86Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God's providence steers even the apostates' evil to a good end; divine wisdom is shown above all in bringing good out of evil, as in martyrdom that arises from persecution.
  • Miscellanies 1.18.89Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Better to read Paul as denying that God made worldly wisdom foolish: unbelief is chosen, not caused by God; the wise are outshone by the gospel as a lamp by the sun; all are called, and those who obey are the called.
  • Miscellanies 1.18.90Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Isaiah shows that choice rests with us; God's wisdom is the teaching handed on through the Son; Paul exhorts those who think themselves wise to put on the new man, seek truth, and share it.
  • Miscellanies 1.23.157Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Egyptians ignored God's warnings; the Hebrews' taking of Egyptian goods at the Exodus was not greed but a just wage for years of unpaid slavery.
  • Miscellanies 1.27.171Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law's punishments are like a physician's surgery: they heal the soul and, when someone is incurable, protect the rest of the body politic.
  • Miscellanies 1.27.172Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God's judgments discipline us so that we are not condemned; he trained Israel in the desert as a father disciplines his son.
  • Miscellanies 1.27.173Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Punishment deters others and even benefits the incurable; God's providence is both sovereign and good; one may rise from servant to faithful attendant to son and friend of God.
  • Miscellanies 2.2.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Proverbs teaches that deeds must follow words and that we should take what is useful from all learning; the fear of God is turning from evil, and God disciplines those he loves.
  • Miscellanies 2.4.12Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christians, free to choose, rest on faith in God's word as an unshakable criterion; Hebrews 11 shows that faith justified the righteous even before the law.
  • Miscellanies 2.5.22Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ, whose Father is God, is the truly noble; Plato too calls the wise man rich, free, beautiful, and king, agreeing with Scripture that riches lie in the soul and freedom comes from the truth.
  • Miscellanies 2.5.23Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato holds that faithfulness is the greatest virtue, containing the others, and that peace is best; so faith is the mother of the virtues.
  • Miscellanies 2.6.26Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Teaching needs a receptive learner, as fire needs dry wood and a magnet iron; God calls all, knowing who will refuse, since obedience rests with us; actions are judged by choice, and repentance is knowledge that comes late.
  • Miscellanies 2.6.27Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Repentance and hope arise from faith; the faithful servant keeps what God has entrusted; God is faithful and worthy of belief; faith is not mere supposition but assent to what is strong.
  • Miscellanies 2.6.30Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Faith is not cheap: if it were merely human it would have died out, but it grows everywhere; whether born of love or fear, it is divine; fear, the law's schoolmaster, itself depends on faith.
  • Miscellanies 2.6.31Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Faith is the first step to salvation, followed by fear, hope, repentance, self-control, and endurance, leading to love and knowledge; as Barnabas says, faith is the foundation of knowledge, as breath is of life.
  • Miscellanies 2.7.32Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · To attack fear is to attack the law and the God who gave it; without law, desire rules; the fear the commandments inspire is not irrational but rational, whatever the philosophers call it.
  • Miscellanies 2.7.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Renamed “caution,” fear is rational, avoiding harm and leading to repentance; the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, so those who reject the law are without wisdom.
  • Miscellanies 2.7.34Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law threatens not outward misfortunes but real evils, such as adultery and the soul's death; it does not create sin but reveals it, as a good teacher shows what saves and what harms.
  • Miscellanies 2.7.35Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law revealed sin but did not create it; it is a good schoolmaster to Christ, leading through fear to repentance; the one near the Lord endures hardship for the truth; Barnabas too joins fear with keeping the commandments.
  • Miscellanies 2.8.39Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Against the Marcionites, who call the law just but not good, Clement argues that the fear of the Lord destroys evil and so is good, bringing fearlessness and moderation; to fear sinning and keep the commandments honors God.
  • Miscellanies 2.8.40Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Not all fear is a passion: superstition fears passionate demons, but fear of the passionless God is itself free from passion, since what one fears is falling away from God.
  • Miscellanies 2.9.41Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Fear leads to repentance and hope, and hope to love; love is fellowship of life; hospitality, philanthropy, and affection accompany it; strangers to the world are our guests, friends, and brothers.
  • Miscellanies 2.9.42Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Brotherly love binds those who share the Spirit, as Paul teaches in Romans 12; the Jews had zeal without knowledge, following the letter of the law and not the Christ it prophesied, the end of the law.
  • Miscellanies 2.9.45Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The virtues follow one another from faith to love and knowledge; only God is wise by nature; philosophy begins in wonder, as Plato, the Traditions of Matthias, and the Gospel of the Hebrews say; godliness is following God.
  • Miscellanies 2.10.46Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Christian philosopher holds to three things, contemplation, keeping the commandments, and forming good people; Leviticus 18 commands Israel to keep God's ordinances and live by them.
  • Miscellanies 2.10.47Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Egypt and Canaan symbolize the world and the passions; “he will live in them” means life for Jews and Gentiles alike; the repeated “I am the Lord your God” calls us to seek and know God, a knowledge never separated from just action.
  • Miscellanies 2.11.50Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The manna jar holding a tenth of three measures points to sense, speech, and mind; the one who knows avoids sins of all three, as the Lord teaches; the human being is a decad.
  • Miscellanies 2.11.51Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Rising above the nine parts of the cosmos, the soul reaches the tenth, the knowledge of God, as the tithe and Passover signify; the one who knows stands firm in faith, while the self-wise drift like Cain into “tossing.”
  • Miscellanies 2.12.53Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Faith looks to past and future, with memory and hope; fear grows into faith and then love, not the fear of a beast but a son's reverent fear of his father; blessed is the one in whom love and fear are blended.
  • Miscellanies 2.12.55Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · All assent is a kind of faith; the Shepherd of Hermas makes faith the virtue that holds the church together, with the other virtues its daughters; fear God, not the devil; repentance is great understanding.
  • Miscellanies 2.13.56Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Those forgiven must sin no more; the first repentance cleanses the life of ignorance; but the Lord foresaw human weakness and the devil's jealous schemes against the forgiven.
  • Miscellanies 2.13.57Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God in mercy allows one second repentance after baptism for those overcome by temptation; but repeated repentance followed by the same sins is no better than unbelief, since such a person sins knowingly.
  • Miscellanies 2.13.58Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Converts receive forgiveness once in baptism; one who sins afterward and repents may be pardoned but should feel shame, since there is no second washing; the reborn must abandon their old works, not repent of the same sin again and again.
  • Miscellanies 2.13.59Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Repeated requests for pardon for repeated sins are only a show of repentance; Scripture blesses those who fear the Lord; passions are excessive impulses disobedient to reason, and since obedience is in our power, voluntary acts are judged.
  • Miscellanies 2.14.60Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Involuntary acts, done in ignorance or under necessity, are not judged; Clement lists examples of ignorance of self, act, person, instrument, manner, and purpose.
  • Miscellanies 2.14.61Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law distinguished involuntary from voluntary offenses; spiritually understood, the one who cannot restrain the generative word, the idle talker, is to blame; God judges the intention, as Lot's wife shows.
  • Miscellanies 2.15.62Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Voluntary acts spring from appetite, choice, or thought; Clement distinguishes sin, mishap, and wrong; sin comes from ignorance or weakness, but accepting instruction and obeying the commandments are in our power.
  • Miscellanies 2.15.63Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Giving ourselves up to anger and desire wrongs our own soul, as the tragic figures Laius, Medea, and Ajax confess.
  • Miscellanies 2.15.64Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Desire ruins many in tragedy and comedy; a mishap is an unexpected sin, a sin an involuntary wrong, and a wrong is voluntary vice; for believers sin has no dominion, since by Christ's wound we are healed.
  • Miscellanies 2.15.65Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The psalm distinguishes sins wiped out, covered, not counted, and forgiven; this blessing belongs to those chosen through Christ; love covers sins and God, who prefers repentance, wipes them out.
  • Miscellanies 2.15.66Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Sins not arising from choice are not counted; God, who is both just and good, forgives sins, as Jeremiah says; John's first letter distinguishes sins unto death and not unto death.
  • Miscellanies 2.15.68Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Another teacher applied Psalm 1 to evil opinions, the broad way, and fellowship with destructive powers; Peter's Preaching calls the Lord Law and Word; the food laws also teach avoidance of sins in word, deed, and thought.
  • Miscellanies 2.15.69Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Psalm 1 says the ungodly will not stand in judgment; the unbeliever is already judged; through Ezekiel the Lord rebukes the shepherds who neglect the weak, since the Father rejoices over one sinner saved; Abraham obeyed.
  • Miscellanies 2.15.70Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Greek maxims such as “Follow God,” “Pardon is better than punishment,” and “Give a pledge and ruin is at hand” come from Scripture; Enoch after Cain shows that repentance brings pardon, understood as healing; “Know yourself” means seeing God in one's brother.
  • Miscellanies 2.15.71Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Knowing oneself leads to love of God and neighbor, on which the law and the prophets hang, and to Christ's command of mutual love; mercy and faithfulness purge sins, and the fear of the Lord turns from evil.
  • Miscellanies 2.16.73Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God makes our joy his own without being changed, as Christ is fed in the least of his brothers; God shows mercy richly through the law, the prophets, and the Son, and only God, the greater, truly shows mercy to us.
  • Miscellanies 2.16.75Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God's greatest goodness is to care for us though we are not related to him by nature, only as works of his will; he calls to adoption those who seek the truth; our sins, not God, ensnare us.
  • Miscellanies 2.17.76Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Knowledge is a state unshakable by reason, ignorance a yielding impression; Clement defines the related terms: experience, cognizance, intellection, understanding, knowing, and truth.
  • Miscellanies 2.17.77Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · We fail to act from inability, unwillingness, or both; we cannot become like the Lord in substance, since adoption is not nature, but we can become eternal sons who behold the Father; willing comes first; the one who knows lives consistently.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.78Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The virtues recorded by Moses gave the Greeks the beginning of ethics; the law teaches godliness, justice, and prudence by forbidding idols and binding us to the Maker and Father.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.79Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God rejects the sacrifices of the lawless and accepts prayer, justice, and a broken heart; Pythagoras's “do not step over a balance” comes from Proverbs; Clement begins defining courage, self-restraint, and related virtues.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.80Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Keeping the commandments secures life; the virtues imply one another, so the one who truly has one has all; self-control, joined with courage, prudence, and justice, makes us like the Lord as far as mortals can be.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.81Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God is without need or passion; we, subject to passion, need self-control to become like him and need little; the law forbidding men to wear women's clothing teaches manliness in endurance, even to martyrdom.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.82Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law exempts from war the man with a new house, vineyard, or bride, both so soldiers are undistracted and out of humanity, lest another enjoy his labors.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.83Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law's promises show that the hopes of the disciplined are not in vain; the Midianite women, by beauty and pleasure, led Israel from self-restraint into idolatry until fear restrained them.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.84Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · True understanding of the law is not passionate fear; the fear of the Lord gives life, as Barnabas teaches; the law forbids lending at interest to a brother, and the generous receive the interest of virtue and good name.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.85Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law's humanity shows in paying the poor the same day, forbidding creditors to seize pledges by force, and leaving gleanings and uncut corners for the poor.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.86Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law shows God's justice and goodness in the gleanings, the tithes, the sabbatical year, and the jubilee restoring land to the poor; so it is good and a teacher of justice; mercy to the poor is blessed.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.87Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Love shows itself in gentleness, patience, and freedom from envy and resentment; the law commands returning a stray animal, teaching us to treat what we find as a deposit and to bear no grudge.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.88Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law commands love of strangers as oneself, forbids abhorring an Egyptian, requires offering peace before war, and protects the captive woman, allowing intercourse only in marriage and for children.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.89Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law restrains the captor's desire by a waiting period and by cutting the captive's hair; if he no longer wants her, he may not sell her or keep her as a slave but must set her free.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.90Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law commands helping an enemy's burdened animal and returning his stray, training us not to rejoice at enemies' misfortunes but to pray for them; forgetting wrongs ends enmity and leads to concord.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.91Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law is humane, a schoolmaster to Christ, and the one God is good with justice; the Lord's saying on mercy and measure sums it up; the law protects servants, debtors, and suppliants, and God tests hearts.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.92Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Pythagoras learned gentleness to animals from the law, which forbids separating the newborn from its mother for seven days; how much more does it condemn the Greeks' exposure of human infants.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.93Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · There is no excuse for exposing children: one who does not want children should not marry; the law forbids killing an animal with its young, and the Romans spare pregnant condemned women, showing the law's humane concern.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.94Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Those who kill pregnant animals for delicacies make the womb a tomb, against the law forbidding boiling a lamb in its mother's milk; the unmuzzled ox and the ban on yoking ox with donkey teach fairness to foreigners and, allegorically, discernment in teaching.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.95Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law forbids destroying fruit trees, even an enemy's, and commands tending young trees for three years, offering the firstfruits to God in the fourth.
  • Miscellanies 2.18.96Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The farming law teaches us to prune away sins until faith is firm; the fourth year signifies the four virtues offered to God; God gives the strength and gifts that we, as ministers of grace, pass on to others.
  • Miscellanies 2.19.97Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows is the true image and likeness of God, imitating him in self-control, justice, and generosity; he who does and teaches is greatest; pride provokes God, and repentance must reach mouth, heart, and hands.
  • Miscellanies 2.19.98Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Hands, heart, and mouth stand for action, counsel, and speech; God chooses the repentant as his people, and even one counts as the people; true nobility lies in choosing the good, which Adam, noblest of all, neglected, exchanging immortality for death, though not forever.
  • Miscellanies 2.19.100Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The good man becomes fellow citizen of the righteous of old and a king, as the Hittites said to Abraham; Plato's goal of likeness to God may come from Moses, whose law calls it “following” God; Christ bids us be merciful like the Father.
  • Miscellanies 2.19.101Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Stoics' “life according to nature” borrows from Moses but wrongly calls God nature; Scripture praises those who love the law; Clement lists three kinds of friendship: of virtue, of exchange, and of habit or pleasure.
  • Miscellanies 2.19.102Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Friendship is of gods, men, or animals; the one who does good is God's image and receives good in giving; we should help friends and enemies alike; the image of God lies in mind and reason, not the body.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.103Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Endurance leads to likeness to God, as Daniel and his companions show; the king of Babylon threw Daniel to the lions, but the Lord, King of all, brought him out unharmed.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.104Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows has the patience of Job, Jonah, Daniel, and the three young men, bearing witness by word and life, crucified to the world, carrying the cross and following the Lord.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.105Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law trains us in self-control, the foundation of the virtues, by forbidding the fattest foods, pork and fish without fins or scales, which serve luxury.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.106Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The mysteries' food taboos also derive from the law, which teaches us to master the belly and cut out desire by condemning pleasure; Menelaus, overcome by Helen's beauty, could not kill her.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.107Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The tragedians mock Menelaus for yielding to Helen; Antisthenes would shoot Aphrodite for corrupting women; pleasure, even if God-given for procreation, must not be admitted; Xenophon's Virtue rebukes pleasure's luxuries.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.108Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Pleasure, grief, fear, and desire require hard training; pleasure nails the soul to the body; losing one's life for Christ, whether in martyrdom or by separating the soul from pleasure, is the meaning of the cross.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.109Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The practice of death is to be content with natural needs; we must put on God's armor and take every thought captive to Christ, using wealth, health, and life without being moved by them, which requires much discernment.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.110Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The passions are impressions stamped on the soul by the spiritual powers we wrestle against; some are thrown, but athletes of faith win the crown and the powers give up; things move by impulse or by being moved.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.111Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Humans, unlike animals, can judge impressions; the evil powers dangle pleasures like branches before cattle and enslave those who cannot tell true from false; each deception leaves its image through our assent.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.113Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Basilidian man is like a Trojan horse full of spirits; even Isidore, Basilides' son, warns that the doctrine gives the wicked an excuse to say they were forced.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.116Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Desires darken the mind; the soul, like gold, must be purified; Barnabas says that before faith the heart was a house of demons, full of idolatry.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.117Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Barnabas speaks of sins, not indwelling demons, being removed when God comes to dwell in us; Clement tells of a heretic leader who claimed to fight pleasure by indulging it.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.118Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Like Aristippus with Lais, the Nicolaitans misuse Nicolaus' saying “abuse the flesh” to justify indulgence, though he meant self-discipline; they are no better than Sardanapalus; pleasure merely accompanies natural needs.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.119Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Pleasure is only a helper to natural needs, like salt to food; when it rules, it begets desire; Epicurus made it the goal; Diogenes mocks the soft lovers of luxury.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.120Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law threatens fear so that we may win peace by unceasing struggle against the passions, especially pleasure, which attacks even in dreams; the Greeks, like Socrates, teach the same, so they cannot fault the law.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.121Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Greek philosophers too opposed pleasure: Antisthenes preferred madness, Crates praised the soul free of gold and love and prescribed hunger or the noose for lust, and the comic poets mocked Zeno's frugality.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.122Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Even the Greeks admit the value of caution; true wisdom trusts not in words but in the divine commandments and receives divine power; Homer's aegis of Zeus is crowned with fear.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.123Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law and caution are precious to the discerning; the Lord seems too demanding only to those who refuse his yoke; those friendly to sin call truth harsh and the one who will not sin with them merciless.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.124Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law sets out the finest examples to nourish our love of freedom; the righteous of old were ordinary people who gave themselves wholly to God, and it was counted to them as faith.
  • Miscellanies 2.20.126Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · We must avoid exciting foods and luxury; self-restraint is God's great gift, and he will not forsake those who choose it; Christ's kind yoke drives us from faith to faith to salvation.
  • Miscellanies 2.21.127Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement begins a survey of philosophers' views of the goal of life: Epicurus and the Cyrenaics make it pleasure, others freedom from disturbance.
  • Miscellanies 2.21.128Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Continuing the survey: the Cyrenaics make virtue serve pleasure; the Aristotelians make the goal life according to virtue but require the three kinds of goods, so the poor, the sick, and slaves cannot be happy.
  • Miscellanies 2.21.129Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The survey continues with the Stoics (Zeno, Cleanthes, Diogenes, Antipater, Archedemus, Panaetius, Posidonius), Ariston, Herillus, the Academics, and Peripatetics such as Lycon and Critolaus.
  • Miscellanies 2.21.130Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement lists the goals proposed by the natural philosophers: contemplation (Anaxagoras), cheerfulness (Democritus), self-sufficiency, and others; the Cyrenaics reject Epicurus's definition of pleasure as absence of pain.
  • Miscellanies 2.21.131Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Metrodorus, Epicurus's disciple, locates the soul's good in a stable bodily condition and the hope of keeping it.
  • Miscellanies 2.22.131Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato makes the goal twofold, the Good itself and likeness to it in virtuous men; happiness is likeness to God, being just and holy with prudence; so some Christians say the image is given at creation and the likeness at perfection.
  • Miscellanies 2.22.132Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato teaches that likeness to God comes with humility, as Christ said the humble will be exalted; in the Laws, Justice follows God to punish transgressors, and only the humble and orderly, being like God, are dear to him.
  • Miscellanies 2.22.133Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato calls the self-restrained God's friend and happiness flight from evil into likeness to God; Speusippus, Xenocrates, and Polemon give their definitions of happiness.
  • Miscellanies 2.22.135Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Ezekiel describes the righteous man who avoids idolatry, adultery, and oppression, gives to the poor, and takes no interest; he shall live; Isaiah calls the wicked to seek the Lord and turn to him.
  • Miscellanies 2.22.136Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · We wait in faith for the hope of righteousness, and Proverbs says the one who hears Wisdom will dwell confident; Paul bids us imitate him as he imitates Christ, and Christ God; the aim is likeness to God, the goal the fulfillment of the promise.
  • Miscellanies 2.23.144Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Animals mate in season and depart; Polyxena, even when slain, fell modestly; yielding to the passions is the worst slavery and mastering them the only freedom; transgressors are sold to foreign sins until they repent.
  • Miscellanies 2.23.147Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law's death penalty for adultery agrees with the gospel, since one Lord gave both: the adulteress dies to the commandments, but the one who repents is reborn; more is required of those given more. Book 2 ends here.
  • Miscellanies 3.1.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Isidore distinguishes necessary from merely natural desires; Clement quotes him to rebuke later Basilidians who claim that their election lets them sin, bringing blasphemy on Christ's name.
  • Miscellanies 3.1.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Self-control covers the tongue, possessions, and desires, and is a gift of divine grace; the church blesses celibacy given by God, admires a single marriage, bears with others' weakness, and permits second marriage to those who burn.
  • Miscellanies 3.4.28Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Such “fellowship” belongs in the brothel; Paul teaches Christians to put off the old man and put on the new, to imitate God in love, and not even to name sexual immorality among them.
  • Miscellanies 3.4.30Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The followers of Prodicus claim to be sons of the first God, above all law, and live for pleasure; but they commit adultery in secret like slaves, and whoever sins is a slave.
  • Miscellanies 3.4.31Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · One cannot live for God while giving oneself to every desire; if the Gnostics are strangers in the world, they should behave as good sojourners, not like adulterers the pagans themselves condemn.
  • Miscellanies 3.4.32Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Lawless living is hateful to human and divine lawgivers, as Phinehas's zeal shows; John says those who walk in darkness cannot claim fellowship with God.
  • Miscellanies 3.4.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Those who live like the worst of the worldly cannot claim a higher nature; Christ demands righteousness greater than the Pharisees', and Scripture teaches obedience and self-control.
  • Miscellanies 3.4.35Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · False prophets are known by their works; if the commandments against shameful deeds are good, the “Opposers” are fighting the good and doing evil.
  • Miscellanies 3.4.36Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ commands reconciliation and good works, not defiance and display of vice; if the Opposers truly defied the lawgiver, why only in matters of self-control, and not by overturning the seasons like Xerxes?
  • Miscellanies 3.5.40Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement divides the heresies into two classes, the libertine and the harshly ascetic; against the first, if all lives are permitted to the elect, the self-controlled life is all the more permitted.
  • Miscellanies 3.5.41Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God gave us free choice; both the licentious and the self-controlled are free, but only the latter frees the soul; the libertines must either obey every desire, even the most unholy, or admit that some must be refused.
  • Miscellanies 3.5.42Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · One enslaved to bodily pleasure cannot become like the Lord or know God; since the commandments show the blessed life and failure brings endless evil, we must purify ourselves, so that the divine image is restored in a pure mind.
  • Miscellanies 3.5.43Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Those led by passion cannot know God, and conduct reveals ignorance of him; Paul tells believers, circumcised in Christ and raised with him, to seek things above and put to death sexual immorality and evil desire.
  • Miscellanies 3.5.44Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Knowledge is tested by conduct, as a tree by its fruit; true knowledge is a divine light from obedience; true freedom is release from pleasure through Christ, and whoever claims to know God but disobeys is a liar.
  • Miscellanies 3.6.54Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ's command to give and lend presupposes private property, refuting Carpocrates' “community”; he identifies himself with the needy, and the old covenant also commands giving to the poor.
  • Miscellanies 3.6.55Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Scripture presupposes givers and receivers, as the world consists of opposites; Christ's call to the rich young man exposed his failure to love his neighbor and taught him to share out of love.
  • Miscellanies 3.6.56Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ forbids not wealth rightly used but greed; the generous gain eternal riches by sharing, while the hoarder, like the rich fool, stores up treasure on earth and loses his soul.
  • Miscellanies 3.7.57Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Greek self-control fights desire; Christian self-control, a gift of God's grace, aims not to desire at all, as Moses fasted forty days; desire that lingers inside still sins in memory.
  • Miscellanies 3.7.58Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · In marriage, food, and all else we should act by will, not desire; the husband who marries for children should love his wife but beget them with a reverent will, walking decently as in the day.
  • Miscellanies 3.7.59Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Self-control extends beyond sex to money, luxury, speech, and thought; even angels fell through desire; Valentinus claimed Jesus did not digest food; Christians embrace self-control out of love for the Lord, sanctifying the Spirit's temple.
  • Miscellanies 3.8.61Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The libertines cite “you are not under law but under grace,” but Paul himself answers: “Shall we sin because we are under grace? By no means.”
  • Miscellanies 3.8.62Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · All must appear before Christ's judgment for deeds done in the body; in Christ one is a new creation, washed from the old life; righteousness has no fellowship with lawlessness, so we must cleanse ourselves in holiness.
  • Miscellanies 3.10.69Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The triad may signify the called, the elect, and those of highest rank; the one who rises above anger and desire, uniting knowledge, faith, and love, becomes one, perfect in Christ's image, brother, friend, and son.
  • Miscellanies 3.11.75Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Peter urges Christians as exiles to abstain from fleshly desires and not use freedom as a cover for evil; Paul teaches that those who died to sin cannot live in it.
  • Miscellanies 3.11.77Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul attributes his evil deeds to indwelling sin, from which the law of the Spirit sets him free through the Son; the body, dead through sin, becomes a temple when the Spirit who raised Jesus dwells in it.
  • Miscellanies 3.11.78Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul contrasts living by the flesh, which is death and enmity to God, with life in the Spirit; believers are sons of God by the Spirit of adoption, not free to indulge the flesh.
  • Miscellanies 3.12.86Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul's letters never reject chaste marriage but accept both marriage and celibacy; a heretic reads “do not store up treasure on earth” as forbidding children, but Christ was urging the rich to share with the needy.
  • Miscellanies 3.15.99Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The true eunuch is the one who begets no truth; by obedience he bears fruit; the apostles begot spiritual children; the eunuch barred from God's assembly is the barren in word and deed, but those who make themselves eunuchs from sin are blessed.
  • Miscellanies 3.16.101Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Micah's “firstborn for ungodliness” refers to sinful habits, not birth; birth is also good, since in it we learn the truth; Paul disciplines his body like an athlete, using things with self-control; some prefer widows to virgins for self-control.
  • Miscellanies 3.18.106Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Proverbs warns against the paths of the wicked, who destroy themselves and others; Paul commands cleaning out the old leaven and not associating with immoral “brothers”; the believer, crucified with Christ, lives by faith.
  • Miscellanies 3.18.109Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · To the pure all things are pure; Paul lists those excluded from the kingdom, from which believers were washed; the libertines “baptize” into immorality under the name of false knowledge; Christians should think on what is true and pure.
  • Miscellanies 3.18.110Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Peter too calls believers to holiness, not to their former desires; Clement ends Book 3, noting that the controversy with the false Gnostics has made it long.
  • Miscellanies 4.1.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement outlines Book 4 and beyond: martyrdom, the perfect Christian, the equal calling of slave and free, men and women, to philosophy, faith, the symbolic method, and a summary of Scripture against Greeks and Jews.
  • Miscellanies 4.2.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The reader must discover more for himself; virtue's path is steep, as Hesiod says, and the Lord's way narrow; “seek and you will find.”
  • Miscellanies 4.3.8Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Both belief and unbelief can be good or bad depending on their object, as with abstaining; the Sabbath signifies abstinence from evil; man, lower than the angels by time and flesh, shares life with them but differs in contemplation and self-control.
  • Miscellanies 4.3.9Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God alone is wise, and the philosopher is his friend; man is like a centaur of soul and body, the body tending to earth, the soul to God; the law's fear exists because of sin, and the law is not for the righteous.
  • Miscellanies 4.3.10Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Justice is known only where there is wrongdoing; Paul says love fulfills all the commandments; so the commandments that threaten fear aim at love, not hatred.
  • Miscellanies 4.3.11Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The fear produced by the law is not a passion, for the law is holy and spiritual; death is not an evil; the end of sin is death, but God's gift is eternal life in Christ.
  • Miscellanies 4.3.12Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Death is the soul's union with sin, life its separation; sinners are slaves and beasts; the philosopher who practices separation from bodily passions all his life can bear natural death easily, crucified to the world and living as a citizen of heaven.
  • Miscellanies 4.4.15Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Every soul that lives purely with knowledge of God and obeys the commandments is a martyr in life and word, however it dies; Christ's call to leave family for his name means detachment from worldly ties.
  • Miscellanies 4.4.18Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato too taught care of the body for the soul's harmony; life and health are the path to knowledge, and the good life lived in the body leads to eternity.
  • Miscellanies 4.5.19Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Against the Stoic indifference to the body, Job's endurance in poverty and sickness is our example; Paul's chains encouraged others to preach boldly; martyrdoms are sanctified examples written for our instruction.
  • Miscellanies 4.5.20Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Pain distracts the soul from study and virtue; virtue itself does not suffer, but one not yet established in self-control may be overcome, which is as bad as flight.
  • Miscellanies 4.5.21Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Poverty, like pain, distracts the soul with getting a living, while health and sufficiency leave it free for God, as Paul wishes believers free from anxiety.
  • Miscellanies 4.5.22Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Health and means are for the body, and the body for the soul; pleasure is not the good, since some pleasures are bad; knowledge, which chooses among pleasures and pains, is the good.
  • Miscellanies 4.5.23Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The martyr chooses the hoped-for pleasure through present pain; pain and pleasure are not evils in themselves; the poets disagree whether wealth is a good or a blinding evil.
  • Miscellanies 4.5.24Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The poets call wealth blind and a bad teacher of manliness; poverty is akin to wisdom; love of money ruins cities; virtue is true currency.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.25Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ's beatitudes apply to spiritual and material states; the one who is persecuted, poor, or hungry for righteousness' sake is a witness, a martyr, to righteousness.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.26Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The beatitudes bless those who mourn, hunger, and are poor for righteousness' sake, choosing poverty to gain the good; true nobility is adoption as God's children, with authority over snakes and demons.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.27Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Lord's discipline separates the soul from the body; “whoever loses his soul will find it” means losing the sinful self in repentance and finding it alive by faith; to find the soul is to know oneself.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.28Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Conversion is described by Stoics and Plato; the persecuting judge reveals who truly loves God; abstaining from evil deeds extinguishes vices; “sell your possessions … follow me” means following the Lord's words.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.29Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Some allegorize the rich man's “possessions” as passions, but God distributes goods justly, and the command is to despise them and follow Christ; the rich man lacked love of neighbor; one should come to Christ for the good itself, not fear or reward.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.30Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Those who seek incorruption for its own sake stand at the right; those who bargain are hired servants; likeness and image correspond to choosing by knowledge and by imitation; the parables of Lazarus and of the two masters warn against love of money.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.31Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Those who refuse the supper are held back by passionate attachment to possessions; the foxes are the earthbound greedy, the birds the heavenly-minded; poverty too, badly borne, brings cares that choke the word like thorns.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.32Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · We must learn to use every circumstance for eternal life; the exalted ungodly vanish, but the peaceful and upright have a future; God rejects those who honor him with their lips while their hearts are far from him.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God silences the boastful and rises for the poor; Christ belongs to the humble; the treasures of earth that thieves break into are possessions, anxieties, and bodily loves; the true treasure is with God, gained by sharing.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.34Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The broad road to destruction is profligacy, lust, and ambition; the rich fool loses his soul; Christ warns against greed and anxiety and bids us seek first the kingdom, and the small things will be added.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.35Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ counts the choice, not the size of the gift; Zacchaeus (or Matthias, some say) gave half his goods and was saved; the widow's two coins were more than the rich man's gift.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.36Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The meek are those who have ended the war of anger and desire within; there are many rewards and dwelling places according to one's life; the laborers in the vineyard show both differing merit and equal salvation.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.37Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The saved will serve in dwelling places proportioned to their merit; Plato describes the purified dwelling above; “blessed are those who mourn” refers to repentance, whether from fear or from conscience, here or hereafter.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.38Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Mercy is not grief but a noble thing God desires more than sacrifice; those who wish to show mercy but cannot, through poverty, illness, or age, share the same honor as those who can.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.39Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Works and knowledge are two ways to perfection; the pure in heart see God; knowledge purifies the mind, and good actions need the neutral things of life and health; those who come to know God must be pure in body and thought.
  • Miscellanies 4.6.40Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · In contemplation the knower becomes knowledge itself; the peacemakers are those who have subdued the war of the passions against reason and will be adopted as God's children; perfect peace sees the world's order as good and brings others to faith.
  • Miscellanies 4.7.43Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Dying for Christ, our nearest neighbor, is dying for our own salvation; those who keep Christ's commandments bear witness in every act, having crucified the flesh and living by the Spirit.
  • Miscellanies 4.7.53Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Salvation proceeds from fear to hope to love; the Greeks submit unwillingly to blind necessity, as Euripides says.
  • Miscellanies 4.7.54Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The foundation of knowledge is faith, hope, and love, love being greatest; Christian freedom yields to the weaker brother's conscience and does all to God's glory; our warfare is spiritual.
  • Miscellanies 4.7.55Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Armed with spiritual weapons, the one who knows asks the Lord for occasion to prove his love; virtue is its own reward; Christians should put on compassion, humility, and love, the bond of perfection.
  • Miscellanies 4.8.58Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Getae's chosen envoy is sacrificed, and the rest grieve at being passed over; the church is full of men and women who practice the life-giving death for Christ; anyone, without letters, of any race, age, or sex, may philosophize.
  • Miscellanies 4.8.59Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Man and woman share one human nature and so the same virtue; women, like men, free and slave, must pursue self-restraint and justice; they differ only in what belongs to sex, such as childbearing.
  • Miscellanies 4.8.60Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Woman shares man's virtue in soul and differs in body; Paul teaches headship yet mutual dependence in the Lord; women, like men, must master pleasure by walking in the Spirit.
  • Miscellanies 4.8.61Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul lists the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit; flesh means sinners and spirit the righteous; Christian courage is endurance, turning the other cheek; women are not trained for war, for even men should be peaceful.
  • Miscellanies 4.8.62Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Women of some nations fight and labor like men, and even female dogs work as males do; so women must philosophize like men, though men hold the first place.
  • Miscellanies 4.8.65Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul's household code in Colossians sets out the duties of wives and husbands, children and fathers, slaves and masters, all under the one Lord in whom there is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free.
  • Miscellanies 4.8.66Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The earthly church is an image of the heavenly, as we pray; Paul's call to compassion, forgiveness, love, and thankfulness is repeated to shame Marcion, who should be grateful to the Creator who called us in the body.
  • Miscellanies 4.8.67Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Wives and slaves may pursue true philosophy even against husbands' or masters' threats, and free men even under tyrants; to die for virtue is noble for women as for men, for it belongs to the good, not to one sex.
  • Miscellanies 4.8.68Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Old and young, slaves, children, and wives often become excellent despite opposition; opposition should increase their zeal, since serving God and serving demons admit no comparison; we act for our own salvation whether others approve or not.
  • Miscellanies 4.8.69Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Virtue must be pursued regardless of others' opinion; as Epicurus wrote to Menoeceus, it is never too early or too late to philosophize, for young and old alike.
  • Miscellanies 4.12.87Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God does not cause afflictions but permits them and turns them to good as training, for others because of their sins, for the Lord and the apostles because of ours; God's will is our sanctification, for which the Lord was not prevented from suffering.
  • Miscellanies 4.13.93Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Neither Valentinians nor Montanists should call other Christians “psychics”; the perfect practice love, which means loving enemies as God's creatures, not their sins, for sin lies in activity, not in substance.
  • Miscellanies 4.13.94Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Sinners are God's enemies by rejecting his commands; “desire nothing” does not mean the world is evil or belongs to another god, but that worldly goods are ours only for use, not permanent possession, to be used well without excess.
  • Miscellanies 4.14.95Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ commands love of enemies to make us like the Father; the “adversary” to be reconciled on the way is not the body but the devil, whose servants will hand over those who profess Christ while doing the devil's works.
  • Miscellanies 4.15.97Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Knowledge about idol meat must yield to the weak; Paul's permission to buy market meat excludes what the apostolic decree forbade (idol meat, blood, strangled things, fornication); Paul renounced his right to a wife and food to set an example.
  • Miscellanies 4.15.98Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul, free, made himself a slave to all; the knowing Christian abstains for the weaker brother's conscience, not his own, and does everything to God's glory within the rule of faith.
  • Miscellanies 4.16.100Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The common faith is the “fragrance of knowledge”; the veil remains until one turns to the Lord; the pleasure-loving are “offspring of vipers”; John teaches love in deed, the perfect love that casts out fear, shown in keeping the commandments.
  • Miscellanies 4.17.105Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement of Rome, whom Clement calls an apostle, praises the Corinthians' faith, godliness, hospitality, and knowledge, and holds up Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Rahab, and the prophets as models.
  • Miscellanies 4.17.106Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Following 1 Clement, Abraham, Job, and Moses are models of humility: Abraham called himself dust and ashes, Job confessed no one is pure, Moses called himself slow of tongue; God gives grace to the humble.
  • Miscellanies 4.17.107Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · David, chosen by God, still begged for mercy and confessed his sin; the Spirit searches the inner self, and the Lord Jesus, overseer of the heart, whose blood was offered for us, knows all our thoughts.
  • Miscellanies 4.17.108Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Following 1 Clement: respect leaders and elders, instruct the young, lead wives to purity, gentleness, and impartial love, and teach children humility, pure love, and the fear of the Lord, who searches hearts.
  • Miscellanies 4.17.109Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Following 1 Clement, faith in Christ confirms the psalm's call to fear the Lord, avoid evil, do good, and seek peace, which Clement reads as the mystery of the seventh and eighth: perfection in deed and word.
  • Miscellanies 4.17.110Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Following 1 Clement: the Lord rescues the righteous and surrounds the hopeful with mercy; through Christ we taste immortal knowledge; the wise must show it in works, the humble not praise themselves, the chaste not boast; more knowledge means more danger.
  • Miscellanies 4.18.111Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Following Clement of Rome: love of God and neighbor lifts us to God, covers sins, and perfects the elect; Paul says that even martyrdom without love, done from fear, is nothing.
  • Miscellanies 4.18.113Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Love keeps one from sin, and if one falls, confession and a broken spirit please God; God is love, and love fulfills the law, as Christ does; the same deed differs as done from fear or from love, by faith or by knowledge.
  • Miscellanies 4.18.114Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Rewards differ: the knower receives what eye has not seen, the simple believer a hundredfold; Clement recalls a self-styled Gnostic who taught that desire alone is not sin unless it is acted out, even in imagination.
  • Miscellanies 4.18.115Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement tells of King Bocchoris, who, when a courtesan demanded pay for a youth's dream of her, had her take the shadow of the purse: an image of payment for an image of union.
  • Miscellanies 4.18.116Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Looking with desire is sin even without imagined intercourse, if one admires flesh lustfully; but one who looks with pure love sees the soul's beauty and rises through it to the Creator, bearing the Spirit's anointing to the angels at the ascent.
  • Miscellanies 4.18.117Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Moses' face shone with a glory the people could not bear; at the soul's ascent the heavenly toll-collectors hold back those laden with worldly passions but send on the one full of knowledge and righteousness, like the tree of Psalm 1.
  • Miscellanies 4.19.118Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Perfection belongs equally to men and women: Moses offered to be blotted out for his people, and Judith, perfected among women, risked her life for her city and slew Holofernes.
  • Miscellanies 4.19.120Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Pagan women too showed virtue: Lysidice and Philotera in modesty, Leaena who endured torture without betraying the tyrannicides, and the Argive women led by Telesilla who repelled the Spartans.
  • Miscellanies 4.19.121Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Greek poets praised heroic women, and many women philosophized: Theano's modest sayings, Themisto the Epicurean, Myia and Arignote the Pythagoreans, the five dialectician daughters of Diodorus, and Hipparchia the Cynic.
  • Miscellanies 4.19.122Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · More learned women: Arete who taught her son, Plato's women students, Aspasia who taught Socrates and Pericles, and women poets and painters.
  • Miscellanies 4.19.123Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Noble women of old did humble work, like Sarah serving the angels; a wife should first try to win her husband to the way of salvation, otherwise pursue virtue alone, obeying him in all but what concerns virtue and salvation.
  • Miscellanies 4.19.124Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · No one excels without learning and training; virtue is in our power as God's gift, which no one else can take away, so vice and virtue belong to each person's own choice.
  • Miscellanies 4.20.128Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul tells older women to train the younger to love their husbands and children and live purely; Hebrews urges peace and holiness, warning against immorality like Esau's.
  • Miscellanies 4.21.131Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The perfect Christian relies on God's power, enduring affliction and persecution without despair, commending himself to God by patience, purity, knowledge, and love, cleansing himself and perfecting holiness; godly grief leads to repentance and salvation.
  • Miscellanies 4.21.132Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers to build up the church toward the perfect man, Christ's fullness; we must strive for perfection in the flesh; the one Spirit distributes varied gifts to each.
  • Miscellanies 4.22.135Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The knower's work is neither mere abstention from evil, nor doing good out of fear or hope of reward, but doing good out of love, for the sake of the good itself.
  • Miscellanies 4.22.136Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The knower seeks the knowledge of God for itself, not for any benefit; if knowledge of God and eternal salvation could be separated (though they are one), he would choose knowledge of God without hesitation.
  • Miscellanies 4.22.137Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The perfect man does good constantly for its own sake, not for glory or reward, becoming like the Lord, good to just and unjust; his flesh has died, and his body, once a tomb, is now a holy temple.
  • Miscellanies 4.22.138Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The perfect man has passed beyond self-control to freedom from passion; he gives and fasts in secret, doing good by settled habit; he must walk the narrow way, drawn by the Father through grace, and pities those who hate him.
  • Miscellanies 4.22.139Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Knowledge loves and teaches others to honor all creation; the one who has learned to love God keeps virtue even in dreams, his mind unchanged; Christ's command to stay awake means keeping the soul pure by night as by day, which is likeness to God.
  • Miscellanies 4.22.140Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Greeks called night “the kindly time” because the soul then withdraws from the senses toward wisdom; Paul bids Christians, children of the day, to stay awake and sober, armed with faith, love, and hope.
  • Miscellanies 4.22.142Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Outward washing before prayer symbolizes inner purity, holy thought; the image of baptism passed from Moses to the poets, as in Homer's Penelope and Telemachus; true purity is of mind, deeds, words, and even dreams.
  • Miscellanies 4.22.143Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Firm repentance purifies; knowledge and faith make the soul stand firm; the truly righteous man is just not from fear of punishment or detection, unlike Epicurus's sage, who would do wrong if sure of not being caught.
  • Miscellanies 4.22.144Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Doing right only for reward is no better than doing it from fear; yet the hope of reward and punishment after death is taught by Scripture and by Pythagoreans, Socrates, and Heraclitus.
  • Miscellanies 4.22.145Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul says affliction produces endurance, character, and hope that does not disappoint; the true knower pursues knowledge not from fear or for gain but drawn by love of God, the truly lovable.
  • Miscellanies 4.22.146Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The knower would do no wrong even with impunity, reward, or secrecy, having chosen the good for itself; food, marriage, or celibacy without knowledge do not commend us; abstinence from fear is no better than a dog's fear of the stick.
  • Miscellanies 4.23.147Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · All created things, including marriage and childbearing with self-restraint, are good, though freedom from passion is better; those who abstain from fear or dislike slander the Creator; true obedience to “do not desire” comes from within.
  • Miscellanies 4.23.148Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Obedience for reward is bait; the knower turns from sensible to intelligible things out of love, admiring creation and its Maker, and prays to be free of desire, content with little, near to God.
  • Miscellanies 4.23.149Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul teaches choosing the better among goods, not rejecting marriage as bad; God made necessities easy to obtain; as Democritus says, teaching reshapes nature; God gave both nature and renewal; the one who trusts God finds peace and may become a god.
  • Miscellanies 4.23.150Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Empedocles says wise souls become gods; man is formed by nature, but each person is shaped by what he chooses; Adam was perfect in formation but was to attain perfection by obedience; his fall was his own choice, and God is not to blame.
  • Miscellanies 4.23.151Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Human courage and self-restraint master anger and desire, but God, without passion, needs neither; as the Pythagoreans said, man too must become one, like the one high priest and the one God.
  • Miscellanies 4.23.152Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ removed anger with desire; the one deified into freedom from passion becomes one; like sailors pulling on an anchor who draw themselves to it, those who seek God are drawn to him; serving God is caring for oneself, and purity makes one like God.
  • Miscellanies 4.24.153Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · What rests with us is choosing between opposites, such as believing or not; God forgives sins before faith, all of them, not only involuntary ones as Basilides held; punishment aims at preventing future sin, not undoing the past.
  • Miscellanies 4.24.154Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God disciplines to improve the sinner, warn others, and protect the wronged; correction is by teaching or by punishment; sins before baptism are forgiven, those after are cleansed by discipline; unbelievers are like chaff.
  • Miscellanies 4.25.155Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Euripides blesses the contemplative, and Plato calls the one who contemplates the Ideas a god among men; the soul that rises above becoming becomes like an angel and dwells with Christ, while the rest are shadows and the dead.
  • Miscellanies 4.25.158Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Only those who live purely are God's true priests; the priests' avoidance of the dead signifies avoiding sin, which is dead; their seven days of purification and eighth-day offering point to the promise.
  • Miscellanies 4.25.159Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Perfect purification is faith leading through law and prophets to the gospel, and propitiation is obedient purity until the soul's release; whether the seven are periods or heavens and the eighth the fixed sphere, the knower must rise above becoming and sin.
  • Miscellanies 4.26.163Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The body, made upright to see heaven and with senses for knowledge, is not evil but a fit dwelling for the soul and the Holy Spirit; wisdom, justice, and holiness go together; Isaiah's “all flesh is grass” is explained by Jeremiah as referring to the disobedient.
  • Miscellanies 4.26.164Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Jeremiah shows that “flesh” means sinful living, not the body as such; the soul is better than the body, but neither is good or evil by nature; man is composed of different, not opposed, elements.
  • Miscellanies 4.26.165Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The wise soul lodges in the body as a guest, respecting it but ready to leave; Basilides wrongly made the elect foreign to the world by nature, for all belongs to the one God; the elect lives as a stranger by choice.
  • Miscellanies 4.26.166Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The knower uses bodily and external goods like a traveler uses inns, caring for them without attachment and leaving gladly, thankful for his stay and longing for the heavenly dwelling, as Paul says.
  • Miscellanies 4.26.168Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Job, having gained knowledge, called himself earth and ashes; the ignorant are “earth,” while the knower, made like God, is spiritual and elect; Jeremiah calls the disobedient “earth.”
  • Miscellanies 4.26.170Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Scripture proclaims that God hears the righteous and does no wrong, refuting the heresies that make God responsible for evil; God asks Israel to fear, love, and serve him, and we have the power to choose salvation.
  • Miscellanies 4.26.171Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Pythagoreans prayed aloud so that prayers would be just; Christians should let their works cry out as in daylight, imitating God; the poets' epithets “godlike” echo the image and likeness of God.
  • Miscellanies 5.1.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Faith is the ear of the soul; Paul speaks of faith growing “from faith to faith”: the common faith is the foundation, and the excellent faith built on it, like the apostles', is perfected through learning and obedience.
  • Miscellanies 5.1.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · It is godless to demand proofs from God; some questions need sense, some rebuke, and some, like whether providence exists, deserve punishment; providence is plain from creation; the Word is not a spoken word but God's wisdom, goodness, and power.
  • Miscellanies 5.1.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · We are saved by grace, but not without good works and a sound will; we need grace, right teaching, and the Father's drawing; God cannot be seen clearly in this life, as Paul, Plato, and Moses say, but the pure in heart will see him; so the Savior was sent as divine teacher.
  • Miscellanies 5.1.8Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God makes foolish the wisdom of the world; Jeremiah bids us ask for the good way; Numa founded a temple of Faith; Abraham believed, and his name change from Abram, “elevated father,” signifies his turn from natural philosophy to knowledge of the one God.
  • Miscellanies 5.1.11Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Faith must advance with inquiry, for “seek and you will find”; but inquiry must be free of rivalry, envy, and strife, which Timon mocks in the philosophers' quarrels over sophisms.
  • Miscellanies 5.1.12Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Inquiry about God aimed at discovery, not strife, is saving; the psalm promises those who seek the Lord knowledge and life; but we should not open our ears to everyone, lest faith's pure hearing be spoiled, like cups whose handles break.
  • Miscellanies 5.1.13Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Love is learned through hearing, as children are taught to kiss relatives held by the ears; God is love, known to those who love; we must become pure and childlike, as the Epidaurus inscription and Christ teach, entering God's temple founded on faith, hope, and love.
  • Miscellanies 5.2.15Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato speaks of the love that begets like, and of teachers begetting pupils, as Christians call instruction rebirth and Paul begot the Corinthians in Christ; Empedocles speaks of Love, and Parmenides of seeing absent things with the mind.
  • Miscellanies 5.3.17Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Recognizing ignorance begins learning: seeking leads to the teacher, then faith, hope, love, and likeness to the beloved; the wise virgins' lamps are souls lighting the light in ignorance's night; few are chosen, as Plato and Cleanthes also say.
  • Miscellanies 5.4.22Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The sayings of the Greek sages, like “spare time,” pack large meanings into few words.
  • Miscellanies 5.4.23Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · “Know yourself” has many meanings: that you are mortal, of little account, whose image you bear, and how you are akin to God; Isaiah's hidden treasures are God's wisdom, hard to find.
  • Miscellanies 5.5.27Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Pythagorean symbols depend on Scripture: “no swallow in the house” means shun gossips; “confuse the pot's mark in the ashes” means leave no trace of anger, as Scripture says not to let the sun set on anger.
  • Miscellanies 5.5.28Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · More Pythagorean symbols: disturbing the bed means forgetting nocturnal emissions; “don't sail on land” means avoid tax-farming; “wear no ring with gods' images” agrees with Moses' ban on images, as the Hebrews' temple had none.
  • Miscellanies 5.5.30Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Pythagoras's “do not step over the balance” summarizes Moses on justice; Christ's light yoke and call to be like children teach equality; in Christ there is no slave or free; the mysteries' ban on eating the heart means not consuming the soul with grief.
  • Miscellanies 5.5.31Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The two ways of Scripture, narrow and broad, are echoed by Prodicus's fable and Pythagoras's ban on public roads; a Scythian king and Euphorion speak symbolically of war; the Egyptian sphinx signifies that God is to be loved and feared.
  • Miscellanies 5.8.44Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Barbarians too used symbols: the Scythian king sent Darius a mouse, frog, bird, arrow, and plow, variously interpreted; Anacharsis slept guarding mouth and genitals, meaning the tongue is harder to master than pleasure.
  • Miscellanies 5.8.51Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Moses' food laws are symbolic: the pig stands for greedy, unclean desire; as Barnabas explains, clean animals that part the hoof and chew the cud signify those who ponder God's word and live in this world while awaiting the next.
  • Miscellanies 5.8.52Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The unclean birds stand for plunderers, the unjust, and the greedy, whom we must avoid; the Psalms, 1 Clement, and Theognis teach that companions shape us; the horse and rider cast into the sea are desire and the soul that gives it rein.
  • Miscellanies 5.11.67Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The acceptable sacrifice is separation from the body's passions; Socrates' “practice of death,” Pythagoras' silence, and Moses' flaying of the burnt offering all mean that the soul must be stripped bare to contemplate God.
  • Miscellanies 5.11.69Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Isocrates' description of the truly educated man shows that even the Greeks admired the life of the one who knows, though they did not know what knowledge is.
  • Miscellanies 5.13.86Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Faith is a voluntary assent that produces good works; wrongdoing is voluntary, not necessary; and Christ is the door through which alone one rightly enters.
  • Miscellanies 5.14.95Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Stoic goal of living by nature and Plato's goal of likeness to God come from Moses' command to follow God; Zeno's teaching that the good are friends was taken from Plato.
  • Miscellanies 5.14.96Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato's goal of becoming like God matches the saying that the seeker will find and reign and rest; Thales' sayings about God echo Scripture, and Moses' “choose life” teaches that only the good is to be chosen and that the end of life is to love God.
  • Miscellanies 5.14.97Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ's two great commandments underlie Socrates' prayer for inner beauty and the Stoic view that only the noble is good; Aristobulus showed that Peripatetic philosophy depended on Moses.
  • Miscellanies 5.14.119Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Isaiah's rejection of sacrifices without repentance is echoed by verses ascribed to Menander, which say that God is not won by costly offerings but sees and requires an upright life.
  • Miscellanies 5.14.120Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Verses ascribed to Menander, echoing the psalm's “sacrifice of righteousness,” teach that God delights in just deeds and is always near.
  • Miscellanies 5.14.136Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Malachi foretells that God's name will be glorified among the nations; Plato and Bacchylides teach that virtue is freely chosen and that God is never the cause of evil.
  • Miscellanies 5.14.141Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God's goodness and justice toward all are everlasting and without beginning; each person shares in them as he chooses, and so ends the fifth book of the Miscellanies.
  • Miscellanies 6.1.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement introduces books 6 and 7: after the Instructor's elementary training, he will show that the one who knows is not godless but alone truly devout, and then answer objections about Christ's coming.
  • Miscellanies 6.7.56Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The philosophers, knowing nothing beyond this world, imitate the truth as a painter creates an illusion of depth; self-love, the root of all sin, must give way to love of God.
  • Miscellanies 6.7.60Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The righteous man is refined like silver; abstaining from evil is the perfection of the ordinary believer, but the one who knows goes on to a settled habit of doing good, in the likeness of God.
  • Miscellanies 6.8.65Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows must be widely learned, able to answer arguments, faithful, wise, and humble; as a pruning hook serves several tasks, man, made to know God, also farms and studies.
  • Miscellanies 6.8.69Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Knowledge precedes impulse and action, so it is the source of all rational action and the distinguishing mark of the rational soul.
  • Miscellanies 6.9.71Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows feels only the bodily needs of hunger and thirst; Christ ate only to prove his real body, and the apostles, after the resurrection, rose above even the good emotions, needing neither boldness, cheer, anger, nor zeal.
  • Miscellanies 6.9.72Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · United with God by love, the one who knows has no desires and strives to be like his teacher in freedom from passion; the mind is God's image in man, so sin against a man is impiety.
  • Miscellanies 6.9.73Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Some claim the perfect man needs anger, boldness, cheer, and desire; but love is not craving, and the one who knows already possesses through love what he would desire.
  • Miscellanies 6.9.74Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows is free from all passion, not merely moderate in it, and shares not even in the so-called good feelings that border on the passions.
  • Miscellanies 6.9.75Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · One perfected by love and feasting on contemplation cannot return to petty pleasures; though still in the body, he has departed to the Lord, not by ending his life but by withdrawing his soul from the passions.
  • Miscellanies 6.9.76Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows needs neither courage nor self-restraint, since he has no fears or desires to master; foreordained to adoption, he already grasps by faith what others only guess.
  • Miscellanies 6.9.77Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Through love the future is present to the one who knows; he does not pray for earthly goods but to keep the faith and that many may become like him, for whoever resembles the Savior helps save others.
  • Miscellanies 6.9.79Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows guides his life by the intelligible good as sailors steer by a star, enduring hardship, avoiding rashness and pleasure, and living simply, with knowledge as his first concern.
  • Miscellanies 6.11.95Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · All things were made through the Word, the cornerstone; the four cardinal virtues are already taught in Wisdom, so the Greeks received them from the Hebrews; we are born fitted to acquire virtue, not possessing it.
  • Miscellanies 6.12.96Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Adam was created not perfect but fitted to acquire virtue by his own choice; all are made for virtue, but people advance unequally, and knowledge is the hardest thing to acquire.
  • Miscellanies 6.12.97Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Man was made in God's image for incorruption, and the knower strives toward perfection; he is pure even in speech, understands the nature of sin itself, and so has the higher repentance that prevents sin rather than follows it.
  • Miscellanies 6.12.98Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Sinners cannot blame demons: by choosing what demons choose, a person becomes demonic; some goods, like knowledge, are chosen for themselves, others, like faith, for their results, since most avoid sin from fear and obey for the promised reward.
  • Miscellanies 6.12.99Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Knowledge is the highest good, to be embraced for itself; punishment corrects and warns; true wealth is abundance of virtuous deeds, and possessions harm only when used beyond measure.
  • Miscellanies 6.12.100Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The knower limits his desires, values living well above life, and puts no family bond before love for God; after childbearing his wife becomes like a sister, since souls are neither male nor female and do not marry in the resurrection.
  • Miscellanies 6.12.102Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The knower prays at all times, first for forgiveness, then for power to do good and to understand creation, aiming at the face-to-face vision; fasting means abstaining from all evil, and righteousness must be complete on every side.
  • Miscellanies 6.12.103Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Abraham's faith advanced toward perfect righteousness; true righteousness requires not only avoiding evil but doing good with knowledge, and it leaves a lasting mark on the soul, as the glory did on Moses' face.
  • Miscellanies 6.12.104Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · As Moses' face shone from converse with God, so divine goodness marks the righteous soul with light; the knower becomes like God as far as humans may, for God himself is not idle but blessed in unceasing doing of good.
  • Miscellanies 6.13.105Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who moves from moderating the passions to freedom from passion and active goodness becomes equal to the angels and hastens to the holy dwelling, like the apostles, who were chosen not for their nature but because God foresaw their fitness, as with Matthias.
  • Miscellanies 6.14.108Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The perfect will rest on God's holy mountain, the highest church, passing beyond the Sabbath rest to the eighth day; the Lord's other sheep have other folds, and “Your faith has saved you” does not mean salvation without works.
  • Miscellanies 6.14.110Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Wisdom describes the astonishment of those who mocked the wise; God judges Gentiles justly, having given them philosophy and even the heavenly bodies to keep them from utter godlessness, but idolaters are condemned unless they repent.
  • Miscellanies 6.14.111Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Those who fell from star-worship to idols are worthless as a drop from a jar; the knower's every act is a right action, the simple believer's intermediate, and the Gentile's sinful, since Scripture requires acting with a goal and with reason.
  • Miscellanies 6.14.112Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Without knowledge one cannot rightly handle life; the fight for freedom from pleasure goes on everywhere, and those who do not do good do not know their own good, so they cannot pray rightly or use God's gifts well.
  • Miscellanies 6.14.113Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · A good conscience keeps the soul holy toward God and just toward others; such a soul, empowered by the Lord, practices being godlike, gives thanks in reading, prayer, offering, and song, and is never separated from God.
  • Miscellanies 6.15.115Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The knower bears the closer likeness, the Teacher's mind, teaching and living it; a Christian must master his inner passions and exceed the Pharisees, and only the knower understands the hidden sayings of the Spirit, keeping silent before the unworthy.
  • Miscellanies 6.15.125Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ spoke all things in parables, including the law and prophets, which are understood by the church's rule, the harmony of the two covenants; knowledge leads to prudence and then self-restraint, and the perfect man's righteousness comes from love of God.
  • Miscellanies 6.16.136Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The bodily spirit is the seat of perception and desire; “You shall not covet” means ruling that spirit, and man is God's image not in bodily shape but because, as God creates by the Word, the knower acts well by reason.
  • Miscellanies 7.3.14Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The true sacrifice God accepts is a humble, purified heart; Christians kill the old self and rise to the new, and they offer no animal sacrifices, since God needs nothing and delights only in our salvation.
  • Miscellanies 7.3.17Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows, master of himself, studies both divine things (God, the Word, the order of creation) and human things (nature, virtues, vices), and uses courage to resist pleasure, desire, grief, and anger.
  • Miscellanies 7.3.18Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows is courageous, indifferent to praise and blame, calm and self-controlled, rich in wanting nothing, and just in loving to live with his fellow believers on earth and in heaven.
  • Miscellanies 7.3.19Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The servant of God obeys the commandments willingly, but the friend of God is pure in heart out of knowledge itself; virtue is not innate or picked up by habit, nor does knowledge come from trades or ordinary schooling.
  • Miscellanies 7.3.20Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Laws and rhetoric cannot give firm hold on truth, but philosophy prepares the soul for faith; the one who knows is an athlete in the world's stadium, judged by God and the Son, who wins immortality by overcoming the passions.
  • Miscellanies 7.3.21Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Our part is to obey God gladly and please him; the Savior counts good done to believers as done to himself, and harm done to them as dishonor to himself; like the sun, the Word sees even the smallest acts.
  • Miscellanies 7.4.27Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · True purity is not ritual washing but a clear conscience and abstaining from sin; so souls must first be cleansed of false opinions before receiving the true teaching.
  • Miscellanies 7.7.36Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows is a royal priest of God; he shuns the theater and luxuries, gives thanks to God for food and drink, rarely attends banquets, and knows that God hears even unspoken thoughts.
  • Miscellanies 7.7.45Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Taught by the truth, the one who knows is gentle, patient, incorruptible, and unshaken by pleasure or pain; as a judge he is impartial, and he trusts that God governs all things for the best.
  • Miscellanies 7.8.50Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows neither lies nor swears: his whole life is his oath, and he answers simply “yes” or “no,” as Christ taught.
  • Miscellanies 7.8.51Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · A truthful life makes oaths unnecessary; the one who knows keeps faith by his deeds, needs only God's witness and his conscience, and will never deny the truth, even under torture.
  • Miscellanies 7.9.53Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows speaks as he thinks; like Paul circumcising Timothy, he may accommodate himself to others for their salvation without hypocrisy, but he never lies deceitfully.
  • Miscellanies 7.10.59Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Some people act bravely, even under torture, from mere temperament, but without the love that comes from knowledge; the one who knows acts rightly because he understands, in every virtue.
  • Miscellanies 7.11.60Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows begins from wonder at creation, believes in God and providence, and eagerly learns, receiving the realities behind the words and understanding the commandments in a deeper sense.
  • Miscellanies 7.11.61Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Taught by the Lord, the one who knows never prefers pleasure to what is right, resisting temptation as Joseph did, and remains unshaken by disease or death, which God uses as a saving medicine.
  • Miscellanies 7.11.62Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows uses created things with thanksgiving and restraint, bears no grudge, prays for those who wrong him, and grows through love from faithful servant into God's friend.
  • Miscellanies 7.11.65Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows fears nothing but evil; death, disease, poverty, and disgrace are not truly evils, and he plays well whatever part God gives him in the drama of life.
  • Miscellanies 7.11.67Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Some endure martyrdom for glory, from fear, or for rewards, like children in faith; the one who knows endures out of love for God, which is chosen for its own sake, and his self-restraint likewise springs from knowledge, not from ambition, greed, or fear.
  • Miscellanies 7.12.69Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows treats everyone alike, helping those in need, even enemies and persecutors, with wise discernment; like God, he is no one's enemy, though the disobedient make themselves his enemies.
  • Miscellanies 7.12.70Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Self-control begins in fear of God and is perfected in love; the one who knows eats, drinks, and marries as need and reason require, and the married man who serves God amid family cares surpasses the solitary man, whose virtue is less tested.
  • Miscellanies 7.12.71Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Knowledge is a kind of death to the passions that frees the soul to live for God; the one who pleases God does not seek pleasure in food, drink, or sex, for no one can serve God and the pleasures money buys.
  • Miscellanies 7.12.72Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Only the Lord was free from desire by nature; his followers become so by discipline; the knowing souls are the wise virgins of the parable, who wait for the Lord with their lamps lit and pray for what is good, not what is pleasant.
  • Miscellanies 7.12.74Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows labors in the Lord's vineyard, is tested only for the good of others, prays for those who hate him, shuns the cruel spectacles of the arena, and does God's will, holding future things more present than things at hand.
  • Miscellanies 7.12.76Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows fasts from evil deeds and evil thoughts; he keeps the Lord's day whenever he casts off a bad thought, and he disciplines his eyes, seeing the beauty of others with the soul rather than with desire.
  • Miscellanies 7.12.77Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Believers are true brothers who share the same faith, knowledge, and hope; the one who knows lives in the city as in a desert, takes the apostles' place in helping others, does good in secret, and goes without so that a brother in need may not suffer.
  • Miscellanies 7.12.80Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows does good promptly, shares his goods and bears his brothers' burdens, keeps the Lord's commands day and night, teaches his children, and, like Job, is thankful and patient in every loss.
  • Miscellanies 7.14.84Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement closes his sketch of the one who knows and turns to 1 Corinthians 6: going to law before the unjust is seeking revenge, praying for retribution is better but still imperfect, and the perfect pray for their enemies.
  • Miscellanies 7.14.85Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · As God sends sun and Savior to the just and unjust alike, the one who knows forgives seventy times seven and asks forgiveness for his wrongdoers; to pray against them is itself to wrong and defraud them.
  • Miscellanies 7.14.86Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · All human beings are God's work and should be treated as brothers; retaliation in deed, word, or thought is wrong, and those washed and sanctified must, like the sun, show kindness to the just and unjust and forgive as they hope to be forgiven.
  • Book of the Laws of Countries 13Anonymous · ca. 196–235
  • Book of the Laws of Countries 17Anonymous · ca. 196–235
  • On Idolatry 1Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Idolatry is the chief sin, containing murder, adultery, fraud, and every other vice, because it robs God of his honor and serves the demons.
  • On Idolatry 2Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Idolatry is not only sacrifice and incense, just as Christ taught that adultery includes lust and murder includes hatred; Christians must recognize its hidden forms.
  • On Idolatry 5Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Idol-makers' excuses, that they must earn a living, that Paul told each to remain as he was called, or that Moses made the bronze serpent, do not excuse them.
  • On Idolatry 6Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Even apart from the law, the baptismal renunciation of the devil forbids making idols; one who makes them for others to worship offers them his own soul.
  • On Idolatry 8Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Craftsmen who build or furnish temples share the guilt of idolatry, but they can earn a living through the many other uses of their skills, and must refuse knowingly to make anything for idols.
  • On Idolatry 9Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Astrology was taught by the fallen angels and is a form of magic; the magi's visit to Christ ended its license, as the fate of Simon Magus and Elymas shows.
  • On Idolatry 10Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Christians should not be schoolmasters, who must teach the myths of the gods and keep pagan festivals, but they may learn literature, rejecting the idolatry in it.
  • On Idolatry 11Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Trade breeds covetousness and lying, and trades that supply idol worship, such as selling sacrificial animals or incense, make a Christian the idols' agent.
  • On Idolatry 12Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · The excuse “I have nothing to live on” is answered by Christ's words and examples: the disciples left everything, and faith does not fear hunger.
  • On Idolatry 13Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Christians must not share in pagan festivals or their gift-giving customs, for the world's rejoicing is not theirs, and to join in is to be ashamed of Christ.
  • On Idolatry 14Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · The fear that refusing pagan customs will bring blasphemy on Christ's name is no excuse; Christians may live among pagans but not share their festivals, since they have their own Lord's day and Pentecost.
  • On Idolatry 15Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Hanging lamps and laurels on doors for public festivals honors the door-gods and demons; Christians owe obedience to rulers, but only within the bounds set by God.
  • On Idolatry 16Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Christians may attend family occasions such as weddings and coming-of-age ceremonies, which are clean in themselves, but not as participants in any sacrifice.
  • On Idolatry 17Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Christians in service to officials must not assist at sacrifices; whether a Christian could hold public office is doubtful, since he would have to avoid every idolatrous duty and every capital judgment.
  • On Idolatry 18Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · The insignia of Roman office are bound up with idolatry, unlike the honors Joseph and Daniel wore, and Christ's own humility teaches Christians to shun worldly rank and power.
  • On Idolatry 19Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · A Christian may not become a soldier, nor may soldiers remain soldiers after believing, for the oath to Christ cannot be shared with the oath to Caesar, and Christ disarmed Peter.
  • On Idolatry 20Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Idolatry can creep in through words: Christians may mention pagan gods' names in ordinary speech, but must never call them gods or swear by them, even in common exclamations.
  • On Idolatry 21Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Keeping silent when someone swears or curses by the gods, or cursing back in their name, honors the idols; a Christian should answer with a blessing in God's name.
  • On Idolatry 22Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · A Christian should not accept a blessing in the name of pagan gods but should make it known that his kindness was done for God; to let oneself pass as a pagan is to deny Christ.
  • On Idolatry 23Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Signing a written oath by the gods to secure a loan is a real denial even if nothing is spoken, since the soul dictates what the hand writes, as Zechariah “spoke” in writing.
  • On Idolatry 24Tertullian · ca. 196–211 · Faith can steer safely through the dangers of idolatry by watchfulness; avoiding idolatry is the Christian's law, and just as no idolater was figured in Noah's ark, none should be in the church.
  • Octavius 12.5Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Romans prosper without the Christian God, while Christians shun public festivities connected with the gods.
  • Octavius 12.6Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Christians deny themselves life's pleasures and gain nothing hereafter.
  • Octavius 23.7Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Myths of divine adultery and lust give authority to human vice.
  • Octavius 25.11Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Temples are centres of vice more than brothels.
  • Octavius 28.10Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · The obscene charges reflect the pagans' own sexual vices.
  • Octavius 28.11Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Pagans commit acts no one should have to endure.
  • Octavius 30.2Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Pagans expose infants and procure abortions.
  • Octavius 30.6Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Christians abhor bloodshed so much that they do not even eat animal blood.
  • Octavius 31.4Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Pagan promiscuity and child exposure make unknowing incest likely.
  • Octavius 31.5Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Christians keep to one marriage, sober meals, and many to lifelong virginity.
  • Octavius 31.8Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Christians know each other by virtue and love each other as brothers in God.
  • Octavius 32.3Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Christian sacrifices are innocence, justice, honesty, and rescuing others.
  • Octavius 35.5Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Even with their shortcomings, Christians live far better than pagans.
  • Octavius 35.6Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Christians avoid even sinful thoughts, and none are in prison except for their faith.
  • Octavius 36.1Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Fate is no excuse: the mind is free and people are judged by their actions.
  • Octavius 36.3Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Christian poverty is a glory, since frugality strengthens the mind.
  • Octavius 36.4Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · The truly poor are those who always want more; Christians are rich toward God.
  • Octavius 36.5Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Like the birds, Christians possess everything by not coveting.
  • Octavius 36.6Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Life's journey is easier without the weight of wealth.
  • Octavius 36.7Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Christians prefer virtue to wealth, and their sufferings are a soldier's service, not punishment.
  • Octavius 37.10Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Office and noble birth mean nothing; only virtue distinguishes people.
  • Octavius 37.11Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Christians avoid the public games, rooted in idolatry and full of violence.
  • Octavius 37.12Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · The theatre teaches adultery and dishonours the gods; pagans weep at fictional deaths but demand real ones.
  • Octavius 38.1Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Christians avoid sacrificial food not from fear but to make clear they do not honour demons.
  • Apology 9Tertullian · ca. 197 · Tertullian turns the charges back on the pagans: child sacrifice, exposure of infants, drinking of blood, and the risk of incest are found among them, while Christians forbid even abortion and abstain from blood.
  • Apology 36Tertullian · ca. 197 · True loyalty to the emperors lies not in festival displays but in the conduct God requires toward everyone: never to wish, do, speak, or think ill of anyone.
  • Apology 37Tertullian · ca. 197 · Christians, commanded to love their enemies, never retaliate, though they are now so numerous everywhere that they could resist, or empty the empire by withdrawing.
  • Apology 42Tertullian · ca. 197 · Christians are not useless to society: they live, work, trade, farm, sail, and serve as soldiers like others, and pay their taxes honestly, abstaining only from pagan rites.
  • Apology 45Tertullian · ca. 197 · Christians alone are truly innocent, because their law, taught by God, forbids even anger, lust of the eyes, and retaliation, and they fear his eternal judgment.
  • Apology 46Tertullian · ca. 197 · Christianity is not merely a philosophy: philosophers attack the gods unpunished, but their lives contradict their teaching, while Christians know God and live chastely and faithfully.
  • On the Dress of Women 1.1Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Tertullian tells Christian women that, as daughters of Eve bearing the guilt of the first sin, they should dress in penitence rather than finery.
  • On the Dress of Women 1.2Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · The fallen angels of Genesis 6 taught women jewelry, dyes, and cosmetics; Christians, who will judge those angels, should not covet their gifts.
  • On the Dress of Women 1.4Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Tertullian distinguishes “dress” (gold, jewels, clothes), which shows ambition, from “adornment” (hair and skin), which invites lust.
  • On the Dress of Women 1.5Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Gold and silver are only earth, mined by convicts, and less useful than iron and bronze; their prestige is baseless.
  • On the Dress of Women 1.6Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Gems are mere pebbles and pearls a shellfish's wart; a Christian woman who wears a gem from a serpent's head cannot tread on the devil's head.
  • On the Dress of Women 1.7Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Where gold and gems are common, as among barbarians and Parthians, they are despised; their value is only rarity.
  • On the Dress of Women 1.8Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Dyed cloth is an “adultery of colors” God did not make; that materials come from God no more justifies vanity than it justifies spectacles or idolatry.
  • On the Dress of Women 1.9Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Rarity breeds covetousness and ambition, which inflate prices until a woman wears estates and fortunes on her neck, ears, and fingers.
  • On the Dress of Women 2.1Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Addressing Christian women, Tertullian argues that chastity, the guardian of the Spirit's temple, requires modest outward dress, not merely bodily integrity.
  • On the Dress of Women 2.2Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Women should not seek to be desired, both for their own safety and because a man who lusts after them sins in his heart; even natural beauty should be downplayed.
  • On the Dress of Women 2.3Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Even harmless beauty is useless to chaste women and not a proper object of glory; Christians glory in the flesh only when it suffers for Christ.
  • On the Dress of Women 2.4Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · A wife need please only her husband; a Christian husband does not require beauty, and a pagan one suspects it.
  • On the Dress of Women 2.5Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Cosmetics criticize God's workmanship and borrow the devil's art; they are a lie of the face and an adultery of appearance.
  • On the Dress of Women 2.6Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Dyeing the hair blond or black harms it, resembles offering to idols, and contradicts Christ's word; hiding old age is foolish for those who long to depart to the Lord.
  • On the Dress of Women 2.7Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Elaborate hairstyles and wigs defy Christ's word and may use hair from the damned; God commands women to be veiled, and nothing artificial will rise at the resurrection.
  • On the Dress of Women 2.8Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Men too are tempted to vanity in grooming, and must likewise renounce it, since chastity requires gravity in face and dress.
  • On the Dress of Women 2.9Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Rich clothing serves vanity; like those who renounce marriage or wine for God, Christian women should use wealth as if not using it, since the time is short.
  • On the Dress of Women 2.10Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · God did not invent dyes, jewelry, or pierced ears; these came from the fallen angels, and even permitted things are tests best met by abstaining.
  • On the Dress of Women 2.11Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Christian women go out only for grave purposes, such as visiting the sick, the Eucharist, or hearing the word, and need no finery; the fear that plainness brings blasphemy is misplaced.
  • On the Dress of Women 2.12Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Christian women dressed like courtesans invite just blame; Scripture describes the harlot city in purple and gold, and Tamar was taken for a harlot by her dress.
  • On the Dress of Women 2.13Tertullian · ca. 197–206 · Christian chastity must be visible, like a light on a hill; women should shed luxuries that would weaken them for chains and martyrdom and adorn themselves with modesty, God's word, and Christ's yoke.
  • To the Nations 1.4Tertullian · 197 · Christians are hated for their name, like Socrates for truth, even when their lives visibly improve, and their true marks are wisdom, self-restraint, chastity, compassion, truth, and freedom.
  • To the Nations 1.5Tertullian · 197 · Some who are called Christians are wicked, but Christians disown them, and the wickedness belongs to the individuals, not to the name.
  • To the Nations 1.15Tertullian · 197 · Pagans who accuse Christians of killing infants themselves expose and drown their newborns in defiance of the law, and commit worse acts besides.
  • To the Nations 1.16Tertullian · 197 · The charge of incest at Christian meetings is turned back on the pagans, whose exposed children and casual unions make incest common, as a recent case at Rome showed.
  • On the Shows 1Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Tertullian writes to catechumens and baptized Christians to show that the faith forbids attending the public shows, rejecting the pagan claim that such pleasures do God no harm.
  • On the Shows 2Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · It is argued that the materials of the shows are God's good creation, but everything God made can be perverted by the devil, who corrupted man and his use of creation from the beginning.
  • On the Shows 3Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Though Scripture does not forbid the shows by name, the first psalm's blessing on the man who does not sit in the council of the ungodly applies to the crowds of the theatre and circus.
  • On the Shows 4Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · At baptism Christians renounce the devil, his pomp, and his angels, and since the shows are bound up with idolatry, that vow covers them too.
  • On the Shows 8Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Every part of the circus is dedicated to some god, yet places defile no one of themselves; what defiles is taking part in what is done there, as a spectator or worshipper.
  • On the Shows 10Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · The theatre is a shrine of Venus and Liber, gods of lust and drunkenness, and the stage arts were inspired by demons who hide behind the names of their supposed inventors.
  • On the Shows 12Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Gladiatorial shows began as human sacrifices to the dead, and so remain idolatry, even when given in honor of magistrates; the amphitheatre is a temple of demons.
  • On the Shows 13Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Since the shows are idolatrous, Christians must abstain from them, keeping their eyes and ears as clean as they keep their mouths from food offered to idols.
  • On the Shows 14Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Scripture's condemnation of worldly lusts covers the lust for pleasure, and the shows are a form of pleasure.
  • On the Shows 15Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · The Holy Spirit is to be kept in peace, but every show stirs up eagerness, rivalry, anger, and grief, and Christians must not keep company with those who do such things.
  • On the Shows 16Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · The circus breeds frenzy, partisan passion, curses, and hatred, all of which contradict Christ's commands to love enemies and bless those who curse.
  • On the Shows 17Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · The theatre is a school of unchastity; what is shameful to say or do is also shameful to hear and watch, for what enters through the eyes and ears defiles the spirit.
  • On the Shows 18Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Though Paul mentions the stadium, the violence and vanity of athletics disfigure God's image, and wrestling mimics the devil who threw the first humans.
  • On the Shows 19Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · The amphitheatre delights in human blood; even when the guilty die, the innocent should grieve, and innocent men too are killed there.
  • On the Shows 20Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Some argue that God watches the shows without being defiled, but God watches as judge; what he condemns is never lawful anywhere.
  • On the Shows 21Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Pagans judge good and evil inconsistently: modest and gentle in daily life, they applaud nakedness, filth, violence, and killing at the shows.
  • On the Shows 22Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Pagans adore charioteers, actors, and gladiators yet strip them of civil rights, which confesses that their trade is shameful.
  • On the Shows 23Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · God cannot be pleased by charioteers, masked actors, cross-dressing pantomimes, boxers, or beast-fighters, who deface his image and counterfeit what he made.
  • On the Shows 24Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · The shows belong to the devil's pomp renounced at baptism, and even pagans recognize a Christian by his refusal to attend them; to go back is to desert to the enemy.
  • On the Shows 25Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · No one can think of God at the shows, which stir lust and passion; the hands and mouth used in worship should not applaud actors and gladiators.
  • On the Shows 26Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Tertullian tells of a woman possessed by a demon at the theatre and another who died after dreaming of a shroud, as warnings that no one can serve two masters.
  • On the Shows 27Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Christians should shun the shows, where God is blasphemed and persecution is demanded, and should see their pleasant parts as honey on poison.
  • On the Shows 28Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · The Christian's feast is still to come; for now believers mourn while the world rejoices, and their true pleasure is to depart and be with the Lord.
  • On the Shows 29Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · Christians have their own better shows: forgiveness, freedom, victory over demons, the race toward the end, and the contests of virtue, in which they are crowned.
  • On Prayer 11Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Before praying we must be reconciled with our brothers and put away anger, as Christ and the apostle commanded.
  • On Prayer 20Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Tertullian turns to women's dress, following Peter and Paul, who both forbid ostentatious clothes, gold, and elaborate hairstyles.
  • On Prayer 21Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Tertullian takes up the disputed question whether virgins must be veiled, beginning with the argument of those who say Paul's command applies only to married women.
  • On Prayer 22Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Tertullian argues that Paul's command to veil “women” includes virgins, from the use of the word in Genesis and in Greek, from “every woman,” from the angels, and from nature; at the least, betrothed girls and consecrated virgins should be veiled.
  • On Repentance 1Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Pagans know repentance only as a natural feeling of regret, without reason, and so they even repent of their good deeds.
  • On Repentance 2Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · God himself instituted repentance after Adam's fall, calling Israel to it through the prophets and John the Baptist, so that the heart might be cleansed for salvation; it belongs to sins only, never to good deeds.
  • On Repentance 3Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Sins are both bodily and spiritual, of deed and of will; body and soul share guilt and need repentance alike, and Christ taught that sinful desire is itself sin.
  • On Repentance 4Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · God promises pardon to all who repent and even swears to it; the sinner should cling to repentance like a plank in a shipwreck, obeying because God commands.
  • On Repentance 5Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Repentance once made must not be undone by returning to sin: this is contempt and ingratitude toward God and a triumph for the devil; nor may anyone claim that inward fear of God excuses outward sin.
  • On Repentance 6Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Catechumens must not put off repentance, presuming on baptism to wash away sins committed meanwhile; true repentance must come before baptism, which seals a faith already changed.
  • On Repentance 7Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · After baptism, God has left open one further repentance for grave sin, but only once; the sinner should not abuse it, nor despair, but gratefully accept the remedy.
  • On Repentance 8Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · The letters to the seven churches, the prophets, and the parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the prodigal son show that God welcomes the sinner who repents and confesses.
  • On Repentance 9Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · The second repentance must be shown outwardly in exomologesis, public confession with sackcloth, ashes, fasting, weeping, and kneeling before the presbyters and the faithful, through which God pardons.
  • On Repentance 10Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Many avoid public penance out of shame, but among fellow Christians the sinner is before Christ himself, who prays for him; hiding sin from men does not hide it from God.
  • On Repentance 11Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Tertullian mocks those who shrink from the discomforts of penance, comparing them to candidates for office who endure worse for a single year's honor.
  • On Repentance 12Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · The fires of volcanoes foreshadow Gehenna; since exomologesis is the second remedy after baptism, the sinner should use it, like Nebuchadnezzar, and not reject it, like Pharaoh.
  • On Patience 1Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Tertullian confesses that he, an impatient man, writes on patience as a sick man speaks of health; patience is necessary to every Christian virtue and is praised even by pagan philosophers.
  • On Patience 2Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · The model of Christian patience is God himself, who bears with ungrateful and wicked humanity and gives his gifts to just and unjust alike.
  • On Patience 3Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Christ showed divine patience throughout his life, from his birth and baptism to his gentle ministry, his refusal of the sword at his arrest, and the insults of his passion.
  • On Patience 4Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Just as servants follow their master's character and even animals obey us, we ought to obey God, and obedience itself springs from patience.
  • On Patience 5Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Impatience was born in the devil, who could not bear God's favor to man; through it Eve and Adam sinned, Cain murdered, and Israel repeatedly rebelled; every sin springs from impatience.
  • On Patience 6Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Patience proved Abraham's faith; Christ, bringing faith to the nations, replaced the law's “eye for an eye” with patience, commanding love of enemies.
  • On Patience 7Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Christians should bear loss of property patiently, since nothing is truly theirs; patience in loss trains them to give freely, whereas pagans value money above the soul.
  • On Patience 8Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Christians should bear blows and insults patiently, as Christ commanded; patience blunts every injury, so that the one who inflicts it loses his aim and is himself the one who grieves.
  • On Patience 9Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Christians should not grieve impatiently for the dead, since, believing in the resurrection, they know that death is only a departure to Christ, whom they too will soon follow.
  • On Patience 10Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · The desire for revenge is a chief form of impatience; it makes the one provoked as guilty as the provoker and usurps God's right to judge and avenge.
  • On Patience 11Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Whatever the source of our troubles, the devil, ourselves, or God's discipline, we must bear them patiently; the Beatitudes promise happiness to the patient.
  • On Patience 12Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Patience makes peace and forgiveness possible, waits for the repentance of sinners (even a separated spouse), and is the source of the love Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13.
  • On Patience 13Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Patience is also exercised in the body: in fasting and penance, as Nebuchadnezzar showed, in continence and celibacy, and above all in enduring persecution and martyrdom.
  • On Patience 14Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Isaiah, Stephen, and above all Job are models of patience; Job, stripped of everything, only thanked God and was restored double.
  • On Patience 15Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · God rewards patience, which supports every virtue; Tertullian pictures Patience as a serene figure sitting on the throne of the gentle Holy Spirit, who cannot dwell in us without her.
  • On Patience 16Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Pagan “patience” in pursuit of money and pleasure is a devilish counterfeit; Christians should repay Christ's patience with patience of spirit and body, believing in the resurrection of both.
  • To His Wife 1.4Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · The desires of the flesh and of the world that urge remarriage should be overcome, following widows who have chosen to be “married to God” and trusting God's provision.
  • To His Wife 1.6Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Many Christians live continently even within marriage, and even pagan priestesses keep virginity and widowhood for their demons; a Christian widow can surely do so for God.
  • To His Wife 1.8Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · God champions widows; widowhood, being chosen by effort, has a merit of its own even beside virginity, and a widow should avoid idle and loose company.
  • To His Wife 2.3Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Marrying a pagan is sexual sin, a violation of the body bought by Christ's blood, and daily exposure to pagan ways wears faith away.
  • To His Wife 2.6Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Married to a pagan, a Christian woman is drawn into idolatrous festivals and taverns and loses the fellowship, prayer, and Scripture of Christian life.
  • Acts of Thomas 12Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · The Lord, in Thomas's likeness, urges the bride and groom to abstain from intercourse and children for the sake of the true, incorrupt marriage; they believe him.
  • Acts of Thomas 19Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · Thomas gives the king's money to the poor, tells the king the palace awaits only its roof, and thanks the Lord who sold him to free many.
  • Acts of Thomas 28Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · Thomas preaches against sexual immorality, greed, and gluttony, quotes the Lord's sayings on anxiety, and calls all to repent before the coming judgment.
  • Acts of Thomas 58Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · The raised woman begs to be spared the punishments; Thomas warns the crowd that worse punishments await unless they turn to God, who forgives and cleanses.
  • Acts of Thomas 79Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · The wild ass calls the crowd to believe Christ and his apostle, and warns against false apostles who preach continence and honesty while secretly living in vice.
  • Acts of Thomas 83Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · Thomas tells Mygdonia's bearers that the Lord's invitation is for them, that slaves and free alike are human, and that his command is not to do to others what we would not have done to ourselves.
  • Acts of Thomas 84Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · Thomas urges abstinence from adultery and all vice and praises holiness, which here means chastity, as the champion that leads to eternal life.
  • Acts of Thomas 86Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · Thomas praises gentleness, which conquered death and the enemy, and names holiness, freedom from care, and gentleness as the three marks that portray Christ.
  • Acts of Thomas 126Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · Before the king, Thomas defends his teaching that those who serve God must be pure and free from bodily pleasures, as a king's servants must be clean.
  • Bruce Codex, untitled work 16Anonymous · ca. 200–300 · The Mother's first-begotten Son receives a garment containing all bodies, broods over matter like a bird over its young, brings forth species from it, gives them the law of love and worship, and leads them out of darkness.
  • Didascalia 1.1 (Latin)Anonymous · first half of the third century · Covetousness of a neighbor's wife or goods is already adultery and theft; Christians keep the one simple law of not doing to others what they would not have done to themselves.
  • Didascalia 1.2Anonymous · first half of the third century · Christians bless those who curse them, leave vengeance to the Lord, and love their enemies.
  • Didascalia 1.7 (Latin)Anonymous · first half of the third century · A long quotation from Proverbs 7 and 5 warns against the adulterous woman.
  • Didascalia 1.8 (Latin)Anonymous · first half of the third century · A Christian woman walks modestly and does not bathe in the men's bath.
  • Didascalia 1.9Anonymous · first half of the third century · If a woman must use a mixed bath, she bathes rarely, briefly, modestly, and at the tenth hour.
  • On Proverbs, fragment 9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · On Prov 4:27: virtue is a mean; the ‘right’ to be shunned is apparent good through pleasure, and Boreas, the harsh wind called ‘right-hand,’ is the devil, called an angel.
  • On Proverbs, fragment 13Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · On Prov 6:27–28: desire is fire and the flesh a garment, so the eyes must be guarded, as Job and Paul did.
  • On Proverbs, fragment 14Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · On Prov 7:22: the man who follows the harlot is like the lustful, foolish kepphos bird that is easily caught.
  • On Proverbs, fragment 15Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · On Prov 7:26–27: the harlot's desire ends in death, and many forms of wickedness lead the foolish to Hades.
  • On Proverbs, fragment 17Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · On Prov 9:12: the wise must benefit many, while the wicked harm only themselves.
  • On Proverbs, fragment 44Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · On Prov 25:16: enjoy the things of life without excess.
  • Book of Jeu 2 43Anonymous · ca. 200–300 · Jesus forbids giving the mysteries to the unworthy, especially to a sect whose rites he describes as obscene and whose god he names Taricheas, and promises the disciples the mysteries, the three baptisms and the spiritual anointing, with moral commandments for those who receive them.
  • Pistis Sophia 102Anonymous · 3rd century
  • Letters to Virgins 1.2.1Anonymous · 3rd century · One who chooses celibacy for the kingdom must live worthily of it.
  • Letters to Virgins 1.2.2Anonymous · 3rd century · The kingdom is gained by active faith, shown in good works.
  • Letters to Virgins 1.2.3Anonymous · 3rd century · The lover of the poor heeds Proverbs on almsgiving.
  • Letters to Virgins 1.2.5Anonymous · 3rd century · The man of God must be an example in every good work.
  • Letters to Virgins 1.3.2Anonymous · 3rd century · Celibates must imitate Christ in everything to be saved.
  • Letters to Virgins 1.3.3Anonymous · 3rd century · Virginity without virtues is the foolish virgins’ lampless state.
  • Letters to Virgins 1.3.4Anonymous · 3rd century · Professed virginity without its power is vain.
  • Letters to Virgins 1.5.5Anonymous · 3rd century · Chastity is great but must be joined with the other virtues.
  • Letters to Virgins 1.7.1Anonymous · 3rd century · Form the image of Christ in every virtue.
  • Letters to Virgins 1.8.2Anonymous · 3rd century · A list of the works of the flesh.
  • Letters to Virgins 1.8.3Anonymous · 3rd century · The list of vices continues.
  • Letters to Virgins 1.12.1Anonymous · 3rd century · Visiting orphans, widows, and the poor is good.
  • Letters to Virgins 1.12.8Anonymous · 3rd century · Hospitality and brotherly love please God.
  • Letters to Virgins 2.3.2Anonymous · 3rd century · Ascetic men and consecrated women must not associate, to avoid scandal.
  • On Dice-Players 5Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Gambling is one of the devil's snares, and it is monstrous that a hand that receives the Eucharist and makes the sign of the cross should play at dice.
  • On Dice-Players 6Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Gambling breeds perjury, quarrels, and ruin, squanders inherited wealth, and is joined with nights spent with prostitutes.
  • On Dice-Players 7Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · The inventor of dice, an adulterer later worshiped as a god, set up his own image with the dice board and required players to sacrifice to him.
  • On Dice-Players 8Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Gambling involves sacrifice to the inventor of dice, so a Christian gambler shares in idolatry and receives the Eucharist unworthily.
  • On Dice-Players 9Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Gamblers rave, perjure themselves, and ruin their inheritance, and in playing they take part in the devil's sacrifice.
  • On Dice-Players 10Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Sin against God has no excuse, as the Gospels, Samuel, Paul, and John show, and the gambler is his own enemy.
  • On Dice-Players 11Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · The gambler is urged to give his money to the church and the poor instead, laying up treasure in heaven.
  • Prescription against Heretics 43Tertullian · ca. 203 · Heretics associate with magicians and astrologers and deny that God is to be feared; but where God is feared there is order, discipline, and a united church.
  • Commentary on Daniel 1.22Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · Susanna as a teacher of the church: men are urged to imitate Joseph and women Susanna, resisting seducers and heretics and choosing a brief death rather than sin.
  • Commentary on Daniel 3.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · Do not trust in kings or seek their favour, for their gifts are passing and their friendship dangerous; hope in the living God.
  • Commentary on Daniel 3.21-23Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · On Daniel 6:10: Daniel prays openly despite the decree rather than hide his faith; Christians obey the authorities by doing no evil, but must die rather than deny God, as the apostles obeyed God rather than men.
  • Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting 14Tertullian · ca. 211–213 · Paul's command to obey the authorities is a call to live well, not an excuse to avoid martyrdom: Caesar receives taxes and honour, but man himself belongs to God alone.
  • Exhortation to Chastity 1Tertullian · ca. 208 · Tertullian counsels a widowed brother that God wills our sanctification, which comes in three degrees: virginity from birth, continence from baptism, and “monogamy,” refusing a second marriage after a spouse's death.
  • Exhortation to Chastity 2Tertullian · ca. 208 · Since God took the first spouse away, remarrying is striving against his will; and we cannot excuse our choices as his will, because we choose freely, as Adam did.
  • Exhortation to Chastity 8Tertullian · ca. 208 · What is merely lawful is not thereby good; license tests discipline, and Paul, who did not use his right to a wife, calls us to follow his example.
  • Exhortation to Chastity 9Tertullian · ca. 208 · Tertullian argues that second marriage is akin to sexual immorality, since it arises from the same desire of the flesh, and that permitting a second marriage leaves no limit to further ones.
  • Exhortation to Chastity 10Tertullian · ca. 208 · Widowhood is an opportunity for continence, which makes prayer and spiritual life clearer; if even marital intercourse dulls the Spirit, a second marriage does so still more.
  • Exhortation to Chastity 12Tertullian · ca. 208 · Tertullian answers the excuses for remarrying (running a household, having heirs) and says a widower should rather take a widow as a “spiritual wife,” warning that a second marriage may bring children anyway.
  • Exhortation to Chastity 13Tertullian · ca. 208 · Even pagans honor once-married women and priestly celibacy, and Dido and Lucretia died rather than take a second man; how much more should Christians, like those of the church who live in continence, refuse a second marriage.
  • On the Pallium 4Tertullian · ca. 205–211 · Tertullian mocks the Romans for adopting Greek athletic fashions and for effeminate changes of dress, from Achilles and Hercules to Alexander and Roman matrons, and argues that the pallium, now worn by Christian wisdom, deserves respect rather than ridicule.
  • On the Pallium 5Tertullian · ca. 205–211 · The pallium is simple to wear, unlike the laborious toga; it withdraws from public life yet serves the public by lancing the luxury and cruelty of famous men of the toga.
  • Against the Valentinians 30Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · Believing themselves saved by nature, the Valentinians neglect discipline, explain away martyrdom, and make union with a woman a sacred mystery, while the church must work out its salvation.
  • Against Marcion 1.23Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · True goodness is rational and just: it serves its own first and never wrongs another; Marcion's god, stealing the Creator's man like a kidnapper stealing another's slave, shows a goodness that is irrational and unjust.
  • Against Marcion 1.26Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · A god who forbids sin but never judges or punishes it in effect permits it; true goodness must hate and punish evil in order to protect the good.
  • Against Marcion 1.27Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · A god who forbids sin but never punishes it invites every vice; the Marcionites themselves still fear sin, and their teaching that sinners are “cast away” implies a judgment after all.
  • Against Marcion 2.5Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · To the Marcionite charge that a good, all-knowing, all-powerful God would have prevented the fall, Tertullian answers that God's works prove all three attributes, and that the fall came from the free will God gave man as the very mark of his image.
  • Against Marcion 2.6Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · God rightly made man free: only a free being could truly be God's image, possess goodness as its own, resist evil, and deserve reward or punishment; so the fall is man's fault, not God's.
  • Against Marcion 2.9Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The soul is God's “breath,” not his Spirit: an image of God, free and rational, but not incapable of sin as God is; so its sin comes from its free choice, not from God, who forbade sin and warned of death.
  • Against Marcion 2.13Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Once evil entered the world, God's justice became the guardian of goodness: the fear of judgment keeps people from evil, and a God who can both reward and punish is to be loved as Father and feared as Lord.
  • Against Marcion 2.17Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Creator's judgments serve his goodness: he sends rain on good and evil, spares the repentant (Nineveh, Hezekiah, David), and gave laws of justice and kindness long before any pagan lawgiver.
  • Against Marcion 2.18Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The law of “eye for eye” was meant to restrain violence by the fear of immediate requital; the food laws taught self-control and prepared for fasting; and the sacrifices kept an idolatry-prone people bound to the true God.
  • Against Marcion 2.19Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The law kept Israel mindful of God in every part of life, and the prophets taught justice, mercy, and care for the poor, while the Psalms promise blessing to the righteous: proof of a supremely good God.
  • Against Marcion 4.12Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In the sabbath controversies Christ did not destroy the Creator's sabbath but fulfilled it, allowing the relief of hunger as David did and doing God's work of saving life, as Elisha had done.
  • Against Marcion 4.14Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Beatitudes on the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the persecuted echo the Creator's constant care for the lowly in the Psalms and Isaiah, and fulfill Isaiah 61, so they belong to the Creator's Christ.
  • Against Marcion 4.15Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The woes on the rich, the full, the laughing, and the praised are the Creator's own warnings from the law and prophets; the same God who blesses the poor rebukes the rich, so there is one God, not two.
  • Against Marcion 4.16Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Love of enemies, turning the other cheek, giving to all who ask, and the Golden Rule are the Creator's own law brought to fulfillment by Christ; a god who does not avenge would command patience in vain.
  • Against Marcion 4.17Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Tertullian argues that Christ's teaching on lending, mercy, judging, and being called “Lord” in Luke 6 continues the Creator's law and prophets, and mocks Marcion's god as a eunuch who forbids marriage yet claims sons.
  • Against Marcion 4.27Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's own apparent inconsistencies and his rebukes of the Pharisees and lawyers over washing, tithes, honors, burdens, the prophets' tombs, and the key of knowledge show that he upheld the Creator's law rather than attacking it.
  • Against Marcion 4.33Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's sayings on God and mammon, on the Pharisees' self-justification, and on the law and the prophets lasting until John show one God, the Creator, whose law is fulfilled rather than destroyed.
  • Against Marcion 4.35Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's warnings about causing stumbling, his teaching on rebuke and forgiveness, the healing of the ten lepers, and his sayings on the kingdom and the days of Noah and Lot all follow the Creator's law and prophets.
  • Against Marcion 4.37Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Zacchaeus fulfilled Isaiah's commands of mercy and was saved, Christ came to save the whole man, flesh as well as soul, and the parable of the entrusted money shows a God who judges.
  • Against Marcion 5.14Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh, not in a phantom body; God will raise mortal bodies as he raised Christ; and Paul's lament over Israel's ignorance, his praise of God's riches, and his moral precepts in Romans 8–14 all come from the Creator's Scriptures.
  • Against Marcion 5.18Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion altered Ephesians 3:9 to make the mystery hidden from the Creator, but the context, Paul's spiritual allegories, his moral commands, his teaching on marriage as a great mystery, and the powers of darkness in Ephesians 3–6 all point to the Creator.
  • On the Veiling of Virgins 2Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · Many apostolic churches in Greece and elsewhere veil their virgins; since they are one church with us, their custom is ours too, and the custom that hides virgins from view better suits God's discipline.
  • On the Veiling of Virgins 3Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · Veiling had been left to choice in Carthage until unveiled virgins, claiming to be scandalized, demanded that veiled virgins be uncovered; Tertullian condemns stripping a consecrated virgin of her veil as a kind of violation.
  • On the Veiling of Virgins 10Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · If virgins deserved a visible mark of honour, male virgins and the continent, whose struggle is harder, would deserve it more; since men have none, women should have none either.
  • On the Veiling of Virgins 12Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · A grown girl's body and her own grooming declare that she is a woman; it is inconsistent for her to claim virginity only by going bareheaded.
  • On the Veiling of Virgins 13Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · Virgins who veil themselves in public but go bareheaded in church are seeking the brothers' praise, whereas Christ commands that good deeds, and above all the offering of one's own body, be done in secret for God alone.
  • On the Veiling of Virgins 14Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · Displaying virgins to attract others makes virginity a matter of glory and rivalry; some who fall conceal it by staying unveiled, some attempt to destroy their unborn children, and public admiration wears down modesty.
  • On the Veiling of Virgins 15Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · True virginity fears itself and hides under the veil as under armor, guarding against envy, the evil eye, and temptation, content to be known to God alone.
  • On the Veiling of Virgins 16Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · Scripture, nature, and discipline all point to the veil; Tertullian urges every virgin to veil her head, since she is already married to Christ.
  • On the Veiling of Virgins 17Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · Tertullian warns married women against token head-coverings, citing Arabian women, a sister's vision of an angel, and the ostrich, and closes with a blessing.
  • On the Soul 16Tertullian · ca. 210 · Reason is natural to the soul from God, while the irrational came from the devil through sin; anger and desire can be rational, as they were in Christ.
  • On the Soul 25Tertullian · ca. 210 · Against those who say the soul enters at birth with the first breath, pregnant women know the fetus is alive in the womb; physicians' instruments for killing it show the same, so the soul is present from conception.
  • On the Soul 40Tertullian · ca. 210 · Every soul is unclean in Adam until it is born anew in Christ; the flesh is only the soul's instrument, so sin belongs chiefly to the soul.
  • On Flight in Persecution 13Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · The command to give to all who ask concerns alms, not extortion, and the saying about making friends by mammon does not mean paying off persecutors; Tertullian denounces whole churches and their bishops who pay regular protection money to soldiers.
  • On Monogamy 2Tertullian · ca. 210–217 · Tertullian defends the New Prophecy's discipline: Jesus promised that the Spirit would later teach new and hard things, and a true revelation of the Paraclete can be recognized by its agreement with the rule of faith.
  • On Monogamy 3Tertullian · ca. 210–217 · One marriage is not a new rule: Christ and Paul already preferred continence and allowed marriage only as a concession, so the Paraclete, far from innovating, spares our weakness by not demanding complete continence.
  • On Modesty 1Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Tertullian laments the decay of modesty and attacks a bishop's edict forgiving adultery and sexual immorality after penance, defending his New Prophecy view that such sins, like second marriage, exclude from the church.
  • On Modesty 2Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Against appeals to God's mercy, Tertullian sets God's justice and Scripture's warnings, and distinguishes remissible sins from irremissible ones, the “sins unto death.”
  • On Modesty 4Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Tertullian defines his terms, adultery and sexual immorality covering every union outside marriage, including secret unions not declared before the church, and excludes unnatural vices entirely.
  • On Modesty 5Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · In the Decalogue adultery stands between idolatry and murder, bound to both; it cannot be pardoned while they are not.
  • On Modesty 6Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Old Testament examples of pardon do not apply, since Christ has fulfilled and sharpened the law; flesh renewed in baptism is the body and temple of Christ, and only a precedent from the new era would count.
  • On Modesty 7Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · The parables of the lost sheep and coin concern heathen sinners, and even if applied to Christians they fit lesser sins, not adultery, whose guilty are counted as dead and expelled.
  • On Modesty 10Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Repentance belongs above all to the heathen; Tertullian rejects the idea of a second repentance for adulterers and the Shepherd of Hermas, which teaches it, in favor of John's call to amended life.
  • On Modesty 11Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Christ's pardon of the sinful woman and the Samaritan woman, given before his passion and the Spirit's coming, sets no precedent for pardoning Christians.
  • On Modesty 12Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · The apostolic decree of Acts 15 places sexual immorality between idolatry and bloodshed as sins the Spirit forbids, so, like them, it cannot be pardoned by the church.
  • On Modesty 13Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Tertullian argues that 2 Corinthians 2 does not pardon the incestuous man of 1 Corinthians 5, mocks the public penance of adulterers in the bishop's church, and reads “destruction of the flesh” as final exclusion.
  • On Modesty 14Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Tertullian argues from the severe tone of 1 Corinthians that the man forgiven in 2 Corinthians was one of those merely rebuked, not the incestuous man whom Paul condemned.
  • On Modesty 15Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · The rest of 2 Corinthians, with its calls to holiness and separation from impurity, shows Paul could not have restored the incestuous man to communion.
  • On Modesty 16Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Paul's teaching on the body as Christ's temple, on marriage as a concession against sexual immorality, and on divorce and continence shows he could never pardon adultery or incest after baptism.
  • On Modesty 17Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Paul's letters to the Thessalonians, Galatians, Romans, Ephesians, and Colossians all forbid sexual immorality after baptism, so one doubtful passage cannot outweigh them.
  • On Modesty 18Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Old Testament and apostolic texts forbid communion with the sexually immoral without any time limit; God's mercy to the repentant applies to those before baptism, while after baptism only lighter sins can be pardoned by the bishop and graver ones by God alone.
  • On Modesty 19Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Neither Revelation's call to Jezebel nor 1 John's promises of cleansing grant pardon for adultery after baptism; John distinguishes daily sins, forgiven through Christ, from deadly sins such as murder, idolatry, apostasy, adultery, and sexual immorality.
  • On Modesty 20Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Hebrews, which Tertullian ascribes to Barnabas, denies a second repentance, and the laws of the leper, the leprous house, and the betrothed slave woman prefigure that relapse after baptism cannot be cleansed.
  • On Modesty 21Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Forgiving grave sins belongs to God's power, not to church discipline; Christ's word to Peter was personal to him, and the church that forgives is the church of the Spirit acting through spiritual men, not the bishops.
  • On Modesty 22Tertullian · ca. 210–220 · Tertullian denies that confessors or martyrs can forgive adultery for others, since martyrdom washes only one's own sins, and protests that adulterers are readmitted more easily than those who denied Christ under torture.
  • On the Resurrection of the Flesh 11Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Those who deny the resurrection live most carnally; God, who made the world out of nothing (or even from matter), can surely remake the flesh.
  • On the Resurrection of the Flesh 15Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Flesh and soul act together even in thought, so God, as a just judge, must reward or punish the flesh along with the soul.
  • On the Resurrection of the Flesh 45Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The “old man” and “new man” are not flesh and soul but the former and the renewed way of life; Paul condemns sinful works, not the body.
  • On the Resurrection of the Flesh 46Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · In Romans 8 Paul condemns the works and mind of the flesh, not the flesh itself, and promises that God will raise our mortal bodies through his indwelling Spirit.
  • On the Resurrection of the Flesh 47Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The old man crucified with Christ is sinful conduct, not the body; Paul promises the members of the body sanctification and eternal life, and baptism in the flesh points to its resurrection.
  • On the Resurrection of the Flesh 49Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · In the context of 1 Corinthians 15, “flesh and blood” that cannot inherit the kingdom means the earthly way of life of the old Adam, not the substance of the body.
  • On the Crown 1Tertullian · 211 · A Christian soldier refused to wear the laurel crown at a donative, confessed “I am a Christian,” and was imprisoned; Tertullian defends him against Christians who called him reckless and asked where Scripture forbids the crown.
  • On the Crown 2Tertullian · 211 · All the faithful refrain from crowns; those who ask where Scripture forbids it must equally show where Scripture commands it, and what is not expressly permitted is forbidden.
  • On the Crown 5Tertullian · 211 · Nature itself forbids the crown: God gave flowers to be enjoyed by sight and smell, and to wear them on the head, where they cannot be perceived, is against nature.
  • On the Crown 6Tertullian · 211 · Paul appeals to nature as God's law, and creation is to be used as nature directs, since the devil has corrupted its use, as in the public shows.
  • On the Crown 8Tertullian · 211 · Some inventions credited to pagan gods, such as letters, music, medicine, ships, and clothing, are rightly used by the saints and by Christ because they serve real human needs; things beyond such needs, like the crown, are not.
  • On the Crown 9Tertullian · 211 · No patriarch, prophet, priest, apostle, or bishop, nor the temple or its furnishings, was ever crowned; Christ's crown of thorns was a Roman soldiers' insult, and Scripture never mentions crowns among Israel's festivities.
  • On the Crown 10Tertullian · 211 · The crown belongs to idols and to the dead; created things are clean, but using them with the rites and dress of idolatry defiles them, and Christians must flee idolatry in every form.
  • On the Crown 11Tertullian · 211 · Tertullian argues that military service itself is incompatible with the Christian's oath to Christ, since it involves the sword, executions, guarding temples, and pagan rites; soldiers converted in service must leave, avoid sin by every means, or suffer martyrdom.
  • On the Crown 12Tertullian · 211 · The military laurel, myrtle, and olive are sacred to pagan gods, and the crown is worn at vows to Jupiter, donatives, and triumphs; to wear it is to deny Christ, as Judas sold him for silver.
  • On the Crown 13Tertullian · 211 · Every occasion for crowns, civic offices, public festivals, pagan weddings, manumission, and the games, belongs to the world and to idolatry, which Christians renounced at baptism; their citizenship, freedom, and honours are in Christ.
  • On the Crown 14Tertullian · 211 · A man's head belongs to Christ and a woman's is veiled, so neither may be crowned; Christ wore thorns for us, and the Christian should not wear flowers where he wore thorns.
  • To Scapula 1Tertullian · 212 · Christians do not fear persecution; Tertullian writes out of love for his enemies, as Christ commanded, to warn them of what is coming.
  • To Scapula 4Tertullian · 212 · Tertullian urges Scapula not to fight against God, citing lenient governors, Christian healings of pagans, the favor of Severus, the rain miracle under Marcus Aurelius, and the blameless life of Christians.
  • On First Principles 3.1.1Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Since the church's preaching includes God's just judgment, which implies that our life is in our power, Origen turns to the question of free choice.
  • On First Principles 3.1.3Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · A rational being can judge its impressions: what befalls us from outside is not in our power, but how we use it is, by the judgment of reason.
  • On First Principles 3.1.4Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Outside incitements cannot compel us: nothing is done without the mind's assent, as a man resolved on chastity can resist a woman's enticement.
  • On First Principles 3.1.5Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · To blame outside causes or bodily temperament for our sins makes us like stones; conversions and corruptions show that the use of what befalls us is in our power.
  • On First Principles 3.1.6Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Scripture confirms free choice: Moses, the prophets, the Psalms, the Saviour's commandments and Paul all speak to us as able to keep or transgress what is commanded.
  • On First Principles 3.1.7Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Origen sets out the passages that seem to exclude free choice: the hardening of Pharaoh, the heart of flesh in Ezekiel, the parables, and Paul's words on mercy and the potter.
  • On First Principles 3.1.9Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Those who make the God of the law only just, not good, must explain how a just God can harden Pharaoh's heart and then condemn him.
  • On First Principles 3.1.18Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Against those who infer from “not of him who wills” that salvation is not in us, Origen argues that willing and running toward the good is itself good, and cannot come from a bad nature.
  • On First Principles 3.1.19Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · As a house, a besieged city, a harvest or a ship's safe arrival is credited to God though human labour was needed, so salvation is God's mercy completing our will and effort.
  • On First Principles 3.1.20Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · “To will and to accomplish are from God” means that the power of willing and acting comes from God, while we direct it to good or evil.
  • On First Principles 3.1.21Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The potter's making of vessels for honour and dishonour does not remove free choice, for Paul blames and praises, and says that whoever cleanses himself becomes a vessel for honour.
  • On First Principles 3.1.24Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Paul's two sayings about vessels must be read together: nothing in our power is done without God's help, and nothing in God's hand is completed without our acts and purpose.
  • On First Principles 3.2.2Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Many sins arise from natural bodily motions such as hunger and desire; the hostile powers then inflame these beyond measure, at times even to madness.
  • On First Principles 3.2.3Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Some sins arise from the flesh warring against the spirit; God, like a just president of the games, lets each be tempted only according to his strength, while the use of that strength is in our power.
  • On First Principles 3.2.4Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Thoughts arise from ourselves, from hostile powers, or from God and the angels, as Scripture, Hermas and Barnabas attest; but in every case we remain free to accept or reject them.
  • On First Principles 3.2.6Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The demons' warfare is spiritual: misfortunes like Job's are allowed by God and aim to drive us to anger, despair or complaint against God.
  • On First Principles 3.2.7Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Misfortunes happen not by God's doing yet not without him, since he permits the hostile powers within limits; next Origen turns to false knowledge.
  • On First Principles 3.3.5Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Why some are moved by good spirits and others possessed from birth: Origen suggests causes earlier than bodily birth, since the soul always has free choice and is never without motion.
  • On First Principles 3.3.6Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Good or evil suggestions may also have causes before birth, but our watchfulness or sloth opens the heart to the ministering spirits or to the devil.
  • On First Principles 3.4.3Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · On this view a lukewarm soul in the middle is worse off than one that follows the flesh, which may tire of its evils and turn more quickly to the spirit.
  • On First Principles 3.4.4Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The opposing view holds that there is one soul: inner conflict is ordinary deliberation, and 'flesh against spirit' means the body's needs and pleasures distracting us from divine things.
  • On First Principles 3.5.5Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · God foresaw from the beginning the causes of each being's state; those who do not see that the world's variety arises from free choice blame chance or fate and cannot clear God's providence.
  • On First Principles 4.3.4Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Origen does not deny that most of Scripture's history happened or that most precepts are to be kept literally; the patriarchs' tomb, Jerusalem, the Decalogue and Christ's commands stand as written.
  • On First Principles 4.4.10Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · To deny the immortality of what is made in God's image insults Christ, the Image; the image lies in the virtues, acquired by imitating God, and the mind advances by a 'divine sense' from visible to intellectual things.
  • Eclogae on Exodus-Judges, column 807Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Deuteronomy 12–19: sin by excess and by defect; clean animals read of conduct and meditation on Scripture; feasts and assemblies distinguished; boundaries; the law of retaliation and Christ's teaching.
  • Fragments on Genesis, column 67Origen · ca. 220-254 · Human beings have real powers for good and evil; God hides the future from us, as Jeremiah's “perhaps” shows, so that foreknowledge may cause neither despair nor slackness.
  • Fragments on Genesis, column 95Origen · ca. 220-254 · The image of God lies in the rational soul and is shown in actions; man was given rule over some animals, but not over sea monsters and wild beasts.
  • Fragments on Job, column 81Origen · ca. 220-254 · God lets us argue our case with him, and Eliphaz's false charges against Job describe real sins of creditors who strip the poor.
  • Fragments on Job, column 83Origen · ca. 220-254 · Eliphaz's charges become lessons on mercy to widows and orphans, on the sleep of sin, and on God's providence over all.
  • Fragments on Luke, column 315Origen · ca. 220-254 · Zacharias and Elizabeth were righteous before God, who alone sees the heart, and blameless because they kept the commandments without vainglory.
  • Fragments on Luke, column 347Origen · ca. 220-254 · The moonstruck boy pictures souls whose virtue waxes and wanes like the moon, healed only by the faith that moves mountains; the Son of Man is handed over by the Father, by Judas and by the devil.
  • Fragments on Proverbs, column 151Origen · ca. 220-254 · The word "prudence" in Scripture can mean the serpent's cunning or the virtue by which God made the heavens, and the prudent virgins show that it is a virtue.
  • Fragments on Proverbs, column 169Origen · ca. 220-254 · Demons cannot reach the mind given to wisdom; almsgiving and meekness drive away terrors; the Lord resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.
  • Fragments on Proverbs, column 181Origen · ca. 220-254 · The harlot of Prov 7 is wickedness, which meets those who give themselves to pleasure and lies in wait at every corner of impure thought.
  • Fragments on Proverbs, column 211Origen · ca. 220-254 · Christ is father to the mature and mother to the immature; double weights are excess and deficiency in virtue; the eye and ear that attend to good are the Lord's work.
  • Fragments on Proverbs, column 217Origen · ca. 220-254 · The mind is a horse that bears the Lord's name; rich and poor serve each other's salvation; the faithful from the nations now lend teaching to Israel; the devil must be driven out of the council of the soul.
  • PG 12:1131 (Ps 3–4 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Who hates God: not persons but the evils in them, which must be hated with a perfect hatred; the broken teeth of sinners are irrational thoughts; the end of Psalm 3 and the start of Psalm 4, with its title “for the end.”
  • PG 12:1141 (Ps 4 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The heavy-hearted are slow disciples and those who seek the falsehood of antichrist; the “cry” God hears is the soul’s silent voice; “be angry” in Ps 4:4 may be imperative or indicative, and anger may be a chosen passion or an involuntary first movement.
  • PG 12:1143 (Ps 4 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The anger that is an involuntary first movement is not sin, and Aquila’s “be agitated” confirms the reading; Ps 4:4 teaches an examination of conscience at bedtime; “compunction” in Scripture means being stung by sin, as with Ahab.
  • PG 12:1149 (Ps 4 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Love “hopes all things,” the promised beatitudes; on Ps 4:6, “Who will show us good things?” is the cry of those who long to understand the promises, which only the wise, like Paul, can show; then an extract from Origen’s tome on the question what the good things are.
  • PG 12:1151 (Ps 4 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Three views of good and evil (only chosen things, only unchosen things, or both); Scripture plainly calls virtues good, but some think it also teaches goods of the body and external goods, citing the promises and curses of the law.
  • PG 12:1157 (Ps 4 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Afflictions cannot be evils, since the Apostle boasts in them and the righteous are always afflicted, as Job’s trials show; the literal blessings of the law (lending to nations, health, wealth) do not fit the saints, and true health and wealth belong to the soul.
  • PG 12:1159 (Ps 4 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The literal reading would make health and wealth higher than virtue and leads to crude hopes of eating and begetting after the resurrection; Origen’s own view: the unchosen good is the Lord’s power that cooperates with our building and guarding.
  • PG 12:1161 (Ps 4 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The good of a rational being is mixed, from our choice and God’s cooperating power, as a harvest needs both the farmer and the weather; even the perfect fall if they claim the credit, like the fallen morning star; Scripture uses “good” and “evil” loosely for pleasant and painful things.
  • PG 12:1179 (Ps 7 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · On Ps 7:3–8: the righteous man does not repay evil, being no longer a child under the law; the empty and the full; the enemy who tramples those who bear the image of the man of dust; God’s “arising” is his power to discipline, and the enmity of his enemies ends in reconciliation; Christ’s return on high after the resurrection.
  • PG 12:1207 (Ps 13–14 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Only Christ, the physician, could bring the salvation from Zion, and the Old Testament calls him “salvation”; LXX Psalm 14 (Ps 15): the holy mountain is the knowledge of Christ, reached by one who walks blameless like Abraham and works all the virtues, unlike Cain.
  • PG 12:1209 (Ps 14–15 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The end of LXX Psalm 14 (Ps 15:3–4): the blameless man harms no neighbor and reproaches no one; LXX Psalm 15 (Ps 16), whose heading is lost: only the sinless can call God “my Lord,” and God needs nothing of our offerings; the goods and the saints in his land.
  • PG 12:1221 (Ps 16 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · On Ps 17:11–13 (LXX 16:11–13): the enemies surround those they have cast out of virtue; whether the vices, like the virtues, follow one another; the lion lying in wait is the impure thought; God’s sword is the righteous soul, to be rescued from the enemies of his hand.
  • PG 12:1267 (Ps 23 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Ps 23 LXX (24):4–10: clean hands and a pure heart, seeking the face of God, and the gates of the virtues.
  • PG 12:1287 (Ps 27 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Ps 27 LXX (28):3–5: the righteous drawn among sinners to save them, hypocrites who speak peace, and punishment as remedial discipline.
  • PG 12:1607 (Ps 118 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 119:110–116 (LXX 118): the snares laid for Joseph and Daniel, the reward stored up, and hating the lawless man's sin while loving the image of God in him.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 1.19.15Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · For Plato only goods of the soul are truly good; bodily and external goods are only so called.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 1.19.16Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Plato's four virtues each lie between two vices, and possessing them brings happiness.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 1.19.17Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Plato defines happiness as becoming as like God as possible, holy and just with wisdom.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 1.19.18Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Plato held that the virtues always agree while the vices are many and conflicting.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 1.19.19Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Plato admitted fate but also human freedom and responsibility.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 1.19.20Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Plato taught that wrongdoing is involuntary, arising from ignorance of the good.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 1.19.21Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus cites a passage he attributes to the Republic that wrongdoing is involuntary.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 1.19.22Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Plato said punishment is good because it purifies the wrongdoer and deters others.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 1.19.23Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · For Plato evil is not made by God but is a falling away from the good.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 1.20.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Unlike Plato, Aristotle held that the wise man also needs bodily and external goods.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 1.22.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Epicurus made pleasure the goal of wisdom, understood variously by his followers.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 1.24.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Only those who conquer bodily passions, the Brahmins say, reach God.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 6.19.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus charges Simon's followers with promiscuity, which they call perfect love, claiming that the redeemed cannot sin.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 6.19.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon's followers reject the prophets as inspired by the world-making angels and claim freedom to do as they wish.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 6.19.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They teach that evil is only a convention of the world-making angels and expect the world's dissolution.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 6.27.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus explains several Pythagorean maxims: do not provoke anger, despise small things, stir up strife, or take up menial work.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 6.41.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Marcus was thought to prophesy and taught his disciples that, belonging to the perfect power, they could sin without danger.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 7.36.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus blames Nicolaus, one of the seven deacons, whose followers John rebuked in Revelation for sexual immorality and eating idol sacrifices.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.12.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Callistus, a Christian slave of Carpophorus, ran a bank in Rome and lost the deposits of widows and fellow Christians.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.12.20Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus charges that Callistus founded a rival school and was lax, promising forgiveness to any sinner who joined him.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.12.21Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus says Callistus's rule drew people with bad consciences and excommunicates, and that he refused to depose bishops even for mortal sin.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.12.23Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Callistus likened the church to Noah's ark, with clean and unclean animals together, and crowds flocked to him.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.12.24Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus charges that Callistus allowed unmarried women of rank to take a slave or free man as a partner, regarded as a husband without legal marriage.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.12.25Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus says that as a result some Christian women used contraceptives and procured abortions, and he calls Callistus's teaching adultery and murder.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.15.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · He vows before the seven witnesses to avoid sin and is baptized in his clothes.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.18.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Essenes live in self-control and mutual love, abstain from marriage themselves without forbidding it, and adopt others' children.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.19.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Essenes share all property; newcomers sell their goods for a common fund distributed by need.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.19.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · No Essene is in want; they avoid oil, elect stewards, and always dress in white.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.20.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Essenes live in many towns and welcome traveling members as family; they travel carrying only a weapon.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.20.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Each town has an Essene steward; they own no spare clothing and exchange goods freely without buying or selling.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.21.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Their meals are quiet and orderly, and they are always sober and moderate.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.22.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Essenes obey their leader, show mercy, avoid anger, and refuse oaths, since their word is stronger than an oath.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.23.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The initiate swears to revere God, wrong no one, hate no one but pray for enemies, and be faithful to rulers, since authority comes from God.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.23.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · He also swears to rule humbly, love truth, not steal, keep nothing from members and reveal nothing to outsiders, and pass on the teachings unchanged.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 9.30.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Their laws produce a dignified and temperate life, admirable to any reader.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 10.33.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · God made the human being from all the elements to rule creation; he made a man, not a god, but one who obeys him may become a god and be entrusted with greater things.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 10.33.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Humans were made with free will; evil is not a created thing but arises when a free being chooses it.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 10.33.10Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The giving of the law proves human free will; God gave it through righteous men and finally through Moses.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 10.33.13Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Christian faith rests not on eloquence but on words spoken by divine power, through which the Word calls humans freely back from disobedience.
  • Refutation of All Heresies 10.33.15Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Word took a body from the virgin and lived through every age of life, showing in his humanity that God made nothing evil and that humans are free.
  • Fragment on 1 Corinthians (Jenkins § 39, part 1)Origen · ca. 226-254 · Origen distinguishes commanded duties from voluntary counsels such as virginity, notes that Paul calls chastity “good” but marriage only “not sin,” and on 1 Cor 7:27 says the married must not seek release nor the released seek a wife.
  • Commentary on John 1.68Origen · ca. 230–248 · Good done to Christ's disciples is done to Christ and belongs to the gospel written in heaven.
  • Commentary on John 1.72Origen · ca. 230–248 · The thorns that crown Jesus are the cares and pleasures that choke the word in believers.
  • Commentary on John 1.73Origen · ca. 230–248 · Believers must take care not to crown Jesus with their own thorns.
  • Commentary on John 1.270Origen · ca. 230–248 · Those in whom reason is not yet developed have no sin; those who share in the Word and act against it do.
  • Commentary on John 2.92Origen · ca. 230–248 · “All things” cannot include vice and sin, which did not come to be through the Word.
  • Commentary on John 2.93Origen · ca. 230–248 · Some interpret “nothing” as evil, which has no real existence.
  • Commentary on John 2.94Origen · ca. 230–248 · “Nothing” and “what is not” are synonyms, and Paul calls evil things “things that are not.”
  • Commentary on John 2.96Origen · ca. 230–248 · God, who is, is the good; so evil, the opposite of good, is what is not.
  • Commentary on John 2.97Origen · ca. 230–248 · The devil as devil is not God's creation, though the being who became the devil was created by God.
  • Commentary on John 2.98Origen · ca. 230–248 · Saints share in God who is, and so truly are; the wicked, turning from him, become “non-beings.”
  • Commentary on John 2.99Origen · ca. 230–248 · Vice is the “nothing” that came to be without the Word.
  • Commentary on John 2.105Origen · ca. 230–248 · Origen asks whether vice comes about through the reason in each person.
  • Commentary on John 2.106Origen · ca. 230–248 · Sin requires law and reason; without them there would be no sin.
  • Commentary on John 2.107Origen · ca. 230–248 · Since reason within shows what to do, sin too comes about through reason, which removes every excuse.
  • Commentary on John 2.108Origen · ca. 230–248 · The Word is not to blame for sin, as a teacher is not to blame when his lessons leave a wrongdoer no excuse.
  • Commentary on John 2.109Origen · ca. 230–248 · Reason in us is an inseparable teacher; when we misuse it, it judges us.
  • Commentary on John 2.110Origen · ca. 230–248 · The Word within will judge us, though this reading stretches the meaning of “Word” in John's prologue.
  • Commentary on John 2.136Origen · ca. 230–248 · Since darkness can become light, every person can change for better or worse.
  • Commentary on John 2.158Origen · ca. 230–248 · The light of men includes both good works and true knowledge; darkness includes evil deeds and false knowledge.
  • Commentary on John 2.160Origen · ca. 230–248 · Hosea speaks of a light of knowledge; John's letter uses darkness for evil works.
  • Commentary on John 2.161Origen · ca. 230–248 · Walking in darkness means evil deeds, while ignorance of divine things is another kind of darkness.
  • Commentary on John 6.102Origen · ca. 230–248 · The soul without God is a wilderness that must be called to make the Lord's way straight.
  • Commentary on John 6.103Origen · ca. 230–248 · The Lord's way is made straight in both contemplation and action, turning neither right nor left.
  • Commentary on John 6.105Origen · ca. 230–248 · The good way leads to the good Father; it is narrow and “pressed” by those who travel it.
  • Commentary on John 6.259Origen · ca. 230–248 · The sixth day brings the wedding at Cana; the greater coming to the lesser teaches humility and readiness to help.
  • Commentary on John 6.300Origen · ca. 230–248 · Knowing that God disciplines everyone in love, we should live so as not to need painful correction.
  • Commentary on John 10.90Origen · ca. 230–248 · Israel removed leaven from their houses; Christians keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
  • Commentary on John 10.102Origen · ca. 230–248 · The bitter herbs are godly grief in repentance, or the hardships of seeking truth.
  • Commentary on John 10.104Origen · ca. 230–248 · Boiling the lamb is watering Scripture down into lax, comfortable interpretations.
  • Commentary on John 10.132Origen · ca. 230–248 · Jerusalem is the soul gifted for spiritual insight; even such a soul can sin and, unless it repents, become a citizen of foreign cities.
  • Commentary on John 10.133Origen · ca. 230–248 · Jesus finds in the temple, that is, in the church or its teaching, people making the Father's house a place of trade.
  • Commentary on John 10.134Origen · ca. 230–248 · There are always money-changers in the church who need Christ's whip.
  • Commentary on John 10.135Origen · ca. 230–248 · Some sell off the oxen of labor for God's kingdom, and some prefer money to the sheep that clothe them.
  • Commentary on John 10.136Origen · ca. 230–248 · Many sell out the guileless “doves” for miserable profit.
  • Commentary on John 10.137Origen · ca. 230–248 · Christ drives out the traders from the soul, overturning the tables of the love of money.
  • Commentary on John 10.141Origen · ca. 230–248 · The soul is a temple; Jesus drives out its earthly and foolish impulses with the whip of reasoned teaching so that it may truly serve God.
  • Commentary on John 10.142Origen · ca. 230–248 · Oxen stand for earthly things, sheep for folly, doves for flighty thoughts, coins for false goods.
  • Commentary on John 10.204Origen · ca. 230–248 · Whoever receives Christ need not fear heretical arguments (the chariots of Ephraim) or lust (the horse).
  • Commentary on John 10.221Origen · ca. 230–248 · Christ, Son of a “jealous” God, is zealous that nothing foreign defile God's house within each soul.
  • Commentary on John 13.21Origen · ca. 230–248 · Jesus blesses those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
  • Commentary on John 13.166Origen · ca. 230–248 · Jesus shows his humility by speaking of great things to a poor woman drawing water.
  • Commentary on John 13.167Origen · ca. 230–248 · We, in our pride, despise humble people, forgetting that each bears God's image.
  • Commentary on John 13.168Origen · ca. 230–248 · God, who fashions every heart, is the God of the lowly and savior of the hopeless.
  • Commentary on John 13.174Origen · ca. 230–248 · Like her, we should leave lesser concerns and hurry to share what we have received.
  • Commentary on John 13.278Origen · ca. 230–248 · Those sunk in passions and the flesh cannot lift their eyes to see the harvest.
  • Commentary on John 13.288Origen · ca. 230–248 · A third sense: Paul calls this life's deeds a sowing and their recompense a harvest.
  • Commentary on John 19.45Origen · ca. 230–248 · Words and deeds both go into the treasury, and Christ judges by each one's ability, not the amount.
  • Commentary on John 19.46Origen · ca. 230–248 · Christ prefers those who give little from little ability to those who give more from great ability.
  • Commentary on John 19.47Origen · ca. 230–248 · No one should look down on those who seem to do less, since only God knows what each could do.
  • Commentary on John 19.57Origen · ca. 230–248 · Christ's imitator should come to the spiritual temple and bring words of eternal life and matching deeds.
  • Commentary on John 19.58Origen · ca. 230–248 · Origen wishes all would give their whole wealth to God.
  • Commentary on John 19.85Origen · ca. 230–248 · Some sins kill the soul, some weaken it, and some bring it loss.
  • Commentary on John 19.138Origen · ca. 230–248 · Whoever lays up treasure on earth is from below; whoever lays up treasure in heaven is born from above.
  • Commentary on John 19.139Origen · ca. 230–248 · Works show where one is from: the works of the flesh or the fruit of the Spirit; love of the world cannot coexist with love of God.
  • Commentary on John 19.152Origen · ca. 230–248 · One who dies in sin has not truly believed, even if he claims to; faith without works is dead.
  • Commentary on John 19.154Origen · ca. 230–248 · One born of God does not sin; believing in Christ as Righteousness excludes doing wrong.
  • Commentary on John 20.32Origen · ca. 230–248 · Abraham's seed may become his children by diligence, or lose even the seed by neglect; Jesus' hearers still had hope.
  • Commentary on John 20.66Origen · ca. 230–248 · “The works of Abraham” is plural: it means all his works, not faith alone.
  • Commentary on John 20.75Origen · ca. 230–248 · Becoming Abraham's child requires wisdom and every virtue.
  • Commentary on John 20.78Origen · ca. 230–248 · Sinners are children of the devil, and more specifically of some wicked figure.
  • Commentary on John 20.90Origen · ca. 230–248 · Sinning after grace crucifies Christ afresh, and this was true before his coming as well as after.
  • Commentary on John 20.99Origen · ca. 230–248 · 1 John 3 explains why sinners are called children of the devil.
  • Commentary on John 20.100Origen · ca. 230–248 · Continuation of 1 John 3.
  • Commentary on John 20.101Origen · ca. 230–248 · Conclusion of the quotation.
  • Commentary on John 20.102Origen · ca. 230–248 · All who sin are of the devil.
  • Commentary on John 20.103Origen · ca. 230–248 · While we sin, we are still the devil's children, even if we are believers.
  • Commentary on John 20.104Origen · ca. 230–248 · Whoever is not of the devil does not sin.
  • Commentary on John 20.105Origen · ca. 230–248 · Until we let Christ destroy the devil's works in us, we remain the devil's children, known by our fruits.
  • Commentary on John 20.106Origen · ca. 230–248 · No one is a child of God or of the devil by nature; one can change from the devil's child to God's.
  • Commentary on John 20.107Origen · ca. 230–248 · One becomes a child of God by loving enemies; every person of mature reason is either God's child or the devil's, depending on whether he sins.
  • Commentary on John 20.108Origen · ca. 230–248 · 1 John also says those who remain in the Son do not sin, and those who sin have not seen him.
  • Commentary on John 20.109Origen · ca. 230–248 · The sinner does not abide in the Son; one who has seen him does not sin.
  • Commentary on John 20.110Origen · ca. 230–248 · Seeing the Son gives power not to sin.
  • Commentary on John 20.111Origen · ca. 230–248 · “You do your father's works” fits both sinners and the righteous.
  • Commentary on John 20.112Origen · ca. 230–248 · Can one be God's child and the devil's by turns? That is irrational and not what Scripture says.
  • Commentary on John 20.113Origen · ca. 230–248 · One born of God does not sin.
  • Commentary on John 20.114Origen · ca. 230–248 · John does not say those born of the devil never do right, only that sinners are of the devil.
  • Commentary on John 20.120Origen · ca. 230–248 · One born of God cannot sin because God's seed remains in him.
  • Commentary on John 20.121Origen · ca. 230–248 · 1 John 5:18: the one born of God keeps himself from the evil one.
  • Commentary on John 20.122Origen · ca. 230–248 · Whoever does not keep himself from the evil one is not born of God.
  • Commentary on John 20.142Origen · ca. 230–248 · Loving enemies makes one a son of the Father.
  • Commentary on John 20.146Origen · ca. 230–248 · Only exceptional right actions may make one a son rather than a servant of God.
  • Commentary on John 20.147Origen · ca. 230–248 · Sonship is linked specifically to loving enemies.
  • Commentary on John 20.148Origen · ca. 230–248 · Loving enemies imitates God, who loves and spares all he has made.
  • Commentary on John 20.149Origen · ca. 230–248 · The saying about sonship would not fit after the teaching on adultery.
  • Commentary on John 20.150Origen · ca. 230–248 · Nor would it fit after the teaching on oaths.
  • Commentary on John 20.151Origen · ca. 230–248 · God's sons, like the Father, let their love shine and their prayer fall like rain even on enemies.
  • Commentary on John 20.176Origen · ca. 230–248 · The devil's children do his many desires, which are the mind of matter and enmity against God.
  • Commentary on John 20.177Origen · ca. 230–248 · Murder, injustice, greed, and impurity can be called the devil's desires, which he breeds in his children.
  • Commentary on John 20.178Origen · ca. 230–248 · It is harder to see how sexual sins can be the devil's own desires.
  • Commentary on John 20.179Origen · ca. 230–248 · The devil desires that people sin sexually and instills that desire in those who serve him; in this sense he sins first.
  • Commentary on John 20.180Origen · ca. 230–248 · Likewise the devil does not want money but wants people to love it.
  • Commentary on John 20.181Origen · ca. 230–248 · We must examine our wishes, for wishing the devil's desires forms us in his image.
  • Commentary on John 20.189Origen · ca. 230–248 · There is also bad desire, as with lustful looking; and desire need not be for something absent.
  • Commentary on John 20.192Origen · ca. 230–248 · The man of sin does his father's works; our works too are either God's or the devil's.
  • Commentary on John 20.193Origen · ca. 230–248 · Our works and wishes show whether we are God's sons or the devil's.
  • Commentary on John 20.194Origen · ca. 230–248 · Even wishing to do the devil's desires makes one his son.
  • Commentary on John 20.195Origen · ca. 230–248 · Does wishing God's will suffice for sonship without doing it?
  • Commentary on John 20.196Origen · ca. 230–248 · Good willing is always joined by God to good working.
  • Commentary on John 20.232Origen · ca. 230–248 · The “living” in Christ are the perfect; the “dead in Christ” are believers who still sin from ignorance or weakness.
  • Commentary on John 20.237Origen · ca. 230–248 · One “stands in the truth” who holds sound doctrine firmly and is unmoved from the good by any pressure.
  • Commentary on John 20.254Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon's view would excuse the devil; in fact all who still sin, like the devil, have not stood in the truth.
  • Commentary on John 20.255Origen · ca. 230–248 · Even professed Christians who sin are born of the devil.
  • Commentary on John 20.279Origen · ca. 230–248 · Imitating Christ, we should aim to have a clean conscience since our conversion, even if not since childhood.
  • Commentary on John 20.292Origen · ca. 230–248 · One hears God's words by becoming his son through love of enemies, not by nature.
  • Commentary on John 20.327Origen · ca. 230–248 · Some have called even irritability and slander demons.
  • Commentary on John 20.332Origen · ca. 230–248 · Rage and uncontrolled lust show demonic influence.
  • Commentary on John 20.337Origen · ca. 230–248 · Those who honor worldly things do not honor the Father.
  • Commentary on John 20.344Origen · ca. 230–248 · Everyone who acts wrongly dishonors Christ, who is righteousness and God's power.
  • Commentary on John 20.346Origen · ca. 230–248 · We must be at peace with all and keep God's peace in our hearts.
  • Commentary on John 20.347Origen · ca. 230–248 · The quarrelsome dishonor Christ, who is our peace.
  • Commentary on John 20.348Origen · ca. 230–248 · Those who do evil dishonor Christ, the light.
  • Commentary on John 20.378Origen · ca. 230–248 · Philosophers ascribe sin to bad judgments; Scripture adds the influence of demons.
  • Commentary on John 28.17Origen · ca. 230–248 · Nothing should come between Christ's command and our obedience.
  • Commentary on John 28.19Origen · ca. 230–248 · As creation obeyed God at once, so the faithful obey Christ at once; any delay is disobedience.
  • Commentary on John 28.20Origen · ca. 230–248 · The son who went to the vineyard only later was disobedient until he repented.
  • Commentary on John 28.21Origen · ca. 230–248 · Scripture warns against delaying conversion or good deeds.
  • Commentary on John 28.102Origen · ca. 230–248 · One can do right things without righteousness, as those who give to the poor for glory.
  • Commentary on John 28.103Origen · ca. 230–248 · The same holds for every virtue.
  • Commentary on John 28.209Origen · ca. 230–248 · He teaches us to withdraw both from persecution and from worldly honors.
  • Commentary on John 28.210Origen · ca. 230–248 · He fled alone when the crowd wanted to make him king.
  • Commentary on John 32.13Origen · ca. 230–248 · No soul, however perfect, stays wholly unsoiled.
  • Commentary on John 32.15Origen · ca. 230–248 · The feet need washing from small sins the many do not even notice.
  • Commentary on John 32.24Origen · ca. 230–248 · The devil shoots every kind of sin into hearts that lack the shield of faith.
  • Commentary on John 32.56Origen · ca. 230–248 · Peter's words show that good intentions without understanding can lead to harmful speech.
  • Commentary on John 32.57Origen · ca. 230–248 · Peter, though reverent, spoke against his own good by refusing the washing that gave him a part with Christ.
  • Commentary on John 32.58Origen · ca. 230–248 · Many believers, meaning well, say or do harmful things out of ignorance.
  • Commentary on John 32.59Origen · ca. 230–248 · Those who forbid foods and things meant for use are an example of such well-meant error.
  • Commentary on John 32.91Origen · ca. 230–248 · Jesus showed Peter it was better for his vow to prove false.
  • Commentary on John 32.92Origen · ca. 230–248 · Peter had to let his rash word prove false in order to have a part with Jesus.
  • Commentary on John 32.94Origen · ca. 230–248 · This passage can be used to persuade people to abandon rash promises that harm them.
  • Commentary on John 32.95Origen · ca. 230–248 · People should be persuaded to set aside rash promises, even sworn ones, rather than persist in them.
  • Commentary on John 32.96Origen · ca. 230–248 · Like Peter, one who made a rash promise should change course.
  • Commentary on John 32.139Origen · ca. 230–248 · Origen allows that literal foot-washing may sometimes rightly be done out of love.
  • Commentary on John 32.178Origen · ca. 230–248 · Having “all faith” means being perfect in the virtue of faith.
  • Commentary on John 32.179Origen · ca. 230–248 · Imperfect virtues are called by the same names only loosely.
  • Commentary on John 32.185Origen · ca. 230–248 · Since faith has hidden degrees, humans should not judge one another.
  • Commentary on John 32.210Origen · ca. 230–248 · One who becomes such an apostle should not be proud but faithful.
  • Commentary on John 32.219Origen · ca. 230–248 · The works of the flesh, set against the fruit of the spirit, are all blameworthy.
  • Commentary on John 32.255Origen · ca. 230–248 · The disciples knew that the will of those still growing can change.
  • Commentary on John 32.258Origen · ca. 230–248 · No one should be overconfident; each disciple searched the others' hearts, wondering who could fall so far.
  • Commentary on John 32.287Origen · ca. 230–248 · Guard the heart against the devil's darts, lest he then enter.
  • Commentary on John 32.360Origen · ca. 230–248 · As sinners bring blasphemy on God's name, the saints' good works bring it glory.
  • On Prayer 6.2Origen · ca. 233–234 · Denying free will is absurd: we experience ourselves choosing, and everyone praises and blames others as responsible for their acts.
  • On Prayer 9.3Origen · ca. 233–234 · Coming to prayer free of grudges, as the prophet and Jesus command, already gives us the best of gifts.
  • On Prayer 19.2Origen · ca. 233–234 · Jesus condemns praying for human glory; those who pray or give to be seen already have their reward, as the rich man had his good things in this life.
  • On Prayer 19.3Origen · ca. 233–234 · Those who follow the broad, crooked road of pleasure, even praying at feasts while drunk, are the ones who pray “at the street corners,” not on Christ's narrow and straight way.
  • On Prayer 22.3Origen · ca. 233–234 · Only true children of God, whose lives and hearts agree with their words, can rightly call God “Father,” just as only a life of obedience truly says “Jesus is Lord.”
  • On Prayer 28.1Origen · ca. 233–234 · The petition on debts recalls Paul's teaching that we owe others not only money but kind words, deeds, and above all love.
  • On Prayer 28.2Origen · ca. 233–234 · We owe duties to fellow Christians, to family, to fellow citizens, to all people, and even to our own body, soul, mind, and speech.
  • On Prayer 28.3Origen · ca. 233–234 · Above all we owe God wholehearted love, Christ the price of our redemption, the Holy Spirit fruit that does not grieve him, our guardian angels their due, and the watching world a worthy performance.
  • On Prayer 28.6Origen · ca. 233–234 · Remembering our own unpaid debts to God and others should make us gentle toward those who fail in their duties to us.
  • On Prayer 28.7Origen · ca. 233–234 · Whoever will not forgive will be treated like the unforgiving servant in the parable; we must forgive the repentant even seven times a day and seek the healing even of the unrepentant.
  • On Prayer 29.5Origen · ca. 233–234 · No condition of life is free from temptation: the poor may steal, the rich grow proud, and even Paul and Hezekiah were in danger of pride.
  • On Prayer 29.6Origen · ca. 233–234 · Poverty, wealth, and moderate means each bring their own temptations.
  • On Prayer 29.7Origen · ca. 233–234 · Health and sickness both bring temptations: the healthy to sins of the body, the sick to impure thoughts, impatience, and shame at bearing Christ's name.
  • On Prayer 29.8Origen · ca. 233–234 · Honor among men is also a temptation, leading the high born to pride and the low born to flattery that counterfeits love.
  • On Prayer 29.18Origen · ca. 233–234 · Examples from Genesis show that temptation reveals what was already in the heart: Eve's weakness, Cain's wickedness, Ham's impiety, Esau's profanity, and Joseph's self-control.
  • Homily on Luke 2Origen · ca. 233–250 · Zechariah and Elizabeth show that one who has ceased to sin can be called without sin, and that true righteousness is righteousness before God, done blamelessly and without vainglory.
  • Homily on Luke 8Origen · ca. 233–250 · Mary magnifies the Lord by making her soul, the image of Christ who is God’s image, great; the “lowliness” God regarded is the virtue of humility.
  • Homily on Luke 25Origen · ca. 233–250 · The people’s suspicion that John was the Christ shows the danger of love without measure, seen also in excessive claims made for Paul and for Origen himself; God alone is to be loved with the whole heart, and Christ is loved in the Father and the Father in him.
  • Homily on Luke 34Origen · ca. 233–250 · The parable of the Good Samaritan, following an earlier presbyter’s allegory, shows Christ the true “guardian” caring for wounded humanity, bringing it into the church and entrusting it to the church’s angel; and it calls us to imitate him.
  • Homily on Luke 38Origen · ca. 233–250 · Christ’s weeping over Jerusalem fulfils his own beatitude and also laments the baptized who fall into sin; his expulsion of those who sold doves warns teachers not to sell the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
  • Exhortation to Martyrdom 43Origen · 235 · Christians must show their knowledge by pure and patient lives, bearing dishonor and slander as Paul did, disciplined but not killed, rejoicing though seeming sorrowful.
  • Homily on Isaiah 8Origen · ca. 235–250 · Origen reads the idols of Jerusalem and Samaria as the hidden idols of sin in church members and heretics, and the boastful king of Assyria as the devil, whom Christians resist by standing firm on Christ the rock.
  • Address of Thanksgiving 9Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 238–245 · Origen taught the moral virtues, prudence, temperance, justice, and courage, by self-examination and by his own example, not by mere definitions.
  • Address of Thanksgiving 11Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 238–245 · Origen led Gregory to live the virtues: justice as attending to one's own soul, prudence as self-knowledge, temperance as preserving it, courage as perseverance.
  • Address of Thanksgiving 12Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 238–245 · Origen has not yet made Gregory virtuous, but has made him a lover of the virtues, above all of piety, whose end is to be made like God and abide in him.
  • Homily on 1 Samuel 1.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · From the words “one man” Origen teaches that the sinner is divided into many selves, while the righteous, imitating the unchangeable God who is one, become one, individually and together.
  • Homilies on Exodus 4.8Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Morally, the plagues are the stages by which the law of God purges a soul living in Egypt, ending with the destruction of its first sinful impulses, unless it persists in unbelief.
  • Homilies on Exodus 6.14Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · As Israel walked dry through the sea, one who follows Christ can pass through a sinful world untouched by the waves of lust and greed.
  • Homilies on Exodus 9.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Each believer can build the tabernacle within himself, with silver pillars of patience, an inner altar for sacrificing pride, anger, and lust, a lampstand of watchfulness, and a ruling mind that serves as high priest.
  • Homilies on Exodus 13.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The twisted linen is the flesh disciplined by abstinence, the goats' hair dead sin, the rams' skins dead fury; the wives' jewellery offered by the men is the obedient flesh's hearing, good works, and discernment, unlike the earrings given for the golden calf.
  • Homilies on Ezekiel 9.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · Sodom’s pride grew from plenty, like that of the rich man who ignored Lazarus; such arrogance makes anyone a “Sodomite” in the sense of Ezek 16:49.
  • Homilies on Ezekiel 9.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · Neglect of the poor and boasting are Sodom’s sins, found within us; both wealth and spiritual gifts breed pride, as Paul’s thorn and David’s fall after boasting of his purity show.
  • Homilies on Joshua 4.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The people enter the promised land on the tenth day of the first month, the day the Passover lamb was chosen, a sign that each virtue has its own perfection and all tend to one perfection.
  • Homilies on Joshua 5.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The people’s haste to cross the Jordan teaches the baptized to hasten through all the Beatitudes and then to guard carefully the virtues they have gained.
  • Homilies on Joshua 5.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The forty thousand girded men are those girded with truth in God’s sight, and the battle they cross over to fight is waged within, against the evils that come from the heart.
  • Homilies on Joshua 5.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Baptism, the second circumcision, removes the reproach of Egypt, but sin after baptism, especially sexual immorality and the superstitions of astrology and omens, brings back a heavier reproach.
  • Homilies on Joshua 7.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The accursed things of Jericho are worldly habits, pagan festivals, astrology, and augury, which Christians must not bring into the church.
  • Homilies on Joshua 7.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Achan’s sin, which brought wrath on all Israel, warns church leaders that sparing an unrepentant sinner endangers the whole church; after repeated warnings he must be cut off, even if he is a presbyter.
  • Homilies on Joshua 8.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Joshua’s feigned flight teaches the virtue of fleeing sin, especially sexual immorality, anger, and avarice, and the double tree signifies the twofold power of the cross, a tree of the knowledge of good and evil on which Christ and the devil both hung.
  • Homilies on Joshua 8.7Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The command to leave none of Ai alive is read as the war against sin and the demons, which the righteous must wage without sparing any vice; the Old Testament’s wars of slaughter are to be understood in this way.
  • Homilies on Joshua 9.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The Deuteronomy, or “second law,” that Jesus writes on living stones is the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, written on the hearts of believing Gentiles.
  • Homilies on Joshua 9.7Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Those by Gerizim are believers drawn to salvation by desire for God’s promises, those by Ebal believers moved by fear of punishment; only Jesus can tell them apart.
  • Homilies on Joshua 9.9Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Jesus reads the law to those with inner ears; the “men, women, infants, and proselytes” of the assembly are the perfect, the weaker, the newly baptized, and the catechumens, and Scripture distinguishes “man” and “woman” by the soul, not by sex.
  • Homilies on Joshua 10.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Church members whose faith never changes their conduct share the Gibeonites’ lot; the law freeing a Hebrew slave in the seventh year urges the baptized who have fallen into sin to hasten back to freedom.
  • Homilies on Joshua 15.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The enemy horses that are hamstrung, unlike the donkeys that are spared, figure the proud fallen powers and the passions of the body, which must be curbed by fasting and slain while still small, so that no stirring of vice remains in the soul.
  • Homilies on Joshua 15.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Each believer had a particular king of sin, such as avarice, pride, or lust, whom Jesus slays and commands us to leave no trace of; Christ also fulfilled the whole law, being born under it.
  • Homilies on Joshua 22.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The Canaanite is the flesh, which first only pays tribute, then becomes obedient, and finally, in the perfect, is put to death with its vices.
  • Homilies on Joshua 22.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Pharaoh’s taking of Gezer, “building,” and giving it to his daughter warns that a soul which lets the body live carnally will be led captive to the law of sin.
  • Homilies on Joshua 22.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The Canaanite flesh must be subdued and finally exterminated, lest the soul fall captive to Pharaoh, the law of sin, and become a “seed of Canaan” instead of a child of Abraham.
  • Homilies on Joshua 24.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Joshua, who distributed all the land, took his own portion last and received it from the people, an example of the humility commanded of leaders.
  • Homilies on Judges 1.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The saints' days are long and the evil days are shortened for the elect; the many days of Jesus are the virtues in which the Lord is served.
  • Homilies on Judges 1.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · To know the works of the Lord, in Scripture's usage, is to do them, as not knowing sin means not committing it.
  • Homilies on Judges 2.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Bowing the knee to Baal is any sin; whatever a person loves above all is his god, so avarice, lust, and ambition are idolatry.
  • Homilies on Judges 6.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The beasts and shining she-asses are the body and flesh made bright by chastity under the inner man; in God's people righteousness, not strength, wins.
  • Homilies on Leviticus 1.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Morally, one's own flesh is the calf to be offered in chastity, but bodily chastity without the other virtues is like the foolish virgins' lamps without oil.
  • Homilies on Leviticus 3.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The law that one who knows of a sin and stays silent shares its guilt agrees with the Gospel order of private rebuke, witnesses, and the church; the scribes who keep silent about the oath of Ps 110 share Israel's sin.
  • Homilies on Leviticus 3.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Touching the unclean signifies contact with sin (desire, greed) and following those dead in sin, whether 'men', 'clean animals' of the church, or those seized by the devil; literal corpse-impurity is rejected.
  • Homilies on Leviticus 3.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The oath 'to do evil' is the vow to chastise the flesh for the sake of the spirit; the command to 'declare' one's sin means accusing oneself first, before the devil accuses.
  • Homilies on Leviticus 4.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The law on denying deposits, fraud in partnership, and robbery edifies the weak literally, but Origen refuses to think the faithful guilty of such crimes and turns to the spiritual sense.
  • Homilies on Leviticus 7.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The law forbidding priests wine at the altar teaches sobriety, which the Gospel confirms; mystically, Christ the high priest drank wine with his disciples before his passion, but at the altar of the cross vowed not to drink until he drinks it new in the kingdom.
  • Homilies on Leviticus 8.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Leprosy covering the whole body is 'clean' because it signifies those deprived of reason (by infancy or madness), whose acts are not reckoned as sin; the 'living colour' is restored reason, after which sin is imputed.
  • Homilies on Leviticus 8.8Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Burns signify the fiery darts of the devil, carnal love, ambition, and anger; if after healing the old vice breaks out again from the scar, the soul is again judged leprous.
  • Homilies on Leviticus 11.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · As firstborn animals, sacred vessels, and priestly garments are 'holy' because set apart for God alone, so a person is holy who separates himself from worldly life and keeps his vows to God.
  • Homilies on Leviticus 11.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Origen distinguishes commandments from judgments with penalties and argues that the law's death penalty for adultery purged the sinner, whereas Christians, spared bodily punishment, must be purged by repentance or face future judgment.
  • Homilies on Leviticus 11.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Cursing father or mother deserves death because God is our spiritual Father and the heavenly Jerusalem our mother; earthly parents must be honoured, and those who blaspheme the Creator are worse still.
  • Homilies on Leviticus 14.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Origen consoles habitual slanderers with the many degrees of blessedness and the graded fire that tests wood, hay, and stubble, but urges them to reform; one 'goes out' of the church by sin, not by an unjust sentence.
  • Homilies on Leviticus 15.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The houses are the heavenly dwelling built by fear of God and right living; lighter sins can always be redeemed by repentance, while for graver crimes repentance is granted only once.
  • Homilies on Leviticus 16.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The 'trees of the fields' are the virtues planted in the soul, such as righteousness, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and wisdom, the tree of life.
  • Homilies on Numbers 20.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Origen recounts how Balaam counselled Balak to defeat Israel by seducing it into sexual immorality and idolatry, urges Christians to arm themselves with the virtues against such darts, and explains “the teaching of Balaam” in Revelation as doing what Balaam did.
  • Homilies on Psalms 36-38 1.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Origen calls Psalm 36 (37) wholly moral and explains “do not emulate”: neither lead others into wickedness nor imitate the wicked; from Deut 32:21 and 1 Cor 10:22 he shows that “emulate” means to provoke jealousy.
  • Homilies on Psalms 36-38 2.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Anger is a vice that troubles even the wise and must be burned away like hay and stubble; we should cease from it gradually, and not rival others in wickedness.
  • Homilies on Psalms 36-38 3.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The upright in heart are “slaughtered” when believers of long standing scandalize a newcomer into sin; the blood God will require is the blood of the soul, from a brother if a believer caused the fall, from a “beast” if the hostile power worked through an unbeliever.
  • Homilies on Psalms 36-38 8.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The righteous man guards his ways by guarding his tongue, since we must give account even for idle words; weighing each word before speaking shuts out anger and makes speech gracious and healing.
  • Homilies on Psalms 36-38 8.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Three degrees of response to insult: the small repay in kind, the advancing keep silent “even from good things,” and the perfect bless those who curse them, as Paul did.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 1.14Origen · ca. 240 · Unlike Isaiah, Jeremiah was touched by the Lord's own hand; the kingdoms and nations he roots out are sins in the soul, weeds sown by the devil, which God's words uproot.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 5.5Origen · ca. 240 · Shame for past sins is the beginning of good; those who boast of their immoralities cannot be freed from them until they are ashamed.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 5.6Origen · ca. 240 · The “sheep” of the fathers are the soul's irrational impulses; Christ the good shepherd must dwell in the soul and shepherd them.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 5.7Origen · ca. 240 · The fathers' oxen, sons, and daughters that shame consumes are the soul's wicked labors, thoughts, and deeds, which are destroyed when the sinner is ashamed of them.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 5.9Origen · ca. 240 · Passions such as anger are a veil over the soul's face; God does not hide his glory, but we hide it from ourselves until we put them away.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 5.11Origen · ca. 240 · To return fully to God one must first remove sinful speech from the mouth, then learn a knowing reverence before God's face.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 5.12Origen · ca. 240 · An oath must be sworn in truth, with judgment, and in righteousness, not from habit; this is a stage on the way to Christ's command not to swear at all.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 6.1Origen · ca. 240 · God's eyes rest on faith and on every virtue, as they turn from unbelief and vice; whoever acquires the virtues receives the light of God's face.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 7.3Origen · ca. 240 · Israel, worshipping foreign gods in the holy land, was sent into exile; Christians who make gods of the belly or money will be cast out of the church, but those who worship God in this foreign world will go to the holy land.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 8.4Origen · ca. 240 · God brings up his clouds, the saints, from the “end” of the earth, from those who make themselves last, like the apostles; lightning, which comes from clouds striking each other, is next explained.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 11.2Origen · ca. 240 · In a higher sense Christ lays waste the “earth” in us, the works of the flesh, by the sword of his teaching that separates flesh from spirit.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 11.4Origen · ca. 240 · Boasting in wealth, birth, fine clothes, or even wisdom is shameful; the only right boasting is Paul's, in the cross, in weakness, and in sufferings for Christ.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 12.7Origen · ca. 240 · “Hear” refers to receiving Scripture's hidden meanings into the mind, “give ear” to its plain lessons; and both must be followed by humility, since pride is a common sin even over good things.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 12.8Origen · ca. 240 · People are proud of birth, power, or wealth, which is absurd, and even of wisdom, chastity, or suffering for Christ, which is plausible but still dangerous; Paul was given a thorn in the flesh so that he would not be proud of his revelations.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 12.11Origen · ca. 240 · We glorify God by virtuous deeds, not words; sinners dishonor him, and it is their wickedness that makes others doubt his providence.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 13.3Origen · ca. 240 · To “go backward” is to turn back to sin; like Lot, the believer must never look back or linger near Sodom, but press forward to the mountain, which is Christ.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 14.16Origen · ca. 240 · “I sat alone” describes a life so excellent that no one imitates it, which any believer, not only clergy, may aim at; such a life is filled with bitterness, the bitter herbs eaten with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 20.7Origen · ca. 240 · To “call on faithlessness” is to break our bad agreements with the world and the devil, as Judith broke her pact with Holofernes; to “call on misery” is to choose the narrow way of ascetic discipline, as those who renounce marriage do, and as Jeremiah lived unmarried.
  • Homilies on Jeremiah 20.8Origen · ca. 240 · Jeremiah's resolve to stop prophesying was a sin, at once burned away by God's word like fire in his heart; that inner fire of repentance, which Christ kindles, is better than any punishment, and the sinner who grieves long over his sin has hope, unlike the one who does not care.
  • Lines 191–214Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · God brought Israel out of Egypt, gave the law, and sent prophets, but the people turned to worldly luxury; Christians are to keep away from the devil's shows and pomp.
  • Instructions 1.30Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Commodian rebukes the proud rich and urges them to share with the poor and atone for their sins by good deeds.
  • Instructions 1.31Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Commodian reminds judges of Scripture's warnings against bribery.
  • Instructions 2.7Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · The baptized must avoid the devil's bait, for there are bloodless martyrdoms: not coveting, curbing the tongue, humility, and patience.
  • Instructions 2.14Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Fruitless Christians mixed in the church are like the weeds and the barren fig tree, and will be separated and burned.
  • Instructions 2.16Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Christians must shun the shows and pleasures they renounced at baptism, whatever lax teachers allow for gifts.
  • Instructions 2.17Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · A Christian should live by toil and sadness toward the world, not in pleasure, and wait for rest after death.
  • Instructions 2.18Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Christian matrons should give up jewelry, cosmetics, and dyed hair and show their wealth in almsgiving, like Tabitha.
  • Instructions 2.19Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Paul and Isaiah condemn women who adorn themselves; the holy woman shows her riches in her heart.
  • Instructions 2.20Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Commodian rebukes the church for comfort while confessors suffer, and urges feeding the poor, especially on the Lord's day.
  • Instructions 2.22Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · The Christian's war is daily, against lust, luxury, wine, anger, and greed; martyrdom is not won in a single idle moment.
  • Instructions 2.23Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Covetous envy of others' wealth is folly, since death may come this very night, as God told the rich fool.
  • Instructions 2.24Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Alms given from extortion, usury, or profiting from persecution are rejected by God.
  • Instructions 2.30Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Visiting the sick poor means bringing food, drink, or money, not words, and God will repay it fourfold.
  • Instructions 2.31Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · The healthy poor should work, be humble toward the powerful, and give from their labor, like the widow in the Gospel.
  • Instructions 2.33Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · A servant of God should not seek a showy funeral, which cannot help the dead.
  • Instructions 2.36Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · The drunkard should give his excess to the poor instead, and so escape Gehenna.
  • Instructions 2.37Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · Whoever gives a meal should include the poor, who cannot repay, and so lend to God.
  • Metaphrase of Ecclesiastes 2Gregory Thaumaturgus · 3rd century · Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 2: Solomon's experiment with pleasure and great works ends in emptiness; true good is wisdom from God.
  • Metaphrase of Ecclesiastes 4Gregory Thaumaturgus · 3rd century · Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 4: oppression, envy, the lonely miser, the strength of companionship, and the wise youth better than the foolish king.
  • Metaphrase of Ecclesiastes 5Gregory Thaumaturgus · 3rd century · Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 5: guard the tongue, keep vows, fear God; greed brings no satisfaction, but enjoying God's gifts is good.
  • Metaphrase of Ecclesiastes 6Gregory Thaumaturgus · 3rd century · Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 6: wealth not enjoyed, long life without goodness, and insatiable desire are worse than a stillbirth.
  • Metaphrase of Ecclesiastes 7Gregory Thaumaturgus · 3rd century · Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 7: mourning, wisdom, and the fear of God are better than revelry; the speaker, having lost wisdom, was ensnared by desire.
  • Metaphrase of Ecclesiastes 11Gregory Thaumaturgus · 3rd century · Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 11: be generous, work in season, and remember the judgment of God against the pleasures of youth.
  • To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 31Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · If human philosophy hastens to heal sick souls, God, the teacher of all philosophy, must go willingly to those struck down by sufferings; love of money is the soul's sickness, and envy has no place in God.
  • On the Good of Modesty 2Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · The writer urges the faithful, who are the temple of God and members of Christ, to keep chastity, as the church is Christ's virgin bride.
  • On the Good of Modesty 3Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · Chastity is praised as the honor of body and marriage, while unchastity ruins property, families, and inheritance, and even turns to sex between men against nature.
  • On the Good of Modesty 8Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · Joseph is the first example of chastity: he fled Potiphar's wife, was falsely accused and imprisoned, and was raised by God to rule Egypt.
  • On the Good of Modesty 9Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · Susanna is the example of a chaste woman: she resisted the two lustful elders, was falsely accused, and was delivered by God.
  • On the Good of Modesty 10Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · Neither youth, beauty, opportunity, pressure, nor threats could shake Joseph and Susanna, and God rewarded both.
  • On the Good of Modesty 11Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · Victory over one's own desires is the greatest victory, and chastity lies within the power of the will.
  • On the Good of Modesty 12Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · Chastity includes modesty in appearance: women should not dye their hair, paint their faces, or load themselves with gold and jewels.
  • On the Good of Modesty 13Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · Because the flesh easily falls, men and women must guard chastity with discipline of the senses, sober speech, and the avoidance of touch.
  • On the Good of Modesty 14Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · Adultery is mutual insult, not pleasure; the mind must govern the body like a charioteer, with God's help and the Scriptures.
  • On the Shows 1Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · The writer explains why he is writing: some Christians are defending attendance at the pagan shows, even from Scripture, and he wants to warn the faithful.
  • On the Shows 2Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · The writer reports the defenders' arguments from Scripture (Elijah's chariot, David's dancing, Paul's athletic images) and says they misread the texts.
  • On the Shows 3Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · Scripture's images of athletes and music do not license the shows; Scripture forbids some things by modestly leaving them unsaid, and conscience should do the rest.
  • On the Shows 4Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · All the shows descend from idolatry and are the devil's inventions, so a baptized Christian who attends them goes back on his renunciation of the devil.
  • On the Shows 5Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · The writer describes the bloodshed and the idle fanaticism of the games, and a Christian who carries the Eucharist through the brothel district on his way to the circus.
  • On the Shows 6Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · The stage plays and pantomimes teach adultery and shamelessness in public, so a Christian who may not even think of vice cannot watch them.
  • On the Shows 7Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · Even musical and dramatic performances not tied to idols are too vain for Christians to attend.
  • On the Shows 8Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · Boxing, wrestling, and athletics are displays of gluttony and shamelessness, and Christians must guard their eyes and ears from them.
  • On the Shows 9Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · The Christian has better shows in the beauty of creation, which no theater can match.
  • On the Shows 10Novatian · mid-3rd cent. (disputed) · The Scriptures offer the Christian the true shows: creation, the flood, the exodus, the martyrs' faith, the raising of the dead, and the devil defeated under Christ's feet.
  • Commentary on the Song of Songs 0.70Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · The charity that is God loves only incorruptible things, makes every person our neighbour as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, and is misnamed when applied to money or vice.
  • Commentary on the Song of Songs 0.72Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Human nature must always love something; love is rightly used only when directed to God and the virtues, not to money, glory, lust, or even the liberal arts.
  • Commentary on the Song of Songs 0.73Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · The two great commandments contain the whole law, as a woman in love does nothing to displease her beloved; perfect love makes tribulation light, as Jacob's love for Rachel did.
  • Commentary on the Song of Songs 1.112Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Righteousness loves Christ because love keeps his commandments and admits no iniquity; the virtues love Christ, who is himself the substance of the virtues.
  • Commentary on the Song of Songs 2.143Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · The first way of self-knowledge concerns the soul's dispositions: whether its purpose is good, whether it progresses, helps others, sins from will or weakness, and masters anger, sadness and fear.
  • Commentary on the Song of Songs 2.144Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Self-knowledge also tests love of glory, generosity, and openness to persuasion; the soul that has received the Word's kisses but lives like the crowd is told to go out after the flocks.
  • Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.186Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · The wine of iniquity opposes the ever-new wine of the true vine; 'set love in order in me' means loving God without measure and one's neighbour as oneself.
  • Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.187Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Love for neighbours is graded by merit: those who teach the word and rescue souls, and those of holy life, are to be loved more.
  • Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.188Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Love for enemies is also graded; and men owe a chaste love to all women, in due order: wife, mother, sisters, and others.
  • Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.189Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Love is ordered toward spouses, relatives, and those who serve the Church; even God, who loves all he made, loves each according to merit.
  • Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.190Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Even hatred has its order, as the hatred of God's enemies flowing from love for God; the Bride asks to learn love's order, perhaps from the angels.
  • Homily on the Song of Songs 2Origen · ca. 240–250 · Origen's second homily expounds Song 1:12–2:14: the nard as the anointing at Bethany, the bridegroom as a drop from the mountain, the dove-eyed bride, the ordering of love, the wound of love, and the bridegroom's call to rise after the winter of the passion.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 1Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · The author, a bishop absent from his clergy, writes because some clerics have disgraced themselves by living with women, and warns the negligent with Prov 1:24–31.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 2Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · The author urges his clergy to learn from others' falls and not to trust that chastity can survive when men and women live together, any more than one can carry fire without being burned.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 3Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · In the battle against the allurements of women, prudent fear and flight, not confident faith, bring victory; the clergy must separate themselves from women.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 4Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Living with a woman exposes a cleric to constant temptation, since death entered through a woman; many bishops, clergy, and confessors have been shipwrecked this way.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 5Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Though clerics see others fall, they presume on their own merit and strength, ignoring Christ's warning that such falls are examples for all.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 6Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · A cleric's living with a woman bound to him by no marriage is more dangerous than marriage itself, which Paul says divides the mind; such companionship breeds only conflict and temptation.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 7Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · A cleric who refuses marriage but lives with a woman shows hidden desire, like one who abstains from wine but keeps it about him; even if chaste, he brings scandal and blasphemy on the faith.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 8Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Clergy must avoid giving scandal to unbelievers and the weak; like the aged Eleazar, who refused even to pretend to break the Law lest the young be misled, they must set a blameless example.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 9Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · No cleric should seek the challenge of living with a woman to prove his chastity; his own flesh is enough to fight, and Scripture commends bearing the yoke alone.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 10Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Paul's “bear one another's burdens” does not license cohabitation; Christ himself left celibacy to those to whom it is given, and the daily intimacies of a shared household inflame desire.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 11Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Even a steadfast cleric endangers the women who live with him and gives occasion of sin to others; Paul's rule of not offending the weak and Christ's woe on those who cause offense forbid it.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 16Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Only what God commands is just; God commands men and women to worship together but forbids clergy and consecrated virgins to share a dwelling, which kindles sin even where nothing shameful occurs.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 17Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Pastoral visits to women are commanded but must be conducted with severity and propriety; holiness requires that one's acts match one's vows completely.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 18Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Keeping a woman in one's house to master temptation is like locking a thief in with treasure; every opening must be closed to the devil.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 19Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · The devil lures clergy into cohabitation with women through apparent usefulness and calm, nursing their friendship until he can destroy both at once in an unlawful love.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 28Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Even angels fell through women; clerics who cannot bear separation from women are ruled by the insatiable lust of the eyes, which Scripture condemns.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 29Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Clerics who justify cohabitation as spiritual love counterfeit true love, which harms no one and obeys God's commands, while theirs defames the church's virgins.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 33Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Those who castrate themselves, Jews who circumcise, and the self-mutilating priests of Cybele all shame clerics who will not even part from a woman; their hidden sins will be exposed.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 37Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · The author commands his clergy, with authority, to reject such sophistries, to avoid every occasion of impurity, and to prefer the labor of living alone to disgrace.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 39Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · A long encomium of solitary chastity, which alone overcomes the evils of cohabitation and puts to death the members that are on earth.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 42Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · Temptation must be forestalled before it begins; the Holy Spirit strengthens those who flee occasions of sin, not those who rashly seek them.
  • On the Singleness of Clerics 46Anonymous · 3rd cent. (disputed) · The author closes with Paul's summary of Christian virtue in Phil 4:8–9.
  • Against Celsus 1.4Origen · ca. 248 · Christian ethics resembles philosophy's because God wrote the moral law on every heart; the broken and rewritten tablets symbolize sin and renewal.
  • Against Celsus 1.5Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus notes that philosophers also rejected idols; Origen agrees, because God wrote this truth too on human hearts.
  • Against Celsus 1.26Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus falsely says the Jews worship angels and practice sorcery; and the swift spread of Christ's teaching, which has transformed many lives, shows that it is from God.
  • Against Celsus 1.64Origen · ca. 248 · Philosophy too reformed a few wicked men like Phaedo and Polemon, but Christ has transformed multitudes, as Paul's words to Titus describe.
  • Against Celsus 1.68Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus likens Jesus' miracles to street magic, but magicians never call anyone to moral reform or the fear of God, as Jesus' works and life did.
  • Against Celsus 2.41Origen · ca. 248 · Origen answers that poverty and persecution are not true evils, as the examples of Socrates, Democritus, Crates, and Diogenes show; Celsus cannot point to any wickedness in Jesus.
  • Against Celsus 2.79Origen · ca. 248 · Origen closes Book 2 by arguing that no mere man could have spread his teaching across the world against all opposition and transformed so many lives, since Christ is the power and wisdom of God.
  • Against Celsus 3.7Origen · ca. 248 · Origen denies that Christianity arose from rebellion, since Christ forbade his followers to kill anyone and they accepted death like sheep; and he suggests the Hebrew language was God's gift at the Exodus.
  • Against Celsus 3.8Origen · ca. 248 · Origen argues from Hebrew names that the Israelites were not Egyptians, and says that Christians, forbidden to fight, have been protected by God, who has allowed only a few martyrs as examples while preserving the church.
  • Against Celsus 3.9Origen · ca. 248 · Against Celsus's claim that Christians would not want everyone to become Christian, Origen points to missionaries who travel through cities and villages without seeking wealth or glory.
  • Against Celsus 3.29Origen · ca. 248 · Origen explains that demons opposed the spread of the gospel because it ended their sacrifices, but God made churches arise everywhere, which even at their worst are better than the civic assemblies around them.
  • Against Celsus 3.30Origen · ca. 248 · Origen compares the churches of Athens, Corinth, and Alexandria, and their councils and leaders, with the civic assemblies and magistrates of those cities, finding the church's members, even the weaker ones, morally superior.
  • Against Celsus 3.38Origen · ca. 248 · Origen reflects that what people believe often depends on the “fortune” of their teachers and upbringing, whose causes lie hidden in providence, and that faith in Jesus is well-founded, whether lucky for the many or tested by a few.
  • Against Celsus 3.44Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus claims Christians invite only the ignorant; Origen answers that the ignorance of a few Christians must not be blamed on the teaching itself, which invites people to wisdom.
  • Against Celsus 3.49Origen · ca. 248 · Christ is Savior of all, the wise as well as the simple; true education is a road to virtue and helps, rather than hinders, the knowledge of God.
  • Against Celsus 3.54Origen · ca. 248 · Christians seek to heal the souls even of the foolish, as Wisdom invites them in Proverbs, just as philosophers like Pythagoras and Zeno taught slaves.
  • Against Celsus 3.56Origen · ca. 248 · Christian teachers draw women away from licentiousness, the theater, and superstition, and train boys in chastity, rather than leading them into evil.
  • Against Celsus 3.57Origen · ca. 248 · Christians do not draw people away from good teachers; they openly promise blessedness to those who live by God's word as in his sight.
  • Against Celsus 3.58Origen · ca. 248 · Christians speak freely before good fathers and teachers; they turn youths away only from immoral teachers, and they build on a good philosophical education to lead students to the deeper wisdom of the prophets and apostles.
  • Against Celsus 3.60Origen · ca. 248 · Origen adapts the formulas of the mysteries: those with clean hands, wise speech, and a long-purified soul are admitted to Christianity's deeper mysteries, while the wicked are first called to healing.
  • Against Celsus 3.61Origen · ca. 248 · Christians call the wicked not to the mysteries but to healing, as a physician calls the sick; unlike a robber, they call sinners in order to bind up their wounds.
  • Against Celsus 3.62Origen · ca. 248 · Christ came as physician to sinners and as teacher to the purified; no one except Jesus has been sinless from the beginning, and God receives the sinner who repents and lives well.
  • Against Celsus 3.63Origen · ca. 248 · God is not swayed by flattery; the penitent's humble confession turns sinners back, and since all sin, Christ calls all who labor to find rest in him.
  • Against Celsus 3.64Origen · ca. 248 · A repentant sinner is preferred only to a self-satisfied man who thinks himself righteous, as in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.
  • Against Celsus 3.65Origen · ca. 248 · Origen denies that Christians attract only the worst people: most converts come from decent lives, while hardened sinners, held by conscience and habit, find conversion harder.
  • Against Celsus 3.66Origen · ca. 248 · Both philosophy and Scripture record people who were completely changed, like Heracles, Odysseus, Socrates, and Musonius, so Celsus is wrong that habitual sinners cannot change.
  • Against Celsus 3.67Origen · ca. 248 · Philosophy itself refutes Celsus: Phaedo, once forced into a brothel, became Plato's narrator of Socrates' death, and the drunken Polemo became head of Xenocrates' school.
  • Against Celsus 3.68Origen · ca. 248 · The apostles' simple preaching, powered by the Spirit, changed whole multitudes from vice to virtue and even to contempt of death, far beyond what philosophy achieved.
  • Against Celsus 3.69Origen · ca. 248 · All rational souls share one nature and none was created evil; habits of vice can be changed through God's word, as practice enables even rope-walkers' feats, and no one becomes sinless without the Word.
  • Against Celsus 3.70Origen · ca. 248 · God can do all things consistent with being God, good, and wise; he cannot do injustice, just as sweetness cannot make bitter or light cannot darken.
  • Against Celsus 3.71Origen · ca. 248 · God does not pardon the wicked out of mere pity; he accepts those who condemn their sins and truly change, as virtue or real progress drives out their former wickedness.
  • Against Celsus 3.76Origen · ca. 248 · Christian teachers are not drunkards accusing the sober; rather, those who pray to lifeless images and worship statues or animals are drunk, and even mad.
  • Against Celsus 3.77Origen · ca. 248 · Those truly blind are not Christians but those who fail to rise from the beauty of creation to worship its Creator alone, and who turn to temples, statues, and festivals.
  • Against Celsus 3.78Origen · ca. 248 · Christianity attracts mainly simple people, not the wicked; moved by fear of punishment, they practice self-control, generosity, and even endure torture and death, which no wicked will could produce.
  • Against Celsus 4.3Origen · ca. 248 · Christ came to call back the lost sheep of Israel and give the kingdom to others; God does not correct people by force, since virtue must be freely chosen, and he always corrects the willing through his Word.
  • Against Celsus 4.24Origen · ca. 248 · Human greatness is not measured by bodily size, or elephants would surpass humans; rational beings excel by reason, and angels by perfected reason and virtue.
  • Against Celsus 4.25Origen · ca. 248 · If wickedness makes one a worm, then wicked pagans, even famous orators, are as much worms as wicked Christians; but no rational being, bearing the seeds of virtue from God's Word, should be likened to such animals.
  • Against Celsus 4.26Origen · ca. 248 · If anyone deserves to be called worms, it is idolaters and the sexually licentious, not Christians who rise from creation to the Creator, pray to him, endure death, and keep their bodies chaste as temples of God.
  • Against Celsus 4.27Origen · ca. 248 · True Christians who share in the church's common prayers are free of the vices common elsewhere; only those who are pure in heart, gentle, peacemakers, and willing to suffer may say God has revealed all things to them.
  • Against Celsus 4.29Origen · ca. 248 · Christians know that angels and heavenly powers surpass humans, though the righteous hope to become like angels and like God; if anyone says “after God come we,” it can only mean rational and virtuous beings.
  • Against Celsus 4.31Origen · ca. 248 · Against Celsus's claim that the Jews were insignificant runaways, Origen praises ancient Israel as a shadow of heavenly life: worshiping one God, banning images, prostitutes, and effeminacy, with just judges and Sabbaths devoted to hearing God's law.
  • Against Celsus 4.45Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus calls Lot and his daughters worse than Thyestes; Origen, noting that Scripture neither praises nor blames them, observes that the Stoics defend such an act in a hypothetical end of the world, which Lot's daughters believed had come.
  • Against Celsus 4.46Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus picks out the discreditable family stories of Genesis but ignores Joseph's chastity, which surpasses Bellerophon's, as he chose prison rather than sin and silently left his cause to God.
  • Against Celsus 4.53Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus contradicts himself in calling the dialogue worthy of both pity and hatred; Scripture's writers were sincere witnesses, and no teaching improves people as effectively as faith that God sees every word, deed, and thought.
  • Against Celsus 4.59Origen · ca. 248 · Just as buildings differ according to their use, so bodies differ according to the souls that dwell in them; no wise person would bury Socrates and his accuser Anytus with equal honor.
  • Against Celsus 4.62Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus claims the amount of evil in the world never changes, paraphrasing Plato's Theaetetus, but Plato's Timaeus implies that evils diminish after the earth is purified by flood.
  • Against Celsus 4.63Origen · ca. 248 · Origen rejects Celsus's claim that the amount of evil is fixed, citing Chrysippus's history of how prostitution spread step by step into the cities.
  • Against Celsus 4.64Origen · ca. 248 · Though the nature of the universe is one, its states vary, as a man's moral state varies, so evils increase and decrease, and providence cleanses the world by flood and fire.
  • Against Celsus 4.66Origen · ca. 248 · Evil does not come from God, but neither from matter: the only true evil is the vice each person's own mind produces, and the deeds that flow from it.
  • Against Celsus 4.67Origen · ca. 248 · If history repeats itself exactly in cycles, as Celsus claims, free will and moral praise and blame disappear, and Celsus himself must write his book endlessly again.
  • Against Celsus 4.70Origen · ca. 248 · God may use the wicked for the good of the whole, as a city uses condemned criminals for public works, but they remain blameworthy, as Paul's vessels of honor and dishonor show.
  • Against Celsus 4.82Origen · ca. 248 · The bees' orderly 'wars' may teach humans to wage only just wars, but bees exist for humanity's sake, and it is man who works together with God's providence.
  • Against Celsus 4.83Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus's praise of ants that share burdens would undermine human compassion and imply that human and animal souls are alike, but Christians hold that the human soul is made in God's image.
  • Against Celsus 5.27Origen · ca. 248 · If every nation's customs are right as Celsus says, then parricide, incest, human sacrifice, and animal worship would all be holy, and holiness would be mere convention, which is absurd.
  • Against Celsus 5.28Origen · ca. 248 · If holiness depends only on local custom, all virtues become relative, which is absurd; Origen now turns to a deeper, mystical account of how the nations were allotted to angelic overseers.
  • Against Celsus 5.36Origen · ca. 248 · Ammon's ban on eating cows is arbitrary, unlike the Jewish laws about animals, which carry a deeper meaning; and Celsus's principle would excuse Scythian cannibalism and Indians who eat their fathers.
  • Against Celsus 5.37Origen · ca. 248 · When a city's law contradicts God's natural law, God's law must be obeyed even at the cost of death; so Christians reject the local gods, and Christ, unlike the newly invented Sarapis, is older than all creation.
  • Against Celsus 5.40Origen · ca. 248 · Pindar's 'law is king of all' is true only of the natural law of God, not of the many laws of cities; Christians live by God's law and reject laws that are no laws.
  • Against Celsus 5.42Origen · ca. 248 · Against Celsus, Origen praises the ancient Jewish commonwealth: no games or prostitution, children taught to seek God beyond the material world and to believe in the soul's immortality and judgment, and prophecy instead of divination.
  • Against Celsus 5.43Origen · ca. 248 · The Jewish law, such as its release of slaves after six years, is far better than other nations' laws; even the least Jew worships the one God while philosophers bow to idols, and had Israel not killed the prophets and plotted against Jesus it would model the heavenly city Plato sought.
  • Against Celsus 5.49Origen · ca. 248 · The Jewish food laws were symbols until Christ declared all foods clean; Christians, unlike Pythagoreans who fear eating reincarnated kin, abstain from meat only as a discipline to master the body.
  • Against Celsus 5.63Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus says Christian sects curse and hate one another; true followers of Jesus bless those who revile them, try to win back those in error, and only avoid a persistent heretic, as Paul commands.
  • Against Celsus 6.15Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus says Christian humility is a garbled borrowing from Plato's Laws, but Origen shows it is older, from the Psalms, and was taught above all by Christ, who humbled himself to death on a cross.
  • Against Celsus 6.16Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus claims Jesus garbled Plato's saying about the rich, but Origen finds it absurd that the unlettered Jesus read Plato, and hints at the deeper meaning of the camel and the needle.
  • Against Celsus 6.54Origen · ca. 248 · In Scripture, good and evil in the proper sense are virtue and vice of the soul, as the Psalm “Turn away from evil and do good” shows.
  • Against Celsus 6.55Origen · ca. 248 · Scripture sometimes calls hardships “evils” sent by God, but God does not make moral evil; at most, some evils follow incidentally from his good works, as shavings fall from a carpenter's work.
  • Against Celsus 6.56Origen · ca. 248 · When God sends suffering, it is like a parent's discipline or a surgeon's knife, meant to correct and heal those who would not learn otherwise.
  • Against Celsus 6.57Origen · ca. 248 · God does admonish and persuade through Scripture and teachers, but being persuaded requires the hearer's own free consent, as Paul, Isaiah, and Deuteronomy show.
  • Against Celsus 7.18Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus sets Moses' promises of wealth and conquest against Jesus' teaching on poverty and non-retaliation, but Origen replies that the law's promises were never meant literally, since the righteous prophets lived in poverty.
  • Against Celsus 7.21Origen · ca. 248 · The law's promise of wealth and rule is fulfilled spiritually in people like Paul, rich in knowledge, who “lent” the gospel to many nations and ruled them by the Word.
  • Against Celsus 7.22Origen · ca. 248 · The commands to kill enemies are to be read spiritually: the righteous destroy sinful thoughts, and the “infants of Babylon” dashed on the rock are the first stirrings of sin crushed against Christ.
  • Against Celsus 7.23Origen · ca. 248 · Jesus' warnings against wealth, power, and wisdom refer to wealth that distracts, domineering rule, and worldly wisdom, not to the spiritual riches and wisdom that the law promises.
  • Against Celsus 7.24Origen · ca. 248 · Scripture's warnings against seeking glory and its promises that the righteous will be fed do not contradict Jesus' teaching on not worrying about food and clothing, since the promised food is nourishment of the soul.
  • Against Celsus 7.25Origen · ca. 248 · Jesus' command to turn the other cheek is not opposed to the Old Testament, which already teaches it in Lamentations; the same God speaks in both.
  • Against Celsus 7.26Origen · ca. 248 · The law of Moses suited a nation with its own state and wars, while the Gospel suits people from all nations under Roman rule; providence ended the temple worship and has made Christianity grow despite persecution.
  • Against Celsus 7.33Origen · ca. 248 · God is known not by bodily eyes but by the mind made in his image, and seen by a pure heart, which God himself must create in us.
  • Against Celsus 7.46Origen · ca. 248 · Origen accepts what is well said by outsiders, but warns that those who revile humble worshippers maim their own souls; Christians bless when reviled, and rise from creation to God's invisible power, while some philosophers suppress the truth they know.
  • Against Celsus 7.47Origen · ca. 248 · Paul's words in Romans 1 describe the philosophers who knew God through such doctrines yet worshipped images and fell into impurity.
  • Against Celsus 7.48Origen · ca. 248 · Many simple Christians keep complete chastity without the hemlock used by the Athenian hierophant, and Christian virgins keep virginity not for honour or pay but out of devotion to God.
  • Against Celsus 7.49Origen · ca. 248 · Scripture contains all the best Greek teaching and more, and even simple believers in God and his Son often live more purely than philosophers who practise vice with boys.
  • Against Celsus 7.52Origen · ca. 248 · Those who run to temples made by craftsmen are the lame ones; Christians run the race and fight the fight, living by the Spirit and not by the dead body.
  • Against Celsus 7.58Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus claims the command to turn the other cheek is an old teaching better stated by Plato's Socrates in the Crito, that one must never return wrong for wrong.
  • Against Celsus 7.61Origen · ca. 248 · Jesus' plain words on turning the other cheek teach patient endurance more usefully for ordinary people than Plato's Crito, and they do not corrupt the teaching as Celsus claims.
  • Against Celsus 7.63Origen · ca. 248 · The same act can spring from different doctrines, as Stoics, Epicureans, and the uneducated all avoid adultery for very different reasons, so Christians' refusal of images must be judged by its reasons.
  • Against Celsus 8.10Origen · ca. 248 · Honour to God and to his Son consists in a sound life, since breaking the law dishonours God; only the wise belong to God, which answers Celsus's claim that honouring all God's beings cannot grieve him.
  • Against Celsus 8.17Origen · ca. 248 · Christians do have altars, images, and temples: the righteous soul is the altar whose incense is prayer, and the virtues formed by the Word are images of God, far surpassing Phidias's Zeus, and best of all in Christ.
  • Against Celsus 8.18Origen · ca. 248 · The virtues formed in Christians are living images in which God's Spirit dwells, as God promised to dwell in the righteous; unlike statues, they last as long as the soul wills.
  • Against Celsus 8.24Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus says that eating sacrificial meat is harmless or that demons belong to God and should be honoured; Origen answers from 1 Corinthians that eating idol offerings harms weaker brothers and that one cannot share both the Lord's table and the table of demons.
  • Against Celsus 8.28Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus says Christians should either abstain from all meat like Pythagoras, or admit that all food, drink, and air come from demons; Origen notes that Scripture itself commends abstaining from meat for a brother's sake.
  • Against Celsus 8.29Origen · ca. 248 · Jesus set aside the Jewish food laws so as not to hinder anyone from coming to God, teaching that defilement comes from within, while the apostles forbade Gentile believers only idol offerings, strangled meat, and blood.
  • Against Celsus 8.30Origen · ca. 248 · The apostles forbade idol offerings and blood because they feed demons; Christians may abstain from meat for self-control, not because of Pythagorean transmigration, and they honour the bodies of the dead with burial because of the resurrection.
  • Against Celsus 8.35Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus warns that the demons, like imperial officials, will harm those who neglect them; Origen replies that even Lycurgus and Zeno did not take revenge, and Jesus taught love of enemies.
  • Against Celsus 8.38Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus imagines Christians mocking statues, but God's law forbids reviling even the gods; the real harm to atheists who deny providence is not bodily but blindness to the Creator.
  • Against Celsus 8.41Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus taunts that the gods punish blasphemers while Jesus' executioners went unpunished and his Father abandoned him; Origen answers that Christians revile no one, not even statues or demons.
  • Against Celsus 8.50Origen · ca. 248 · Christians long only for what God promises the righteous, including the resurrection; the body is honoured when it suffers for virtue and dishonoured by vice, and a true lover of mankind would reason even with the simple rather than despise them.
  • Against Celsus 8.52Origen · ca. 248 · Christians try to win everyone to their whole teaching, but at least try to persuade outsiders of reward and punishment, since all can see the Creator's order in the world and all share common notions of right and wrong.
  • Against Celsus 8.55Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus says Christians must either leave life altogether or honour the demons who govern it; Origen answers that the only reasonable death is martyrdom, that Christians may marry and must raise their children, and that they resist the demons with God's armour.
  • Against Celsus 8.56Origen · ca. 248 · Christians will live in God's world by his laws, may marry and have children, and will bear hardships as trials; but they will not honour the demons, since they worship God alone, as Christ did, and cannot serve God and mammon.
  • Against Celsus 8.61Origen · ca. 248 · God accepts the simple person devoted to him, not one who dabbles in demons' names, spells, herbs, and engraved stones for bodily benefit; such demons cannot even be trusted to keep faith with those who serve them.
  • Against Celsus 8.62Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus finally admits that oracles are works of earthly demons bound to blood and incense, as Christians said; Christians would rather be sick and unfortunate with a pure conscience than healthy through serving demons.
  • Against Celsus 8.65Origen · ca. 248 · Christians will not win rulers' favour by sin or servility, but neither do they provoke them, obeying Paul's command to be subject to the authorities; yet they will die rather than swear by the emperor's Fortune, which is either nothing or a demon.
  • Against Celsus 8.73Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus urges Christians to serve in the emperor's army; Origen answers that Christians help the emperor more by praying for him and for just wars, like pagan priests who keep their hands free of blood, forming an army of prayer against the demons who cause wars.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 1Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Origen explains how Christ silenced the Sadducees, why only a true disciple can rightly call him “Teacher,” and how the commandments are ranked under the two great commandments of love.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 3Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · One who loves iniquity or rejects discipline hates himself and so cannot love his neighbour as himself.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 4Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · All the law and the prophets, even their obscure parts, hang on love of God and neighbour, which opens their meaning; Paul's hymn to love and his confidence in Romans 8 illustrate it.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 9Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Origen distinguishes Christ's disciples from the crowds, explains the “seat of Moses” and its counterpart in the Church, warns church leaders who demand titles or impose unbearable burdens, and reads the law's commands about Passover, phylacteries, and fringes spiritually.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 12Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Ambition for honour and titles is found in the Church too, among deacons, presbyters, and bishops; the true disciple seeks spiritual first places, calls no one on earth teacher or father, and follows Christ's humility.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 14Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · The scribes and Pharisees shut the kingdom by opposing Christ and his followers, and bad Christian teachers and clergy do the same by their example, greed, and unjust excommunications.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 16Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · On the proselyte made twice a son of Gehenna, degrees of punishment, oaths by the temple and altar read as Scripture and the heart, and tithing small things while neglecting judgment, mercy, and faith.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 20Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · “Scribes” and “Pharisees” figuratively are literalists and the self-righteous; the small observances of piety are seasonings of the weightier matters, and true cleanness begins within.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 24Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Hypocrites are like whitewashed tombs: feigned righteousness and chastity are dead, and pretence is found even among those who claim martyrdom or church office.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 33Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · The many who come saying “I am the Christ” are above all false interpretations of Scripture and feigned virtues; doctrinal error, even among churchmen, is worse than moral failure, and every counterfeit of truth or virtue is Antichrist.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 43Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Spiritually, the pregnant and nursing are souls in whom the word is still immature and who are easily seduced by heresy; the praiseworthy flight is from sexual immorality, every sin, and false doctrine, to the mountains of the Scriptures, while Christ is awake in the soul.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 45Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · The true sabbath is rest from evil works while doing good; one without good works is easily overcome by false doctrine, the greatest tribulation, and God “shortens the days” by cutting away false additions to Scripture.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 59Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Watching for the Lord's coming means watching for both one's death and his coming into the soul; the thief is the devil breaking into the negligent soul, to be caught before sin is done, while the lamp of the Word guides those still advancing.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 60Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · The watches of the night are the stages of life at which people begin to watch for the Lord; the faithful and wise servant is the bishop or steward who serves rather than lords it, feeds his fellow servants rightly, and administers church funds for the poor with honesty and discernment.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 72Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · The works of mercy stand for every virtue, bodily and spiritual: Christ is fed, clothed, received, and visited in his weak and imprisoned members; the Father blesses, but each person is the author of his own curse, and the eternal fire, invisible, was prepared not for men but for the devil and his angels.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 102Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Jesus told Peter to sheathe his sword because he wants his disciples peaceable, armed only with the sword of the Spirit; Christians must not use the sword for military service or private revenge; he could have had legions of angels, who need him more than he them, but chose to suffer as Scripture foretold.
  • Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 110Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Adjuring is found in the law, but one who lives by the Gospel, which forbids swearing, should not adjure anyone, nor adjure demons, since Christ gave power to command them; Jesus neither denied nor openly confessed, but turned the doubting high priest's words, like the devil's “If you are the Son of God,” back on him.
  • Commentary on Matthew 10.11Origen · ca. 246–248 · Against those who read the net as proof of fixed good and evil natures, Origen argues from Ezekiel that human beings become good or bad by free choice.
  • Commentary on Matthew 10.22Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen reads Herodias’s dancing daughter as the vicious teaching that pleased Herod and silenced prophecy among the Jews, notes that no righteous man in Scripture keeps a birthday, and warns that not every oath should be kept.
  • Commentary on Matthew 10.24Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen distinguishes the soul’s weakness, sickness, and sleep, using 1 Cor 11:30: not every sin is a sickness, only one that takes over the whole soul.
  • Commentary on Matthew 11.9Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen explains Corban from what a Hebrew told him: a gift dedicated to the poor released a son from supporting his parents, a tradition that annulled God’s commandment; he warns church leaders who misuse the fund of the poor, like Judas.
  • Commentary on Matthew 11.12Origen · ca. 246–248 · Foods are indifferent in themselves; what defiles is evil speech and thought, greed, gluttony, or eating with a doubting conscience what is offered to demons, while the food laws are a shadow of spiritual nourishment.
  • Commentary on Matthew 11.15Origen · ca. 246–248 · Evil thoughts in the heart are the spring of all sin and can corrupt even good acts such as almsgiving, chastity, teaching, and seeking the office of bishop; eating with an unwashed heart, not unwashed hands, defiles.
  • Commentary on Matthew 12.7Origen · ca. 246–248 · Sins of the heart alone, such as adultery in the heart, are punished, though less than the act; a woman violated against her will remains chaste in heart though not pure in body.
  • Commentary on Matthew 12.24Origen · ca. 246–248 · To follow Jesus one must deny one’s former sinful self; the righteous confess not themselves but Christ, who is righteousness, and every act of the perfect is a witness to Christ, as each takes up the cross that Simon of Cyrene carried and that Jesus bears for himself.
  • Commentary on Matthew 13.16Origen · ca. 246–248 · In the simple sense, Origen explains becoming like children as reaching by reason the freedom from lust, anger, grief, pleasure, fear, grudges, and pride that small children have by age.
  • Commentary on Matthew 13.25Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen applies the cutting off of hand, foot, and eye to relatives, friends, or a wife who draw one away from godliness, who must be given up for the sake of salvation.
  • Commentary on Matthew 13.30Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen discusses whether Matthew's steps of reproof apply to all sins or only lesser ones, notes that the Gospel leaves undecided the fate of one who does not listen, and urges repentance after any number of sins.
  • Commentary on Matthew 14.5Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen rejects a literal counting of forgivable offences and interprets Peter's seven and Jesus' seventy-seven by the symbolism of numbers, distinguishing sins in worldly matters from graver sins.
  • Commentary on Matthew 14.6Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen states the plain moral of the parable of the unforgiving servant, that God's forgiveness can be revoked if we do not forgive others, and lists the questions a higher, mystical interpretation would have to answer.
  • Commentary on Matthew 15.1Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen sets out two mistaken readings of the three kinds of eunuch in Matt 19:12: that all three are bodily (which led some to castrate themselves), and that only the third is figurative.
  • Commentary on Matthew 15.3Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen rejects literal self-castration, answering Sextus and Philo with the Law and with Paul, warning of its bodily harms, and arguing that Marcion’s refusal of allegory leaves him no consistent position.
  • Commentary on Matthew 15.4Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen reads all three kinds of eunuch figuratively: those continent by nature, those continent because of human teaching (philosophers or heretics), and those who cut out passion by the Word of God for the kingdom.
  • Commentary on Matthew 15.13Origen · ca. 246–248 · The commandments Jesus lists are the minimum for entering the beginning of life; even partners of thieves and adulterers are excluded, and love of neighbour, which sums up the commandments, leads to perfection.
  • Commentary on Matthew 15.15Origen · ca. 246–248 · Selling everything is possible: the Cynic Crates did it for philosophy, and the first believers in Acts did it; Ananias and Sapphira died under the force of Peter’s rebuke, and bishops should encourage such renunciation.
  • Commentary on Matthew 15.16Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen raises the difficulty that selling one’s goods cannot by itself free a person at once from anger, grief, fear, desire, and pleasure, or make him wise, and so cannot by itself make him perfect.
  • Commentary on Matthew 15.17Origen · ca. 246–248 · A literal answer: the prayers of the poor whom the renouncer helps bring him divine help, so that from that day he begins to grow, like Isaac, toward virtue and freedom from passion.
  • Commentary on Matthew 16.29Origen · ca. 246–248 · Mark’s “it was not the season for figs” teaches that Christ seeks the fruits of the Spirit even out of season—love for enemies, joy in suffering—since God calls believers to be “gods” and more than human; we must ask for great and heavenly things.
  • Commentary on Matthew 17.8Origen · ca. 246–248 · The ripening of the vine through its seasons pictures the soul’s growth from infancy through imperfect stages to the mature fruit of virtue and the beatitudes.
  • Commentary on Matthew 17.24Origen · ca. 246–248 · The guest without the wedding garment is one who kept the vices he had before faith; bound and cast out, he will weep and gnash his teeth, and the churches too have many called but few chosen.
  • Commentary on Matthew 17.27Origen · ca. 246–248 · Figuratively, Caesar’s due is what the body reasonably needs, and God’s due is the virtue that suits the soul made in God’s image; excessive bodily austerity is like refusing Caesar his tax.
  • Commentary on Romans 1.18Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Against Marcion, God's 'giving up' of sinners to their desires is explained: the soul between flesh and spirit, helped by good or evil angels, freely chooses, and the virtues withdraw from the soul that chooses the flesh.
  • Commentary on Romans 1.19Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen discusses Paul's three 'givings up' (Rom 1:24, 26, 28) and proposes that all the causes and all the punishments be read together; those who judge others for what they do condemn themselves.
  • Commentary on Romans 1.20Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The three groups in Romans 1 are pagans, philosophers and heretics; believers who commit the same sins are no better; the 'image of man' passage also refutes the Anthropomorphites, for God's image is the inner man.
  • Commentary on Romans 3.3Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · To 'turn aside' implies that rational nature was created upright; doing only what is commanded leaves one a 'useless servant,' so works beyond the precept such as virginity make one good and faithful; no one but Christ has brought goodness to completion; and Origen explains the 'open grave' and 'deceit.'
  • Commentary on Romans 3.4Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The 'poison of asps' is slander and heretical teaching; cursing and bitterness are common faults of the angry tongue; and those who separate souls from God by scandal are murderers with 'feet swift to shed blood.'
  • Commentary on Romans 6.1Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen teaches that it lies in our power to keep sin from reigning in the body, that the soul stands between flesh and spirit, and that keeping the death of Christ before the mind routs sin.
  • Commentary on Romans 6.3Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen teaches that each person freely chooses whether to serve sin or righteousness, rejects excuses blaming the devil, nature, fate, or the stars, and explains the “pattern” of teaching as a shadow of the full truth to come.
  • Commentary on Romans 6.4Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen explains Paul’s “human” appeal: the members once used for vice should now serve righteousness and chastity, which shows that the choice lies with us, not with nature or the stars.
  • Commentary on Romans 6.5Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen explains servitude to sin and to righteousness, the fruits of each, why evil fruits are not “ours,” and the meanings of “eternal” in Scripture.
  • Commentary on Romans 6.8Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen explains Romans 7:7–13: the law that makes sin known is the natural law in the conscience; the commandment is good, but sin, taking occasion from it, deceived and killed the soul.
  • Commentary on Romans 6.9Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen reads Romans 7:14–25 as Paul taking on the person of the weak, one beginning conversion whose good will is not yet matched by deeds, delivered at last by the grace of God through Christ.
  • Commentary on Romans 6.10Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen argues that “I myself serve the law of God with the mind but sin with the flesh” is still said in the person of a beginner, lest every soul despair of overcoming sin.
  • Commentary on Romans 6.14Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen explains that we owe nothing to the flesh beyond necessities and that the fruits of the Spirit gradually put to death the deeds of the flesh, ending Book 6.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.1Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Christians offer God the reasonable sacrifice of their own bodies, mastering pride, anger and lust; virginity holds a high rank but married believers too can offer a holy sacrifice, while virgins stained by pride or avarice do not; renewal of mind through Scripture lets one discern God's good, pleasing and perfect will.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.2Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Speaking through grace converts hearers as eloquence does not; virtue is a measure that can be exceeded or fallen short of, as in false asceticism or heresy about Christ; each member of Christ's body has its own gift according to the measure of faith, and providence dispenses all according to merits gathered by free choice.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.4Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Love not directed to God, or that will not correct a neighbor, is feigned; hatred too has its place in the soul when it is directed at vices, and cleaving to the good makes us one with it.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.6Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Love of one another is the first commandment after love of God, yet we turn our hatred on our brothers instead of on vices; we are to love them, not judge them, whether they are ungodly, sinners or righteous.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.7Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Preferring others in honor is the Lord's teaching to take the last place at table.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.8Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Diligence is required of all believers, lest they hear the Lord's rebuke of the slothful servant.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.9Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Those who live under the law of the spirit must do everything with fervor, not lukewarmly.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.13Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · To pursue hospitality is not only to receive guests but to search them out, as Lot did.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.14Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Christians must not curse but bless those who persecute them; God's blessing gives a gift, while human blessing of God is praise, and Paul's example is to bless when cursed.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.15Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Christians should rejoice only with joys worthy of heaven, such as good works and conversions, and weep not over worldly losses but with those who weep for their sins and long for Christ.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.16Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · 'Thinking the same toward one another' means regarding and wishing for a brother as for oneself, as in the Golden Rule.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.17Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Pride must be shunned in all things, and consenting to the lowly is to imitate Christ's self-humbling.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.19Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Returning evil for evil is as bad as inflicting it, or worse, since the avenger knows it is evil; vengeance belongs to the Lord.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.20Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Providing good things before all means living blamelessly, not pleasing everyone's vices; good must be done whether or not it pleases.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.21Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Our part is always to be ready for peace, leaving the blame for discord with the other; peace with evildoers in their sins is excluded, but the perfect love the person while hating the crime.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.22Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Not avenging ourselves gives place to wrath in two ways: the offender's anger subsides, and he stores up God's wrath, which will punish him far more than we could.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.23Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Heaping coals on an enemy's head by kindness may mean his punishment, or better, the fire of remorse that helps him repent; evil is overcome by its contrary, and Paul joins moral precepts to the gifts to show that good conduct too is a gift of God's grace.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.26Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Paul means ordinary authorities, not persecutors; the apostolic decree forbade only what human law left untouched, since the civil judge, as God's minister, punishes the other crimes, and the law-abiding will have praise from God at the judgment, while those who do good from love live under the law of the spirit.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.31Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Love fulfills every commandment, since no one kills, commits adultery against, robs or slanders the one he loves; above all, loving Christ, our true neighbor, fulfills the whole law, and love of Christ brings love of neighbor.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.33Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The works of darkness are the vices of the flesh, revelry, drunkenness and sexual wantonness, and of the mind, strife and jealousy, which those who walk in the light avoid.
  • Commentary on Romans 9.34Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · To put on Christ is to put on the virtues he is; the flesh is to be cared for in necessities but not in its lusts.
  • Commentary on Romans 10.2Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Peace, which flees from the quarrelsome, must be pursued at any cost, and edification builds the temple of living stones; whoever offends brothers over food tears down God's work of love.
  • Commentary on Romans 10.6Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The strong must bear the weaknesses of the weak rather than expel them, as Christ bears ours; we are to please our neighbor for his edification, not to win praise or by betraying the faith, as Christ bore reproaches to save sinners; and the Scriptures, read spiritually, were written to give comfort and hope to those who understand.
  • Commentary on Romans 10.36Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Christians should be wise in finding ways to do good and simple in evil, refusing crafty revenge; one can be wise toward God and foolish toward the world, and no one can serve both Christ and the belly.
  • To Donatus 6Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246 · From a mountain top Donatus should view the world's violence, where murder is called valour when done by nations.
  • To Donatus 7Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246 · The gladiatorial games teach killing as an art and make spectators accomplices in murder.
  • To Donatus 8Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246 · The theatre keeps ancient crimes alive, teaches adultery and effeminacy, and makes vice religious by showing the gods' immorality.
  • To Donatus 9Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246 · In private, people commit shameful acts, including men with men, which they condemn in public.
  • To Donatus 10Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246 · Even the law courts are corrupt: advocates cheat, judges take bribes, and the innocent are condemned.
  • To Donatus 11Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246 · Worldly honours and offices are bought with humiliation and end in ruin when flatterers leave.
  • To Donatus 12Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246 · The rich are tormented by fear for their wealth, possessed by it, and share it with no one.
  • To Quirinus 2.30Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · The Psalm, the rider on the white horse, and the parable of the sheep and goats show Christ as both Judge and King.
  • To Quirinus 3.1Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Scripture passages on almsgiving and works of mercy, from Isaiah's true fast to Christ's judgment of the nations by what was done for the least of his brothers.
  • To Quirinus 3.2Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · When means are small, the willingness to give is what God accepts.
  • To Quirinus 3.3Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Passages urging brotherly love and peace, from Malachi's “one Father” to Paul's hymn to love and John's “God is love.”
  • To Quirinus 3.4Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Since everything we have is received from God, no one should boast.
  • To Quirinus 3.5Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Scripture commends humility and quietness: God looks on the lowly, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
  • To Quirinus 3.6Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · The righteous suffer more than others, but must endure, since trials prove them, as Job, Paul, and the Psalms show.
  • To Quirinus 3.7Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Believers must not grieve the Holy Spirit with whom they were sealed.
  • To Quirinus 3.8Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Anger must be mastered before it leads to sin.
  • To Quirinus 3.9Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christians must carry one another's burdens.
  • To Quirinus 3.10Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Trust and boasting belong to God alone, not to human wisdom, strength, or princes, as the three young men in Daniel showed.
  • To Quirinus 3.11Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · The believer, having put off the old self and renounced the world, should set his mind on heavenly things, as the Passover, the Sermon on the Mount, and Paul's letters teach.
  • To Quirinus 3.12Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christians are not to swear oaths.
  • To Quirinus 3.13Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Cursing and evil speech are forbidden, since every idle word will be judged.
  • To Quirinus 3.14Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Instead of grumbling, believers should bless God in all circumstances, as Job, the Psalmist, and Paul and Silas did.
  • To Quirinus 3.15Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · God tests people in order to prove them, as he did Abraham and the righteous who suffered.
  • To Quirinus 3.18Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Nothing, not even family or life itself, may be preferred to the love of God and Christ.
  • To Quirinus 3.19Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Following Christ's own example, believers must do God's will rather than their own.
  • To Quirinus 3.20Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom and the foundation of hope and faith, as Abraham's trial showed.
  • To Quirinus 3.21Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christians must not rashly judge others, since they too may fall.
  • To Quirinus 3.22Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Those who pray to be forgiven must forgive the injuries done to them.
  • To Quirinus 3.23Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christians must not repay evil with evil but overcome it with good, leaving the reward to Christ at his coming.
  • To Quirinus 3.26Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Baptism and the Eucharist profit little unless they bear fruit in good works.
  • To Quirinus 3.27Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Baptismal grace can be lost by one who does not keep his innocence afterwards.
  • To Quirinus 3.28Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Sin against God himself, like blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, cannot be forgiven by the church.
  • To Quirinus 3.30Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Vows made to God must be kept promptly; Ananias's lie was against God himself.
  • To Quirinus 3.32Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Scripture commends virginity and continence: Christ praises those who renounce marriage for the kingdom, and Paul prefers the undivided single life while permitting marriage.
  • To Quirinus 3.34Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Believers must not live like the heathen but separate themselves from them, as the call to come out of Babylon shows.
  • To Quirinus 3.35Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · God's patience is meant to lead sinners to repentance, not to presumption.
  • To Quirinus 3.36Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christian women should not adorn themselves with worldly finery, which Scripture associates with the harlot, but with modesty and good conduct.
  • To Quirinus 3.38Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · A servant of God should live blamelessly so as not to incur punishment from the civil authorities.
  • To Quirinus 3.39Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christ's patient suffering, self-emptying, and foot-washing give believers the pattern for their lives.
  • To Quirinus 3.40Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Good works should be done in secret, not for show.
  • To Quirinus 3.41Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christians should avoid foolish and coarse talk.
  • To Quirinus 3.42Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Faith avails for everything, and we can do as much as we believe, as Abraham and the three young men show.
  • To Quirinus 3.44Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christians should not take their disputes with one another before pagan courts.
  • To Quirinus 3.47Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Our troubles, and our failure to feel God's help, come from our own sins, as the prophets declare.
  • To Quirinus 3.48Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Lending money at interest is forbidden by Scripture.
  • To Quirinus 3.49Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christians must love even their enemies, as God is good to all.
  • To Quirinus 3.50Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · The holy mystery of the faith must not be exposed to those who will mock it.
  • To Quirinus 3.51Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · No one should take pride in his good works, since he has only done his duty.
  • To Quirinus 3.52Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Whether to believe or not is left to each person's free choice.
  • To Quirinus 3.53Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · God's secrets are beyond our sight, so our faith should be simple rather than curious or quarrelsome.
  • To Quirinus 3.54Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · No human being is free from sin.
  • To Quirinus 3.55Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christians must seek to please God rather than people.
  • To Quirinus 3.57Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · God disciplines believers in order to correct and preserve them.
  • To Quirinus 3.60Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christians must not give way to greed for food, since God's kingdom is not food and drink.
  • To Quirinus 3.61Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · The love of money and possessions is condemned, for it profits nothing and leads to ruin.
  • To Quirinus 3.63Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Sexual immorality is a graver sin, because it is committed against one's own body.
  • To Quirinus 3.64Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Paul lists the works of the flesh, which exclude from God's kingdom, and the fruit of the Spirit.
  • To Quirinus 3.66Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · The discipline God gives through the church's precepts must be kept, for those who reject it are wretched.
  • To Quirinus 3.68Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Believers must keep apart from a brother who lives in disorder and against the church's rule.
  • To Quirinus 3.69Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · God's kingdom rests not on worldly wisdom or eloquence but on faith in the cross and a life lived in its power.
  • To Quirinus 3.70Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Children must obey and honor their parents.
  • To Quirinus 3.71Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Fathers must not be harsh with their children.
  • To Quirinus 3.72Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Slaves who become believers should serve their earthly masters even more faithfully, as serving Christ.
  • To Quirinus 3.73Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Masters must be gentle with their slaves, knowing they share one Lord in heaven.
  • To Quirinus 3.75Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Everyone must care for his own household, and especially for fellow believers, who are Christ's household.
  • To Quirinus 3.77Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Sinners are to be rebuked publicly as a warning to others.
  • To Quirinus 3.81Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Workers' wages must be paid without delay.
  • To Quirinus 3.82Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Taking omens and augury are forbidden.
  • To Quirinus 3.83Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christians should not wear the pagan-style topknot of hair.
  • To Quirinus 3.84Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · The beard should not be plucked.
  • To Quirinus 3.87Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Believers should be simple and guileless, yet also prudent.
  • To Quirinus 3.88Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christians must not cheat one another in business.
  • To Quirinus 3.91Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · God never allows anyone to be tempted beyond what he can bear.
  • To Quirinus 3.92Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Not everything permitted is beneficial or edifying.
  • To Quirinus 3.95Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christians should keep company with the good and avoid the wicked, since bad company corrupts.
  • To Quirinus 3.96Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Faith must show itself in deeds, not words alone, like the wise man who built on rock.
  • To Quirinus 3.97Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · No one should delay turning to the Lord.
  • To Quirinus 3.98Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Those preparing for baptism must already stop sinning, not presume on the grace to come.
  • To Quirinus 3.100Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · God's grace is given freely and must not be bought or sold.
  • To Quirinus 3.102Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · The wise welcome correction, while the ungodly resent it.
  • To Quirinus 3.103Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Much talk leads to sin; restraint of speech is wisdom.
  • To Quirinus 3.104Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Lying is an abomination to God.
  • To Quirinus 3.105Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Children and members of the household who do wrong should be corrected regularly.
  • To Quirinus 3.106Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Injuries should be borne patiently, leaving vengeance to God.
  • To Quirinus 3.107Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Christians must not slander others but love them, as Paul loved his brothers.
  • To Quirinus 3.108Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Whoever plots against his neighbor will fall into his own trap.
  • To Quirinus 3.109Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Visiting the sick strengthens love and is done to Christ himself.
  • To Quirinus 3.110Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Gossips and the double-tongued are accursed for destroying peace.
  • To Quirinus 3.111Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · God does not accept the offerings of the wicked.
  • To Quirinus 3.113Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Widows and orphans must be protected, since God himself is their father and judge.
  • To Quirinus 3.114Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Confession and repentance must be made in this life, since there is none after death.
  • To Quirinus 3.115Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Flattery leads people astray.
  • Fragment Z VIII (from works unspecified)Dionysius of Alexandria · ca. 248–265 · Sayings ascribed to Dionysius: mercy is most godlike; sweetness is won by toil; speak only what is better than silence.
  • Letter 2.1Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Cyprian answers Eucratius that an actor who still trains boys in the theatre's effeminate art may not be in communion with the church.
  • Letter 2.2Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · An actor who has retired but still trains others is not excused; if he is poor, the church (at Carthage if need be) will support him so he can give up the trade.
  • Letter 4.1Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Cyprian and four other bishops answer Pomponius about consecrated virgins found sleeping with men, including a deacon, and insist on church discipline.
  • Letter 4.2Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Virgins must not live with men at all; those who cannot keep their vow should marry rather than fall into sin and scandal.
  • Letter 4.3Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · A midwife's examination proves nothing; the very sharing of beds is shameful, and Christ, the virgins' Bridegroom, is angered; clergy above all must set an example.
  • Letter 4.4Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · The offending clergy are rightly excluded; virgins found intact may return, those found corrupted must do full penance, and the obstinate are cast out, since there is no salvation outside the church.
  • Letter 4.5Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Pomponius should guide his flock wisely; those vowed to celibacy must please God, and if some will not listen, the bishops must still please Christ.
  • Letter 7.1Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Cyprian explains that he stays away to avoid provoking the heathen, and asks his clergy to care for widows, the sick, the poor, and needy strangers from his own funds.
  • Letter 13.3Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Confessors above all must live humbly and quietly, so that their good works lead others to glorify God.
  • Letter 13.4Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Some confessors disgrace their name by drunkenness, pride, or rashly returning from exile; they must imitate the humble, silent Christ.
  • Letter 13.5Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Some confessors share beds with women, quarrel, and revile others; the tongue that confessed Christ must stay pure, and confession is a true renunciation of the world.
  • Letter 13.6Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · When peace comes, the confessors should return to the church changed for the better, admired for their conduct as well as their courage.
  • Letter 14.2Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Cyprian charges his clergy to care for the faithful poor and needy confessors, and to teach the confessors humility after the example of Christ and Paul.
  • Letter 14.3Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · The devil attacks the victorious most fiercely; some confessors live disorderly and immoral lives, but a true confessor is one the church can be proud of.
  • Letter 45.2Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Cyprian refused to have Novatian's party's slanders against Cornelius read aloud in church, as Scripture forbids evil speech, and read only letters of sober character.
  • Letter 55.16Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · The Stoic view that all sins are equal is not Christian; Scripture calls for gentleness and mercy, and the lapsed are wounded, not dead.
  • Letter 55.21Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Some earlier African bishops refused reconciliation to adulterers, yet did not break unity with those who granted it; each bishop answers to the Lord for his own practice.
  • Letter 55.26Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · If Novatian judges hearts, let him also expel adulterers, whose sin, willful and against the body, is worse than that of those who took certificates; yet Paul allows even them penance.
  • Letter 55.27Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Novatian's followers cannot claim to shun idolaters, for Paul calls adulterers and defrauders idolaters; and in truth each bears only his own sin, so no one should be denied the hope of peace.
  • Letter 62.1Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · Cyprian grieves with the Numidian bishops over Christians taken captive by raiders, whose captivity is the whole body's.
  • Letter 62.2Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · The captives are temples of God and wear Christ; in them Christ himself must be ransomed, and the danger to consecrated virgins adds to the urgency.
  • Letter 62.3Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · The church of Carthage has gladly collected 100,000 sesterces to ransom the captives, for Christ will reward those who free him from captivity.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 1Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · Discipline keeps us in Christ and leads to God's rewards; Scripture commands it, and those who correct others do so out of love, as God does.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 2Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · Our bodies, cleansed in baptism, are God's temples; having been healed, we must sin no more, and this applies to everyone of every age and sex.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 3Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · Cyprian turns to the consecrated virgins, the flower of the church, and addresses them out of affection and concern rather than authority.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 4Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · Virgins vowed to Christ should seek to please him alone; Christ and the Apocalypse praise continence, and what is said to men applies to women too.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 5Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · A virgin should be chaste not only in body but also in dress, so that no one could doubt she is a virgin; she has no husband to please.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 6Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · A virgin who has renounced the flesh should not glory in her beauty; the only glory of the flesh is to suffer for Christ in martyrdom.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 7Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · True riches are spiritual; Christians renounced the world's pomps in baptism and must imitate Christ, doing God's will rather than loving the world.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 8Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · Paul and Peter restrict women's adornment; if married women may not excuse finery by their husbands, a virgin has still less excuse.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 9Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · Not everything lawful is expedient; a virgin who adorns herself and walks conspicuously stirs desire in others and cannot excuse herself by claiming a chaste mind.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 10Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · A virgin should not boast of wealth; Scripture says riches pass like a shadow, and Peter, though he had no gold, was rich in Christ's grace.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 11Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · Riches should be used for the poor and for heavenly treasure; wealth, like any gift of God, may be misused, and a great fortune is a temptation unless it redeems sins.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 12Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · Costly finery suits prostitutes, as the Apocalypse's harlot shows; chaste virgins should flee such adornment.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 13Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · Isaiah condemns the adorned daughters of Zion; what has destroyed others should be shunned like poison, not sought.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 14Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · God did not create dyed wool, jewelry, or pierced ears; the fallen angels taught women these arts and cosmetics.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 15Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · All women should avoid cosmetics, for altering what God made in his image is an insult to the divine artist.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 16Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · Painting and dyeing the hair contradict the sincerity and truth Paul commands and defy Christ's word; white hair is like the Lord's own.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 17Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · At the resurrection God may not recognize a face he did not make; virgins who use cosmetics should be kept apart from the others lest they corrupt them.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 18Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · Virgins should not attend wedding feasts, where indecent talk and drunkenness diminish their purity even if body and mind stay intact.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 19Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · Virgins should not bathe in mixed baths, for being seen naked by men corrupts both them and others, whatever their intentions.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 20Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · Through finery and freedom the devil corrupts virgins, who become adulteresses against Christ and face punishment as great as the reward they lose.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 21Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · Cyprian urges virgins to stay as God made them, avoid jewelry, cosmetics, mixed baths, and wedding feasts, and take the narrow way to their sixtyfold reward.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 23Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · God first commanded increase, then counseled continence; virgins, freely choosing it, live out the new birth of baptism more fully and bear the image of the heavenly man.
  • On the Dress of Virgins 24Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 249 · Cyprian closes by urging virgins to encourage one another and asks them to remember him when their virginity is rewarded.
  • On the Lord's Prayer 11Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 252 · Those who call God Father must live as his sons, as temples of the Spirit.
  • On the Lord's Prayer 15Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 252 · God's will is the life Christ lived and taught: humility, faith, justice, mercy, peace, love, and steadfastness to death.
  • On the Lord's Prayer 16Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 252 · Since we are both earth (body) and heaven (spirit), we pray that God's will may bring the flesh into harmony with the spirit.
  • On the Lord's Prayer 19Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 252 · 'Daily bread' also means that disciples who have renounced the world ask only for today's food.
  • On the Lord's Prayer 20Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 252 · Riches are dangerous, like the rich fool's; the perfect give to the poor and store up treasure in heaven.
  • On the Lord's Prayer 32Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 252 · Prayer must be joined with good works, fasting, and almsgiving, like that of Cornelius.
  • On the Lord's Prayer 33Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 252 · Prayers joined with good works rise quickly to God, as with Tobit, as Isaiah teaches, and as Paul calls gifts to him a sacrifice.
  • On Jewish Foods 4Novatian · ca. 250–258 · Novatian adds that many foods were also forbidden to the Jews to curb the gluttony they showed when they preferred Egypt's food to the manna.
  • On Jewish Foods 5Novatian · ca. 250–258 · With Christ, the end of the Law, food distinctions have ceased; Novatian cites Paul and the Gospels to show that God is worshiped by faith and virtue, not by foods.
  • On Jewish Foods 6Novatian · ca. 250–258 · Freedom from food laws is not license for gluttony; Novatian points to Christ's beatitudes, Lazarus, and Paul, and denounces Christians who drink wine on an empty stomach in the morning.
  • On the Lapsed 6Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Cyprian lists the sins that provoked the persecution: greed, vanity, fraud, marriage with unbelievers, perjury, quarreling, and bishops who neglected their people for business and usury.
  • On the Lapsed 11Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Love of property kept many from fleeing and made them fall; Christ's call to sell all and follow him would have kept them free.
  • On the Lapsed 12Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Those possessed by their wealth cannot follow Christ; Scripture warns against the love of money and promises great reward to those who lose everything for Christ's sake.
  • On the Lapsed 30Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Cyprian rebukes lapsed men and women who live in luxury, bathing, feasting, and adorning themselves, instead of mourning their spiritual death with true penance.
  • On the Lapsed 35Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · The lapsed must do long and earnest penance with prayer, fasting, mourning, and generous almsgiving, spending on the poor the property that caused their fall.
  • On the Unity of the Catholic Church 2Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · We gain immortality by keeping Christ's commandments, building on the rock; otherwise we are blown about like dust.
  • On the Unity of the Catholic Church 15Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Miracles do not save without obedience; Christ summed up the law in love, which schismatics destroy.
  • On the Unity of the Catholic Church 24Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Christ left peace as our inheritance; the sons of God must be peacemakers.
  • On the Unity of the Catholic Church 26Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Christians now give less than the first believers, showing that faith has weakened, as Christ foretold.
  • To Demetrian 8Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Pagans demand that nature serve them and harshly demand obedience from their slaves, yet they refuse to serve God, the Lord of all.
  • To Demetrian 10Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Pagans should judge themselves: civil injustice, hoarding, and greed during the plague cause more suffering than war, drought, or disease.
  • To Demetrian 11Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Even the plague does not stop plunder and injustice; as Isaiah says, God could help, but sins separate people from him.
  • To Demetrian 19Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Christians share bodily hardships with pagans in this world, but bear them patiently, so what punishes pagans is not a punishment to them.
  • On Mortality 1Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Though most of his people stand firm in the plague, Cyprian writes to strengthen those whose faith is shaken.
  • On Mortality 4Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Life in the world is a constant battle against the devil and one vice after another.
  • On Mortality 9Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · A Christian must expect more struggle than others, as Scripture warns those who serve God to prepare for temptation.
  • On Mortality 10Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Job and Tobit were proved, not defeated, by their sufferings, blessing God in adversity and refusing their wives' temptations.
  • On Mortality 11Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · The righteous endure without murmuring, unlike Israel in the wilderness; God tests us by adversity to show whether we love him.
  • On Mortality 12Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Abraham was ready even to sacrifice his son; losses and sickness are battles that prove faith, as storms prove a helmsman and wind separates grain from chaff.
  • On Mortality 13Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Like Paul, whose power was perfected in weakness, Christians are proved rather than overcome by adversity, while unbelievers only complain.
  • On Mortality 16Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · The plague tests everyone's character and charity, and teaches Christians not to fear death, preparing them for martyrdom.
  • On Mortality 24Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Since the world hates Christians and is passing away, we should not love it but be ready for God's will, neither mourning our dead nor fearing our own death.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 1Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Besides the gift of redemption, God has given a further remedy for the sins committed after baptism: works of mercy and almsgiving.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 2Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Sins committed after baptism can be cleansed by almsgiving, as Scripture teaches and as Christ said: “Give alms, and all things are clean for you.”
  • On Works and Almsgiving 3Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Since no one is without sin, all need the remedy God has given for wounds received after healing.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 4Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Scripture constantly calls God's people to works of mercy; Isaiah says that fasting and sackcloth do not appease God, but feeding the hungry and clothing the naked do.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 5Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Scripture teaches that sins are redeemed by mercy to the poor, as Daniel counseled Nebuchadnezzar and Raphael told Tobit; prayers and fasts without almsgiving avail little.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 6Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Tabitha, devoted to almsgiving, was raised from the dead by Peter at the widows' pleading, showing that mercy frees even from bodily death.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 7Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Christ commands almsgiving more than anything else: sell your goods, lay up treasure in heaven, and buy the pearl of great price.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 8Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Those who give to the poor are true children of Abraham, like Zacchaeus; almsgiving shows faith, while the fruitless will be cut down.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 9Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Almsgiving will not impoverish, for Scripture promises that those who give will lack nothing and that God provides for those who seek his kingdom first.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 10Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Fearing to lose one's wealth, one loses one's soul; as Paul says, we brought nothing into the world, and the love of riches ruins faith.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 11Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · God never lets the righteous go hungry, as he fed Elijah and Daniel; if he feeds the birds, he will provide for Christians who give.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 12Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Anyone who doubts that Christ will feed those who feed him is more a Pharisee than a Christian, like the covetous Pharisees who mocked Christ's teaching on almsgiving.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 13Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Fear for the future is only an excuse for avarice, which enslaves; like the rich fool, the miser will lose all, so he should share his wealth with Christ.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 14Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · The rich who think themselves secure are, as the Apocalypse says, poor and naked; they should buy from Christ the gold, white clothing, and eye salve of almsgiving.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 15Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · The rich who bring no offering to the Eucharist but eat what the poor offered should learn from the poor widow, whom Christ praised for giving all she had.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 16Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Children are no excuse for withholding alms, for Christ must be loved above family, and what is given to the poor is given to him.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 17Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · The widow of Zarephath fed Elijah before her own children and was rewarded; Christians, redeemed by Christ, have still less excuse to put their children before him.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 18Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Many children are a reason to give more, not less, as Job offered sacrifices for each of his children.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 19Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · The best provision for children is to entrust one's wealth to God, who protects it and blesses the children of the merciful.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 20Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Parents should teach their children what Tobit taught his son: serve God, do righteousness, and give alms according to their means.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 21Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Almsgiving is a public show with God, Christ, and the angels as spectators, and its reward is eternal life, not the fleeting applause of the crowd.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 22Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Cyprian imagines the devil taunting Christ that pagans spend fortunes on worthless games for him, while Christians, promised eternal life, will scarcely give to the poor.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 23Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · The rich have no excuse, for Christ has foretold that at the judgment he will reward or condemn each according to what they did for the least of his brothers.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 24Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Christians should give generously now, sowing much so as to reap much and come to the heavenly banquet, while there is time.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 25Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · The first Christians sold their property and held all in common; one who shares his goods with the brothers imitates God, who gives his gifts to all alike.
  • On Works and Almsgiving 26Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 253 · Cyprian praises almsgiving as a remedy for sin and a crown within reach of all; those who give will receive a white crown in peace and a purple one in persecution.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 1Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · Jealousy and envy seem small sins and so are not feared, but the devil uses them to ruin souls; Christians must keep watch, as Peter warns.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 2Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · The devil probes every weakness, tempting through the senses, greed, and ambition, and, when deceit fails, threatening with persecution.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 3Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · Among the devil's hidden weapons, jealousy is especially dangerous to Christians; to guard against it we must understand its origin.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 4Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · Jealousy began with the devil, who envied man made in God's image and so fell himself; through his envy death entered the world.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 5Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · Jealousy led Cain to kill Abel, Esau to hate Jacob, Joseph's brothers to sell him, Saul to persecute David, and many Jews to reject Christ.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 6Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · Jealousy is the root of many sins, feeding avarice, ambition, pride, and anger, and it breaks the church's unity, producing heresies and schisms against bishops.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 7Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · Envy is a moth and rust of the soul that tortures the envious man from within and, unlike other sins, never comes to an end.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 8Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · Envy shows itself in the face and breaks out in violence, as the Psalms and Paul describe.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 9Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · Unlike a visible wound, envy is hidden and incurable, and the envious man cannot escape the enemy he carries inside himself.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 10Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · Christ cut off rivalry by teaching that the least is greatest, and Paul tells those enlightened by Christ to cast off jealousy as a work of darkness.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 11Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · Envy returns a Christian to the devil and makes him like Cain, a murderer walking in darkness, whereas following Christ means imitating what he taught and did.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 12Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · Christ calls his people sheep and lambs and commands them to love one another; a jealous man who bears Christ's name without following his way betrays it.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 13Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · Paul teaches that without love even martyrdom profits nothing, that love is not jealous, and that jealousy and strife show a person to be still carnal.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 14Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · Those who died and rose with Christ in baptism must put to death the works of the flesh and bear the heavenly likeness of Christ.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 15Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · The new birth must show itself in a life that reflects God the Father, loving even enemies, so that Christ may welcome us into the kingdom.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 16Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · Scripture reading, prayer, and good works arm the mind, and peace too has its crowns: victories over lust, anger, greed, pride, and envy.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 17Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · The envious man must tear out envy, let the cross sweeten his bitterness as the wood sweetened the waters of Marah, and love those he once envied.
  • On Jealousy and Envy 18Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 256 · Cyprian closes by urging the reader to think of paradise, the kingdom, and God's watching eye, and to please God now by peace and concord.
  • Canonical Epistle, canon 1Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 254–264 · Captives who ate the barbarians' food are not defiled, since it was not offered to idols; women raped in captivity are not to be blamed unless their earlier life was already immoral.
  • Canonical Epistle, canon 2Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 254–264 · Those who profited from the invasion by plunder are to be excommunicated, lest God's wrath fall on the whole people and on the bishops who fail to act.
  • Canonical Epistle, canon 3Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 254–264 · Plundering a fellow Christian's goods during the invasion is like Achan's theft of the devoted thing, which brought wrath on all Israel.
  • Canonical Epistle, canon 4Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 254–264 · Keeping goods one has found is forbidden by the law of Deuteronomy and Exodus, all the more when their owners have fled from enemies.
  • Canonical Epistle, canon 5Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 254–264 · Taking others' property as compensation for one's own losses is like the barbarians' plunder; Gregory sends the presbyter Euphrosynus to guide the inquiries and exclusions.
  • Canonical Epistle, canon 6Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 254–264 · Those who forcibly detain escaped captives are to be investigated without delay.
  • Canonical Epistle, canon 7Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 254–264 · Christians who joined the invaders and killed or betrayed their neighbours are excluded even from the hearers until a synod decides their case.
  • Canonical Epistle, canon 8Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 254–264 · Those who broke into others' houses during the invasion are excluded from the hearers if convicted, but placed among the kneelers if they confess and make restitution.
  • Canonical Epistle, canon 9Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 254–264 · Those who kept things the barbarians left behind are placed among the kneelers if convicted, but admitted to the prayers if they confess and give them back.
  • Canonical Epistle, canon 10Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 254–264 · Those who return lost property must not demand any reward for it.
  • On the Good of Patience 1Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Cyprian opens by noting that even listening requires patience, and that nothing in the Christian life is more useful or glorious than patience.
  • On the Good of Patience 2Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · The philosophers' patience is as false as their wisdom, for they know neither the wisdom nor the patience of God and are proud rather than humble.
  • On the Good of Patience 3Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Christians are philosophers in deeds, not words; patience comes from God, and as his servants and children they should imitate it.
  • On the Good of Patience 5Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Christ taught his followers to love their enemies so as to be perfect like the Father; patience restores in us the divine likeness Adam lost.
  • On the Good of Patience 6Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Christ taught patience by his whole life: his incarnation, baptism, fasting, temptation, washing his disciples' feet, and bearing with Judas and his opponents.
  • On the Good of Patience 7Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · In his passion Christ patiently bore spitting, scourging, thorns, blows, stripping, gall and vinegar, false witness, and death, silent to the end.
  • On the Good of Patience 8Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Christ receives even his murderers and persecutors if they repent; without such patience the church would not have had Paul.
  • On the Good of Patience 9Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Christians must walk as Christ walked, following his example of patient suffering, as John and Peter teach.
  • On the Good of Patience 10Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and David all showed patience, and the prophets and martyrs won their crowns by it.
  • On the Good of Patience 11Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · God's sentence on Adam, that he would toil in sorrow until he returned to the earth, binds all people and shows why patience is necessary.
  • On the Good of Patience 12Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Life begins with tears and is full of labor; Christians, facing temptations and persecutions, need patience even more than others.
  • On the Good of Patience 13Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Christ requires endurance to the end; since we hope for what is unseen, patience is needed to persevere in good works until we receive the crown.
  • On the Good of Patience 14Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Patience guards against the deadly sins of adultery, fraud, and murder, keeping the body, God's temple, and the hand that has held the Eucharist pure.
  • On the Good of Patience 15Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Love, the greatest virtue and the bond of unity, cannot last without patience, as Paul shows in describing love as enduring all things.
  • On the Good of Patience 16Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Christ's commands to forgive, love enemies, and turn the other cheek require patience, as Stephen showed; patience keeps anger and discord out of the Christian heart.
  • On the Good of Patience 17Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Since the Fall brought bodily weakness and death, patience is needed in sickness and loss; it is what distinguishes the righteous from the unrighteous.
  • On the Good of Patience 18Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Job lost property, children, and health, and was tempted by his wife, yet blessed God in patience; Tobit likewise bore his blindness patiently.
  • On the Good of Patience 19Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Impatience is the devil's evil: it caused his fall, Adam's sin, Cain's murder, Esau's loss, Israel's idolatry, and the rise of heresies.
  • On the Good of Patience 20Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Patience underlies every virtue: it restrains anger and lust, keeps virgins, widows, and married people faithful, forgives, and endures persecution and martyrdom.
  • Life of Cyprian 2Anonymous · ca. 258–265 · From his conversion Cyprian embraced continence and sold his property for the poor, becoming perfect almost before he had been taught.
  • Life of Cyprian 9Anonymous · ca. 258–265 · When plague struck Carthage and pagans abandoned the sick, Cyprian taught his people to show mercy to all, even to enemies and persecutors, after the example of God.
  • Life of Cyprian 10Anonymous · ca. 258–265 · Under Cyprian's direction the Christians of Carthage cared for all the plague victims, Christian and pagan alike, surpassing even Tobit, who buried only his own people.
  • Passion of Montanus and Lucius 10Anonymous · 259 · An exhortation to concord and peace among the brothers.
  • Passion of Montanus and Lucius 11Anonymous · 259 · Montanus's vision of the stains of unreconciled discord; closing exhortation of the letter.
  • Symposium 1.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Marcella praises virginity as the church's finest flower, which needs a noble soul, constant study of Scripture as preserving salt, and inner as well as bodily purity.
  • Symposium 1.3Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Circumcision ended marriage of siblings; the prophets and the Wisdom books then led from polygamy to one wife and on toward continence.
  • Symposium 1.4Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Virginity was reserved for Christ to teach: taking our form, he became the model by which humanity, made in God's image, may attain his likeness.
  • Symposium 2.5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The house is the hidden process of generation and the craftsman is God's creative power; seed, like any material, is not evil in itself, but adulterers who misuse it are to be punished.
  • Symposium 2.6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · God himself forms every child in the womb; even children of adultery are given guardian angels and will accuse parents who exposed them.
  • Symposium 3.11Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Paul first sets out that it is good not to touch a woman, then allows marital relations to those who cannot control themselves, lest they fall into sexual immorality.
  • Symposium 3.13Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Paul permits marriage for virgins without sin, but only by human concession; his counsel as a whole leans toward virginity as freeing one to please the Lord.
  • Symposium 4.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · God sent chastity to anchor souls against the flood of corruption; as Pharaoh drowned the boys, the devil seeks to destroy the soul's rational offspring.
  • Symposium 4.3Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · In Psalm 137 the pure souls hang their bodies, the “instruments,” on the willow of chastity so that the rivers of Babylon, this turbulent life, cannot sweep them away.
  • Symposium 4.6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The virgin's breast-band in Jeremiah is love of God, which binds the soul to chastity; Arete calls on Thallousa next.
  • Symposium 5.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Thallousa, the fifth speaker, argues that the “great vow” of Numbers 6 is virginity, the offering of oneself wholly to God.
  • Symposium 5.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · One must dedicate oneself wholly; Abraham's three three-year-old animals and the three night watches of Luke 12 stand for keeping chaste through childhood, prime, and old age.
  • Symposium 5.3Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Keep the lamp of faith lit and bear the yoke from youth, letting self-control rein in the senses; thus one is wholly dedicated to God.
  • Symposium 5.4Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · True dedication means consecrating every member, mouth, tongue, eyes, ears, hands, feet, and heart, to the Lord; this is the great vow.
  • Symposium 5.5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The Nazirite's abstinence from wine means that the virgin must shun the devil's vine, whose fruit is lust, violence, and every passion, and cling to Christ, the true vine.
  • Symposium 5.6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The virgin must avoid not only wine but everything intoxicating, including luxury and adornment; the chaste are God's golden altar of incense in the holy of holies.
  • Symposium 6.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Agathe, the sixth speaker, says that every soul is created beautiful, in the image of the Only-begotten, and that the devil and his angels seek to defile it.
  • Symposium 6.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The soul's beauty is kept by virginity; the ten virgins of the parable are believers, the wise truly practising virginity and the foolish only professing it.
  • Symposium 6.3Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The five wise virgins are the five senses kept pure; the flesh is a five-lighted lamp carried to Christ at the resurrection, and the oil is wisdom and righteousness.
  • Symposium 7.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Christ loves the soul's inner eye of understanding and its inner adornment of virtues, not bodily beauty or jewels.
  • Symposium 8.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Thecla, the eighth speaker and a disciple of Paul, explains virginity as nearness to God, which gives the soul wings to rise above the world's seductions.
  • Symposium 8.12Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Winged by virginity, the church escapes the dragon; the virgins, armed with God's armour, should face the many-headed beast boldly, since Christ has already defeated it.
  • Symposium 8.13Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The dragon's seven heads are vices to be conquered for seven crowns and its ten horns the sins against the ten commandments; humans are free and not ruled by the stars, and Thecla turns to refute astrology.
  • Symposium 8.16Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · A series of arguments against astrological fate: the stars and God cause no evil, laws presuppose freedom, and blame and praise would be meaningless if fate made people what they are.
  • Symposium 8.17Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Thecla concludes that good and evil lie in our own choice; Gregorion and Euboulion praise her and recall her deeds among the martyrs, and turn to the last two speakers.
  • Symposium 9.4Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The branches of Tabernacles are faith, study of Scripture, love, righteousness, and above all chastity, which virgins bear in full and chaste married people in smaller measure.
  • Symposium 10.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Domnina, the last speaker, argues that chastity, taught by Christ, did what the law could not: it overthrew the devil's reign over humanity.
  • Symposium 10.3Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The bramble, the same plant as the chaste-tree, stands for chastity; Elijah found refuge under it, and the earlier laws given to Adam and Noah failed to save humanity.
  • Symposium 10.5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The devil counterfeited the fig and the vine, but under the reign of chastity the true vine (Christ) and fig (the Spirit) bear fruit, as Joel, Isaiah, Paul, and Micah show.
  • Symposium 11.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Arete judges that true chastity governs every member and the heart, not only the body, and crowns all the speakers, giving Thecla the greater crown.
  • Symposium, epilogueMethodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · In the closing dialogue, Euboulion argues against Gregorion that the soul that feels desire and masters it is better than one that never feels it; they agree to continue another day.
  • Commentary on the Apocalypse 3.1Victorinus of Pettau · late 3rd century · The letter to Sardis rebukes Christians in name only who lack works.
  • Commentary on the Apocalypse 3.3Victorinus of Pettau · late 3rd century · The letter to Laodicea rebukes lukewarm, learned, wealthy believers without works and calls them to repentance.
  • Against the Manichaeans 14Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander mocks the conclusion that destructive animals and men would deserve honour, and says education and law, not Manichaean myth, answer vice.
  • Against the Manichaeans 15Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander argues that pleasure and desire belong to sensation and bodily need, not to an evil principle, and that man can master them.
  • Against the Manichaeans 16Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander argues that if anyone can become good all can, so education and wisdom matter, and praises Jesus for bringing ordinary working people to God and the good.
  • Book 2, chapter 7Macarius Magnes · ca. 400 (disputed) · Macarius explains Christ's sword that divides families as the call to renounce earthly ties for the heavenly warfare, shown in the martyrs and ascetics, and allegorically as the separation of the apostles from the law.
  • Book 3, chapter 5Macarius Magnes · ca. 400 (disputed) · The pagan philosopher argues that the camel and needle saying makes poverty rather than virtue the way to heaven and complains that preachers use it to strip wealthy women of their property.
  • Book 3, chapter 12Macarius Magnes · ca. 400 (disputed) · Macarius answers that wealth does not exclude the rich from the kingdom, but its misuse does, citing Job as a rich man who used his riches well and bore poverty nobly, and urging the rich to make the poor their advocates.
  • Book 3, chapter 28Macarius Magnes · ca. 400 (disputed) · Macarius answers that Ananias and Sapphira committed sacrilege by secretly keeping back what they had vowed to God, and that their deaths, caused by their own conscience at Peter's word, protected the young church from the belief that God does not see secret sin.
  • Against Porphyry, fragment 5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Evil is unlikeness to and ignorance of God; good is likeness to him, conversion, and faith.
  • On Free Will 8.10Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Murder is an act of a substance, not itself a substance.
  • On Free Will 8.11Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · A person is called evil from evil acts, as a physician from medicine, without the acts being his substance.
  • On Free Will 8.13Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · If an evil agent were identical with his acts, humans who do those acts would cause his existence.
  • On Free Will 13.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Whether evils among humans are species or parts of evil, evil turns out to have a beginning; it lies in human choice, not substance.
  • On Free Will 15.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Nothing is evil by nature; intercourse is good within marriage and evil in adultery.
  • On Free Will 15.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The same act differs morally by the manner of its use.
  • On Free Will 15.3Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Killing too is judged by its manner: punishment differs from murder for gain.
  • On Free Will 15.4Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Taking another’s money is good or evil according to the manner.
  • On Free Will 16.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God made the first man with free will, inherited by his descendants.
  • On Free Will 16.5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Man’s freedom was given so that obedience might earn him a reward.
  • On Free Will 16.6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Without freedom man would be a mere instrument, deserving neither reward nor blame.
  • On Free Will 16.7Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God gave man power to choose and exhorts him to choose the better without removing his freedom.
  • On Free Will 16.8Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · As a father urges a child to study without forcing him, God urges obedience without removing freedom.
  • On Free Will 16.9Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God’s commands presuppose freedom and aim at rewarding obedience.
  • On Free Will 17.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Free will is not a choice among pre-existing evils but the power to obey or disobey God.
  • On Free Will 17.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Evil began with the first man’s disobedience to God’s command.
  • On Free Will 18.8Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Evil began in envy at man’s honor and consists in disobedience to God.
  • On Free Will 20Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God did not destroy the devil at once, because that would have been no great deed and would have hidden his kindness; instead he trains men like wrestlers to conquer the devil themselves.
  • Cib. 3Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Suffering must come before honor, as the examples of farmers, helmsmen, runners, Joseph, David, Daniel, Moses, the prophets, and the apostles show.
  • Cib. 5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Self-control and patience in trials are health for the soul, as Job on the dunghill shows; affliction is God's discipline, like dung that makes a plant fruitful.
  • Cib. 7Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God gave the food laws not because foods defile but to train Israel by small commands, as teachers start children with strokes; the Law is a shadow, the gospel an image, of the good things to come.
  • Cib. 14Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The field of the dead, the bone, and the grave signify incontinence, apostates, and hypocrites; the seventh day is the end of life, and the ashes signify repentant humility.
  • Creat. 1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Methodius rejects Xenon's reading of the pearls and swine as mystical teaching withheld from unbelievers, since the apostles preached to unbelievers; the pearls are the virtues, which must not be given over to pleasures.
  • Lepr. 5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The leprosy of the Law signifies sinful passions, which Christ commands us to root out at the seed, as with lustful looking and anger, and which must be shown to the priests.
  • Lepr. 6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Each kind of leprosy is a vice; the sinner must show his sore to Christ in prayer and, if it persists, confess to the bishop, who may separate him from communion, examine him, and cast out the impenitent.
  • Lepr. 9Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · In the law of leprous garments the warp is the mind, the woof the soul, and the skin the body; a sin that persists after repentance and confession to the bishop is a lasting leprosy that leads to Gehenna.
  • Lepr. 16Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Christ purifies humanity as Joshua the high priest was given clean garments; the rich man in purple and the proud Pharisee show that outward finery displeases God, while the poor are to be honored.
  • Lepr. 17Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Usurious bishops and greedy laity are the leprous warp and woof of the church; Christ's teaching on wealth, enemies, and trust in the Father condemns them.
  • Lepr. 18Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Christians have become gluttonous and quarrelsome; the true shepherd must first correct himself before reproving others.
  • On the Martyrs (Peri martyron), fragment 2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Every good act begins in human will and is brought to completion by God.
  • Res. 1.31Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · By a Socratic exchange the narrator shows that a fetter prevents wrongdoing, whereas the body serves the soul for good or evil, so the body is not a punitive fetter; Scripture's appeal to free choice confirms it.
  • Res. 1.44Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God, like a potter, remoulds man through death to raise each to honour or dishonour, while our part is to keep the root of sin from bearing fruit, for which we are answerable.
  • Res. 1.45Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · No one may blame God for the punishment he chose by his own free will; death, like bitter medicine, serves our good, as the song of Deuteronomy confirms.
  • Res. 1.57Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The narrator refutes the claim that Paul's 'I was once alive apart from the law' refers to souls living without bodies, and shows that Paul's 'flesh' in Romans 7-8 means a fleshly way of life, not the body.
  • Res. 1.59Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Paul's 'mind of the flesh' is the flesh's impulse toward sin, not the flesh itself, which can be brought under God's law, as virginity, self-control and Paul's commands about the body show.
  • Res. 1.61Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Paul's words on sexual immorality concern this visible body, which can be a temple of the Spirit and so will be raised and clothed with immortality.
  • Res. 2.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Methodius begins Book 2 by explaining 'I was once alive apart from the law' as the bodily life of Adam and Eve in paradise before the commandment, when they knew no desire.
  • Res. 2.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Methodius explains Romans 7: the devil used the commandment in paradise to stir up desire, and Paul's 'I do what I do not want' refers to unwanted thoughts that assail the mind, not to evil deeds.
  • Res. 2.4Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Paul did not mean that he actually committed sins he hated, since he urged others to imitate him as he imitated Christ; he meant the unwanted thoughts that assail us and must be resisted like besieging enemies.
  • Res. 2.5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Methodius urges the soul to resist the evil one with the armour of God, and resumes his reading of Romans 7:15-18.
  • Res. 2.6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Sin entered man through disobedience as desire lodged in the body; hence two kinds of thoughts arise in us, from that desire and from the natural law of the mind.
  • Res. 2.7Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Methodius distinguishes three laws in Romans 7: the law of the mind, the law of the evil one's assaults, and the law of sin lodged in the flesh through desire.
  • Res. 2.8Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Paul's 'body of this death' is the law of sin in the members, not the body itself, from which Christ delivers us so that the natural law of the good may be fulfilled; Methodius then pauses before the harder questions.
  • Sang. 6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The leech in the muddy water of the serpent is the power that silences the soul's voice and fills it with improper desires; each of its insatiable daughters is explained.
  • Sang. 8Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Heaven and firmament may also mean the mind and the feelings; true confession of Christ come in the flesh includes his coming into the church and into each believer, with a holy life.
  • Vit. 1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Every creature obeys its master, so man ought to obey God and not be held fast by pleasures that end in death.
  • Vit. 2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Hardship strengthens body and soul and leads to lasting goods, as with the sick, children at school, and athletes; only treasure stored in heaven escapes life's changes.
  • Vit. 5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Man should accept the changes God appoints, including loss and travel, as discipline, and seek God's purpose instead of lamenting.
  • Vit. 6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · What can be lost was only lent; earthly goods wither like grass, so we should seek the lasting goods and be content with enough.
  • Vit. 7Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Christ, John the Baptist, and the poor widow show that one should despise temporal goods, renounce the broad way, and serve the needy for an eternal reward.
  • Fragment on Job, no. 7Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God allows temptation because no one could be righteous without an adversary.
  • Fragment on Job, no. 13Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Job made his wealth into virtue by using it well.
  • Fragment without closer identification, no. 1 (on righteousness)Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Four sayings on righteousness: it fulfils all the commandments, human reason sees it only dimly, it is equal on every side, and God judges each according to his own disposition.
  • Fragment without closer identification, no. 2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Evil knows neither the good nor its own nature.
  • Apostolic Church Order 4Anonymous · ca. 300 · The two ways of life and death, and the two great commandments.
  • Apostolic Church Order 5Anonymous · ca. 300 · The negative golden rule.
  • Apostolic Church Order 6Anonymous · ca. 300 · The commandments of the way of life: against murder, adultery, sexual immorality, abortion, falsehood and hatred.
  • Apostolic Church Order 7Anonymous · ca. 300 · Anger leads to murder; avoid jealousy and quarrelling.
  • Apostolic Church Order 8Anonymous · ca. 300 · Lust and anger, given room, become demons that enlarge themselves in the soul and lead it to ruin.
  • Apostolic Church Order 9Anonymous · ca. 300 · Foul speech and wandering eyes lead to adultery.
  • Apostolic Church Order 10Anonymous · ca. 300 · Avoid augury, enchantment, astrology and purifications, which lead to idolatry.
  • Apostolic Church Order 11Anonymous · ca. 300 · Against lying, love of money, grumbling and pride; be meek, merciful, humble, and accept what happens as from God.
  • Apostolic Church Order 13Anonymous · ca. 300 · Make peace, judge impartially, pray without doubting, give generously and share all things with your brother.
  • Apostolic Church Order 14Anonymous · ca. 300 · Do good while there is time, for the day of the Lord is near; keep what you have received without adding or taking away.
  • Apostolic Church Order 29Anonymous · ca. 300 · Generous sharing lays up treasure in the kingdom.
  • Fragment 5Lactantius · ca. 290-325 · God implanted the passions in human nature from the beginning; kept within bounds they become virtues and earn eternal life, but beyond their bounds they become vices and bring eternal punishment.
  • 1Anonymous · 295 (12 March) · Maximilian, presented as a recruit at Theveste, refuses military service as a Christian.
  • 2Anonymous · 295 (12 March) · Maximilian refuses the soldier's seal, having the sign of Christ.
  • Canon 5Anonymous · ca. 306 (disputed, ca. 295–314) · A mistress who beats her slave woman to death does seven years' penance if it was intentional, five if accidental.
  • Canon 7Anonymous · ca. 306 (disputed, ca. 295–314) · A baptized person who falls again into sexual sin after penance for adultery is refused communion even at death.
  • Canon 12Anonymous · ca. 306 (disputed, ca. 295–314) · A Christian woman who acts as a procuress, even of her own daughter, is refused communion even at death.
  • Canon 20Anonymous · ca. 306 (disputed, ca. 295–314) · Clergy who lend at interest are degraded; laymen are pardoned if they stop, but expelled if they persist.
  • Canon 63Anonymous · ca. 306 (disputed, ca. 295–314) · A woman who conceives in adultery and kills the child is refused communion even at death.
  • Canon 71Anonymous · ca. 306 (disputed, ca. 295–314) · Men who sexually abuse boys are refused communion even at death.
  • Against the Nations 1.6Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Christ's teaching not to repay evil with evil has reduced war, and if all obeyed it the world would live in peace.
  • Against the Nations 2.29Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The doctrine that souls are naturally immortal and godlike encourages vice, since it removes the fear of divine judgment.
  • Against the Nations 2.30Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If souls are immortal and incorruptible, punishments cannot touch them and virtue is pointless; if they simply perish, as Epicurus held, virtue is equally without reward.
  • Against the Nations 2.41Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius asks whether God sent souls to delight in amphitheater slaughter, gluttony, and vain adornment, including effeminate grooming by men.
  • Against the Nations 2.42Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius asks whether God sent divine souls to become criminals, gourmets, lewd musicians and dancers, and prostitutes.
  • Against the Nations 3.27Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If Venus inspires love, she is responsible for adultery, incest, and the suicides of desperate lovers.
  • Against the Nations 5.29Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The phallic cults show the truth of these myths; such gods, whose incest and lusts are celebrated, set a corrupting example that Christians rightly refuse to worship.
  • 1Anonymous · 298 (30 October) · At the emperor's birthday feast the centurion Marcellus throws down his belt and arms.
  • 2Anonymous · 298 (30 October) · Marcellus explains his act to the governor and is sent on to Agricolanus.
  • Acts of Marcellus the Centurion 4Anonymous · 298 (30 October) · Marcellus confirms his statements before Agricolanus.
  • Canons of Hippolytus, canon 11Anonymous · 4th century · Craftsmen may not make idols; a baptized craftsman who does is excommunicated until he repents.
  • Canons of Hippolytus, canon 12Anonymous · 4th century · Actors, gladiators, diviners, beast-fighters, and idol-sacrificers must abandon these works before instruction and baptism; a schoolmaster may continue if he confesses the pagan gods to be demons and teaches the faith.
  • Canons of Hippolytus, canon 13Anonymous · 4th century · Anyone given the power to kill is not received; soldiers who fought under orders but kept from evil speech and pagan crowns may be; officials who do not act with Gospel justice are separated.
  • Canons of Hippolytus, canon 14Anonymous · 4th century · A Christian is not to enlist voluntarily; a compelled soldier who sheds blood is kept from the mysteries until he repents with tears.
  • Canons of Hippolytus, canon 15Anonymous · 4th century · Those living by sexual immorality, lying, magic, usury, sedition, and similar works are not admitted to the catechumenate or baptism until three witnesses attest that they have left them; relapsed believers are expelled until they do penance.
  • Canons of Hippolytus, canon 17Anonymous · 4th century · Rules for women in church: head covering and plain hair, nursing their own children, submission and humility toward their husbands, silence in church, purification after childbirth, and separate places for women; with directions for catechumens.
  • Canons of Hippolytus, canon 30Anonymous · 4th century · Catechumens must be ready to forsake family and suffer death; the three temptations of Christ are read as desire, pride, and avarice; a long description of Christian conduct follows, with counsel for those seeking perfection and rules for Sunday communion.
  • Canons of Hippolytus, canon 34Anonymous · 4th century · At gatherings in homes there is to be no loud talk, so as to give a good example; the bishop or, in his absence, a presbyter presides and breaks the blessed bread.
  • Canons of Hippolytus, canon 38Anonymous · 4th century · The Easter night is kept in vigil until dawn; baptized Christians must stay watchful and fervent rather than rest on their baptism; the collection closes with a blessing and a colophon.
  • Church History 1.4.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · They practised the virtues and faith in one God that the name Christian signifies.
  • Church History 2.17.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Philo says they gave up their property and withdrew outside the cities to live apart.
  • Church History 2.17.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Acts likewise records that believers sold their property and shared it according to need.
  • Church History 2.17.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Philo (quoted): founded on self-control, they eat and drink only after sunset.
  • Church History 2.17.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Philo describes elderly virgins among them, chaste by choice out of love for wisdom.
  • Church History 2.23.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Hegesippus (quoted): James lived as a lifelong Nazirite, abstaining from wine, meat, oil, and baths.
  • Church History 3.29.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Clement (quoted): accused of jealousy, Nicolaus offered his wife to others; his followers misread his saying “abuse the flesh” as licence for immorality.
  • Church History 3.29.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Clement (quoted): Nicolaus himself lived chastely with his one wife; his act renounced passion, not chastity.
  • Church History 3.29.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Clement (quoted): Matthias likewise taught to fight the flesh and nourish the soul by faith and knowledge; these heresies soon died out.
  • Church History 3.33.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Tertullian (quoted) reports Pliny's letter and Trajan's reply forbidding a search for Christians.
  • Church History 3.37.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Many disciples gave their goods to the poor and went out as evangelists, carrying the written Gospels.
  • Church History 4.7.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Irenaeus reports that Carpocrates' Gnostics practised magic openly and taught that shameful deeds were needed to escape the cosmic rulers.
  • Church History 4.17.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Justin (quoted): a formerly dissolute woman, converted, urged her licentious husband to reform, warning of eternal punishment.
  • Church History 4.17.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Justin (quoted): because her husband persisted in unnatural vice, she wished to separate from him.
  • Church History 4.23.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Dionysius wrote to Amastris and Pontus with scriptural exposition, much counsel on marriage and chastity, and a command to receive back all who repent of sin or heresy.
  • Church History 4.23.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Dionysius urged Pinytus of Cnossus not to impose celibacy on the brothers as a necessity, but to consider the weakness of the many.
  • Church History 4.23.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Dionysius (quoted): Rome has always sent aid to churches and to Christians in the mines, a custom Soter has increased.
  • Church History 5.3.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Attalus received a revelation that Alcibiades's strict diet of bread and water was wrong and a stumbling block.
  • Church History 5.18.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Apollonius: a prophetess who takes gold, silver, and fine clothes must be rejected.
  • Church History 5.18.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Apollonius: contrary to Christ's command, the Montanist prophets and martyrs extort money even from the poor, orphans, and widows.
  • Church History 5.18.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Apollonius: true prophets do not dye their hair, use make-up, gamble, or lend at interest, as the Montanist prophets do.
  • Church History 6.3.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Origen's life matched his teaching, and many imitated him.
  • Church History 6.3.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Origen sold his books for a small daily income and lived an austere life of study, fasting, and little sleep.
  • Church History 6.3.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · He literally kept Christ's commands about one coat, no shoes, and no anxiety for tomorrow.
  • Church History 6.3.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · He refused others' offers of help and lived in extreme poverty.
  • Church History 6.8.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Taking Matt 19:12 literally, and to avoid scandal in teaching women, Origen castrated himself.
  • Church History 7.22.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Many Christians nursed the sick at the cost of their own lives, dying in their place.
  • Church History 7.22.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Presbyters, deacons, and laity died this way, a death Dionysius ranks with martyrdom.
  • Church History 7.22.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Christians washed and buried the dead lovingly, and soon died themselves.
  • Church History 7.22.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Pagans abandoned their sick and dead, yet could not escape the plague.
  • Church History 7.30.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · The synod charges Paul with enriching himself by extortion and bribery.
  • Church History 7.30.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · The synod accuses Paul and his clergy of keeping women companions, and of buying their silence.
  • Church History 7.30.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Even if innocent, a bishop should avoid the scandal of living with women.
  • Church History 7.30.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · How can Paul warn others when he keeps two young, beautiful women with him?
  • Church History 7.32.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Anatolius smuggled out almost all the besieged, and Eusebius nursed them like a father and physician.
  • Church History 8.14.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Maxentius turned to every vice, taking senators' wives from their husbands, abusing them, and sending them back.
  • Church History 8.14.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Maximin seduced women and carried off virgins in every city he passed through.
  • Church History 8.14.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · A noble Christian woman of Alexandria resisted Maximin's advances; unwilling to kill her, he exiled her and seized her property.
  • Church History 8.14.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Many women endured torture rather than be violated, but the most admirable was a noble woman at Rome whom Maxentius tried to abuse.
  • Church History 8.14.17Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · The Roman woman, whose husband the prefect let the tyrant's agents take her, killed herself with a sword rather than submit.
  • Church History 9.8.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Only the Christians cared for the sick, buried the dead, and fed the hungry, so that pagans praised their God.
  • Church History 10.8.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Licinius forbade anyone to feed or pity prisoners, on pain of sharing their punishment.
  • Church History 10.8.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Licinius exiled the innocent, gave nobles' wives to slaves to be abused, and himself violated women, but his last crimes were worse still.
  • Acta Archelai (Latin) 47Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus answers Manes's contrasts: Jesus' teaching on retaliation advances from justice to goodness, the spoiling of Egypt was just wages, and Jesus too accepts gifts from the rich.
  • Fragment 7Peter of Alexandria · ca. 300–311 · A penitent laments that he forgot that God sees the mind, sinned while presuming on God's mercy, and despised forgiveness because punishment did not come at once.
  • Homilies 2.6Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter defines the true Prophet as all-knowing and sinless, and says that apart from him people can know only the basic rule of not wronging others.
  • Homilies 3.31Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Those who reject the apostles fare worse than Sodom; to receive peace one must refuse to do wrong and bear wrong, trusting God’s justice.
  • Homilies 3.68Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · The presbyters and all believers should promote marriage, even for older people, because adultery, the sin most hated by God, spreads like rabies through the church.
  • Homilies 3.69Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Love shows itself in works of mercy; believers must meet often, for whoever forsakes the assembly scatters the church and becomes prey for the evil one.
  • Homilies 3.71Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · The church must support Zacchaeus without his asking, since the worker deserves his wages, and must honour and provide for its clergy, widows, and orphans.
  • Homilies 4.12Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Greek teaching of immoral gods and of astrological fate removes shame and repentance.
  • Homilies 4.18Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Myths learned in childhood take root like evil seed and, as custom becomes second nature, are hard to remove.
  • Homilies 4.19Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Greek myths, theatres, and books should be avoided, for they spread their corruption like rabies.
  • Homilies 4.20Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Clement rejects the philosophers’ view that adultery and similar acts are sins only by convention, since they cause strife and murder.
  • Homilies 4.21Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Even undetected adultery breeds evils: desertion, plots, theft, abortion, and children who inherit from a man who is not their father.
  • Homilies 4.23Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Clement argues that the gods of the myths would deserve punishment, and that only fear of the all-seeing God restrains secret sin.
  • Homilies 5.7Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Clement insists that seduction by persuasion is less culpable than compulsion by magic, which he refuses.
  • Homilies 5.8Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Appion argues that only the deed of adultery is judged, not the means; Clement prefers persuasion but says the woman is a philosopher.
  • Homilies 5.21Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · The reply argues that Eros cannot be a god: either he suffers passion willingly or is driven by another, leading to an endless regress; love is simply a human appetite.
  • Homilies 5.25Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · The reply urges parents to train children in self-control and to marry them early, teaching them not to look at another woman.
  • Homilies 5.26Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · The reply explains how desire feeds on memory and is quenched by fear, and the woman declares that a Jew has taught her to live as befits God.
  • Homilies 6.15Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Clement explains the judgment of Paris as a moral allegory in which irrational impulse chooses pleasure and wealth stirs up strife.
  • Homilies 6.18Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Clement argues that the myth-makers acted like demons by clothing supposed truths in shameful stories, and suggests that wicked men invented the outrages.
  • Homilies 7.4Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter calls the people to repentance: to pray, abstain from sacrificial food, carrion, and blood, to purify themselves, and to treat their neighbour as they wish to be treated.
  • Homilies 8.16Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter says humans imitated the giants in eating meat, showing that people become good or bad by habit, and the giants turned to cannibalism.
  • Homilies 10.6Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Idolaters have become like beasts, but by accepting God's law and doing good they can become truly human again and be restored as God's sons.
  • Homilies 11.3Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · The hearers must turn righteous anger against their evil desires, burning them away like fire on a neglected field.
  • Homilies 11.4Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Man, not the idol, is God's image, so godliness toward God means feeding, clothing, sheltering and visiting people in need.
  • Homilies 11.5Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Idolaters claim piety toward images while murdering, committing adultery and stealing against man, God's true image.
  • Homilies 11.8Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · God gave free will because only chosen goodness is true goodness, and making God the cause of all thoughts makes him the author of sin.
  • Homilies 11.15Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Pagan feasts, with their smoke, blood and wine, feed unclean spirits who enter the worshippers and drive them to vice and violent death.
  • Homilies 11.27Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Both righteous and unrighteous must hasten to baptism, for forgiveness and a new life of good deeds that honors God as Father.
  • Homilies 11.31Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Whatever pagans did well belongs to the truth and should be kept, and more should be done.
  • Homilies 11.32Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Those who know the truth must surpass pagans in goodness, avoiding anger and lust and loving even enemies, or they will be shamed at the judgment.
  • Homilies 12.6Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter jokes that he has no luxuries needing a slave, describes his simple diet and clothing, and offers instead to serve Clement.
  • Homilies 12.14Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter warns that suicides are punished in Hades and promises the woman a remedy if she tells him her grief.
  • Homilies 12.25Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter explains that repaying a benefactor is friendship, not love for humanity, which does good to every person simply as a human being.
  • Homilies 12.26Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter defines love for humanity as doing good even to enemies, in imitation of God who sends sun and rain on the just and the unjust.
  • Homilies 12.29Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter quotes the true Prophet's saying that good and evil must come, with blessing and woe on those through whom they come, and explains that the righteous are tested by the wicked.
  • Homilies 12.30Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter teaches that the wicked who afflict the righteous should be pitied and prayed for, not resisted, since suffering comes by God's providence.
  • Homilies 12.32Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter describes the righteous man who loves his enemies and his neighbour as himself, and the works of mercy that make up the female part of love for humanity.
  • Homilies 12.33Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter teaches that love for enemies is reached through the fear of God, which, by doing the deeds of love, comes to love itself and makes a person immortal.
  • Homilies 13.13Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter teaches that chastity brings good outcomes and adultery destruction, and that God rewards chastity even among the unbaptized in this life, though salvation is for the baptized.
  • Homilies 13.14Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter teaches that a chaste woman must flee at once from any illicit love, and that the one sin of adultery brings punishment even on one who does all other good.
  • Homilies 13.19Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter declares that one adultery is many murders of the soul, defiling the breath of God within a person and leading to eternal fire.
  • Homilies 15.5Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · The father reports Clement's account of Jesus' teaching on non-retaliation, which seemed to him unjust.
  • Homilies 15.6Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter compares Christians to subjects of one king caught in a hostile king's land, for whom mild treatment is kindness.
  • Homilies 15.7Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter explains that God gave the present world to an evil king and the age to come to a good one, and each person chooses between them.
  • Homilies 15.8Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter argues that no one is wronged, since each freely chooses the present or the future goods; the father quotes Plato.
  • Homilies 15.9Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter teaches that possessions are sins and that afflictions, by God's kindness, take them away and spare believers eternal punishment.
  • Homilies 15.10Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter explains that poverty alone does not save; Jesus blessed the faithful poor who do not sin.
  • Homilies 17.11Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter rejects a formless God and defends the fear of God as the source of good deeds and freedom from other fears.
  • Homilies 17.12Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter teaches that both fear and love of God serve to keep people from sin, and that one who teaches fearlessness denies the judgment.
  • Recognitions 2.20Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter opens the debate by urging his hearers to seek first God's righteousness and kingdom, since judgment concerns deeds, not questions.
  • Recognitions 2.21Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter teaches that this life is the time for works, that God is known from creation, and that hidden things will be revealed to the righteous by the Holy Spirit.
  • Recognitions 3.5Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · In the bracketed passage, Peter argues from Jesus' teaching on adultery and desire that the commandment is addressed to the free, immortal soul rather than to the body.
  • Recognitions 3.22Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Simon appeals to fate, and Peter shows that denying free choice would overturn judgment, law, virtue, and God himself.
  • Recognitions 3.37Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter teaches that men will be judged on doing the good within their power, and must know God as both good and just.
  • Recognitions 3.42Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter denounces Simon as armed with the serpent's cunning and describes the moral chaos that denying the soul's immortality would bring.
  • Recognitions 3.54Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter teaches that the kingdom must be loved above everything, since all earthly things pass while God alone remains.
  • Recognitions 4.16Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Demons enter only those who, through excess and impiety, break the measure set by God.
  • Recognitions 4.18Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Incomplete faith leaves room for demons, who disguise their suggestions as bodily humors, so moderation in food and drink is necessary.
  • Recognitions 4.31Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Worship of lifeless idols removed the fear of an all-seeing God and unleashed war, plunder, and insatiable greed.
  • Recognitions 4.36Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter lists what stains the baptismal garment—false teaching about God, sins of deed, and eating food offered to demons—and speaks of three steps of thirty, sixty, and a hundred commandments.
  • Recognitions 5.13Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter calls his hearers to serve the one God, imitate his mercy, and so recover the image and likeness in which they were made.
  • Recognitions 5.23Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The true image of God is man, honored by works of mercy and violated by murder, adultery, and every injury, not by images of stone or wood.
  • Recognitions 5.32Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The religion of God calls to sobriety, chastity, patience, contentment, justice, and abstention from idol sacrifices, which give demons entry.
  • Recognitions 5.33Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Idol worship gives demons power to drive people to crime, lust, rage, and even suicide, which God permits so that they may recognize whom they have forsaken.
  • Recognitions 6.10Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The baptized must show God's likeness by avoiding sin, and keep the purity rules of the law, beginning with abstaining from intercourse during menstruation.
  • Recognitions 6.11Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Washing the body is good as a consequence of inner purity, as Christ taught in rebuking some Pharisees for cleaning only the outside of the cup.
  • Recognitions 6.12Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Intercourse should be for the sake of children, not lust alone, and Christians must keep chastity more carefully than pagans do.
  • Recognitions 6.13Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Christians should keep whatever good they practiced as pagans and surpass pagan virtue as the Sermon on the Mount teaches, or be shamed at the judgment.
  • Recognitions 6.14Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · As Christ said that the queen of the south and the Ninevites would condemn his generation, Christians who know the truth must surpass pagans in chastity.
  • Recognitions 7.6Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter jokingly lists the luxuries a slave would tend, describes his own simple life of bread, olives, and a single garment, and offers rather to serve Clement himself.
  • Recognitions 7.14Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter warns that suicide brings greater punishment, and the woman says she would accept it to see her children again, so Peter asks the cause of her grief.
  • Recognitions 7.37Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter insists that all fast one day before Mattidia's baptism, and explains Christ's saying about plucking out the eye as cutting off the purpose and causes of sin, not limbs.
  • Recognitions 7.38Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Mattidia is baptized in the sea and dines with her sons, and Peter teaches that chastity is rewarded and must be guarded by flight from temptation.
  • Recognitions 8.56Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Evil did not always exist and comes from rational creatures who exceed God's laws, not from God; what we will be judged on is simply not doing to others what we would not suffer.
  • Recognitions 9.6Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · God gave humans bodily needs to drive them to work, which tests whether they meet those needs justly or by crime; the wicked then blame the stars for their own choices.
  • Recognitions 9.7Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Providence turns social inequality into an occasion for justice and mercy under God's law, and baptism's water quenches the fire of desire through which we were first born.
  • Recognitions 9.9Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Children may inherit defects when parents disregard God's law of intercourse, for the purity rules guard procreation as a farmer guards his sowing.
  • Recognitions 9.15Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Fear restrains men, animals, and all creation, and the fear of God can likewise extinguish the desires that demons stir up.
  • Recognitions 9.23Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The women of Susa are licentious with their husbands' consent, some Eastern peoples kill boys who submit to homosexual acts while the Gauls permit it, which no common horoscope can explain.
  • Recognitions 9.31Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The mind errs through habit, bodily desire, and demonic urging, but knowledge of the truth and fear of judgment enable it to resist all three, so conduct is in our power.
  • Recognitions 10.5Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Faustinianus presents the Greek view that nothing is good or evil by nature—not murder, adultery, or theft—and Plato's teaching that friends should hold all things, even wives, in common.
  • Recognitions 10.9Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Using astrology's own terms, Clement shows that adultery, murder, and theft come from the same malign stars as fevers and fires, so by the old man's own principles they are evil.
  • Recognitions 10.43Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter urges Faustinianus, given the shortness of life, to repent, adorn his soul with virtue, keep the company of believers, pray, and help his repentance by almsgiving.
  • Recognitions 10.44Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · An older convert should be grateful that desire has waned, and should devote himself to knowledge and mercy, for God values the firmness of conversion, not its length.
  • Poem 6 (To Flavius Felix on the Resurrection of the Dead), lines 250–274Anonymous · 4th-5th cent. (disputed) · The pious, the merciful and the honest rejoice and praise God in the land of the blessed; then the wicked come forward, lamenting their crimes.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 1Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · The author, writing to Zenas and Serenus, explains why he writes: to show them the childish ways of some, so that they may avoid them.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 2Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Against anger and jealousy: say nothing harsh to an opponent, seek peace with those who differ, and teach without bearing grudges, unlike those who would hand everyone over to Gehenna.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 3Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Tranquillity comes from not seeking first places and from silence before the contentious; wrongdoer and wronged should hasten to be reconciled, and the believer must be free of fleshly desire.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 4Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · On blameless speech: keep silence for the most part, flee evil suspicions, do everything by a right rule, and call on the physician, since no good dwells in the flesh.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 5Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Moderation in food, contentment in want, the world regarded as alien, and avoidance of busyness and worldly talk.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 6Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Against those who readily believe evil, take every remark as aimed at themselves, and stir up quarrels under a show of zeal and frankness.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 7Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Even temper, honour to friends, giving and hearing reproof, moderate use of wine, and patient listening; the ref breaks off mid-sentence.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 8Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Counsel on conduct with women, on avoiding evil talk, and on studying the Scriptures with humility.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 9Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Counsel on humility, quiet speech, sincere psalmody, listening, and avoiding contentiousness and boasting.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 10Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Counsel on forgiveness, on accepting admonition, on judging oneself, and on avoiding quarrels.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 11Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Counsel against scheming, for blamelessness and self-control in anger, and for examining oneself before admonishing others.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 12Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Counsel on the moderate use of wine as God's gift for the body's help.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 13Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Counsel against gluttony and its excuses.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 14Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Counsel on wealth and poverty, and the prize awaiting those who run within the rule.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 15Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Counsel on honourable and careful conduct toward women and against vanity and lust.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 17Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Counsel on care for children and the sick, and on not being ashamed of manual work.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 18Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Counsel on godly grief and on preparing the mind for misfortune.
  • Letter to Zenas and Serenus 19Anonymous · 4th century (disputed) · Closing counsel on virtue, purity of heart and mutual sympathy, with the final blessing.
  • On Sodom, lines 1–24Anonymous · 4th-5th century (disputed) · After the flood and God's covenant of the rainbow, a new impiety arose, and Sodom, given over to unnatural lust, deserved destruction by fire.
  • On Sodom, lines 25–48Anonymous · 4th-5th century (disputed) · God sends two angels to Sodom, where Lot alone fears God; he receives them hospitably, and when the townsmen besiege his door he pleads with them against their unnatural lust.
  • Acts of Julius the Veteran 1Anonymous · ca. 304 (27 May) · Julius, a veteran of twenty-six years' service, refuses the governor Maximus's offers and pleas to sacrifice and is sentenced to death.
  • Prophetic Extracts 3.37Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius applies Jeremiah's new covenant written on hearts to the Gospel, which makes the old covenant obsolete and forms a virtuous life even in the unlettered.
  • Prophetic Extracts 4.8Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius reads Isaiah's shoot from the root of Jesse, and the peace among wild beasts, as Christ and the taming of human natures in the churches, with Lebanon's fall as Jerusalem's.
  • Divine Institutes 1.1.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Teaching people to live well matters more than teaching them to speak well.
  • Divine Institutes 1.9.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Hercules, born of adultery, defiled the world with lust and could not be divine.
  • Divine Institutes 1.9.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · True bravery is self-mastery, which Hercules never achieved.
  • Divine Institutes 1.9.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Conquering one's own anger, greed, and lust is braver than Hercules' labours.
  • Divine Institutes 1.9.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Only the temperate and just are truly brave; beside God's works Hercules' feats are trivial.
  • Divine Institutes 1.10.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Jupiter's abduction of a royal boy was a crime against nature.
  • Divine Institutes 1.18.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Romans think conquering generals become gods through war and destruction.
  • Divine Institutes 1.18.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Conquerors call their crimes virtue for the sake of empty glory.
  • Divine Institutes 1.18.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · One murderer is shut out of temples, but a mass killer is admitted to heaven.
  • Divine Institutes 1.18.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Lactantius would rather die than win immortality by killing.
  • Divine Institutes 1.18.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If only killers reach heaven, a peaceful world would leave no one worthy of heaven.
  • Divine Institutes 1.18.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Lovers of military glory would destroy peace just to have enemies.
  • Divine Institutes 1.20.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The Floralia are celebrated with obscene speech and naked prostitutes performing.
  • Divine Institutes 1.20.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Placing Cupids in gymnasia was a wicked means of corrupting boys.
  • Divine Institutes 1.20.18Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtues belong in the heart, not in shrines, and should not be deified.
  • Divine Institutes 1.20.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue is cultivated by will and purpose, not by sacrifice or incense.
  • Divine Institutes 1.20.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue is cultivated by holding it in the mind; worship belongs to the one God alone.
  • Divine Institutes 1.20.23Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The human heart is the true temple, to be filled with real virtues.
  • Divine Institutes 1.20.25Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Where virtues are worshipped as images, real virtues vanish and vice rules.
  • Divine Institutes 1.21.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Sacrificing infants was worse than the savagery of beasts, which love their young.
  • Divine Institutes 2.1.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Believing God does not care or that death ends all, people run after pleasures into death's snares.
  • Divine Institutes 2.1.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Knowing man's purpose would lead people to worship God and live justly.
  • Divine Institutes 2.2.24Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Rejecting idols, riches, and bodily pleasures means worshipping the living God and living.
  • Divine Institutes 2.4.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Persius says the best gift to God is a just and holy heart.
  • Divine Institutes 2.6.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Under the guise of religion people worship the wealth that drives crime and war.
  • Divine Institutes 2.12.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The soul, like fire, must rise toward heaven and is kept alive by justice alone.
  • Divine Institutes 3.7.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · In ethics there is no room for disagreement, since error overturns life.
  • Divine Institutes 3.7.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · He lists the philosophers' views of the highest good.
  • Divine Institutes 3.7.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · He completes the list of views of the highest good.
  • Divine Institutes 3.8.31Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Knowledge without virtue is not enough; virtue joined to knowledge is wisdom.
  • Divine Institutes 3.8.32Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue is not the highest good but the mother of it, contrary to Cicero and others.
  • Divine Institutes 3.9.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Serving God means keeping justice by good works; Anaxagoras reduced the greatest matter to two objects.
  • Divine Institutes 3.9.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Humanity is justice, justice is piety, and piety is acknowledging God as Father.
  • Divine Institutes 3.11.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue consists in despising what others count as goods.
  • Divine Institutes 3.12.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The soul's enemies are desires, vices and sins.
  • Divine Institutes 3.12.35Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · In this life we are happy only by keeping to virtue's hard way amid hardships.
  • Divine Institutes 3.15.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Philosophers often practise at home the vices they condemn in school.
  • Divine Institutes 3.15.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Intention cannot excuse a vicious act, since deeds are seen and intentions are not.
  • Divine Institutes 3.15.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Aristippus's teaching that bodily pleasure is the highest good came from the brothel.
  • Divine Institutes 3.16.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Goodness on the lips but not in the heart is a lie.
  • Divine Institutes 3.17.36Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If souls perish and no god cares, crime becomes rational.
  • Divine Institutes 3.18.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Suicide is murder, since it kills a man.
  • Divine Institutes 3.18.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Only God may release the soul from the body; wrongs done to us are for him to avenge.
  • Divine Institutes 3.22.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Justice lies in the mind, not in external arrangements.
  • Divine Institutes 3.22.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · True equality comes from removing pride, not property or marriage.
  • Divine Institutes 3.22.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Plato overthrew justice, since community should be of minds, not goods.
  • Divine Institutes 3.22.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Plato's scheme removes frugality, abstinence, temperance, chastity and modesty.
  • Divine Institutes 3.23.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Money should be given to the poor, not thrown away.
  • Divine Institutes 3.23.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Compassion is man's natural protection in place of animals' weapons.
  • Divine Institutes 3.26.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God's words make the angry gentle.
  • Divine Institutes 3.26.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · They make the greedy generous.
  • Divine Institutes 3.26.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · They make the lustful chaste.
  • Divine Institutes 3.26.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · They make the cruel merciful.
  • Divine Institutes 4.17.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Circumcision signifies repentance: confessing sins to God brings pardon.
  • Divine Institutes 4.23.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · A teacher who does not practise undermines his own precepts.
  • Divine Institutes 4.24.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The perfect teacher must show by deeds that virtue is possible, while leaving people free.
  • Divine Institutes 4.24.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christ, sharing our flesh, overcame sin, desire, pain and death and so removes every excuse.
  • Divine Institutes 4.25.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Our great struggle is against the desires of the flesh.
  • Divine Institutes 5.5.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Justice, the highest virtue, was sought by poets and philosophers.
  • Divine Institutes 5.5.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The poets said Justice left the earth after the golden age of Saturn.
  • Divine Institutes 5.5.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God gave the earth for the common use of all.
  • Divine Institutes 5.5.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The golden age meant generosity to the poor, not the absence of property.
  • Divine Institutes 5.5.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · When the just shared, no one went hungry.
  • Divine Institutes 5.5.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Losing God's religion, people lost the knowledge of good and evil.
  • Divine Institutes 5.6.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Greed, born of contempt for God, concentrated wealth in few hands.
  • Divine Institutes 5.6.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The greedy hoarded necessities to enslave others.
  • Divine Institutes 5.6.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · True religion makes people brothers who share, help, and welcome.
  • Divine Institutes 5.7.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue needs opposing vice and adversity.
  • Divine Institutes 5.7.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God allowed evil so that virtue could exist.
  • Divine Institutes 5.7.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God lets the wicked be strong and many so virtue is tested and rare.
  • Divine Institutes 5.7.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Quintilian: innocence is praised because it is rare.
  • Divine Institutes 5.7.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue needs evil to fight against.
  • Divine Institutes 5.7.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Adversity strengthens virtue.
  • Divine Institutes 5.8.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Justice is present and easy to attain if one wills.
  • Divine Institutes 5.8.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Justice is at hand; take it into your heart.
  • Divine Institutes 5.8.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Worship the true God and the golden age will return.
  • Divine Institutes 5.8.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Worship of the one God would end war, plots, and theft.
  • Divine Institutes 5.8.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Knowing God condemns lust beyond procreation would end adultery and prostitution.
  • Divine Institutes 5.8.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If all lived as Christians do, the world would be golden.
  • Divine Institutes 5.8.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God's one law would make human laws and punishments unnecessary.
  • Divine Institutes 5.9.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The crimes of society come from pagans, not Christians.
  • Divine Institutes 5.9.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Incest, treason, sacrilege, and fraud are pagan crimes.
  • Divine Institutes 5.9.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Sexual vices, castration, gladiatorial self-selling, and corrupt judges are theirs too.
  • Divine Institutes 5.9.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christians' whole religion is a blameless life.
  • Divine Institutes 5.10.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · True piety is found among peacemakers who love even enemies.
  • Divine Institutes 5.10.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Worshippers imitate violent and immoral gods.
  • Divine Institutes 5.10.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The gods' thefts and adulteries teach vice.
  • Divine Institutes 5.12.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christians choose the 'folly' of loving those who hate them.
  • Divine Institutes 5.12.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christians prefer true goodness with suffering to false with prosperity.
  • Divine Institutes 5.14.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Justice by nature looks like folly.
  • Divine Institutes 5.14.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Justice springs from religion and consists in equity.
  • Divine Institutes 5.14.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Justice's two chief parts are piety and equity.
  • Divine Institutes 5.14.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Equity means treating oneself as equal to others.
  • Divine Institutes 5.14.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God made all people equal.
  • Divine Institutes 5.14.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Before God no one is slave or master.
  • Divine Institutes 5.14.18Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God's measure of rank is virtue and mercy.
  • Divine Institutes 5.14.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Justice makes equal those born equal.
  • Divine Institutes 5.15.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christians call each other brothers because they are equal.
  • Divine Institutes 5.15.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Slaves are brothers in spirit and fellow servants.
  • Divine Institutes 5.15.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · True riches lie in good use and contentment.
  • Divine Institutes 5.15.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Before God rank depends on justice.
  • Divine Institutes 5.15.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Those who make themselves lower will be raised higher by God.
  • Divine Institutes 5.15.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Contending for rank is contrary to wisdom.
  • Divine Institutes 5.15.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christ taught that the humble will be exalted.
  • Divine Institutes 5.15.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The humble are distinguished before God.
  • Divine Institutes 5.17.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The truly just man would not be in such situations.
  • Divine Institutes 5.17.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The just man neither trades abroad nor makes war.
  • Divine Institutes 5.17.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The just man seeks no gain and will not even watch killing.
  • Divine Institutes 5.17.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Without eternal reward, virtue would be folly.
  • Divine Institutes 5.17.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The just man will die rather than kill.
  • Divine Institutes 5.17.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Innocence kept even to death is perfect, not foolish.
  • Divine Institutes 5.17.25Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The fool, not knowing the good, always sins.
  • Divine Institutes 5.17.26Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Justice requires wisdom, so the just cannot be fools.
  • Divine Institutes 5.17.27Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Refusing to harm another is wise, not foolish.
  • Divine Institutes 5.17.29Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Folly is erring through ignorance of the good.
  • Divine Institutes 5.17.31Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Humans, knowing good and evil, prefer to suffer rather than harm.
  • Divine Institutes 5.17.32Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Deceit in trade is cunning, not wisdom.
  • Divine Institutes 5.17.34Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Wisdom seeks the good and corrects others' errors.
  • Divine Institutes 5.20.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christians leave vengeance to God.
  • Divine Institutes 5.22.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Patience is a great virtue.
  • Divine Institutes 5.22.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Patience requires that the just suffer at the hands of the unjust.
  • Divine Institutes 5.22.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Without adversity there is no patience.
  • Divine Institutes 5.22.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The prosperous lack patience and innocence.
  • Divine Institutes 5.22.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Wealth and power are the rewards of injustice.
  • Divine Institutes 5.22.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The just man seeks neither others' goods nor power.
  • Divine Institutes 5.22.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · He is content and shares with the needy.
  • Divine Institutes 5.22.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The just man is self-controlled and humble.
  • Divine Institutes 5.22.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The just are necessarily subject to the unjust.
  • Divine Institutes 6.1.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God desires only innocence.
  • Divine Institutes 6.1.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Turning from heaven, they let the body rule the soul.
  • Divine Institutes 6.1.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · They seek wealth by any means for display and luxury.
  • Divine Institutes 6.1.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Slaves to pleasure, they rush toward death.
  • Divine Institutes 6.2.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · This book will teach how to worship rightly.
  • Divine Institutes 6.2.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christian ethics completes the philosophers' precepts.
  • Divine Institutes 6.3.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Human life follows one of two ways, to heaven or to hell.
  • Divine Institutes 6.3.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Philosophers say virtue's way is hard at first, then pleasant.
  • Divine Institutes 6.3.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The way of vice is pleasant at first, then ruinous.
  • Divine Institutes 6.3.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue costs labor but yields lasting fruit; vice ends in misery.
  • Divine Institutes 6.3.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtues and vices expel each other.
  • Divine Institutes 6.4.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The broad way looks delightful but holds vice.
  • Divine Institutes 6.4.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The heavenly way is hard and steep.
  • Divine Institutes 6.4.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The narrow way holds virtues along with hardships.
  • Divine Institutes 6.4.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Riches hinder travel on the narrow way.
  • Divine Institutes 6.4.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Life is a campaign against the adversary, with eternal rewards.
  • Divine Institutes 6.4.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The devil uses greed, anger, lust, and envy.
  • Divine Institutes 6.5.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Philosophers kept the name of virtue but lost its substance.
  • Divine Institutes 6.5.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Lucilius' verses defining virtue.
  • Divine Institutes 6.5.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue lies in the will, not in knowledge.
  • Divine Institutes 6.5.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Knowing the way is useless without walking it.
  • Divine Institutes 6.5.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Sinners know they sin and hide it.
  • Divine Institutes 6.5.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue is the right desire to do good.
  • Divine Institutes 6.5.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Knowledge without virtue deserves punishment.
  • Divine Institutes 6.5.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue is doing good and avoiding evil.
  • Divine Institutes 6.5.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue restrains anger, greed, and lust.
  • Divine Institutes 6.5.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Restrained anger ends strife.
  • Divine Institutes 6.5.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Restrained greed ends robbery and war.
  • Divine Institutes 6.5.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Restrained lust preserves chastity.
  • Divine Institutes 6.5.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Calming the passions removes crime.
  • Divine Institutes 6.5.18Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Without knowing God one cannot avoid sin.
  • Divine Institutes 6.6.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Seeking wealth is not virtue.
  • Divine Institutes 6.6.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue seeks goods that neither man nor death can take.
  • Divine Institutes 6.6.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pagans thought using wealth rightly meant thrift.
  • Divine Institutes 6.6.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Thrift is an earthly, not a true, virtue.
  • Divine Institutes 6.6.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Patriotic gain comes at others' expense and overthrows virtue.
  • Divine Institutes 6.6.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · War destroys justice and human fellowship.
  • Divine Institutes 6.6.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero: favoring citizens over foreigners destroys justice.
  • Divine Institutes 6.6.22Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Those who harm and kill for country cannot be just.
  • Divine Institutes 6.6.23Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Conquerors are praised as virtuous, even by philosophers.
  • Divine Institutes 6.9.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Rome won its empire by lawful injustice.
  • Divine Institutes 6.9.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Good works without knowledge of God are empty.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · What is given to man is given to God, whose image he is.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Justice joins us to God (religion) and to man (mercy).
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God gave frail man compassion so that people would help one another.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · All descend from one man, so hating anyone is a crime.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God commands us to end enmities.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · We are brothers in soul through one God.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Harming others is bestial; God teaches only good.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Doing good means helping the oppressed and feeding the hungry.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · We must help others as we would be helped.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Philosophers (Stoics) removed mercy.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Stoic rigor cuts them off from human fellowship.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.22Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If society is for mutual help, we must help the needy.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.23Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Breaking the compact of mutual help is wicked.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.24Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Whoever refuses help forfeits help.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.25Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Humans cannot live without mutual help.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.26Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If society rests on humanity, we must recognize one another.
  • Divine Institutes 6.10.27Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Civilized people owe even more to one another.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Humanity means loving others as fellow humans.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Harming others is against nature; helping them accords with it.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Failing to help forfeits the name of human.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Even Stoics would help a man attacked by a beast.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · All agree one must save the endangered.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Hunger and cold call for help as much as accidents.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · They help only those who can repay.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero warned that generosity drains itself.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero put property above justice.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero allowed giving to "suitable" people.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero measured duty by advantage.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · True justice gives to those who cannot repay.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero himself said generosity seeks no profit.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero's rule would abandon the destitute.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Give most to those from whom you expect nothing.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Do not choose whom to help; everyone who asks is human.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.18Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Give to the blind, lame, and destitute, whom God keeps alive.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Failing to save the dying is killing.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Fearing loss, the ungenerous lose what they give.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Misers to the poor squander fortunes elsewhere.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.22Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Spending fortunes on public shows is madness.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.26Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · True beneficence meets real need.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.27Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Gifts to the non-needy are not justice.
  • Divine Institutes 6.11.28Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · True generosity feeds the needy.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Wealth's true fruit is using it for others and for justice.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Mercy must expect reward from God alone.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Invite those who cannot repay.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Friendship is allowed, but the just work is for God.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero praised hospitality only to the illustrious.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The just man's home should be open to the lowly.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · A repaid benefit ceases to be a benefit.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Only gifts to those who cannot repay remain benefits.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero praised ransoming captives.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Feeding the poor and ransoming captives is the work of the just.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Doing good to kin earns little praise.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.18Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Doing good to strangers is true justice.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Protecting orphans and widows is a great work of justice.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.22Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christians know why the defenseless must be protected.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.23Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Care for widows and orphans frees believers to face martyrdom.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.24Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Caring for the sick is a living sacrifice to God.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.25Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Burying strangers and the poor is the last duty of piety.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.30Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christians bury the unknown dead as God's image.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.31Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Burying strangers is a sacrifice to God.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.32Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Objection: such giving would impoverish me.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.33Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Poverty, praised by philosophers, is a harbor from care.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.34Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Wealth exposes its owner to danger.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.35Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Entrust wealth to God, where no thief or rust can reach it.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.36Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Throw off wealth to run freely to God.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.37Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · These precepts are for the whole church, united as one.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.38Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Do your share, in proportion to your wealth.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.39Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Redirect spending on games to ransom, food, and burial.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.40Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Turn wasteful spending into gifts to God.
  • Divine Institutes 6.12.41Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God forgives the merciful and judges the unmerciful by their own measure.
  • Divine Institutes 6.13.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Almsgiving removes sins but is no license to sin.
  • Divine Institutes 6.13.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Repentance means resolving to sin no more.
  • Divine Institutes 6.13.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Even the purified should keep giving.
  • Divine Institutes 6.13.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The justified should do good for the glory of virtue.
  • Divine Institutes 6.13.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Sin affects deeds, words, and thoughts.
  • Divine Institutes 6.13.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Three steps of virtue.
  • Divine Institutes 6.13.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The third step brings likeness to God.
  • Divine Institutes 6.13.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pure thought is almost beyond human power.
  • Divine Institutes 6.13.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Even the just sin by word and thought.
  • Divine Institutes 6.13.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Constant giving wipes out sins of the flesh.
  • Divine Institutes 6.13.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Riches placed in justice are the only true wealth.
  • Divine Institutes 6.13.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Put on the garment of justice.
  • Divine Institutes 6.13.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Adorn God's living images, the poor, rather than idols.
  • Divine Institutes 6.13.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God rewards good done to his images.
  • Divine Institutes 6.14.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Philosophers treated mercy, a chief human good, as a vice.
  • Divine Institutes 6.14.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtues become vices when they exceed their limits.
  • Divine Institutes 6.14.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Courage, frankness, and severity each have limits.
  • Divine Institutes 6.14.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Their virtues serve only this temporary life.
  • Divine Institutes 6.15.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Without passions there is no virtue to restrain them.
  • Divine Institutes 6.15.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue needs something to restrain.
  • Divine Institutes 6.15.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · No virtue without vice, as no victory without an enemy.
  • Divine Institutes 6.15.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Passions are like fertile soil that needs cultivation.
  • Divine Institutes 6.15.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God implanted passions so that virtue could grow.
  • Divine Institutes 6.16.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Even moderate vices must be avoided.
  • Divine Institutes 6.16.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Passions become vices or virtues by their use.
  • Divine Institutes 6.16.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The direction of a passion matters, not its degree.
  • Divine Institutes 6.16.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Some joy is wrong even in small measure, some right in great.
  • Divine Institutes 6.16.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Joy at an enemy's harm versus joy at liberation.
  • Divine Institutes 6.16.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The object determines whether a passion is right.
  • Divine Institutes 6.16.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Passions should be directed to proper objects and times.
  • Divine Institutes 6.16.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Passions directed rightly are good.
  • Divine Institutes 6.16.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Sexual desire within marriage is blameless; outside it, a grave vice.
  • Divine Institutes 6.16.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The vice lies in the disposition, not in feeling itself.
  • Divine Institutes 6.16.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Passions should be steered onto the right road.
  • Divine Institutes 6.17.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Desire for heavenly things is a virtue.
  • Divine Institutes 6.17.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Desire for God persists where mere will fails.
  • Divine Institutes 6.17.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The passions should be directed rightly.
  • Divine Institutes 6.17.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The passions are like a chariot that needs the right road.
  • Divine Institutes 6.17.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Fear and desire aimed at God become virtues.
  • Divine Institutes 6.17.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Thrift that serves possession is no virtue.
  • Divine Institutes 6.17.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Thrift is not a virtue when mercy requires spending.
  • Divine Institutes 6.17.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Frugality springs from love of possessions.
  • Divine Institutes 6.17.18Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Philosophers distinguish generous from prodigal.
  • Divine Institutes 6.17.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Giving to the poor is not prodigality.
  • Divine Institutes 6.17.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Spending to save lives is virtue; stinginess is vice.
  • Divine Institutes 6.17.24Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Constancy means obeying God rather than men, not resisting injury.
  • Divine Institutes 6.17.25Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Despising death means martyrdom, not suicide.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Bear one another's burdens and seek no glory.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Boasting of good works forfeits the heavenly reward.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Never lie to deceive or harm.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · There is no place for lying on the way of justice.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The Christian lies to no one, friend or foe.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Lend without interest.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Taking interest preys on need.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · An interest-free loan is a good work.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Take no gifts from the poor; answer curses with blessing.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Bear wrongs mildly and leave vengeance to God.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Do not avenge wrongs; God the Judge sees all.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The world despises the forbearing and honors the vengeful.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The just man prefers contempt to wrongdoing.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero: the good man harms no one unless provoked.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero's exception spoils his definition.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Returning injury is as bad as inflicting it.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.18Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Impatience answering wickedness breeds strife.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Patience quenches wickedness; impatience inflames it.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Universal patience would end crime.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Anger unrestrained strips one of humanity.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.23Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Patience distinguishes the wise from the foolish.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.25Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Retaliation imitates the wrongdoer.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.29Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The wise remove the quarrel, not the adversary.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.30Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Patience is the highest virtue, proved by insults.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.31Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Retaliation is defeat; self-control is mastery.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.32Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Patience opposes all vices and restores the soul.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.33Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Do not let the sun set on anger.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.34Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero himself praised Caesar for forgetting injuries.
  • Divine Institutes 6.18.35Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christians, candidates for immortality, should forgive all the more.
  • Divine Institutes 6.19.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Anger was not given for killing.
  • Divine Institutes 6.19.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Anger, greed, and lust are the three Furies.
  • Divine Institutes 6.19.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God set limits to each passion.
  • Divine Institutes 6.19.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Desire is for necessities, lust for offspring, anger for disciplining children.
  • Divine Institutes 6.19.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Anger against equals is impious and ruinous.
  • Divine Institutes 6.19.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God forbids anger at equals but commands correcting children.
  • Divine Institutes 6.19.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The ignorant misuse the passions.
  • Divine Institutes 6.19.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Misused passions produce war, crime, and sexual sin.
  • Divine Institutes 6.19.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Keeping the passions within limits makes one just.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The pleasures of the five senses must be controlled.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Man's unlimited pleasure is a field for virtue's fight.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero: pleasure is the enemy of the mind.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God gave virtue to master pleasure.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christians must shun public spectacles.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Watching executions for pleasure defiles the conscience.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Gladiatorial "games" are bloodshed.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Spectators demand death and mutilation.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Crowds thirst for quick killing.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The arena destroys humanity.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God's prohibition of killing extends to lawful killing.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The just man may not be a soldier or bring capital charges.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Killing a human being is always wrong.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.18Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Infanticide is the greatest impiety.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Parents deny their infants the light they did not give.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Exposure of infants is also condemned.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Exposure is crueler than strangling.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.22Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Exposed children end in slavery or prostitution.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.23Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Exposure risks unwitting incest, as with Oedipus.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.24Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Poverty is no excuse for killing children.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.25Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Those too poor for children should abstain from intercourse.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.26Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · One may not even watch a killing.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.27Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The theater corrupts through eloquent depictions of vice.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.29Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Actors' gestures incite lust.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.30Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Mimes teach adultery.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.31Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Spectators carry the vices home.
  • Divine Institutes 6.20.33Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · All spectacles must be avoided.
  • Divine Institutes 6.21.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Prefer the true, eternal, and useful.
  • Divine Institutes 6.21.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Use sight and hearing for good.
  • Divine Institutes 6.22.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Gluttony and perfumes are unworthy of the wise.
  • Divine Institutes 6.22.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pleasures exist so that virtue may overcome them.
  • Divine Institutes 6.22.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Pleasures are the devil's weapons.
  • Divine Institutes 6.22.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Deceptive goods lead to true evil.
  • Divine Institutes 6.22.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Avoid pleasures as snares.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · He turns to the pleasure of touch, especially lust.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Desire is stronger in man, so that restraint may be virtuous.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The devil twists sexual desire toward evil.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · He prompts desire for others' spouses.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · He inflames desire until the person is trapped.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The devil established brothels.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · He brought in homosexual acts against nature and God's ordinance.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The abuse of children is condemned.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Such acts are impious, yet treated as trivial by pagans.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · He condemns a still more shameful practice.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · We must arm ourselves against lust.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Where marriage is impossible, continence; God forbids adultery and prostitution.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Sexual sin defiles the mind, which is cleansed only slowly.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Disciples of God must master themselves.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Serving lust enslaves the soul to death.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cultivate modesty and chastity beyond what law requires.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.22Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Habit in virtue makes vice shameful.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.27Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Chastity is a virtue only where sin is possible.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.28Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Human chastity is praiseworthy because it is chosen.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.32Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Spouses should bear the yoke together, following the golden rule.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.34Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Even the thought of adultery must be avoided.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.35Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Sin lies in the mind.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.36Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Chastity requires a pure mind, not only a pure body.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.37Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Many have kept perpetual virginity.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.39Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Continence is the summit of the virtues.
  • Divine Institutes 6.23.40Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Knowing God makes the hard way easy.
  • Divine Institutes 6.24.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The fallen can be restored through repentance.
  • Divine Institutes 6.24.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero doubted that repentance could correct a life; it can.
  • Divine Institutes 6.24.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · As parents forgive repentant children, so God forgives.
  • Divine Institutes 6.24.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God promises to forgive the repentant.
  • Divine Institutes 6.24.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Later justice wipes out earlier sins, and later wickedness earlier good.
  • Divine Institutes 6.24.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Repentance (metanoia) is coming to one's senses.
  • Divine Institutes 6.24.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Repentance makes one careful.
  • Divine Institutes 6.24.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God gave repentance as a harbor for frail humanity.
  • Divine Institutes 6.24.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Returning is hard, but a reformed life earns pardon.
  • Divine Institutes 6.24.24Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Bodily health is not true health.
  • Divine Institutes 6.24.25Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The healthy soul is humble, merciful, and at peace.
  • Divine Institutes 6.24.29Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The heart is God's altar; virtues are its offerings.
  • Divine Institutes 7.1.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Poverty makes people capable of virtue.
  • Divine Institutes 7.1.18Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The always-prosperous cannot bear evils.
  • Divine Institutes 7.1.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The poor believe more easily than the rich.
  • Divine Institutes 7.1.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The narrow way requires traveling light.
  • Divine Institutes 7.1.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The rich walk the broad way of death.
  • Divine Institutes 7.5.23Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Soul and body have opposite goods.
  • Divine Institutes 7.5.24Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The just suffer; the unjust prosper in earthly goods.
  • Divine Institutes 7.5.25Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · One must choose the life of the soul over the body.
  • Divine Institutes 7.7.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Ariston rightly said man is born for virtue; Aristippus erred.
  • Divine Institutes 7.10.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Vices are temporary.
  • Divine Institutes 7.10.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue is constant.
  • Divine Institutes 7.10.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue must keep perpetual watch.
  • Divine Institutes 7.12.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue defends the soul; pleasure makes it liable to death.
  • Divine Institutes 7.27.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Final exhortation: seek the heavenly treasure.
  • Divine Institutes 7.27.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · All must take the right road or persevere in it.
  • Divine Institutes 7.27.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christ went ahead on the road of virtue.
  • Divine Institutes 7.27.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · We take nothing with us but a good life.
  • Divine Institutes 7.27.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtues are the true inheritance.
  • Divine Institutes 7.27.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Close: serve God as soldiers to win the promised reward.
  • On the Workmanship of God 1.5Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · Lactantius rejoices in his friend's prosperity but fears it may gradually corrupt his mind.
  • On the Workmanship of God 1.6Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · Earthly pleasures are not true goods but deceptive and treacherous.
  • On the Workmanship of God 1.9Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · Demetrianus should despise or at least not admire his prosperity, remembering his heavenly Father and citizenship.
  • On the Workmanship of God 4.18Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · If death came only at a fixed age, people would become arrogant and inhuman, since social bonds arise from awareness of frailty.
  • On the Workmanship of God 4.20Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · If humans needed no help from one another, there would be no society, order, or humanity.
  • On the Workmanship of God 4.21Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · Human weakness leads people to form society for a better and safer life.
  • On the Workmanship of God 13.2Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · The wicked turn God's holy provision for procreation into prostitution and lust, seeking only barren pleasure.
  • On the Workmanship of God 19.8Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · God left it in our power to use his gift and bound us by the sacred pledge of virtue to win life.
  • On the Workmanship of God 19.9Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · Whoever keeps faith with the pledge of virtue is blessed and like God; the true man is hidden within the visible body.
  • On the Workmanship of God 19.10Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · Whoever gives in to the flesh falls to earth; whoever keeps his upright state and masters earthly things will merit eternal life.
  • Martyrdom of Dasius 3Anonymous · 303–304 · The author condemns Christians who keep the pagan New Year masquerades.
  • On the Anger of God 5.10Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Love of the good and hatred of evil go together.
  • On the Anger of God 7.13Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Righteousness, which includes the worship of God, belongs to man alone; without it he lives like a beast in human shape.
  • On the Anger of God 8.5Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · If God does not care, nothing stops us from secret crime whenever we can escape the law.
  • On the Anger of God 8.8Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Without religion life fills with crime; conscience restrains us when we believe God sees our deeds and hears our thoughts.
  • On the Anger of God 12.2Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Without religion we lose wisdom, which is knowing God, and righteousness, which needs God's restraint.
  • On the Anger of God 12.3Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Without religion and righteousness men become worse than beasts, which at least spare their own kind.
  • On the Anger of God 12.5Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Fear of God alone holds society together, and it vanishes if God is thought never angry; next, why the world was made.
  • On the Anger of God 13.14Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Choosing the good requires knowing and rejecting the evil.
  • On the Anger of God 13.24Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Remove evil, and wisdom and virtue, which consist in overcoming evil, would vanish too.
  • On the Anger of God 14.3Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Since God made man his worshiper and lord of creation, we must love God and also our fellow man.
  • On the Anger of God 14.4Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Man was made for religion and righteousness, as Cicero says: we are born for justice.
  • On the Anger of God 14.5Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · God wills everyone to honor him as Father and love others as brothers; in these two lies all righteousness.
  • On the Anger of God 14.6Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Whoever ignores God or harms others breaks the divine law and his own nature.
  • On the Anger of God 15.4Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Because human nature became corrupt, a law was needed to forbid vice and command virtue.
  • On the Anger of God 16.4Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Others are criminals who commit every crime and despise the law and God.
  • On the Anger of God 18.3Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Never to be angry means approving sin or shirking correction; constant leniency ruins the wrongdoers and causes endless trouble.
  • On the Anger of God 18.12Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Restraining anger against an equal is praiseworthy, but failing to correct slaves and children is a sin; there anger should even be roused.
  • On the Anger of God 19.1Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Man is soul and body, and the virtues of the one fight the vices of the other.
  • On the Anger of God 19.3Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Most yield to pleasure's sweetness, bind themselves to earthly things, and lose the divine gift.
  • On the Anger of God 19.4Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Those who obey God, scorn bodily desires, and keep righteousness God recognizes as like himself.
  • On the Anger of God 21.5Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · God forbids not anger itself but staying angry; human anger should be short-lived,
  • On the Anger of God 21.6Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · lest enmity become permanent; "be angry and do not sin" moderates anger rather than uprooting it.
  • On the Anger of God 22.8Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · The Sibyl warns against idolatry, adultery, sex between males, and killing children, for God is angry with those who sin.
  • On the Anger of God 23.14Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Where there is no anger there is no rule; therefore let no one despise God, but love him as Father, fear him as Lord, live righteously, share wealth, and keep the heart as his temple, so as to have him always gracious and never angry.
  • Martyrs of Palestine (shorter recension) 4.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 311–314 · Apphianus, not yet twenty and wealthy, studied at Berytus yet lived chastely and piously.
  • Martyrs of Palestine (shorter recension) 11.22Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 311–314 · After leaving the army Seleucus lived as an ascetic caring for orphans, widows, the poor and sick.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 1.4.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Christ's teaching has reformed barbarous customs such as incest, cannibalism, killing the aged, and human sacrifice.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 1.4.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The gospel has put an end to these savage customs.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 1.4.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The gospel teaches Greeks and barbarians to worship only the one God and to master even lustful looks and thoughts.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 1.4.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Christians, taught not to swear and to account for every idle word, practice the highest philosophy in speech.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 1.4.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Multitudes everywhere are taught self-control, patience under insult, generosity to the poor, and brotherhood with all.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 4.14.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Belief that gods want costly sacrifices corrupts, while knowing they seek character produces virtue.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 4.16.22Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Ritual prostitution at Heliopolis in Phoenicia shows that these gods are wicked demons.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 4.21.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Christians repel demons by purity of life and need no divination.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If even our decisions are fated, philosophy, piety, and the reward of virtue all vanish.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Fatalism abolishes blame, praise, and the glory of philosophy.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The doctrine of fate drives people to vice and overturns all of life.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If soldiering is fated, so are crime and virtue alike.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Anyone who exhorts, rebukes, or praises shows he really believes in free will and only uses the name of fate.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Fatalism would make laws, punishments, and honors meaningless.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.35Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Reason masters sexual desire and hunger, as in long fasts freely chosen.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.37Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Others choose the worse, as Paul says of unnatural acts.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.42Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Others' influence can make our will better or worse, as bad company corrupts.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.47Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Evil originates only in the soul's free turning aside from the natural, straight way.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.49Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God gave a natural law and free will, so that right choice deserves reward and wrong choice punishment.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.10.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Humans also differ in character, some vicious, some gentle, some just.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.10.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Humans act partly by nature and partly by choice, and are judged only for what they choose.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.10.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Seres' laws forbid murder, immorality, theft, and idols, and their land is free of these crimes.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.11.44Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Each chooses the better or worse according to whether he heeds instruction.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 6.11.45Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · One yields to pleasure for lack of struggle; another despises it.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 7.2.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Enslaved to pleasure, humanity fell into the vices Paul describes in Romans 1.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 7.8.35Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Joseph resisted Potiphar's wife and fled.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.7.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo: the law punishes pederasty, adultery, rape of children, and prostitution with death.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.7.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo: kidnapping, theft of sacred things, and cursing God or parents are capital crimes.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.7.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo: the Golden Rule, honesty, and charity to the poor are commanded.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.7.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo: burial of the dead, respect for tombs, and bans on castration and abortion.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.7.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo: just weights, kept confidences, and keeping captive families together.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.7.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The produce of the seventh year is left free for travelers and the needy.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses made the other virtues parts of piety.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.27Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God is served by virtue.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.32Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Josephus: the law allows only natural union with a wife for children and punishes male intercourse with death.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.34Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Adultery and the rape of a betrothed virgin are punished by death.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.35Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Children must all be raised; abortion is child-murder.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.39Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Honoring parents comes next after God; the ungrateful son is stoned.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.42Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Laws against bribery, theft, and interest bind Jewish society together.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.45Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Basic help must be given to all.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.48Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Josephus: death is the penalty for adultery, rape, and male intercourse.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.49Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Fraud and theft are punished severely; offenses against parents and God, with death.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.9.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eleazar: companionship shapes character for good or ill.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.9.17Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Unclean birds signify that people must not oppress others by force.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.9.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The lesson is justice and non-violence.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.9.22Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Other nations practice male intercourse and incest; Israel is set apart.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.9.33Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eleazar praises the king for punishing informers; the law forbids harming anyone.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.9.34Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · All the laws aim at justice toward all and remembrance of God.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.12.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · They have no slaves, holding slavery unjust and contrary to nature.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.12.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Essenes study ethics above logic and physics, trained by their divinely inspired laws.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.12.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · They learn piety, justice, and ethics under the rules of love of God, virtue, and humanity.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.12.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Their love of God, of virtue, and of humanity are shown in their way of life.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · A man enslaved to his passions cannot be happy, whatever the crowd thinks.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plenty breeds greed for gold, mere earth, and endless strife.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philosophers should likewise examine the soul's passions, not outward goods.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.69Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Animals exist for the completeness of creation, not to feed human gluttony.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 9.3.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Members swear oaths of piety, justice, honesty, and secrecy.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 11.4.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Hebrews’ ethics made piety and friendship with God the highest good.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 11.4.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Not scepticism or mere virtue, but hope in God makes one blessed.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 11.4.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God alone suffices for the blessed life.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 11.4.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses taught ethics through history, beginning with God and creation.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 11.4.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses’ histories and laws aimed at a God-loving life.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 11.4.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The prophets and Solomon’s Proverbs carry on Hebrew ethics.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 11.4.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Hebrews were taught ethics long before the Greeks learned to read.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.6.22Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · One must fear doing wrong more than suffering it, and be good rather than seem so.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.16.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Human goods (health, beauty, strength, wealth) depend on divine goods.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.16.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The divine goods are wisdom, temperance, justice, and courage.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.16.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · All must look to the divine, and the divine to the ruling Mind.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.21.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato: the just man is happy whatever his fortune; the unjust miserable however rich.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.21.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato reworks Tyrtaeus: without justice no good avails.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.21.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The many count health, beauty, wealth, and power as goods.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.21.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Goods are good only for the just; for the unjust they are evils.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.21.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Poets must teach that true good belongs only to the good.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.21.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Psalms already taught what Plato says of true blessedness.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.25.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato’s Laws severely restrict the drinking of wine.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.25.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses, Solomon, and Paul restrict wine as Plato does.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.27.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato’s Laws: each man is at war with himself.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.27.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Self-mastery is the first of victories.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.27.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Pleasure and pain are inner counsellors; reasoning judges between them.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.27.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato’s image of the soul as a puppet pulled by cords; the golden cord of reason must be followed.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.27.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · A city must make reason its law.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.27.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Paul too describes the inner war.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.29.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato: escape is becoming like God, just and holy with wisdom.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.29.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God is perfectly just; the most just man is most like him.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.29.17Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Knowing God’s justice is true wisdom; all else is vulgar.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.29.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The wicked are ignorant of the inescapable penalty of injustice.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.29.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The unjust become like the godless pattern and live its life as their penalty.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.30.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses teaches following and imitating God.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.30.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · David taught God’s justice and contempt for wealth.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.35.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Proverbs and Plato both warn against wealth and poverty.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.46.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Injustice feeds the beast and starves the man within.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 12.46.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Justice lets the inner man rule and tame the beast.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 13.7.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Scripture, like Plato, forbids returning evil for evil.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 13.19.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato orders that children conceived outside the set ages not be reared.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 13.20.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses punishes pederasty with death; Plato does not, but would put to death a slave who failed to report found treasure.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 13.21.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses’ harvest laws show generosity to the neighbor and the poor.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 14.18.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · A skeptic who recognizes no good or evil would be a dangerous member of society.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 14.20.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Protagoreanism would make virtue and vice the same.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 15.61.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eusebius: Christians rightly leave these useless questions and hold to piety toward the Creator.
  • Preparation for the Gospel 15.62.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Socrates discussed only human and moral questions.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 7.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Hercules was born of adultery and was himself lustful.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 9.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The goddesses conceived through immorality; Venus invented prostitution.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 10.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Jupiter committed adultery, seized Ganymede, and violated countless virgins.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 20.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Losing the knowledge of God, people turned to violence.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 24.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Virtue is good, so vice, its opposite, is evil.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 24.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Virtue needs vice to overcome, so good cannot exist without evil.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 24.8Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Each virtue is understood only by its opposite vice.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 24.11Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · God allowed evils as a contest in which the virtuous win immortality.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 27.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Do philosophers at least agree on ethics?
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 28.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The highest good must belong to man alone, to the soul, and be gained by virtue.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 28.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · He will test the philosophers' definitions by these criteria.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 28.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Aristippus, who made bodily pleasure the highest good, likened himself to a beast.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 28.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Freedom from pain is shared with animals and cannot be man's highest good.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 28.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Zeno's “living according to nature” applies to all creatures.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 28.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Epicurus's pleasure of the mind is also found in well-fed animals.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 28.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · “Honourable pleasure” either repeats Epicurus or still makes a bodily good supreme.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 28.8Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The Peripatetic mixture of goods depends on things outside our control shared with animals.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 28.9Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Virtue is not itself the highest good but the means to it.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 28.10Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Aristotle linked virtue with honour; Herillus made knowledge the highest good.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 28.11Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Knowledge can be gained without virtue and can concern bad or useless things.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 28.12Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Knowledge is sought for other ends and so is not the highest good.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 28.13Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Philosophers disagree even on the foundation of ethics.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 28.14Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Their conflicting precepts err because they do not know God.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 29.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Scripture and even philosophers teach that humans are born for justice.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 29.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Cicero: nothing is more excellent than knowing we are born for justice.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 29.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Much more should humans spare and love one another.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 29.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Justice owes duty to God as Father and to others as brothers.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 29.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · We owe God religion and neighbours love; justice includes both.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 29.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The just must suffer evils in order to exercise virtue.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 29.8Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The just man shuns pleasure, gives away wealth, seeks no honours, and does not retaliate.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 29.9Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · He will accept torture and death rather than deny God, and so lives poor and despised.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 30.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Since virtue suffers in this life, its reward must be immortality.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 33.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Common wives would destroy families and chastity.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 33.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Zeno condemned pity, which is dear to God and needed by people.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 33.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Everyone in trouble wants pity, which moves others to help.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 33.8Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Pity, given only to humans for mutual help, cannot be removed without making us beasts.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 33.9Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Zeno's doctrine that all sins are equal leads to cruelty or laxity.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 33.10Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Unequal crimes need unequal penalties.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 34.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Aristippus founded a school that justified vice by making pleasure the highest good.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 34.9Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Philosophers who committed suicide were guilty of murder under God's law.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 34.10Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Only God may call us out of the body.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 34.11Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Suicide is an attempt to escape God, which is impossible.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 34.12Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · They even taught others to commit suicide.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 45.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Christ took a body so that he could practise the virtues he taught.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 50.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Plato and Aristotle praised justice as the outward-looking virtue that gives each his due.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 50.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Justice belongs to everyone, not only to rulers.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 50.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Not knowing justice's source, they reserved it for a few.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 50.8Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Carneades attacked their idea of justice to show it lacked foundation.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 51.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Justice is the worship of the true God, which the philosophers lacked.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 51.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Carneades argued that justice which neglects self-interest is folly.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 51.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · If empires returned their conquests they would be just but foolish.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 51.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Carneades' example: honesty in a bargain is just but costly.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 51.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Carneades' dilemmas of the plank and the horse set justice against self-preservation.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 52.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Justice only looks like folly, and malice only looks like wisdom.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 52.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Self-serving cleverness is cunning; justice is innocence, and the just are truly wise.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 52.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The just man, doing only good, must be wise.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 52.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Only the wise can tell good from evil; justice and wisdom go together.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 52.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Refusing to harm another in the plank or horse case is wise, not foolish.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 52.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · If there is eternal life after death, the just man rightly despises this life.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 53.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · God seeks only justice, which is true worship.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 54.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Philosophers spoke of two ways of life, but only in terms of this life.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 54.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The two ways of life and death are in this life, leading to heaven or eternal punishment.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 54.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Justice first owes God love and fear as Father and Lord, then brotherhood to all people.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 54.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Created alike by God, all people are brothers.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 54.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · When people turned to many gods, justice fled and human fellowship broke down.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 54.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Then every kind of crime and lust broke out.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 54.8Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Laws restrained open crime but could not reach conscience.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 54.9Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Crime went underground, judges were corrupted, and violence grew.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 55.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · God's law teaches that what we do for others we do for God.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 55.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Justice is rooted in the golden rule: do not do to others what you would not suffer.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 55.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · First do no harm, then do good.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 55.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Vices must be uprooted before virtues can be sown by God's word.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 56.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Anger, avarice, and lust are the three great disturbers of the soul.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 56.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Stoics would remove the passions and Peripatetics moderate them; both are wrong.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 56.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The passions are good gifts of God that become evil only through misuse.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 56.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Anger is given to restrain wrongdoing, but beyond its limits it leads to murder and war.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 56.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Desire is for life's necessities; unbounded it breeds fraud.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 56.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Sexual desire exists for procreation; misused it leads to adultery and corruption.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 56.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The passions must be kept within their proper bounds.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 57.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Restrain anger under injury and curb avarice when one has enough.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 57.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · It is madness to hoard what others will take.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 57.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Sexual desire belongs within marriage; unchastity brings eternal death.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 57.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · One must also resist the pleasures of the other senses.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 57.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Virtue must resist the pleasures of sight, hearing, smell, and taste.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 57.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Taste and smell lead to luxury; pleasing words and music can lead to false worship.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 57.8Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Pleasure of the eyes breeds avarice or lust.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 58.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The public shows must be avoided because they corrupt and honour the gods.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 58.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Gladiatorial shows make killing into entertainment.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 58.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Spectators share the bloodguilt of the killing.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 58.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The theatre portrays immorality.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 58.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Actors' mimes teach vice.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 58.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The young are trained in vice by the theatre.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 58.8Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The circus inflames spectators to violence.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 58.9Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Shun all shows to keep a tranquil mind.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 59.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The follower of God will not curse, perjure himself, or even swear.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 59.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · He will be honest, content, free of envy and theft, and lend without interest.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 59.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Treat children and slaves as one wishes God to treat oneself.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 59.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Do not take gifts from the poor.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 59.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · “Do not kill” also forbids endangering life by word, killing or exposing infants, and suicide.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 59.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · “Do not commit adultery” also forbids resorting to prostitutes.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 59.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The ban on false witness forbids all lying, even harmless lies.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 59.8Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The just man never flatters; truth in the end wins gratitude, not hatred.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 60.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Mercy completes the justice that innocence begins.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 60.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · God gave weak humans mercy so they would protect one another.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 60.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · As one family we must love all, not avenge wrongs, and pray for enemies.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 60.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Human frailty requires mutual help.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 60.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Imagine yourself in the sufferer's place.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 60.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, defend the weak, shelter strangers, protect orphans and widows.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 60.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Ransoming captives, visiting the sick, and burying the poor are true sacrifices to God.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 60.8Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · God shows mercy to the merciful and none to the harsh.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 60.9Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Despise money and store up treasure in heaven.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 61.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Christians, who bear the name of faith, must above all keep faith with God.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 61.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · A husband who has relations with any other woman, free or slave, is an adulterer before God.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 61.9Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Chastity excludes even lustful thoughts.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 61.10Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The heart must be cleansed to be God's temple.
  • Epitome of the Divine Institutes 68.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Each must train for justice and self-control to stand firm in persecution.
  • On the Deaths of the Persecutors 8.5Lactantius · ca. 314–315 · Maximian enriched himself by bloodshed and indulged his lusts with boys and noblemen's daughters.
  • On the Deaths of the Persecutors 38.1Lactantius · ca. 314–315 · Maximinus's worst vice was unbridled lust.
  • On the Deaths of the Persecutors 38.2Lactantius · ca. 314–315 · Women were inspected for his bed and drowned if they refused.
  • On the Deaths of the Persecutors 38.3Lactantius · ca. 314–315 · Husbands of violated wives killed themselves; no woman was safe.
  • On the Deaths of the Persecutors 38.4Lactantius · ca. 314–315 · No one could marry without his leave, and he claimed brides first.
  • On the Deaths of the Persecutors 38.5Lactantius · ca. 314–315 · His courtiers imitated him, and noble families were forced to give daughters to barbarians.
  • Canon 16Anonymous · 314 · Penances for unnatural sexual sin are graded by age and marital state, from twenty years to communion only at death.
  • Canon 17Anonymous · 314 · Those guilty of the same sin who have defiled others must pray among the most severely disciplined penitents.
  • Canon 21Anonymous · 314 · Women who commit sexual immorality and procure abortion, previously refused communion until death, are now given ten years' penance.
  • Canon 22Anonymous · 314 · Willful murderers do penance until death and receive communion only then.
  • Canon 23Anonymous · 314 · Involuntary killing carries a penance of seven years under the earlier rule, five under the later.
  • Canon 25Anonymous · 314 · A case of a man who seduced his fiancée's sister, who then killed herself: those involved do ten years' penance.
  • Canon 3Anonymous · 1 August 314 · Soldiers who throw away their arms in time of peace are excluded from communion.
  • Canon 12Anonymous · 1 August 314 · Clergy who lend at interest are excluded from communion.
  • Canon 4Anonymous · ca. 315 (approximate) · A man who intended adultery but did not commit it appears to have been saved by grace.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.2.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Pagan nations, sunk in incest, homosexual practice, human sacrifice, and idolatry, could not share Abraham’s blessing as they were.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The patriarchs lived the same virtuous piety that Christ proclaims, without the Mosaic law.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Job’s account of his care for the poor, the widow, and the orphan shows a life in harmony with the gospel.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Job practiced the gospel’s compassion toward the suffering.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Job shunned mockery and deceit, as the gospel teaches.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.17Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Moses forbids adultery; the gospel forbids even the desire.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Job guarded even his eyes from desire for another man’s wife, as the gospel requires.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Job explains why adulterous desire must be guarded against.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.20Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Job refused bribes.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.21Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Job treated his servants justly.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.22Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Job regarded his servants as his equals before God.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.23Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Job cared for widows, orphans, and the naked.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.24Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Job did not trust in riches.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.26Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Job loved his enemies before the gospel commanded it.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.27Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Job’s hospitality matches Christ’s words about welcoming the stranger.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.28Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Job confessed his faults openly, helped the poor, and forgave debts.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.33Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Moses forbade murder, adultery, theft, perjury, homosexual acts, and incest.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.56Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Converted nations, once savage, now learn virtue and self-control in the churches, rich and poor, women, children, and slaves alike.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.66Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The old law prescribed animal sacrifice; the gospel teaches worship of the mind and virtuous life.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.67Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Moses forbade murder and adultery; Christ forbids even anger and lustful looking.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.68Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Moses forbade false oaths; Christ forbids oaths altogether.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.69Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Moses allowed retaliation; Christ forbids it.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.70Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Yield even your cloak to one who sues you.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.6.71Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ commands love of enemies and prayer for persecutors.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.7.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ’s teaching shows him to be an all-wise and perfect lawgiver.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.8.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The church has two ways of life; the first, above nature, renounces marriage, children, and property for God’s service alone.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.8.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Ascetics live as if in heaven and serve as priests for all through pure doctrine, soul, and virtue.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.8.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The second, more human Christian way includes marriage, children, work, and just military service, with set times for devotion.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 1.10.38Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christians sacrifice by celebrating the Eucharist, offering thanksgiving and hymns, and consecrating themselves wholly to God in purity and true doctrine.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.2.25Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ sent seventy disciples and twelve apostles, as Moses sent seventy elders and twelve spies.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.2.26Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ intensifies each commandment of the law.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.3.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Can one who taught chastity, generosity, and devotion to Scripture be a deceiver?
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.3.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Jesus’ teaching on truthfulness and his way of life show him to be divine, not a deceiver.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.3.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Jesus rejected animal sacrifice and taught that keeping his commandments and becoming like God is the true sacrifice.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.4.33Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Jesus taught his disciples a philosophical life of poverty and trust in providence, surpassing the law.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.4.34Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Jesus raised his disciples above the law’s prohibitions to inner freedom from passion, chastity, generosity, and forbearance.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.4.35Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Jesus taught truthfulness without oaths.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.5.74Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The disciples, though unlearned, embraced an ascetic life of fasting, prayer, and purity.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.5.76Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The apostles lived in poverty, as Peter’s words to the lame man show.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.6.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Jesus taught poverty; his disciples would not have obeyed or recorded it had he sought money.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.6.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Unlike sorcerers who seduce women, Jesus forbade even lustful looking.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.6.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Jesus’ austere conduct and his teaching on eunuchs for the kingdom show his chastity.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.6.20Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Countless disciples who live lifelong continence testify to Jesus’ teaching.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.6.21Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Countless women worldwide live consecrated virginity for God.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 3.6.23Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Countless followers of Jesus, not just one or two, have sold their goods for the poor, as Eusebius has seen himself.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 4.6.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Man misused his freedom and fell into brutish wickedness.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 4.9.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Under demonic rule humanity fell into violence and unnatural vice, justifying it by the example of its gods.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 4.10.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Some nations practiced cannibalism, incest, and the killing of the old.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 4.10.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Through Moses the Word forbade Israel to follow the practices of Egypt and Canaan.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 4.10.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Leviticus forbids unlawful unions and says the nations were driven out for such defilement.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 4.10.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Deuteronomy forbids child sacrifice, divination, and sorcery as abominations of the nations.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 4.15.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Perfumed bodies may hide foul souls, while the godly exhale the better fragrance of virtue.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel, Book 5, preface 14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · If the gods gave national laws, they sanctioned cannibalism, incest, and other unnatural practices, proving them evil demons.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel, Book 5, preface 25Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · With one voice the prophets taught purity, rejection of idolatry and human sacrifice, worship of the Creator, and the coming of Christ.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 6.13.25Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · God answers that he requires justice, mercy, and faithfulness, not sacrifices.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.51Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Spiritually, the two kings are the two forms of impiety—false belief and corrupt morals—that flee when Christ reigns in the soul.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.103Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Spiritually, the two kings are demonic forces of idolatry and moral corruption, driven out when Emmanuel reigns in the soul.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 7.3.34Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The tamed beasts signify savage people transformed by Christ's teaching.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel, Book 8, preface 6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Primitive humanity lived like beasts, without law, learning, or virtue.
  • Demonstration of the Gospel 9.11.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ legislated with divine authority in the Sermon on the Mount, astonishing his hearers.
  • Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 6.2Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Virtue and vice, justice and desert cannot be the product of fate.
  • Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 6.3Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Laws, rewards and punishments, and the calamities and blessings that follow human conduct show God's just providence, not chance.
  • Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 6.4Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · God loves justice and humility and hates arrogance; we should live modestly, mindful that God sees all.
  • Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 8.3Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Providence everywhere urges virtue, but its full reason lies beyond human understanding.
  • Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 11.1Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Whoever repents and turns to God will live forever; Constantine strives to bring his subjects to faith, and confesses that he himself came to the truth only in maturity, counting repentance his salvation.
  • Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 11.5Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · God gathered the wisest men and gave a teaching by which the worthy become like him and gain eternal happiness.
  • Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 12.5Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · The martyrs are honoured with a bloodless thanksgiving, lamps for prayer, and sober feasts for the relief of the poor.
  • Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 13.1Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Some blame God for making things and characters different; but diversity serves the world, while human character depends on free choice: reason ruling the passions leads to virtue and reward, vice to unquenchable fire.
  • Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 14.2Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · To liken God to men or beasts, or to seek a power rivalling his, is madness; those who live by God's law will dwell in immortal mansions.
  • Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 15.2Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Christ cared for the sick and poor, taught patience, generosity and that virtue alone matters, and trained his disciples by leading them through desert and over the raging sea.
  • Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 15.3Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Christ rebuked the disciple who drew a sword at his arrest, teaching that whoever takes the sword will perish by it.
  • Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 15.4Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Heavenly wisdom is to suffer wrong rather than do it; trusting God, who rescued his people at sea and conquered through the passion, the believer is unconquerable.
  • Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 20.6Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · The heroes' praises signify the deeds of the righteous, and the father's virtues the creation and the church's laws of righteous living.
  • Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 23.1Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Christianity offers concord, loving correction, faith, mercy, simplicity, and knowledge of the one true God.
  • Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 23.3Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · God, more than any human benefactor, rewards virtue, partly now and fully at death, when the soul is judged: eternal life for the righteous, punishment for the wicked.
  • Against the Heathen 4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The soul, free and always in motion, mistook pleasure for the good and turned the body’s members from their proper uses to evil.
  • Against the Heathen 5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Evil is the misuse of the body’s members, like a charioteer who drives at full speed while ignoring the goal of the race.
  • Against the Heathen 26Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Temple prostitution, ritual emasculation, and the vices described in Romans 1 are learned from gods whose own myths are full of the same deeds.
  • On the Incarnation 5.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Human sin grew without limit, from the first invention of wickedness to insatiable lawlessness.
  • On the Incarnation 5.4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Adultery, theft, murder, and war filled the whole world.
  • On the Incarnation 5.5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Humanity fell even into unnatural vice, as Paul describes in Romans 1.
  • On the Incarnation 30.5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · A dead man could not convert consciences, reform sinners, and drive out demons as Christ does.
  • On the Incarnation 48.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Christian virgins, chaste youths, and martyrs prove the truth of the faith.
  • On the Incarnation 50.4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Christ's death drives out demons and transforms fornicators, murderers, and cowards.
  • On the Incarnation 50.5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Faith in Christ made barbarians peaceful and assured people of immortality.
  • On the Incarnation 51.1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Christ's teaching has made even children vow lifelong virginity.
  • On the Incarnation 51.6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Converted to Christ's teaching, warlike peoples give up bloodshed and seek peace.
  • On the Incarnation 52.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Hearing Christ's teaching, barbarians turn from war to farming and prayer, fighting the devil instead.
  • On the Incarnation 52.5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Christ's disciples fight demons by virtue, chastity, patience, and even martyrdom.
  • On the Incarnation 57.1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Understanding Scripture requires a good life and a pure soul.
  • Letter 1.4Antony the Great · before 356 · Antony distinguishes three bodily movements, natural, from overeating, and from evil spirits, and says the soul that holds to the Spirit's teaching is healed of all three.
  • Letter 1.5Antony the Great · before 356 · Antony describes how the Spirit teaches the mind to heal the soul's sicknesses, member by member, beginning with the eyes, the ears, and the tongue.
  • Letter 1.6Antony the Great · before 356 · Antony continues with the hands, the belly, sexual desire, and the feet, which the Spirit sanctifies, so that the body already shares something of the spiritual body of the resurrection.
  • Testament of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste 2Anonymous · ca. 320 · An exhortation to flee worldly glory, repent while there is time, and love one another.
  • On the Witch of Endor 28Eustathius of Antioch · ca. 324–337 · Eustathius quotes Plato's Republic on the danger of telling children false myths and the need to censor the myth-makers, beginning with Homer and Hesiod.
  • Canon 17Anonymous · 325 · Clergy who lend at interest, in any form, are to be deposed.
  • Theophany 5.21Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
  • Book 1, lines 448–472Juvencus · ca. 330 · The crowds gather; the Beatitudes; the disciples are the salt of the earth.
  • Book 1, lines 473–496Juvencus · ca. 330 · Salt and light; Christ comes to fulfil, not abolish, the law and the prophets.
  • Book 1, lines 497–521Juvencus · ca. 330 · Anger and insult are condemned; reconcile before offering a gift; the 'adversary' is the body to be tamed by chastity; adultery of the mind.
  • Book 1, lines 522–545Juvencus · ca. 330 · Lust of the eye and hand; only an adulterous wife may rightly be divorced, for a husband who divorces another exposes her; oaths are forbidden.
  • Book 1, lines 546–570Juvencus · ca. 330 · Not retaliation but patience; give, lend, and love and pray for enemies, as the Father does good to all.
  • Book 1, lines 571–593Juvencus · ca. 330 · Be perfect like the Father; give and pray in secret; the Lord's Prayer begins.
  • Book 1, lines 619–642Juvencus · ca. 330 · The sound eye; no one can serve God and riches; do not be anxious for food and clothing.
  • Book 1, lines 643–667Juvencus · ca. 330 · God clothes the lilies; seek his kingdom first; do not judge; the speck and the beam; pearls before swine.
  • Book 1, lines 668–691Juvencus · ca. 330 · Ask, seek, knock; the golden rule; the narrow gate and the broad way; beware false prophets.
  • Book 3, lines 150–173Juvencus · ca. 330 · Plants not planted by the Father; blind guides; what comes from the heart defiles.
  • Book 3, lines 421–444Juvencus · ca. 330 · Church discipline in stages; Christ present where two or three gather; forgiving without limit; the unforgiving servant begins.
  • Book 3, lines 445–470Juvencus · ca. 330 · The end of the unforgiving servant; Jesus goes to Judaea; the Pharisees ask whether a man may divorce his wife for any cause; the creation of male and female.
  • Book 3, lines 471–497Juvencus · ca. 330 · What God joined, man must not separate; Moses permitted divorce for hardness of heart; whoever dissolves a marriage and takes another wife commits adultery; the disciples' objection; eunuchs for the kingdom; Jesus blesses the children.
  • Book 3, lines 498–521Juvencus · ca. 330 · The rich young man asks about eternal life, is told the commandments and to sell all and follow, and goes away sad.
  • Book 4, lines 272–294Juvencus · ca. 330 · The judge tells the righteous they served him in the needy, and condemns the unrighteous to the fire prepared for the devil.
  • Letter to Amun 1Athanasius of Alexandria · before 356 · Athanasius tells the monk Amun that involuntary bodily emissions are no sin, since God made the body good, and distinguishes lawful marriage from immorality, and marriage from the higher way of virginity.
  • Letter to Marcellinus 13Athanasius of Alexandria · uncertain, after 335 · Christ both taught and lived virtue, giving himself as a pattern; the Psalms likewise give a pattern for every movement of the soul.
  • Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 5.1Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · The God-beloved emperor already shares in God's kingdom through the virtues he receives from above.
  • Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 5.2Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Only a ruler shaped by royal virtues is a true emperor; a vicious tyrant, however powerful, is not.
  • Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 5.3Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · A ruler enslaved to passions and demons cannot bear the image of divine monarchy.
  • Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 5.4Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · The true emperor masters his passions, mirrors God's virtues, and alone is a philosopher-king.
  • Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 5.5Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Constantine prays for God's kingdom, values earthly rule little, is unmoved by armies and acclaim, and laughs at the trappings of power, wearing virtues instead.
  • Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 5.7Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Constantine regards gold and jewels as worthless though he uses them for state, and abstains from drunkenness and luxury.
  • Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 8.6Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Aphrodite's shrine on Lebanon was a place of sexual licence, ritual effeminacy, and adultery.
  • Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 13.5Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Every nation deified local men, monsters and passions, men who taught no virtue but were given to vice; and by imitating their gods' adulteries and crimes they destroyed their own souls.
  • Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 13.11Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Following the myths of their gods, pagans fell into every licentiousness, including homosexual acts condemned by Paul.
  • Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 13.14Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Whole nations practised incest, murder of strangers, cannibalism, and the killing of the old.
  • Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 17.6Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Even amid persecution Christ raised up ascetics and lifelong virgins everywhere, persuaded multitudes to feed on Scripture, and taught even slaves and barbarians to despise death and expect judgment.
  • Demonstration 2.1Aphrahat · 337-345 · Aphrahat opens his demonstration on love with Christ's saying that the law and the prophets hang on the two great commandments.
  • Demonstration 2.12Aphrahat · 337-345 · Christ commanded his disciples to love one another, to love even enemies, and to forgive again and again.
  • Demonstration 2.15Aphrahat · 337-345 · The Lord's Prayer, the command to be reconciled before offering, and the parable of the unforgiving servant all require forgiveness.
  • Demonstration 2.16Aphrahat · 337-345 · Paul's hymn to love shows that every gift, even faith and martyrdom, profits nothing without love, which binds the building of faith together.
  • Demonstration 2.17Aphrahat · 337-345 · Moses and David showed perfect love: Moses offered himself for the people, and David spared and mourned his enemy Saul.
  • Demonstration 2.18Aphrahat · 337-345 · Elisha fed his enemies and Jeremiah prayed for his persecutors; one who hates a brother tears himself from Christ's body.
  • Demonstration 4.14Aphrahat · 337-345 · Works that give God rest, like relieving the weary and needy, are themselves prayer; one should not put off a needed act of mercy for the hour of prayer.
  • Demonstration 7.17Aphrahat · 337-345 · The assurance of repentance must not make anyone careless; it is better not to sin than to be healed, for the scars of sin remain.
  • Demonstration 9.1Aphrahat · 337-345 · Humility rescues and bears much fruit, as Scripture testifies of Noah, Moses, and the meek.
  • Demonstration 9.2Aphrahat · 337-345 · A portrait of the humble: gentle, cheerful, chaste, loving, averse to strife, meditating on the law, and winning over even the proud.
  • Demonstration 9.3Aphrahat · 337-345 · Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Hezekiah, Mordecai, and Daniel overcame their enemies by humility.
  • Demonstration 9.4Aphrahat · 337-345 · The humble are free of envy and pride, put on Christ, build on the Rock, live as strangers in the world, and are sons of the Most High, as Mary's song shows.
  • Demonstration 9.6Aphrahat · 337-345 · Christ, born to angelic praise, taught humility; glory belongs to God alone, and humans should keep to their humble condition and let God exalt them.
  • Demonstration 9.7Aphrahat · 337-345 · Pride and humility cannot coexist; the rich man and Lazarus, and the Pharisee and the tax collector, show that God exalts the humble, whom the wicked always envy.
  • Demonstration 9.8Aphrahat · 337-345 · Envy brings ruin: from the serpent, Cain, and Esau to Pharaoh, Korah, Saul, Ahab, Jezebel, and Haman, the envious were punished and the humble exalted.
  • Demonstration 9.9Aphrahat · 337-345 · Envy houses the evil spirit as in Saul, while Christ dwells in the humble; the reader is urged to love humility, chastity, and patience and to shun anger.
  • Demonstration 9.10Aphrahat · 337-345 · Anger must be stifled before it reaches the tongue, for Christ dwells in the believer; as a tree by its fruit, a person is known by his speech.
  • Demonstration 9.13Aphrahat · 337-345 · The humble keep their standing and are loved; Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Job were exalted for their humility.
  • Demonstration 9.14Aphrahat · 337-345 · Adam exalted himself and was humbled; Christ humbled himself and was exalted; the lover of God should remain in humility, whose fruits reach God's presence.
  • Demonstration 14.3Aphrahat · 337-345 · Leaders in the church have become greedy usurers and corrupt judges, favouring the rich and despising the poor, so that the prophets' indictments fit their day.
  • Demonstration 14.10Aphrahat · 337-345 · A catalogue of the proud brought low, from Adam, Cain, and Ham to Pharaoh, Goliath, Absalom, Haman, and Judas.
  • Demonstration 14.13Aphrahat · 337-345 · Envy and strife ruined a long line of biblical figures from Cain to Haman, and finally scattered Israel.
  • Demonstration 14.14Aphrahat · 337-345 · A hymn to love, the great commandment, which covers sins and overcomes all evils; then a prayer to God, who patiently spares the wicked for the sake of the righteous who stand in the breach.
  • Demonstration 14.23Aphrahat · 337-345 · Desire and greed ruined Adam, Esau, Pharaoh, Achan, Eli's sons, Saul, Ahab, Gehazi, Judas, and Ananias.
  • Demonstration 14.24Aphrahat · 337-345 · Greed is never satisfied, as kings and rich men show, while the poor are content with little; happy is the one whom desire has not mastered.
  • Demonstration 14.25Aphrahat · 337-345 · Church leaders prize rank in ordination and titles over the fear of God and good works; Aphrahat confronts a domineering leader whose life contradicts his teaching, citing Ezekiel's shepherds and Christ's woes.
  • Demonstration 14.30Aphrahat · 337-345 · The brothers are urged to pursue peace, since good and evil cannot be joined, and peacemakers will be called sons of God.
  • Demonstration 14.31Aphrahat · 337-345 · Christ, who owed nothing to death, died to reconcile rebels, conquered Sheol, and was exalted as Lord; peacemakers share his reward, while strife makes prayer and alms worthless.
  • Demonstration 14.37Aphrahat · 337-345 · Unlike the rest of creation, people transgress; a long catalogue denounces troublemakers in the church as greedy, deceitful, and divisive enemies of Christ.
  • Demonstration 14.40Aphrahat · 337-345 · Satan works through every kind of desire; a long list traces the ruin of biblical figures to particular desires, from Adam to Judas.
  • Demonstration 14.43Aphrahat · 337-345 · Envy and strife divide families and destroy peoples; the evil one plants them in the heart, chokes the good seed, makes prayer hollow, and lures the quarrelsome like a bird into a snare; only pursuing peace heals.
  • Demonstration 20.1Aphrahat · 337-345 · Giving to the needy from one's own labour is the rest and the fast that God loves.
  • Demonstration 20.2Aphrahat · 337-345 · The law of Moses provided for the poor, the stranger, the orphan, and the widow through gleanings and the sabbatical year.
  • Demonstration 20.3Aphrahat · 337-345 · The law requires the hired worker's wages to be paid the same day, lest he be cheated.
  • Demonstration 20.4Aphrahat · 337-345 · David cared for the poor and blessed those who consider the needy; Scripture teaches that giving to the poor is lending to God.
  • Demonstration 20.5Aphrahat · 337-345 · In the parable of the last judgment, Christ blesses those who served him in the poor and condemns those who did not.
  • Demonstration 20.6Aphrahat · 337-345 · The parable of the rich fool warns those who store up treasure for themselves and are not rich toward God.
  • Demonstration 20.13Aphrahat · 337-345 · Almsgiving atones for sins, while oppression of the poor brings judgment.
  • Demonstration 20.15Aphrahat · 337-345 · Job's friends accused him of neglecting the poor, but Job answered that he had cared for the blind, lame, naked, orphan, and widow.
  • Demonstration 20.16Aphrahat · 337-345 · Christ commands inviting the poor and making friends by unrighteous mammon; the friends who receive us into eternal tents are God and his Christ, and true treasure is laid up in heaven.
  • Demonstration 20.17Aphrahat · 337-345 · The blessed poor are those poor in spirit who use wealth for others, like Abraham, Lot, Job, and Zacchaeus; the rich young man went away sad; the reader should urge givers to sow generously.
  • Life of Constantine 1.34.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · A Christian senator's wife killed herself rather than be taken to Maxentius.
  • Life of Constantine 1.43.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantine was generous to beggars, the impoverished, orphans, and widows, and provided dowries for orphan girls.
  • Life of Constantine 2.13.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantine paid his soldiers for every prisoner taken alive, to spare enemy lives.
  • Life of Constantine 3.44.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · On her journey Helena gave generously to cities, soldiers, and the poor, and freed prisoners and exiles.
  • Life of Constantine 3.47.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantine gave Helena free use of the treasury, fulfilling the command to honor one's parents.
  • Life of Constantine 3.55.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Eusebius describes the shrine as a place of sexual license.
  • Life of Constantine 3.58.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · At Heliopolis in Phoenicia sacred prostitution had been practiced.
  • Life of Constantine 3.58.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantine forbade the practice by law and wrote urging the people to know God.
  • Life of Constantine 4.29.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantine rebuked greedy officials and warned that all must give account to God.
  • Life of Constantine 4.30.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantine drew a grave's length on the ground to rebuke a greedy courtier.
  • Oration III Against the Arians 19Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Commands like “Be merciful as your Father” call for imitation, not equality; so too John 17 does not make us one with the Father as the Son is, since we are sons and “gods” by grace.
  • Oration III Against the Arians 20Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Christ offers his natural unity with the Father as a model for believers' unity of mind, as he offered his gentleness for imitation, not for equality.
  • Letter 3Ammonas · ca. 340-360 · Works done to please men are not heard by God; Ammonas urges his disciples to fight the spirit of vainglory and to rekindle their fervour, as David did.
  • Letter 11Ammonas · ca. 340-360 · Ammonas forbids his disciples to leave their place on their own judgment, distinguishing thoughts from the Enemy, from oneself and from God, and pointing to Jacob, who left only when sent.
  • Letter 14Ammonas · ca. 340-360 · A short piece: the inheritance that righteous fathers leave their sons is not gold and silver but righteousness.
  • Canon 2Anonymous · ca. 340–360 · Anyone who condemns the eating of meat (apart from blood, idol offerings and strangled animals) as a bar to salvation is anathematized.
  • Canon 3Anonymous · ca. 340–360 · Anyone who teaches slaves to leave their masters on religious grounds is anathematized.
  • Canon 9Anonymous · ca. 340–360 · Anyone who chooses virginity out of contempt for marriage rather than for virginity's own goodness is anathematized.
  • Canon 12Anonymous · ca. 340–360 · Ascetics who wear a special cloak and condemn those in ordinary dress are anathematized.
  • Canon 13Anonymous · ca. 340–360 · Women who adopt men's dress on ascetic grounds are anathematized.
  • Canon 15Anonymous · ca. 340–360 · Parents who abandon their children on ascetic grounds are anathematized.
  • Canon 16Anonymous · ca. 340–360 · Children who abandon their parents, especially believing parents, on religious grounds are anathematized.
  • Canon 17Anonymous · ca. 340–360 · Women who cut off their hair on ascetic grounds are anathematized.
  • Canon 21Anonymous · ca. 340–360 · The synod's epilogue explains that it condemns not true asceticism but its prideful abuse, and affirms virginity, continence, marriage, rightly used wealth, the churches, and the church's traditions.
  • Canon 4Anonymous · ca. 343–381 · Clergy may not lend at interest.
  • Canon 24Anonymous · ca. 343–381 · No clergy or ascetics may enter a tavern.
  • Canon 30Anonymous · ca. 343–381 · No Christian, cleric or lay, is to bathe with women in the public baths.
  • Canon 36Anonymous · ca. 343–381 · Clergy may not practice magic or astrology or make amulets, and those who wear amulets are expelled.
  • Canon 53Anonymous · ca. 343–381 · Christians at weddings are not to dance but to eat soberly.
  • Canon 54Anonymous · ca. 343–381 · Clergy must leave weddings and banquets before the entertainers come in.
  • Canon 55Anonymous · ca. 343–381 · Neither clergy nor laity are to hold club drinking parties.
  • Historical Fragments 2.1.1.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 343–367 · Hilary opens his work with Paul's faith, hope, and love, which alone remain when other gifts pass away.
  • Historical Fragments 2.1.2.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 343–367 · Love is the greatest, binding us inseparably to God.
  • Canon 3Anonymous · ca. 345–348 · Celibate men and women devoted to virginity may not live in the same house; laymen who persist are excommunicated and clerics lose their rank.
  • Canon 4Anonymous · ca. 345–348 · The same rule applies to men who live with widows to whom they are not related, and to widowers and widows.
  • Canon 13Anonymous · ca. 345–348 · Clerics may not lend at interest, since Scripture plainly forbids it to all.
  • Catechetical Lecture 2.1Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Opening his second lecture, Cyril teaches that sin is a self-chosen disease of the soul, terrible but curable by repentance.
  • Catechetical Lecture 2.2Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Sin is not an outside power but an evil shoot from within; remembering God and the judgment keeps it from growing.
  • Catechetical Lecture 2.3Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The devil prompts sin but cannot compel it; evil thoughts must be shut out and uprooted at once, before they take root.
  • Catechetical Lecture 2.14Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The three young men’s confession in the furnace quenched the flames, showing that repentance can quench even the fire of Gehenna.
  • Catechetical Lecture 2.19Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · If Nebuchadnezzar was pardoned, so will the penitent be; Peter, after denying Christ, wept and kept his apostleship.
  • Catechetical Lecture 2.20Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Cyril urges the candidates to confess their sins so as to receive forgiveness and the heavenly gift.
  • Catechetical Lecture 3.8Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The fruits of repentance are generosity to the poor; even the worst sinners may hope, for sins of ignorance are pardoned.
  • Catechetical Lecture 3.15Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Baptism forgives every sin, even the crucifixion of Christ, as Peter’s Pentecost sermon shows; whoever has sinned by word, denial, or deed may repent and hope.
  • Catechetical Lecture 4.2Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Godliness needs both right doctrine and good deeds; Cyril gives a summary of doctrines before the Creed, beginning with the one God, maker of souls and bodies and Father of one Son.
  • Catechetical Lecture 4.18Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The human being is soul and body, both made by God; the soul is free, immortal, and rational, and sin cannot be blamed on the stars.
  • Catechetical Lecture 4.19Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The soul is sinless before it comes into the world; people sin by choice, as Scripture’s appeals to the will show.
  • Catechetical Lecture 4.20Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Souls of men and women are alike and sin by choice, not by nature; the body is God’s skillful work and the soul’s instrument, to be kept pure as a temple of the Spirit.
  • Catechetical Lecture 4.21Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Ascetics and virgins should guard their chastity, but must not despise married people; marriage is honorable when used lawfully.
  • Catechetical Lecture 4.23Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Those married once must not despise those who remarry, since a second marriage is permitted to the weak; all sexual sin is to be banished, and the body kept pure.
  • Catechetical Lecture 4.24Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Cyril turns to food, over which many stumble; some eat idol offerings indifferently.
  • Catechetical Lecture 4.28Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Following the apostolic decree, Christians must abstain from idol offerings, blood, and strangled meat, and eat with reverence.
  • Catechetical Lecture 4.29Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Clothing should be plain and serve need, not vanity.
  • Catechetical Lecture 4.37Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Closing warnings: flee the devil’s works, divination, magic, licentiousness, greed, pagan shows, amulets, Samaritan and Jewish observances, and heretics; guard the soul by fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and Scripture.
  • Catechetical Lecture 5.2Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Each candidate must be faithful in conscience before God; the faithful man, content with little, is richer than the rich.
  • Catechetical Lecture 7.12Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · People forsake the heavenly Father for idols and even the devil; sonship to God is by free choice and faith, and must be shown in works.
  • Catechetical Lecture 7.14Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Honoring the heavenly Father includes honoring earthly parents, as the commandment requires.
  • Catechetical Lecture 7.15Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Children must obey their parents, except where parents oppose God; despising parents is condemned.
  • Catechetical Lecture 7.16Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Honoring parents is the first virtue of Christian piety; parents’ blessings and God’s kingdom follow.
  • Catechetical Lecture 8.5Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · All creation serves God, who patiently bears with sinners until judgment; wealth is not the devil's but God's gift, which used well can even open the kingdom of heaven.
  • Catechetical Lecture 8.7Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Against heretics who condemn possessions and bodies, Cyril argues that wealth is God's gift, the devil being at most a temporary steward of it.
  • Catechetical Lecture 9.9Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Even if we do not know the use of every creature, the varied powers of animals and the structure of our own bodies reveal a wise Creator; the members are not the cause of sin.
  • Catechetical Lecture 12.6Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Sin spread from Cain through the flood and Sodom to Israel's idolatry and immorality, and the prophets could not heal it.
  • Catechetical Lecture 12.7Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The prophets lamented Israel's corruption: violence, adultery, child sacrifice and divination.
  • Catechetical Lecture 12.33Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Christ's own words prove his real humanity; virgins and monks alike may glory in the chastity of the Virgin-born Lord.
  • Catechetical Lecture 12.34Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Cyril urges all ages to the angelic life of chastity, rejecting the adornments that entice to pleasure.
  • Catechetical Lecture 12.35Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The lecture ends with God's promise to dwell among the chaste.
  • Catechetical Lecture 15.23Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The Judge shows no partiality to rich or poor; every good deed, including faithful marriage and chastity, and every sin committed after baptism is recorded.
  • Catechetical Lecture 15.26Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The way to the kingdom is the works of mercy of Matthew 25 and faithful stewardship of every gift.
  • Catechetical Lecture 16.20Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The Spirit inspires virginity, poverty and victory over demons, and as Paraclete strengthens martyrs with the vision of paradise.
  • Catechetical Lecture 17.29Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The Spirit freed the church from the law's ceremonial burdens through the apostolic decree of Acts 15, which the apostles ascribed to the Holy Spirit.
  • Catechetical Lecture 18.1Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Hope of the resurrection is the root of good works and of bodily purity; it is denied by Greeks, Samaritans, and heretics alike.
  • Catechetical Lecture 18.19Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · All will rise with eternal bodies, the righteous to live with angels and sinners to endure eternal fire, because the body shared in every deed.
  • Catechetical Lecture 18.20Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Since we will give account for what is done in the body, we must keep it pure; baptism heals past wounds, but we must guard against future sins.
  • Catechetical Lecture 19.5Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The candidate renounced all Satan's works, that is, every sin, and his "pomp": the theater, horse races, and wild-beast shows.
  • Catechetical Lecture 19.8Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The devil's "worship" is idolatry, divination, and magic; those who return to them after baptism are like Lot's wife, while the faithful flee to Christ.
  • Catechetical Lecture 23.3Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The kiss of peace signifies reconciliation and the putting away of grudges.
  • Catechetical Lecture 23.16Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Since our sins against God are great and others' against us small, we must forgive in order to be forgiven.
  • Homily on the Paralytic 10Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350-387 · Christ withdrew to avoid praise; his warning "Sin no more" is addressed to all, who must master the flesh and run to the forgiver of sins.
  • Long recension, Ephesians 8Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius praises the Ephesians for refusing false teachers, contrasts the Spirit of truth with the spirit of error, and urges them to pray for and answer their opponents with gentleness.
  • Long recension, Ephesians 13Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius urges frequent gatherings for the Eucharist, joins faith and love as the beginning and end of life, praises deeds over words, and warns that corrupters of the church face eternal punishment.
  • Long recension, Magnesians 5Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius sets life and death before the Magnesians, describes the true and counterfeit coin of godly and ungodly, and urges them to act in concord under bishop, presbyters and deacons.
  • Long recension, Trallians 8Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius describes deacons as imitators of the angels, then urges the Trallians to meekness, forgiveness, and conduct that gives the Gentiles no occasion for blasphemy.
  • Long recension, Philadelphians 3Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius warns against schismatics and false teachers, urges the Philadelphians to receive the penitent gently, and forbids violence against God's enemies.
  • Long recension, Philadelphians 4Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius urges one faith and one Eucharist, sets out the unity of God, faith and church, and gives instructions to wives, virgins, children, slaves, husbands, fathers and masters, honouring both virginity and marriage.
  • Long recension, Smyrnaeans 6Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius insists that eternal life depends on believing in Christ's life in the flesh and his saving blood, and describes the lovelessness of those who teach otherwise.
  • Long recension, Tarsians 8Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Without the resurrection we would live like beasts; Ignatius urges the Tarsians to put away vice and keep good order under bishop, presbyters and deacons.
  • Long recension, Tarsians 9Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius gives brief instructions to husbands, wives, children, parents, virgins, widows, slaves and masters.
  • Long recension, Antiochians 10Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Instructions to masters and slaves, with the example of Job.
  • Long recension, Antiochians 11Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius warns against idleness and vice, urges obedience to Caesar where it is without danger, and forbids magic, pederasty and murder.
  • Long recension, Hero 5Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius warns Hero against pride, lying and envy, gives counsel for wives and husbands, and charges him to lead the people of Antioch as Joshua succeeded Moses.
  • Cento, lines 469–492Proba · ca. 360 · Christ teaches justice, mercy and faith, warns of the punishments awaiting the greedy and wicked after death, and forbids idol worship.
  • Cento, lines 517–538Proba · ca. 360 · Christ tells the rich young man to despise wealth and give to the poor, and he goes away sad; the disciples put out to sea and a storm rises.
  • On Humility and Obedience 1Anonymous · uncertain (4th-6th century?) · Addressing monks, the preacher says the enemy within is overcome only by humility and love, after the example of Christ who humbled himself for love of us; humility makes one obedient to God.
  • On Humility and Obedience 2Anonymous · uncertain (4th-6th century?) · True humility is shown to God, not paraded before men; it should be followed by obedience and mutual love, as the members of a body help each other.
  • On Humility and Obedience 3Anonymous · uncertain (4th-6th century?) · Love, humility and obedience imitate Christ; the soul must side with Christ the physician and God's command against the sickness of sinful habit.
  • On Humility and Obedience 5Anonymous · uncertain (4th-6th century?) · Fasting and austerities are useful to tame the flesh but become pride if boasted of, like the Pharisee's works; the only way to God is humility, obedience and love.
  • Commentary on Matthew 4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Hilary expounds the Sermon on the Mount from the Beatitudes to almsgiving: the apostles as salt and light, Christ fulfilling the law, and the Gospel’s stricter precepts on anger, lust, divorce, oaths, retaliation, and love of enemies.
  • Commentary on Matthew 6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Holy things are not to be given to dogs (pagans) or pigs (heretics); Hilary treats asking and receiving, the golden rule, the narrow gate, false prophets known by fruits, and the houses on rock and sand.
  • Commentary on Matthew 18Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Hilary treats becoming like children, the millstone and stumbling blocks (applied to the Jews’ rejection of Christ), the angels of the little ones, the lost sheep as humanity and the ninety-nine as the angels, correction of a brother, binding and loosing, and unlimited forgiveness.
  • Commentary on Matthew 19Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Hilary leaves the question of divorce untouched (referring readers to the words of Jesus, the disciples, and Paul), explains the three kinds of eunuchs, reads the children as the nations, and the rich young man as Israel trusting in the law, with the camel through the needle as the nations entering by the gospel.
  • Commentary on Matthew 28Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · In the judgment of the sheep and goats, Christ is fed, clothed, and visited in his least ones; then he foretells his passion as the Jews plot his death.
  • Commentary on Matthew 32Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 353–355 · Hilary treats Judas’s kiss (love of enemies), the sword and the servant’s ear, the trial before the high priest, Peter’s denials, Judas’s remorse and the potter’s field as the world bought by Christ’s blood for strangers, and Jesus’ answers to the priest and to Pilate.
  • Life of Antony 17Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Renouncing possessions is a small price for the kingdom of heaven; the monks should acquire the virtues, which alone go with them after death.
  • Life of Antony 20Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Virtue is not far off but within us: it is the soul remaining straight, as God made it, and needs only our will.
  • Life of Antony 55Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony’s counsel to monks: faith, love of God, purity, psalmody, memorizing Scripture, daily self-examination, not letting the sun set on any sin, and writing down one’s thoughts as if others would read them.
  • On the Trinity 1.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Thoughtful people rejected a beastlike life and turned to virtue, believing that God did not give life merely to end in death.
  • On the Trinity 9.25Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Christ tells the scribe he is "not far" from the kingdom (Mark 12:34), since his faith, though good, lacked knowledge of the gospel mystery.
  • On Saint Athanasius 2.4Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From the Sermon on the Mount (the beatitudes, anger, reconciliation, love of enemies, judging others, the speck and the beam), Lucifer shows that the bishops could not condemn Athanasius and remain Christians.
  • On Saint Athanasius 2.6Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer mocks the emperor's claim to wisdom, applying to him Paul's lists of the works of the flesh and of those given over to a reprobate mind, and Romans 12 on repaying no one evil for evil.
  • On Saint Athanasius 2.15Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From 1 John 3 Lucifer argues that whoever hates and kills his brother is of the devil like Cain, and casts the emperor as Cain and Athanasius as Abel.
  • On Saint Athanasius 2.16Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer urges the emperor to love himself in Athanasius, and strings together the commands of 1 John to love one's brother and lay down one's life for him, against the command to kill him.
  • On Saint Athanasius 2.19Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer tells the emperor that even if Athanasius had wronged him he was bound to forgive, quoting the parable of the unforgiving servant, and places him among the wicked tenants who killed the servants and the son.
  • That One Must Die for the Son of God 5Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Answering the charge that a bishop should be gentle, Lucifer says that Christians do not curse or kill but are killed, calls Constantius a wolf in sheep's guise, and describes the martyrs standing in the armour of God against his tortures.
  • On Not Sparing Those Who Sin against God 25Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer argues that the Arian denial of the true Son shows that the Spirit who spoke in the prophets and apostles is not in Constantius, calls him a wolf and a brood of vipers, and warns him from Jesus' words to Peter that those who take the sword perish by it.
  • On Not Sparing Those Who Sin against God 33Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer grants that Christians owe obedience to rulers, as Paul tells Titus, but only in good works, not in condemning the innocent unheard or denying the Son, and says no Christian may yield to an emperor who commands apostasy.
  • History of the Arians 61Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357 · Athanasius condemns the Arians for driving away the widows and poor who were being fed by the faithful, and for accusing those who gave them alms.
  • Letter 2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil describes to Gregory of Nazianzus the solitary life: quiet, withdrawal from the world, Scripture reading, prayer, speech, dress, food, and sleep.
  • Letter 22Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · A list of scriptural rules for monks: speech, obedience, work, poverty, correction of a sinning brother, and forgiveness.
  • Letter 42Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Counsel to a young hermit: persevere to the end, advance gradually, avoid relatives, crowds, and money, read Scripture, and answer the thought that urges a return to the city with the evils seen there.
  • Letter 43Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · A short exhortation to a young believer to live by the gospel's commands in hope of the heavenly assembly.
  • Letters 46, 47Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil laments a consecrated virgin's fall, rebukes her seducer, and calls her to repentance; a fragment of a second letter asks a bishop to come and help choose a sound bishop for Caesarea.
  • Letters 85, 86Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil protests against tax collectors exacting oaths from peasants; a second letter asks a governor to restore grain seized from the presbyter Dorotheus at Berisa.
  • Letter 94Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil defends to the governor Elias his building of a great church complex with a hospice, hospital, and workshops outside Caesarea against his slanderers.
  • Letter 106Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil praises a soldier who shows that a Christian can keep perfect love for God in military life.
  • Letter 108Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil reminds the guardian of Julitta's heirs of his promise to allow her time to pay and to return her documents, and urges him to show mercy.
  • Letter 142Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil introduces a chorepiscopus to a prefect's accountant and asks him to exempt the chorepiscopus's poorhouse from taxation.
  • Letter 143Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil commends a chorepiscopus and his poorhouse to another tax official, who himself supports a poorhouse at Amasea.
  • Letters 145, 146Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil begs Eusebius to visit the church of Caesarea before Basil dies; then (Letter 146) he greets Eusebius's nephew Antiochus and urges him to live mindful of Christ's judgment seat.
  • Letter 150Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Written in the name of Heraclidas, a young man turned from public life to the ascetic life, to his friend Amphilochius: he asks for a teacher, and reports bishop Basil's teaching on poverty and almsgiving.
  • Letter 160Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil answers a letter circulating under Diodorus's name that allowed a man to marry his deceased wife's sister: church custom forbids it, Lev 18:18 does not permit it, and Lev 18:6 forbids it.
  • Letter 173Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil tells the canoness Theodora that the gospel life requires faithful attention to the smallest commandments, and lists the virtues it demands.
  • Letters 188, 189Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil's first canonical letter to Amphilochius rules on the baptism of heretics and schismatics, abortion, lapsed deacons, repeated marriages, homicide, divorce, oaths, and other cases; the ref ends with most of his letter to Eustathius the physician defending the one godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
  • Letters 198, 199Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil explains to Eusebius why his letters are few and that he is near death; then (Letter 199, the Second Canonical Letter) he answers Amphilochius on oaths, fallen virgins, monks' vows, sexual immorality and adultery, abduction, unlawful and repeated marriages, deserted spouses, rebaptism of Encratites, and related cases.
  • Letter 217Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil's third canonical letter to Amphilochius: after personal news, canons 51–84 set the penitential periods for murder, adultery, fornication, incest, perjury, sorcery, apostasy, and other sins, and stress that the fruits of repentance, not time alone, decide.
  • Letter 270Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil orders that a girl carried off by force be returned to her parents, that her abductor be excommunicated, and that his accomplices and the village that sheltered her be excluded from the prayers.
  • Letter 277Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil, moved by a friend's report, praises a young man of noble family who has turned to the life of the Gospel, urging humility and the pursuit of the lasting good over youth, wealth, glory, and eloquence.
  • Letter 286Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil tells a court official that thieves caught stealing poor people's clothes at a church festival should be corrected by the Church rather than by the courts, though he leaves him free to refer the case to the count.
  • Letter 287Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil orders that a slippery offender who evades church judgment be excommunicated with his household, in the hope that he will be ashamed.
  • Letter 288Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil excommunicates an unrepentant offender after the three steps of Matt 18:15–17, and orders the village to shun him in everyday dealings.
  • Letter 289Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil reports the complaint of a woman vowed to continence who has been publicly slandered by a man he has already excommunicated, and argues that such offenders should not be rescued from the civil authorities.
  • Letter 291Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil rebukes his old friend Timotheus, a chorepiscopus, for entangling himself in worldly affairs and caring for men's opinion, since no one can serve the world and the life according to God at once.
  • Letters 292, 293Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil congratulates Palladius on his baptism and urges him to keep the garment of incorruption unstained; a second letter to Julianus asks after his health and teaches that a firm mind keeps life calm amid hardships.
  • Letter 295Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil urges monks to encourage one another, to hold fast to the faith of the Fathers, and to join right confession with good works.
  • Letters 298, 299Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil warns a devout friend against superstition about a healing spring; in a second letter he urges a reluctant tax assessor in the district of Ibora to accept the task and to assess justly, fearing neither the powerful nor despising the poor.
  • Letter 307Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil asks a friend to settle a dispute between two litigants himself rather than let them go to court, and to support the wronged party if one refuses his decision.
  • Letters 365, 366Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil asks the emperor Theodosius to build a bridge over the flooding river Halys, which cuts Cappadocia off from its food supplies; the second half of a letter to the monk Urbicius praises continence as the health of the soul, likening it to God, who desires nothing.
  • Oratio (Ephemeris 3), lines 44-66Decimus Magnus Ausonius · ca. 360-390 · Ausonius confesses faith in the Father, the Only-begotten and the Spirit, renounces pagan worship and divination, and asks for a blameless, modest life.
  • Homilies on the Psalms 1.3Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil explains that the opening beatitude sets the reward before the labor, that God alone is properly blessed, that women are included in “the man,” and why the verse speaks of past walking and of avoiding evil first.
  • Homilies on the Psalms 1.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil expounds the three steps of Ps 1:1 (counsel, way, seat): sin begins in thought, life is a way in which we cannot stand still, and the pestilent are those who spread their vice to others; he closes promising to continue.
  • Homilies on the Psalms 7.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil explains that judgment is weighed against each person's advantages: those raised in piety and the law are judged more strictly than those raised in vice, and the good deeds of barbarians condemn Christians; he begins on Ps 7:8.
  • Homilies on the Psalms 14.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil expounds Ps 15:1–3: the sojourner treats the flesh as a lodging and life as exile; the holy mountain is the heavenly Zion; blamelessness and working righteousness, truth in the heart and guileless speech, and doing no harm or reproach to one's neighbor mark the perfect man.
  • Homilies on the Psalms 14.3Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · On Ps 15:4 Basil explains that the just man despises the wicked however great and honors the God-fearing however lowly, and reconciles the psalm's praise of true swearing with the Gospel's “do not swear at all.”
  • Homilies on the Psalms 14.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil turns to Matt 5:42, grounding generosity in human nature as social.
  • Homilies on the Psalms 14.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil explains that almsgiving needs discernment, as in the church of Acts, where gifts were pooled and distributed by those in charge of the poor; giving to the poor is lending to God, with the kingdom as pledge.
  • Homilies on the Psalms 14.7Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil opens his second homily on Psalm 14 (15), on Ps 15:5a, by condemning lending at interest from the Law and the Prophets and by portraying the moneylender's hypocrisy toward the needy borrower.
  • Homilies on the Psalms 14.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil describes the borrower's brief luxury and long misery, urges the poor to sell their goods rather than borrow, and explains interest (tokos, “offspring”) as an unnaturally fertile beast.
  • Homilies on the Psalms 14.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil urges the poor to work or beg rather than borrow, describes the ruin of debtors and their children, and tells the rich to lend to the poor as to God, who repays the interest himself.
  • Homilies on the Psalms 33.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · On Ps 34:12–13 Basil teaches that the true life is Christ and the good days are those of the age to come, not this evil age, and that the first commandment of that life is to restrain the tongue, source of the readiest and most varied sins.
  • Homilies on the Psalms 48.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · On Ps 49:3–7 Basil joins heart and mouth (belief and confession), reads the psaltery as a life in harmony with words, and the evil day as the judgment when each sin will stand as its own accuser; to the strong and the rich he declares that no brother can ransom a soul from the devil, for every man is himself a captive of sin, and only the redemption in Christ sets free.
  • Homilies on the Psalms 48.10Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · On Ps 49:16–20 Basil answers those who doubt providence because the unjust prosper: the rich man takes nothing with him but a shroud and a little earth; the poor are comforted hereafter, as with the rich man and Lazarus. The worldly man praises God only in prosperity, as the devil charged against Job; the sinner knows God only by ancestral custom, and both he and the authors of false teaching will not see the light; the homily closes by lamenting man, honored but become like the beasts.
  • Homilies on the Psalms 61.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil explains that the two psalms “for Idithun” (Pss 39 and 62) were composed by David for the temple singer Idithun, and that both teach endurance and humility, by which the humble man is not moved by insults; in Ps 62 the soul refuses to be the slave of the passions and declares that it serves only God, its true King.
  • Homilies on the Psalms 61.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · On Ps 62:1–5 Basil teaches that the soul must be subject to God, its Maker, from whom comes salvation, Christ himself; the righteous are shaken only humanly by trials, while the devil's servants assault man until, like a leaning wall, he falls, yet God rebuilds him for the resurrection. He discusses the variant “in thirst” and “in a lie,” and condemns those who flatter vice by giving it the names of virtues.
  • Homilies on the Psalms 61.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · On Ps 62:7 Basil calls blessed the one who glories only in God and in the cross of Christ, unlike those who glory in bodily strength or in the killing of war.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's first rule: believers must repent first, now is the time for repentance, repentance must be heartfelt and bear fruit, and after death there is no more time for good deeds.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's second rule: no one can serve God while bound to other things; the convert must first be cleansed, and nothing of this world may come before Christ.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 3Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's third rule: the first commandment is love of God and the second love of neighbour, and love of God is shown by keeping Christ's commandments even to death.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's fourth rule: doing God's will glorifies him, and breaking his law dishonours him.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's fifth rule: Christians must love even enemies, show their discipleship by mutual love, avoid grieving a brother to the harm of his faith, seek reconciliation, and sometimes grieve those they love for their good.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's sixth rule, on fearless confession of Christ, with Rules 7 (hearing without obeying condemns) and 8 (one must not doubt the Lord's words), whose headings the scan lost.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's ninth rule, on attentive learning of God's will, with Rules 10 (the end of sin is death, of the commandment life) and 11 (God's judgments must be feared), whose headings the scan lost.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 12Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's twelfth rule: every word of the Lord must be accepted without contradiction, human tradition must not override God's commandment, all that the Lord handed down must be kept, and God's will must be preferred to one's own.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 13Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's thirteenth rule: Christians must always be watchful and ready, treating every season as fit for doing what pleases God.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 14Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's fourteenth rule: each word and deed has its proper time, as Jesus taught about fasting.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 15Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's fifteenth rule: no one may rely on the good works of others and neglect his own.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 16Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's sixteenth rule: living alongside those who please God is no help to someone who does not set his own mind right.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 17Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's seventeenth rule: Christians should read the signs of the times shown in Scripture and arrange their lives accordingly.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 18Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's eighteenth rule: God's commandments must be done in the way the Lord directed, for God's glory, with a good conscience, faithfully in small things, with insatiable desire, and so that others are enlightened.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 19Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's nineteenth rule, that no one may hinder those doing God's will, with Rule 20 on baptism into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and on its meaning, whose heading the scan lost.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 22Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's twenty-second rule: sin estranges from the Lord and binds to the devil, and true kinship with the Lord comes from doing God's will.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 23Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's twenty-third rule: one who sins against his will is held by an earlier sin which he serves willingly.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 24Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's twenty-fourth rule: Christians must not lie but speak the truth.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 25Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's twenty-fifth rule: Christians must avoid pointless and quarrelsome enquiries and every idle word.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 27Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's twenty-seventh rule, on imitating God and the saints, with Rules 28 (testing those who counterfeit the truth), 29 (proving oneself by works) and 30 (not profaning holy things), whose headings the scan lost.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 31Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's thirty-first rule, on what is set apart for those dedicated to God, with Rules 32 (render to each what is due) and 33 (on causing others to stumble), whose headings the scan lost.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 34Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's thirty-fourth rule, that each should set a good example, with Rules 35 (on blaspheming the Holy Spirit by crediting his fruit to the adversary) and 36 (on receiving those who keep the Lord's teaching), whose headings the scan lost.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 37Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's thirty-seventh rule, that eager service according to one's means is acceptable to God even from women, with Rule 38 on simple hospitality toward the brothers, whose heading the scan lost.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 39Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's thirty-ninth rule: Christians must stand firm in the faith and not be moved from the good things of the Lord.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 41Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's forty-first rule: whatever causes stumbling must be cut off, however dear, while the weak in faith must be spared and helped toward perfection.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 42Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's forty-second rule, that the Lord came to fulfil the law and the prophets, with Rule 43 on how the gospel goes beyond the law, whose heading the scan lost.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 44Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's forty-fourth rule: Christ's yoke is kind and light, while everything foreign to the gospel is a heavy burden.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 45Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's forty-fifth rule, that the kingdom belongs to those who treat one another as equals like children and love the lowest place, with Rule 46 on showing greater zeal in greater things, whose heading the scan lost.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 47Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's forty-seventh rule, on treasure in heaven, with Rules 48 (on mercy, sharing, poverty, freedom from anxiety and the duty to work) and 49 (on not going to law or taking revenge), whose headings the scan lost.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 50Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's fiftieth rule: Christians must lead others into the peace of Christ.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 51Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's fifty-first rule: one must correct one's own faults before accusing another.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 52Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's fifty-second rule: Christians must grieve over sinners, rebuke them, keep company with them only to call them to repentance, and treat the obstinate as outsiders.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 53Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's fifty-third rule: Christians must forgive from the heart those who wrong them.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 54Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's fifty-fourth rule: Christians must not judge one another in matters Scripture leaves free, nor doubt in them, nor judge hidden things, nor judge with partiality or without a hearing.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 55Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · The opening of Basil's fifty-fifth rule: every good thing, even endurance in suffering for Christ, is God's gift.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 56Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · A repetition in the scan of Basil's fifty-third rule, on forgiving from the heart.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 57Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Rules 55 (every good is God's gift, and thanksgiving), 56 (on persevering in prayer, and how to pray) and 57 (against pride in one's good deeds), preceded in the scan by a repetition of Rule 54.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 58Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's fifty-eighth rule: God's gifts cannot be bought; they are given by measure of faith for the common good, must be given freely, and grow or are lost according to how they are used.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 59Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's fifty-ninth rule: Christians must not seek human glory or excessive honour, and must correct those who give it.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 60Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's sixtieth rule: since the Spirit's gifts differ, each must be content with his gift and all must agree in Christ's love like members of one body.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 61Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's sixty-first rule: those who serve the Lord's grace must not be despised for their lowliness, since God delights in such people.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 62Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's sixty-second rule, on preparing for temptation after baptism, not seeking it, fleeing at the right time and answering it from Scripture, with Rule 63 on courage in danger, whose heading the scan lost.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 67Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's sixty-sixth rule, that those who struggle for godliness must not be abandoned and must be prayed for, and his sixty-seventh, that those assured of the resurrection should not grieve over the dead.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 69Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's sixty-ninth rule sets out, in Scripture's own lists, the vices that are forbidden together and carry a sentence, and the virtues that are approved together and receive blessings.
  • Moralia 73.73.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's rule that women should adorn themselves with good works rather than finery, from 1 Timothy 2.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 74Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · This section holds Basil's rules 74–76: on widows, on slaves and masters, and on children and parents.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 78Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's seventy-eighth rule: soldiers must not use violence to extort or bring false accusations.
  • Moral Rules (Moralia) 79Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-370 · Basil's seventy-ninth rule: rulers are avengers of God's ordinances, and one must obey them in everything that does not break God's commandment.
  • On the Holy Spirit 39Didymus the Blind · Greek ca. 360-390; Latin 387-391 · Exposition of Rom 8:4-9: walking by the Spirit rather than the flesh means following God's commands, not escaping the body; the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ.
  • On the Holy Spirit 41Didymus the Blind · Greek ca. 360-390; Latin 387-391 · Exposition of Rom 8:10-13: when the body is dead to sin, Christ gives the Spirit of life, and the Spirit dwelling in believers will raise their mortal bodies.
  • On the Holy Spirit 50Didymus the Blind · Greek ca. 360-390; Latin 387-391 · Whoever despises the Spirit given for sanctification despises God; the Spirit brings God's words, and "Moses" in Isaiah may mean either the man or the law.
  • Tractate 5, section 1Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · Joseph's resistance to Potiphar's wife is both history and figure; Gregory praises his chastity and the victory over desire.
  • Tractate 5, section 2Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · Conquest of desire brings peace and freedom; chastity is defined; Joseph's many-colored tunic, dreams and sale figure the Church of the nations and Christ's betrayal and passion.
  • Tractate 10, section 2Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · A living sacrifice is a life without sin; false virgins and fraudulent almsgivers offer appearances of death; blind, torn and crushed victims figure blind minds and believers dragged back to the world.
  • Tractate 10, section 3Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · The victim with its tongue cut off figures those who deny God in persecution; the worm-ridden figures bodies stirred by unclean spirits; field mange figures the gross sins of the pagan world.
  • Tractate 10, section 5Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · The victim without a tail figures one who has lost the chrism of faith; the castrated victim figures men who lie with males; the gift from a stranger figures works done at the devil's will.
  • Letter 121Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory urges the heirs of a dead woman to pay her bequest to the church gladly and in full, laying up treasure in heaven.
  • Letter 133Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory, too ill to come, urges the assessor Julian to treat the tax equalization as his service to God and to choose honest fellow workers.
  • Letter 143Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory urges a bishop to forgive those who wronged them, citing Phinehas, Moses, Nineveh, Manasseh, and Christ's refusal of vengeance.
  • Letter 145Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory continues: God himself punishes slowly and gives room for amendment, so the bishop should pardon the offenders for the sake of the poor, the monks and the virgins who plead for them.
  • Letter 147Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory urges a newly baptized man whose wife and daughter were wronged not to seek the offender's blood under Roman law but to forgive, leaving him to God.
  • Letter 203Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory again commends young Euphemius to Palladius; then he brings the widow Philumena before the governor Olympius, asking him to help widows and orphans.
  • Letter 205Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory ends his plea for Philumena; then, too ill to come, he asks Olympius to deal gently with a man named Paul who has been brought before him.
  • Letter 207Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory explains to friends the Lenten silence he has undertaken: it teaches measure in speech, tames anger, and teaches silence by example.
  • Letter 209Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory, keeping his Lenten silence, invites Eulalius to share their disciplines; then he writes to the judge Celeusius, rebuking him for not fasting and for putting on shameful shows.
  • Letter 239Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · The end of a plea for a deserter; then Gregory pleads with the governor Olympius not to strip Diocaesarea of its rank as a city after a riot, letting the city itself beg for its life.
  • Letter 241Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory asks the governor to punish the guilty but pardon the city of Diocaesarea, whose citizens rioted in grief at losing its status, for the sake of all its people and its church.
  • Letter 243Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · The end of Gregory's plea for Diocaesarea; then a further letter begging Olympius to spare the town councillors and others implicated in the riot.
  • Letter 271Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory tells a bishop that George, who broke a written oath, has been brought to repentance, and asks him to impose a penance whose length matches his compunction.
  • Letter 305Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · The end of the letter to Nectarius; then Gregory asks a powerful friend to help his widowed niece, harassed by her relatives, quickly.
  • Letter 311Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory rebukes the quarrelling sophists, grown men who trade insults like rams and set a bad example to their students, and blames the audiences who applaud them.
  • Letter 315Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory urges a sophist to treat young Nicobulus well and to stop the war of tongues with his rival, which teaches the young vice.
  • Letter 319Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory commends to a governor the orphaned sons and widow of the elder Nicobulus, whose house is under attack after his death.
  • Letter 341Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory sternly rebukes a young man of good family who is squandering his estate on women and has carried off virgins consecrated to God.
  • Letter 345Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory asks an official, a kinsman of Alypius's family, to help the widow of Alypius in caring for her orphans.
  • Letter 347Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory asks a friend abroad to send back a lady who supports him; then he asks Cyriacus to protect the estates that support the poorhouse run by Sacerdos.
  • Letter 353Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory invites a young monk who has quarrelled with Sacerdos to come and accept his mediation; then he rebukes him frankly for acting first and deliberating afterwards.
  • Letter 385Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · After the opening words of a letter that Migne does not print, Gregory gives Basilissa a list of precepts for the Christian life: self-control, justice, contentment and thankfulness to Providence.
  • Letter 387Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory ends his precepts to Basilissa: true wealth is needing little, and a woman's proper adornment is modesty, dignity and self-control.
  • Treatise on the Mysteries 1.22.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–366 · Believers, renouncing present pleasures, take the inheritance the first people lost.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 0.20Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · "Psalm" headings concern good works, "song" headings concern knowledge of God, and the combined headings join works and knowledge in one order or the other.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 1.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The blessed man is the believer conformed by righteousness to the body the Lord assumed.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 1.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The blessed man keeps five observances; the ungodly differ from sinners, as a son who insults his father differs from a dissolute but loving son.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 1.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The ungodly deny a creator and judgment and ascribe everything to chance and necessity; their counsel never comes to rest, so one walks in it.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 1.9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Sinners in the church are on a way to which nature carries us; the blessed man does not stand on it but turns back.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 1.10Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The chair of pestilence is not Moses' chair but the judge's seat of worldly office, whose duties of punishment infect even a devout Christian.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 1.11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Abstaining from evil is not enough; the blessed man's will, not merely his fear, is in the law of the Lord.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 1.12Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Meditating on the law day and night means living it in every action, so that the whole life becomes unceasing prayer.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 1.22Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Judgment is for the mixed: church members who love Christ yet love darkness more, being neither simply believers nor unbelievers.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 2.15Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God made man to share his blessedness; what he asks, love and obedience, profits us, not him.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 2.16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God gave freedom of will so that goodness might be meritorious, setting reward before us and punishment as a restraint.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 2.20Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · In Isaiah 1 God's anger turns to an offer of cleansing; his anger troubles in order to bring repentance.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 2.36Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Paul's "rod" in 1 Corinthians 4 is the word of correction, not a magistrate's punishment.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 2.38Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The Greek "crush" points to the contrite heart God desires; breaking like a potter's vessel aims at restoration.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 2.39Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Jeremiah's potter shows that God breaks in order to remake: he shatters vices and reshapes us in virtue.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 2.40Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God's "repentance" means that he ceases to punish those who cease to sin; as a potter remakes a vessel, God restores the repentant.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 2.42Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The kings told to understand are not earthly rulers, who belong to the devil's realm, but believers who rule themselves and in whom God's kingdom reigns.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 2.45Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Service is to be in fear, fear tempered by joy, and joy restrained by trembling.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 2.46Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · "Lay hold of discipline" calls for eager seizing, like the violent who take the kingdom of heaven.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 2.47Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Paul's pressing on to lay hold of what Christ laid hold of him for shows how discipline must be seized: God took our nature so that we may attain his.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 14.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Psalm 14 (15), concerned with the present, asks who may dwell in God's tabernacle and rest on his mountain.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 14.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalm's brief precepts gather all of Scripture's teaching; dwelling in the tabernacle comes before rest on the mountain.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 14.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The first requirements are a life kept spotless after baptism and the actual doing of righteousness.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 14.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Speaking truth in the heart marks the spiritual man, who knows the mysteries of Christ, as distinct from the natural man whose virtue is merely human.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 14.9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Truth must be in the tongue and in deeds, so that our actions do not belie the faith we confess.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 14.10Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Hilary allows that some lies are necessary, such as protecting a fugitive or the sick; the psalm condemns deceit that harms a neighbour.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 14.11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The righteous man does not reproach his neighbour in pride but corrects gently, as the humble tax collector rather than the Pharisee was justified.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 14.12Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Humility must not become servility: the openly wicked, even powerful ones, are to be held of no account.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 14.13Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · All who fear the Lord, whatever their station, are to be honoured equally.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 14.14Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The baptismal renunciation is an oath that must be kept to the end, since former righteousness is lost by later failure.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 14.15Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Lending at interest to the poor is a cruel kindness; what is done to the poor is done to Christ, who became poor.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 14.16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Gifts are not forbidden, only those that corrupt judgment or harm the innocent; gifts should be accepted out of love, not greed.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 14.17Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Whoever does these things will not be moved; the psalm should be memorized and kept as provision for eternity.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 51.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Boasting in iniquity is condemned, as opposed to boasting in the Lord and the cross; "all day" means a whole lifetime.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 51.21Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Riches should make us grateful and generous; gold is rightly used by feeding the hungry and freeing captives, whereas the unbelieving people trusted in the law's shadow and human traditions.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 52.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · "None does goodness": we speak well more easily than we act well.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 52.9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · If none does good, how were Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the apostles good, and how does Christ speak of good men?
  • Tractates on the Psalms 52.11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Only God's unchangeable goodness is perfect; human goodness is changeable, yet we are truly good when we are good.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 52.15Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God scatters the bones of men-pleasers; like Paul, we may please men only by pleasing God and seeking others' good rather than our own.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 57.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Speaking righteousness is easy; God judges the heart, where iniquity is done even when the hands refrain, as with adultery in the heart.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 57.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Sinners' estrangement from the womb reflects God's foreknowledge, not a necessity of nature; their fault is a will deliberately deaf, like the ancient serpent.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 58.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalm traces the growth of sin from enmity to rising up, iniquity, and bloodshed, which is why the Gospel restrains anger at its root.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 61.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Psalm 61 (62) teaches fear of God, patient endurance, and contempt for wealth, the root of all evils.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 61.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Pagan philosophy, denying the incarnation and future judgment, pushes over man, already a leaning wall, into vice.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 61.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The believer, rebuilt as God's house, runs thirsting for righteousness and gives no occasion for reproach, though enemies bless with their mouths and curse in their hearts.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 61.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The saint perseveres, his soul subject to God, learning patience from Christ's suffering and hoping to share his glory.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 61.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Love of money is the root of iniquity; riches, even when they come freely, must not hold the heart, since they do not go with us beyond death.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 65.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Singing psalms to God’s name means honoring him with good works done through the body, as the instrument of the soul.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.0.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Hilary insists that simple faith needs instruction in how to live, as Paul placed the word of knowledge after the word of wisdom.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.1.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Hilary notes that the psalm puts blameless conduct before the searching of God's testimonies, as Hosea puts sowing and reaping before enlightenment.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.1.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The blessed are those who walk to the end in the way of the Lord's law, which is Christ, forgetting what lies behind as Paul did.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.1.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Since even a human witness restrains sin, Christians should fear to sin before the angels who see God daily and before the devil who accuses sinners.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.1.12Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God's justifications cover every relationship, from slaves and family to church leaders and God himself, and must all be kept equally, including right belief about the Father and the Son.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.2.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The second letter asks how a young man corrects his way; Hilary praises training in God's precepts from youth, before habits of sin take hold.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.2.10Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Practice of God's commandments must come before consideration of his ways, for faithful works lead to knowledge.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.3.14Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God rebukes the proud above all sinners, because pride scorns to obey him.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.3.15Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Pride wipes out good works, as the Pharisee's fasting and tithes were undone by his boast over the tax collector.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.5.14Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalmist asks that his bodily and inward eyes be turned from the vanities of theater, circus, fine clothes, and gold.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.6.12Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Love of the law must bear fruit in persistent works, the psalmist's lifted hands.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.7.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalmist remembers God's name at night, when temptation is strongest, and fills the night with prayer and confession.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.8.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Only one who renounces worldly ambitions, wealth, and pleasures can say that God is his portion.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.8.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The hundredfold promised in this life is God himself dwelling and walking in us, which requires leaving the world while still alive.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.8.10Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalmist thinks over his ways before acting and then turns his feet to God's testimonies, teaching us to act only after reflection.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.8.11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Foreseeing temptations and persecutions, the psalmist has prepared himself so as not to be troubled in keeping God's commandments.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.10.16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Praying that the proud be put to shame is not a curse but a prayer for their repentance, in keeping with Christ's command to love enemies.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.10.18Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Even the psalmist dares not claim a spotless heart but prays for one, since all evils come from the heart.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.11.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The wineskin in the frost is the body cooled by self-control against the heat of vices, so that it does not forget God's justifications.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.12.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God's word abides in those renewed in Christ as in heaven, but leaves when vices like greed, lust, anger, and drunkenness take hold.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.12.12Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Only one free of the vices that enslave can say "I am yours" to God; the psalmist, seeking God's justifications, belongs to him alone.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.12.15Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God's commandment is exceedingly broad, since believers please him in many ways (fasting, faith, almsgiving, love) as the gifts of grace differ.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.13.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalmist keeps the law out of love, not fear, unlike those who fast, give alms, or attend church only to avoid reproach.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.13.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Understanding must bear fruit in action: the psalmist keeps his feet from every evil way.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.13.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · We must first restrain ourselves from evil before we can keep God's word steadfastly.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.13.13Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Love and hatred must be rightly directed: we should love virtues and hate vices, and so love Christ, who is peace, truth, and righteousness.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.14.9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Wealth, glory, and noble birth make people proud, but in God's sight almsgiving, poverty of spirit, and humility are true riches and nobility.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.14.13Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · David went beyond the law's requirements by sparing Saul and Absalom and mourning them, offering freely what the law did not demand.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.15.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The fifteenth letter begins with an apparent conflict between "I have hated the wicked" and Christ's command to love enemies.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.15.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Christ's command to hate father and mother seems to contradict both love of enemies and the law against cursing parents.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.15.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalmist hates not personal enemies but transgressors of the law, out of love for the law.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.15.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The "malicious" whom the psalmist sends away are chiefly the evil impulses of the heart that Christ names, which hinder the search of God's commandments.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.15.11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · All sinners are transgressors, because a natural law, written on every heart, forbids injury, theft, perjury, and adultery.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.16.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Chastity, contempt of money, and frugality benefit the one who practises them, but they are not the merit the psalmist appeals to here.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.16.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalmist did judgment and righteousness, deeds that benefit others, and so he can ask for protection.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.16.17Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Despising gold, gems, and lust, the psalmist is directed to all God's commandments and hates every wicked way, so as to be in Christ, the way.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.18.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Rather than complain against God in trials, the psalmist wastes away with zeal for God against those who forget his words, such as Christians who feast on fast days or live in debauchery.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.18.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · This zeal is Christ's in cleansing the temple, which our bodies are, and that of Phinehas and Elijah.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.19.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalmist anticipated maturity by a chaste and continent youth, and his hope in God's words never rests.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.19.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Those who come near to injure the faithful move far from God's law; we must not let anger or envy turn us against our brothers.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.19.10Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Since God is present everywhere, every sin is committed within him, which makes it the greater insult.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 118.21.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · All the law is summed up in love of neighbor; such love keeps peace and gives no cause of stumbling, as Paul abstained from meat for his brothers' sake.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 119.23Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalmist kept peace with those who hated it, as Christ made peace, commanded love of enemies, and left his peace to his disciples.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 122.11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The rich man and Lazarus show the reversal of fortunes: the poor sufferer is comforted, the self-indulgent rich man tormented.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 122.13Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Since God reverses the lot of rich and poor, we must not despise the humble and needy but care for them, as Paul and Peter agreed.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 123.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Since all good things are from God, we must not boast in strength, wealth, birth, or wisdom but in the Lord, as the psalm teaches us to confess.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 123.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The teeth of the torrents are the vices, anger, lust, hatred, gluttony, greed, which would devour the soul if God were not in us.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 123.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The fowlers' snares are leisure, money, ambition, and lust, set for every soul; glory lies in flying free of them.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 124.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God rewards those good in deed and in heart, for goodness done only for show or fear is not goodness before God.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 125.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Bodily captivity cannot enslave a faithful soul, as the three youths, Daniel, Eleazar, and the Maccabean martyrs show; the soul's captivity to vices is far worse.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 125.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Hilary describes the misery of those enslaved to greed, lust, drunkenness, anger, and envy.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 125.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God turned back our captivity through the forgiveness of sins, freeing the soul from vices and making us the new Zion in the body of Christ, to the wonder of the nations.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 125.11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Sowing in tears is the spiritual sowing of repentance and confession, which Paul contrasts with the sowing of the flesh; those who sow so will reap joy at the judgment.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 126.13Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The bread of sorrow is the grief of the will that knows the good yet is held back by habitual sin; Christ blesses this mourning.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 127.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The fear of the Lord is learned; it consists in love and obedience, not in dread of calamity, and so those who walk in his ways are blessed.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 127.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The 'labors' to be eaten are good works that nourish the soul now, with the living bread, while their fruit is reaped in eternity.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 128.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · We should not be angry with those who wrong us, but recognize and resist the devil who prompts them, and pity his instruments.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 130.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · This short psalm teaches humility, the greatest work of faith: the heart must not be lifted up.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 130.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · David did not walk 'in great things above him': raised from obscurity to be king and prophet, he loved persecutors and spared his sons rather than seek revenge.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 130.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalmist is humble in heart, the source of evil thoughts, but lofty in soul and thought, which are directed to heaven.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 131.25Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The poor are satisfied when the church feeds them, since Christ receives such service as done to himself, and when those poor in spirit receive the food of eternal life.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 132.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · As in the first church at Jerusalem and in Paul's exhortations, believers should be of one mind, seeking peace with all, like members of one body.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 133.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Lifting hands in the night means doing works of mercy in this dark age, the true evening sacrifice, given cheerfully as Moses' raised hands won the battle.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 135.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · 'Confess' means both praising God and confessing sin; confession is not informing God but acknowledging one's error, which implies ceasing from it.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 135.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The 'lords' and 'kings' whose Lord God is are believers who master their bodies and sins, a dignity given by his mercy.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 136.13Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The 'daughter of Babylon' is the flesh, born of confusion; blessed is he who repays her by subjecting her to the spirit and killing her vices.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 136.14Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Dashing Babylon's little ones against the rock means crushing vices at their birth against Christ, before they grow strong.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 137.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Confession means ceasing from sin; to confess 'with the whole heart' one must abandon all sins, not trade one vice for another.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 137.16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · 'The Lord will repay for me' agrees with the Gospel: Christians leave vengeance to God and do not return evil for evil.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 138.42Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God 'slays the sinner' not by destroying him but by putting his sins to death, so that he dies to the world and lives in Christ.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 138.46Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · There is a holy hatred of those who hate God; we love our own enemies, but God's enemies are Christ's too, since the Son is one with the Father.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 139.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · For us too, belly, eye, tongue, and heart are beset with snares, and we must pray to escape them on the wings of faith.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 140.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The evening sacrifice of the last times is works of mercy done to the least of Christ's brothers.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 140.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Since we will be judged by our words, the psalmist asks for a door and bar on his lips, as Sirach counsels a door, bolt, and measure for speech.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 140.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Sinners make excuses, blaming others for their adultery or murder, and heretics labor to excuse their doctrines; the psalmist asks for a heart that needs no excuses.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 140.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The humble accept correction from the righteous in mercy; mercy has a just measure, as John's 'sin unto death' and Paul's restoring of one 'overtaken' show.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 140.14Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalmist's eyes are fixed on God and his works, not on bodies, wealth, shows, or worldly pomp; 'taking away the soul' means losing its appointed glory.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 143.22Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Christ laid down his life freely, beyond the reach of the sword; the worldly prosperity the psalm describes is falsely called blessed, for the truly blessed people is the one whose God is the Lord.
  • Tractates on the Psalms 144.14Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Human justice and mercy often undercut each other, but God's justice is merciful through patience: he delays punishment, awaiting repentance, and punishes only after patience has failed.
  • Paraenesis, or Exhortation to Penitence 3Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian distinguishes the many minor faults from which Christ has freed believers from the few grave sins that remain binding.
  • Paraenesis, or Exhortation to Penitence 4Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian cites the apostolic decree of Acts 15, which he reads as naming the three grave sins: idolatry, bloodshed, and sexual immorality (the rest of the chapter is missing from this text).
  • Paraenesis, or Exhortation to Penitence 5Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian shows from Scripture that idolatry, murder, and sexual immorality are deadly sins, and warns against flattering those who have committed them.
  • Paraenesis, or Exhortation to Penitence 6Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian warns those who receive communion after grave sin without penance, citing the death of Uzzah and the law on eating sacrifices while unclean.
  • Paraenesis, or Exhortation to Penitence 7Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian applies Paul’s warning against eating the Lord’s body unworthily to sinners who receive communion without penance.
  • Paraenesis, or Exhortation to Penitence 8Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian urges sinners not to endanger the community and the priest by hiding their sins, but to confess them, as the sick show their wounds to physicians, since the church grieves with them.
  • Paraenesis, or Exhortation to Penitence 9Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian rebukes those who confess but will not perform the works of penance, and holds up David and Nebuchadnezzar as examples of severe penance that God accepted.
  • Paraenesis, or Exhortation to Penitence 10Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian rebukes penitents who live in luxury and describes the works of public penance: weeping before the church, squalid clothing, fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and abstaining from baths and banquets.
  • Paraenesis, or Exhortation to Penitence 11Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian urges sinners to use the remedy of penance as animals use healing herbs, and warns of the eternal fire that awaits the unrepentant in body and soul.
  • Paraenesis, or Exhortation to Penitence 12Pacian of Barcelona · ca. 360-390 · Pacian closes with an appeal to do penance now, while there is time, promising God’s forgiveness to those who return like the prodigal son.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.2Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Mani’s second principle makes sin seem incurable, encouraging despair and robbing virtuous effort of true praise.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.29Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Human sins presuppose body and soul joined in a world, so by Mani’s own myth the mixture of good and evil produced evils that matter alone never had.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.32Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Sin lies in reason’s choice, not in desire or body; on Mani’s scheme reason belongs to the good, so sin would come from the good.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.33Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Self-control consists in reason checking desire, so reason is responsible for both virtue and vice.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.34Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The moral quality of deeds lies in purpose: the same outward act can be just or unjust, and good deeds done for show are blameworthy.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.3Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · God gave man knowledge of good and evil and power over virtue and vice, so sin is acting against reason, which must be exercised like the body.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.4Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Virtue requires the real possibility of vice: self-control and justice mean refraining from what one could do, so God rightly made us able to sin.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.5Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Man is made good only through self-control and justice, which require the presence of their opposites.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.6Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Self-control given by nature would not be self-control, since it consists in resisting pleasures.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.7Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Man is by nature fair but neither good nor evil; God gave him both freedom and moral knowledge, like a skilled charioteer.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.8Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Freedom to sin is a benefit, because virtue among men consists chiefly in refusing evil that one could do; God alone is good by pure beneficence.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.9Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Evil exists only as human deeds; God refrains from evil not through ignorance or inability but by perfect power of not willing it.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.10Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · God’s inability to do wrong is the perfection of his will, not weakness; in men evil exists only when done.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.11Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Made in God’s image, man is free; the changes of men toward virtue and vice show that sin is chosen, not natural.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.12Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Bad habits are hard but not impossible to break; fear and law restrain sin, showing that sins come from passions and choice, not nature.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.13Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Thinking of both good and evil shows natural moral knowledge, not two natures; action is decided by choice, and upbringing matters greatly.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.14Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Titus sums up: freedom to sin is necessary for virtue, and evil exists only in action, not as a principle.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.15Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Wealth and poverty are unequal only outwardly; the necessities of life are common to all, and virtue is equally possible and equally demanding for rich and poor.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.16Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Rich and poor test and train each other; true blessedness is virtue, and in health and pleasure the poor man often has more than the rich.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.17Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Sickness and health both serve virtue, and the escape of some criminals from punishment makes virtue a matter of hating evil rather than fearing penalties.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.18Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Both the punishment and the escape of evildoers serve providence, and all apparent opposites in life work together to keep the mind alert for virtue.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.19Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The unjust suffering of the righteous, even to death, does not harm them, since they look to greater goods after this life.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.20Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · God permits wicked rulers as a just punishment of sinful peoples, as Scripture declares.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.21Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · God’s providence gives all people the same access to virtue, birth, necessities and death; the world shows variety, not inequality.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.22Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Wars arise from greed and are permitted by God; death itself is no evil but a natural transition that ends sin for the wicked and begins crowns for the righteous.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.23Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Death, appointed for all, is good, ending the toil of the righteous and the sins of the wicked; the blame for war lies with human purpose, not with God.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.35Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Crimes done at night are the fault of the criminal’s purpose, not of night, which invites only sleep.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.36Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Falsehood, like darkness, has no substance; the possibility of lying exists so that truth may be freely chosen.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.39Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Wild animals and Mani’s irrational evil alike cannot be evil, since evil requires knowledge, as the pardon given to the delirious shows.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.40Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Moral blame requires reason and knowledge, so animals are not evil and infants are neither good nor evil.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.45Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Iron and fire are gifts of the Creator, found by human reason; their misuse is the fault of the user, and death itself, which they may cause, is not evil.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.46Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Human sins cannot change the natural order fixed by God; they only convict the doer, so blame belongs to the user, not the instrument.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.47Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Murder brings about only the death appointed for all; God permits it for various reasons, and death itself is not evil.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.57Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Sexual desire exists so that self-control, virginity and celibacy may be real victories of reason and holiness.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.58Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Natural appetites are good in measured, lawful use; sin lies in excess, and fasting is a voluntary training, not a rejection of nature.
  • Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.59Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Desire is not evil: its lawful use is blameless and voluntary abstinence is a great virtue, possible only because the opposite is possible.
  • Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 73Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Against the Manichaean doctrine of two roots bearing good and evil fruit, Titus points to the apostles, who changed from bad to good, as proof that rational creatures act by choice.
  • Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 74Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Pharaoh’s requests for prayer and Nebuchadnezzar’s recognition of God show that even the worst men had some good, which refutes the idea of evil natures sprung from an evil root.
  • Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 88Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Paul calls the Law holy and spiritual; it opposes every one of the four kinds of vice, and where it is obeyed evil loses its power.
  • Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 89Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The Law and the Prophets remove every vice, folly, cowardice, licentiousness and injustice, and guard eyes, tongue and body against pleasure.
  • Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 90Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The Law guards against idolatry, the gravest injustice, which robs God of his honour, and against love of money, the root of injustice to others.
  • Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 91Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The Law checks love of glory as well as love of money and honours the upright; heretics hate it because it opposes their passions. Titus begins to show that it also teaches every virtue.
  • Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 92Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The Law teaches all four virtues: prudence from God, self-control in Joseph’s refusal of Potiphar’s wife, and courage in Judith’s venture.
  • Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 93Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Judith’s prudent courage and Abraham’s refusal of reward illustrate virtue in the Law; the Law, the Gospel and Paul agree on one God and on the Son begotten from the Father.
  • Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 101Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Christ’s teaching that the maker of the outside made the inside, and his care for bodily purity, show that the body is God’s work; his own real body, crucified and buried, refutes the Manichees.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4.19Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · The Gentiles, without hope of eternity, give themselves over to shamelessness, greed, and shameful pleasures.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4.25Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Because believers are members of one body, the church, whose head is Christ, they must put away lying and speak the truth to one another.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4.26Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Victorinus surveys the moral precepts of Eph 4:26–5:21 and their order, then explains that anger is allowed if it aims to correct rather than to punish and is laid aside within the day.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4.27Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Lingering anger gives the devil an occasion, but he can act on us only when we give him one, since we are masters of our own will.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4.28Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · The sin lies in persisting, not in having sinned, since there is room for repentance; the thief, and every secret sinner, must stop, and work with his hands so as to share with those in need.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4.29Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · No evil word should be spoken, only words that build up faith, lest the Holy Spirit with whom believers are sealed for the day of redemption be grieved.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4.31Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Victorinus defines bitterness, anger, indignation, shouting, and blasphemy, which must be put away together with the malice that makes them sins.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4.32Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Believers must be kind and merciful to one another, forgiving sins as God has forgiven them in Christ, who came to conquer the sin they could not.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 5.3Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Shamelessness, uncleanness, and greed must be so far from saints that they are not even named among them.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 5.4Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Shamefulness, foolish talk, and wounding jests are distinguished from the earlier vices and allowed only when they serve rebuke or correction; thanksgiving should take their place.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 5.5Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · The shameless, the unclean, and the greedy have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God, and greed is idolatry because it seeks from idols the goods of this world or divides worship among many.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 5.10Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Believers should test what pleases God, avoid the fruitless works of darkness, and even rebuke those who do them.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 5.15Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Believers must walk with the wisdom that is from God and redeem the evil days by virtue and patience, making the time their own.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 5.18Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Instead of drunkenness, believers are to be filled with the Spirit, which Paul presents as a matter of their own will, cleansing the soul from vice.
  • Commentary on Galatians 5.14Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · The whole law is fulfilled in love of neighbor, which includes every person, and such spiritual love excludes adultery, theft, and every harm.
  • Commentary on Galatians 5.15Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Discord destroys, while love alone, not circumcision or works, fulfills the law.
  • Commentary on Galatians 6.2Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Bearing and correcting one another’s faults fulfills the law of Christ, who bore our ills.
  • Commentary on Galatians 6.9Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Doing good must be continued without weariness, even amid suffering, since the harvest will come in due time.
  • Commentary on Galatians 6.10Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Since time is short, believers must do good to all without exception, but especially to fellow believers who hold to faith alone in Christ.
  • Commentary on Philippians 2.5Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Victorinus analyzes the precepts of Phil 2:2–4, unity of mind and love, no rivalry or vainglory, humility, and care for others, and shows that Christ, who emptied himself for others, is their pattern.
  • Commentary on Philippians 4.4Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · United in heart, the Philippians should rejoice in the Lord and let their moderation, a humble keeping within their measure, be known to all, since the Lord and his judgment are near.
  • Commentary on Philippians 4.8Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · The Philippians should think on and practice whatever is true, chaste, just, holy, lovely, and of good report, as they learned and saw in Paul, recognizing that virtue and praise are God’s gift, and the God of peace will be with them.
  • Oration 2.14Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Freedom from sin is not enough for a leader: he must excel in good and never stop advancing.
  • Oration 3.7Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory urges his flock to respect themselves and their faith, to prefer silence and good deeds to talk about God, and to walk the royal road.
  • Oration 4.60Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The rest of the first invective: Julian's indirect persecution, his assault on the army and the cross-standard, the outrages of Heliopolis, Gaza, and Arethusa (Mark of Arethusa), his law against Christian teachers, his plan to copy the church's institutions, and Gregory's satire of pagan myth and ethics compared with Christian morals.
  • Oration 5.32Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory mocks the silenced oracles and the pagan gods, then begins his exhortation: those disciplined by God should not sin again.
  • Oration 5.34Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory urges Christians not to forget their chastisement now that the persecution is over.
  • Oration 5.35Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory urges a festival of spiritual joy, not pagan revelry, and forbids revenge on the former persecutors, leaving them to God.
  • Oration 6.6Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The word governs Gregory's passions and is the feast he sets before his reconciled brothers.
  • Oration 8.9Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gorgonia surpassed even Solomon's capable wife, especially in modesty and restraint of eye, laughter, ear, and tongue.
  • Oration 8.10Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gorgonia rejected cosmetics and finery; she was wise, silent about doctrine, generous to the church and the poor, and outstanding in fasting, vigils, prayer, and tears.
  • Oration 14.1Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory opens his discourse on love for the poor by calling all his hearers fellow paupers before God and asking which virtue deserves the first place.
  • Oration 14.2Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory lists virtues, faith, hope, love, hospitality, brotherly love, love for humankind, patience, and meekness, each with its biblical witnesses.
  • Oration 14.3Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory continues his list of virtues, zeal, discipline of the body, prayer, virginity, and self-control, with their witnesses in Scripture.
  • Oration 14.4Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory adds solitude, frugality, humility, and poverty to his list of virtues, and sums them up as contemplation and action.
  • Oration 14.5Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Every virtue is a road to salvation, but the greatest part of love is love for the poor and the suffering, above all for those wasted by leprosy; Gregory reflects on his own bond with the body.
  • Oration 14.7Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory marvels at the strange union of soul and body that keeps us humble, then turns to the duty of caring for the bodies of others, especially the sick, since all are one body in Christ.
  • Oration 14.9Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Unlike other poor people, the lepers suffer poverty, a dreaded disease, and the loathing of others; Gregory weeps for them and calls on his hearers to share his grief.
  • Oration 14.10Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory describes the lepers, mutilated beyond recognition, who must name their parents to be known, and rebukes those who shun them more than they would a corpse.
  • Oration 14.11Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Even parents drive away their leprous children; the sick are shunned more than criminals, barred from towns and even water, and so must beg at the church festivals.
  • Oration 14.13Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The lepers share our nature, the image of God, baptism, and the hope of glory; Christians who follow the compassionate Christ must not abandon them while living in luxury, fine clothes, and feasting.
  • Oration 14.18Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Our soul’s sickness, insensibility to the poor, is worse than leprosy; Gregory refuses to enjoy his goods unless he shares them, and reminds his hearers how unstable all human prosperity is.
  • Oration 14.20Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · No one should boast of wisdom, wealth, power, beauty, or youth, but only of knowing God and helping the suffering; God has made earthly goods unstable so that we may anchor ourselves in what is to come.
  • Oration 14.22Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Let us follow the Word by sharing our goods with the poor, giving a portion to the soul and to God; we can never outdo God’s generosity, since all we give is already his.
  • Oration 14.23Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Everything we have, from life and reason to the hope of heaven and the beauty of creation, comes from God, who now asks of us only kindness; we must not make ourselves superior to the poor.
  • Oration 14.24Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory warns the rich not to be bad stewards who hoard while others starve, citing a saying of Peter and the prophets’ threats against greed and luxury.
  • Oration 14.25Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · God gave the earth and the means of life to all in common; wealth, poverty, and slavery came later with sin, but in the beginning man was free and rich in paradise.
  • Oration 14.26Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Through envy and the serpent’s deceit inequality divided the human family; Gregory urges the strong and rich to look to the Creator’s law, help the needy, and so imitate God’s mercy.
  • Oration 14.27Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Doing good makes us like God, who gave us every gift; Gregory urges spiritual and bodily help for the lepers, insisting that approaching them is safe and that the sick man is a member of one’s own body.
  • Oration 14.28Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Anyone may fall into misfortune, so the prosperous should help while they can; even a little given, or tears, matter, and if the Law commands care for a fallen beast, far more is owed to a fellow human being.
  • Oration 14.29Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory contrasts pagan cults of gain and human sacrifice with Christians who blame the poor and claim God has decreed their misery, and replies that whoever knows his goods come from God will use them as God wills.
  • Oration 14.34Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Health and wealth are not to be admired for themselves, nor sickness and poverty despised: a Job may lie hidden among the sick, and Lazarus was saved through poverty while the rich man suffers.
  • Oration 14.35Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · All the writers of Scripture insist on care for the poor, and the Psalms show God rising up for the poor and watching over them with special care.
  • Oration 14.36Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · God’s concern for the wronged poor shows how much he values kindness to them; almsgiving cleanses the soul’s leprosy, and the wounded soul is healed by Christ when it shows mercy to the sick.
  • Oration 14.38Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Scripture blesses the merciful; Gregory urges immediate, cheerful giving without delay or grumbling, which Isaiah promises will bring light and healing.
  • Oration 14.39Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Christ’s purse for the poor, the apostles’ agreement, and the command to the rich young man show that kindness is a law, not advice; the goats at the judgment are condemned for neglecting Christ in the needy.
  • Oration 14.40Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory concludes: let us honour Christ not with costly gifts but with mercy to the poor, so that they may receive us into the eternal dwellings.
  • Oration 16.18Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory lists the sins behind the disaster: seizing the land of the poor, usury, withholding first-fruits, neglecting widows and orphans, hoarding, injustice, and attributing ill-gotten wealth to God.
  • Oration 16.19Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory rebukes grain profiteers who exploit famine, the greedy who idolize wealth, proud officials, and the luxurious who are unmoved by others’ ruin.
  • Oration 17.4Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Human affairs change constantly under God’s hidden governance; the wise are trained by misfortune and keep hope, and Christians should be subject to God, one another, and the civil authorities.
  • Oration 17.9Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory urges the governor, as God’s image ruling God’s images, to imitate God’s kindness, which can make him godlike, to temper threats with mercy, and to forgive as the parable of the unforgiving servant teaches.
  • Oration 18.16Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory finds his father’s virtues too many to choose among and praises his generous, ungrudging giving to the poor.
  • Oration 18.21Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory praises his parents’ unostentatious generosity, his father’s just and gentle government of the church, his genuine humility, and above all his freedom from malice.
  • Oration 18.22Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory describes his father’s quick forgiveness, his mild punishments, and how those who wronged him were often struck by sudden misfortunes that led them to repent.
  • Oration 19.7Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory urges all classes of people to join the spiritual contest now, each offering God what he can, from virginity to honourable marriage and from teaching to care for the needy.
  • Oration 19.11Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory tells officials to be content with their lawful pay, urges mercy to the poor, and asks the tax assessor to deal humanely with his people, since Christ was born during a census and paid the temple tax.
  • Oration 25.7Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory says Hero’s philosophy aims at the practical good of society, frank speech to rulers and care for the troubled, rather than logic, geometry, or the eccentricities of the old Cynics.
  • Oration 26.3Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory contrasts himself with self-serving shepherds and asks his people to account for the fruit of his teaching in sound faith and good works.
  • Oration 26.7Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory asks his people whether they have cared for the poor, strangers, and clergy, as serving Christ in the least of his brothers, and begins to tell what he learned in solitude, watching the sea as an image of life’s temptations.
  • Oration 26.10Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory compares the true philosopher to a mythical plant that thrives by being cut, showing how he turns every circumstance (birth, age, beauty, health, wealth, or their opposites) into virtue.
  • Oration 26.12Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory continues his portrait of the philosopher, who bears hunger, thirst, cold, insult, and persecution after the example of Elijah, Paul, Job, and Christ.
  • Oration 32.19Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory says true humility is shown not in dress or austerities but in speaking modestly about God and yielding to those more competent.
  • Oration 32.29Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory tells the contentious not to condemn their brothers as impious, but to correct them gently and look first to their own weakness.
  • Oration 32.30Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory urges patience with an erring brother, who is the image of God: admonish him repeatedly and, like the farmer with the fig tree, seek his correction rather than his removal.
  • Oration 32.31Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory urges the strong to bear with a brother’s faults and seek to heal him, citing Paul’s willingness to be cut off for Israel and his teaching on not destroying a brother for whom Christ died.
  • Oration 36.8Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory says that one who loves the good for its own sake stays constant like a rock, unlike those who change with the times.
  • Oration 36.11Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory tells his people that their orthodox faith and consistent life are his best defence, and exhorts emperors, courtiers, and nobles to use their positions under God.
  • Oration 36.12Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory closes by exhorting philosophers, the rich, the luxurious, and the whole city of Constantinople to virtue, generosity to the poor, and contempt for the games.
  • Oration 37.5Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The Pharisees test Christ on divorce; Gregory says some questions deserve silencing, but this one honours chastity, and he rejects the civil law that punishes a wife's adultery but leaves a husband's unchastity unpunished.
  • Oration 37.6Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · God's law treats father and mother, man and woman, equally, and Paul's comparison of marriage to Christ and the church requires chastity of both spouses.
  • Oration 37.8Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory reads Eph 5 as discouraging second marriage (the first is law, the second concession, the third transgression) and explains that Christ permits separation only from an unchaste wife, urging spouses to correct rather than separate.
  • Oration 37.9Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Answering the remark that it is better not to marry, Gregory grants that marriage is honourable and good for the moderate and for children, but not when it becomes a path to vice.
  • Oration 37.10Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Virginity is higher than the good of marriage, yet virgins and wives depend on and should honour one another; the virgin must keep eyes, tongue, feet and mind virgin too.
  • Oration 37.11Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Virginity, which most cannot receive, is angelic; the virgin must direct all her love to God and Christ the Bridegroom, valuing none of the world's goods.
  • Oration 37.12Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · As water confined in a pipe rises, desire concentrated on God lifts the virgin upward; she must guard herself on every side against the devil's gradual approaches.
  • Oration 37.16Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Natural eunuchs should not pride themselves on an untested, involuntary chastity, since only chosen goodness deserves praise.
  • Oration 37.18Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Scripture calls any sin, and especially offence against God, fornication and adultery.
  • Oration 37.20Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory reads Christ's three kinds of eunuchs figuratively: those good by natural aptitude, and those whose passions are cut away by teachers.
  • Oration 37.21Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Those who “made themselves eunuchs” are those who, without a teacher, cut out their passions by their own reason and choice; what matters is that the passions are cut away.
  • Oration 38.5Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The feast is not to be kept with decorations, feasting, finery and drunkenness, especially while others of the same nature go hungry.
  • Oration 39.7Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The demons, envious of man, led him into idolatry; the remedy begins with the fear of God, which leads through obedience and cleansing to illumination, so that we may receive the Word worthily.
  • Oration 40.7Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Baptism cleanses body and soul by water and Spirit, and is a covenant with God for a new life; since there is no second regeneration, the baptized must guard its grace, though repentance with tears can heal, if with scars.
  • Oration 40.18Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Baptism benefits virgins, the married, those in authority and slaves, rich and poor; those engaged in public affairs should not fear it; and the parable of the labourers does not justify delaying baptism.
  • Oration 40.32Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Our observances of fasting, the Passover and baptism follow Christ's but at different times; the baptized should show gratitude by prayer, tears and generosity to the poor, strangers, the sick, the naked and debtors.
  • Oration 40.33Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Baptism must reform character as well as wash away sins; it does not forgive the continued keeping of ill-gotten goods; those raised from the tomb of sin should not bind themselves again.
  • Oration 40.34Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory applies Christ's healings to the baptized: the cleansed leper should be grateful, the withered hand stretched out in giving, the deaf and blind open to the Word and the light of the Trinity, and the gift guarded with care.
  • Oration 40.37Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory distinguishes the true light from the deceptive one, and calls the baptized to be cleansed and illumined in every sense and member: eyes, ears, tongue, smell, touch, taste, hands, feet, belly and heart.
  • Oration 40.40Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The cleansing should reach even the loins and kidneys, the seat of desire, so that the whole person, not only parts, is offered to God as a perfect sacrifice.
  • Oration 43.9Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Basil's parents were known for charity, hospitality, self-control and dedication of property to God, and above all for their children; Gregory will praise Basil not for bodily gifts but for what truly matters.
  • Oration 43.19Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory and Basil became inseparable in the pursuit of philosophy, a friendship lasting because founded on God, not on bodily attraction; Gregory cannot tear himself from the story.
  • Oration 43.34Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Basil's leadership of the church showed itself in many works, above all in the great famine, when grain dealers were hoarding and profiteering.
  • Oration 43.35Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Unable to work miracles like Moses or Elijah, Basil persuaded the rich to open their storehouses and himself served food to the starving like Christ washing feet.
  • Oration 43.36Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Basil surpassed Joseph by giving grain freely, and fed souls too with the word of God.
  • Oration 43.57Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory praises Basil's poverty, frugality and ascetic life, his promotion of virginity and his union of solitary and communal monasticism, and above all the “new city” of charity he built for the poor and the lepers.
  • Oration 44.6Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The hearers must be renewed themselves, putting off the old man and guarding each sense against the temptations that once brought death.
  • Oration 44.7Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Renewal means directing anger at the devil and desire to God, loving one's brother, sharing with the poor and strangers, and forgiving as one has been forgiven.
  • Oration 44.8Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory exhorts the married, virgins and the powerful, and all to humility and constant renewal, the true way to keep the feast of dedication.
  • Oration 44.9Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory calls for a complete change of life, from the faith of demons to that of God, from show to reality, from luxury to humility, so as to receive the new heaven and earth.
  • Oration 45.15Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory reads the Passover night, the flight from Egypt, the blood on the doorposts, the removal of leaven, the roasting and eating of the lamb, and the girded loins as figures of the Christian's deliverance from sin and the stricter demands of the Gospel.
  • Tractates 1.2.4Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno praises love as queen of the virtues, surpassing faith and hope, and describes its works in society, marriage and the household.
  • Tractates 1.2.5Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno shows love at work among animals and the elements, and from the great commandment argues that the law hangs on love yet is to be revered.
  • Tractates 1.2.6Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno concludes that Christianity rests chiefly on love, citing Judas and 1 Corinthians 13.
  • Tractates 1.2.7Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno explains that love's first duty is toward God, then toward the neighbour, who bears God's image, so that wrong done to him is done to God.
  • Tractates 1.2.8Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno contrasts true love with the destructive erotic love pictured as Cupid, which ruined Adam and Eve and assailed Susanna and Joseph, citing 1 John 2:15–16.
  • Tractates 1.2.9Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno hymns the love of God, which created and redeemed man, brought about the incarnation and cross, inspires martyrs and almsgiving, and is one in the Trinity.
  • Tractates 1.3.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno begins a discourse on justice, rejecting the philosophers' civil and natural justice and citing Romans 10:3.
  • Tractates 1.3.2Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno shows from Paul and Jeremiah that the world's wisdom is folly, and describes worldly wisdom, strength and riches as the foundations of vice.
  • Tractates 1.3.3Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno argues that justice and wisdom cannot be separated: no fool can be just and no unjust man wise.
  • Tractates 1.3.4Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno describes true justice, which works for others, ransoms captives, cares for the sick and the dead, gives alms secretly and returns good for evil.
  • Tractates 1.3.5Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno rebukes Christians who think it just to keep their own and seek more, citing Christ's command to sell all and give to the poor.
  • Tractates 1.3.6Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno answers the claim that it is just to keep one's own: in the church all things are common, and the rich who do not help the dying poor are killers.
  • Tractates 1.3.7Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno answers the excuse of providing for one's children from the Psalms, the widow of Zarephath and Abraham's love of God above his son.
  • Tractates 1.4.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno praises chastity, which guards family life and makes the church, Christ's virgin bride, fruitful in holy children.
  • Tractates 1.4.2Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno describes unchastity, which, like Antichrist under Christ's name, poses as chastity while ruining families, nations and kingdoms.
  • Tractates 1.4.3Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno describes unchastity's cosmetics and its link to idolatry, since the pagan gods Jupiter, Hercules and Venus were exalted through lust.
  • Tractates 1.4.4Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno condemns husbands who commit adultery, citing Christ's saying on putting away a wife and Paul's equal rule for husband and wife, and teaches that a Christian must be either continent or married.
  • Tractates 1.4.5Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno gives Joseph's refusal of Potiphar's wife as an example of chastity rewarded by God.
  • Tractates 1.4.6Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno tells the story of Susanna, falsely accused by the elders and vindicated by Daniel, as an example of chastity.
  • Tractates 1.4.7Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno ends with a hymn to chastity, the treasure of souls and temple of God, which brings fruit thirty-, sixty- and a hundredfold.
  • Tractates 1.5.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno begins a discourse on continence: he does not condemn marriage but, with Paul, sets virginity and widowhood above it.
  • Tractates 1.6.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno begins a discourse on patience, the harbour of all virtues, which cannot be moved by anything.
  • Tractates 1.6.3Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno traces the ruin caused by impatience from Adam and Cain to Sodom and the rebellions of Israel.
  • Tractates 1.6.4Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno turns to examples of patience: Abel, the first martyr, and Noah, who built the ark patiently.
  • Tractates 1.6.6Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno gives Jacob and Joseph as examples of patience in exile, service and power.
  • Tractates 1.6.7Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno describes Job's patience under the devil's attacks and declines to praise the Lord's patience, which surpasses all comparison.
  • Tractates 1.6.8Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno ends with a hymn to patience as queen of the virtues, sustaining virgins, widows, the married, slaves, the poor, prophets, apostles and martyrs.
  • Tractates 1.7.2Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno expounds 'Lord, my heart is not lifted up', urging humility after the example of Christ, gentle and humble of heart.
  • Tractates 1.7.3Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno expounds 'nor are my eyes lifted up' through 1 John 2:15–16 on the lust of the eyes.
  • Tractates 1.7.4Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno expounds 'nor have I walked in great things' of worldly greatness, with David, the humble shepherd-king who spared Saul, as the example.
  • Tractates 1.7.5Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno expounds 'if I did not think humbly' with the parable of the Pharisee and the publican.
  • Tractates 1.9.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno begins a sermon against avarice, the root of all evils, which no longer counts as a crime because it has seized everyone.
  • Tractates 1.9.2Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno describes how avarice overrides every law and bond, sets families against each other, and ends in shameful death.
  • Tractates 1.9.3Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno warns the avaricious that death fears neither riches nor honour, and a little earth will at last satisfy rich and poor alike.
  • Tractates 1.9.4Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno describes the usurer, the man who closes common land, and the grain-hoarder who profits from famine.
  • Tractates 1.9.5Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno shows that gold, the idol of the nations, can neither heal nor save nor go with its owner into the grave.
  • Tractates 1.9.6Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno praises his congregation as God's living gold and describes the heavenly city where all is common and no one fears theft.
  • Tractates 1.10.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno begins a second sermon on avarice, which seizes every class of people, never grows old, and spares no one.
  • Tractates 1.10.2Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno asks why the avaricious hoard what they cannot take with them, since silver and gold are the idols of the nations.
  • Tractates 1.10.3Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno rebukes Christian women who condemn idols yet come to church loaded with gold, whose coins bear the images of kings.
  • Tractates 1.10.4Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno shows how avarice sets spouses, parents and children against each other and leads to contempt of God.
  • Tractates 1.10.5Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno praises his congregation's generosity to captives, strangers, the poor and widows, by which they lend to God.
  • Tractates 1.11.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · In a short address Zeno sums up why God hates avarice and promises eternal life to those who conquer it.
  • Tractates 1.12.5Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno portrays the flesh as a seductress singing the song of the ungodly from Wisdom 2.
  • Tractates 1.12.6Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno sets against the flesh's song the spirit's call to spiritual warfare and to renounce the world, quoting 1 John 2:15–17.
  • Tractates 1.12.7Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno explains why the spirit so often loses: the flesh's goods are present and easy, the spirit's hidden, steep and future.
  • Tractates 1.12.8Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno shows the frailty of the flesh, whose strength and beauty disease and death soon destroy.
  • Tractates 1.12.9Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno urges his hearers, who have put on Christ, to choose the soul over the flesh, since the choice of life or death is given to the will.
  • Tractates 1.15.6Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno warns Christians who tolerate pagan shrines on their estates, feast at tombs, observe omens or wrong their wives that their sacrifice is unacceptable, and that eating the Eucharist unworthily is deadly.
  • Tractates 2.15.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno retells the story of Job's trials and patience.
  • Tractates 2.16.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno takes Susanna, condemned by false witnesses and saved by Daniel, as an example that God is with the just.
  • Tractates 2.21.2Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno identifies those reserved for judgment as half-hearted Christians, who profess God but serve the world.
  • Hexaemeron 2.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Evil is chosen, not a nature; the darkness of Genesis 1:2 is the shadow cast by the newly made heaven, which shut out the light in which the spiritual creation already lived.
  • Hexaemeron 4.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Instead of the theater and the races, Basil invites his hearers to the spectacle of God's works.
  • Hexaemeron 5.7Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The variety of trees displays God's art; grafting and fig-caprification teach that sinners can be reformed and that Christians should learn zeal even from the good conduct of outsiders.
  • Hexaemeron 6.7Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · If the stars determined virtue and vice, God would be the author of evil, kings would be born daily, and laws, judges, work, and Christian hope would all be pointless.
  • Hexaemeron 6.10Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The sun's power and the moon's phases show their greatness; the waxing and waning moon teaches the instability of human fortune and of the careless soul.
  • Hexaemeron 7.3Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Fish that devour one another, the crab, and the octopus illustrate greed, deceit, and flattery among men; yet the fishes also keep their appointed regions.
  • Hexaemeron 7.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Unlike greedy men who move boundaries, the sea creatures keep their regions, and migrating fish obey the law of nature by going to the Black Sea to breed.
  • Hexaemeron 8.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The bees' commonwealth under a gentle king, their harmless gathering of honey, and their hexagonal combs teach Christians not to return evil for evil.
  • Hexaemeron 8.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Cranes keep watch in turns, storks care for their aged, the swallow builds with ingenuity, and the halcyon calms the sea: lessons in hospitality, filial love, hope, and prayer.
  • Hexaemeron 9.3Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Each animal has its own nature and an untaught instinct for self-preservation and foresight, as the ant shows; humans too have a natural law of good and evil.
  • Hexaemeron 9.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Virtue is natural to the soul as health to the body; animals' love for their young and the dog's reasoning and loyalty shame ungrateful and impious men.
  • Homilies 3.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil introduces Deut 15:9 and expounds 'give heed to yourself' as watchfulness over one's thoughts and soul, applied to every calling and to every state of fortune.
  • Homilies 6.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Prosperity is a trial like affliction; the rich fool, blessed by God's kindness, answered with miserliness and was as troubled by his plenty as the poor by their want.
  • Homilies 6.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · The rich fool's miserliness is set against the generosity of the earth, the sufferings of the poor who must sell their children, and the judgment that condemns those who do not share; what the rich hold back belongs to the needy.
  • Homilies 7.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil recalls that the rich young man is not the testing lawyer of Luke, since he asked sincerely.
  • Homilies 7.3Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Wealth beyond need goes on luxuries invented by the devil or is buried in the ground; those who keep every commandment but this one are shut out like a traveller who stops at the city gate.
  • Homilies 7.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · The rich who adorn walls and horses but neglect the poor will have no answer at the judgment; greed is insatiable, swallows up neighbors like Naboth, and knows no bounds.
  • Homilies 7.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil sets the judgment seat of Christ before the greedy rich and exposes gold and gems as mere stones; the plea that wealth is needed for children is a pretext for greed.
  • Homilies 7.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · The childless who postpone giving to the poor until their wills are written gain nothing, since there is no reward after death and wills can be prevented or forged.
  • Homilies 7.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Bequests made only at death are no virtue; Basil urges the rich to take their wealth with them by giving it now, following Christ who became poor for us.
  • Homilies 8.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Drought and famine are God's fatherly chastisement for the hard-heartedness of the rich toward the poor; Basil rebukes the half-hearted prayer of the city and holds up the repentance of Nineveh.
  • Homilies 8.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · True repentance would show itself in tears, hospitality and the cancelling of debts; drought tests rich and poor alike, and God, whose power and goodness have not failed, feeds those who trust him.
  • Homilies 8.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · As God fed Israel in the desert, the poor should give from their little like the widow of Sidon; hunger is the cruellest of deaths, and those who let others starve are like murderers, while the generous stand first at the judgment.
  • Homilies 8.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Even animals share pasture; Christians should imitate the common life of the first church and Joseph's generosity, giving the soul its share as a bride to be presented to Christ.
  • Homilies 10.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil's homily against anger opens: experience shows the wisdom of Scripture's warnings, since anger turns a man into a beast.
  • Homilies 10.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Retaliating against abuse brings the same guilt; Christians should bear insults humbly, remembering that they are poor and naked by nature and that Christ was slandered, struck and spat upon.
  • Homilies 10.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Rage directed by reason against sin is right, as in Moses, Phinehas, Samuel and Elijah; but anger against our brothers must be cured by the humility Christ taught and showed.
  • Homilies 11.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Envy, the devil's own vice, consumes the envious soul, rejoices only in others' fall, drove the devil against mankind and Cain against Abel, and made Saul hate David the more for his benefits.
  • Homilies 11.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Envy sold Joseph and crucified Christ; it attacks those nearest us, harms the envious most, sees only faults, and is cured by valuing only true and eternal goods and turning ambition toward virtue.
  • Homilies 11.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Envy breeds hypocrisy and brought death into the world; Basil ends with Paul's call to kindness and forgiveness.
  • Homilies 12.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil explains “true righteousness” and “directing judgment”: human and divine justice, degrees of guilt, Solomon's judgment, and the inner court where chastity and pleasure contend.
  • Homilies 12.10Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Within the soul each virtue is on trial against its vice; the mind must judge for virtue, so as to be crowned on the day of judgment.
  • Homilies 12.11Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil distinguishes innocence acquired by virtue from mere inexperience, and good shrewdness, which protects the simple, from wicked cunning.
  • Homilies 12.15Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · The “steering” of Prov 1:5 is the skill of crossing the changing sea of life and the storm of the passions without being elated or sunk.
  • Homilies 12.16Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Christians are merchants carrying the cargo of good works; without the skill of steering, years of virtue can be lost in one shipwreck of sin.
  • Homilies 12.17Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Steering by heaven: keep the eyes on God, the sun of righteousness and the commandments, and the Spirit will bring you to the harbor of God's will.
  • Homilies 13.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil urges self-examination: the baptismal seal marks Christ's own; delaying baptism to enjoy sin is folly, since self-control in old age is mere incapacity and death may come with a fever.
  • Homilies 13.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Like the Ethiopian eunuch, the hearer should be baptized without delay; the devil's trick is to say “today for me, tomorrow for God,” but the Christian life, though demanding, is easier than the toils of sin.
  • Homilies 14.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · On Easter evening women danced drunk at the martyrs' shrines; Basil, though discouraged, denounces drunkenness, which makes people more irrational than beasts and deranges body and mind.
  • Homilies 14.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Drunkenness breeds unnatural lust and ruins the body; Basil expounds Prov 23:29–30 (“who has woe?”) phrase by phrase.
  • Homilies 14.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Hungover drinkers cannot hear the Scriptures' warnings; wine dries and weakens the body and brings on the trembling of Cain's curse.
  • Homilies 14.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil describes the luxurious drinking parties, with their contests and machines for equal drunkenness, and the soldier carried home dead drunk, applying Isaiah's woe on those who drink from morning to evening.
  • Homilies 14.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Men and women danced together drunk, so that girls lost their virginity and men committed adultery by looking; Basil prescribes fasting, psalms, tears and almsgiving, and tells the sober to separate from the unrepentant.
  • Homilies 20.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Man fell by seeking false glory, and humility is his cure; wealth, office, bodily gifts and even human wisdom only puff up, while the true boast is to know God and be justified by faith in Christ.
  • Homilies 20.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · All we have is received from God; Peter learned humility through his fall, the Pharisee lost his righteousness through pride; Basil sets Christ's lowliness from manger to cross before us as the pattern.
  • Homilies 20.7Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Practical counsel for humility in dress, speech, rebuke, and office, ending with Christ's call to learn from him, gentle and lowly in heart.
  • Homilies 21.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Life is a road on which the devil lies in ambush among worldly delights; wealth, food, lust and power cannot be truly ours, but only the soul, the body as its vehicle, and the virtues.
  • Homilies 21.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · The wise care first for the soul, accept bodily hardship with Paul's confidence, and give the body only what it needs.
  • Homilies 21.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil urges giving to the poor, warns that the rich who lavish money on flatterers while spurning beggars are worse than the rich man of the parable, and closes his exhortation.
  • Homilies 21.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil adds thanks for the church's escape from a fire set nearby, blamed on the devil, and asks the congregation to provide for those who lost everything in it.
  • Homilies 22.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Pagan literature can prepare the young for Scripture as dyeing prepares cloth: take from poets, historians and orators, like bees from flowers, what praises virtue (Homer, Solon, Theognis, Prodicus, the deeds of Pericles, Socrates, Alexander) and reject the rest.
  • Homilies 22.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Athletes endure everything for a perishable crown; we must labor for far greater prizes, caring for the soul and giving the body only what it needs, shunning luxury, finery, corrupting music and sensual pleasure.
  • Homilies 22.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Disdain for the body frees one from love of wealth, flattery and the craving for reputation; virtue is the provision for the endless age to come.
  • Against Parmenian the Donatist 2.20Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · No one is sinless (1 John 1:8): man wills and runs but God perfects; the Donatists, claiming perfect holiness while praying "forgive us our debts," are like the proud Pharisee of the parable.
  • Against Parmenian the Donatist 3.3Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus blames Donatus of Carthage, who rejected the alms that Constans sent to the poor with "What has the emperor to do with the church?", and applies to him Ezekiel's rebuke of the prince of Tyre who said "I am God".
  • Against Parmenian the Donatist 3.5Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Some evils are done well, as when Phinehas killed the adulterers at God's command; the harsh measures of the union may likewise have pleased God.
  • Against Parmenian the Donatist 3.7Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus defends Macarius by the examples of Moses, Phinehas and Elijah, who killed at God's will those who despised his commands, and answers the objection from Christ's order to Peter to sheathe his sword.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 5:1Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The incest at Corinth is worse than anything among pagans, and those who tolerated it share the guilt.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 5:2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The church shared the guilt by tolerating a public sin; only one without power or proof is excused, as Christ did not expel the unaccused Judas.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 5:6Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Tolerated sin, like leaven, defiles the whole church; teachers who failed to rebuke it are like Eli.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 5:8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The Christian feast is kept by putting away shameful living and malice, with sincerity and truth.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 5:9–10Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul clarifies his earlier letter: the ban on association applies to immoral fellow believers, not to outsiders.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 5:11Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers must not even eat with an immoral fellow believer, though they may eat with unbelievers.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 5:13Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers judge fellow members by discerning whom to avoid, while outsiders are left to God's judgment.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 6:7Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Lawsuits between Christians are a fault; serious matters should be brought to the church.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 6:8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Those who wrong their brothers are guilty both of the wrong and of driving the victims to pagan courts.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 6:9–10Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul reminds the Corinthians that the unrighteous, including the sexually immoral, will not inherit God's kingdom.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 6:12Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster rejects reading 'all things are lawful' as permitting fornication; Paul means his right to support, which he waived so as not to be beholden to those he rebuked.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 6:13Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Food and belly will pass away, but the body belongs to the Lord, who will raise it to immortality.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 6:15Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Bodies joined to a harlot cease to be Christ's members.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 6:16Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Sexual union makes two one body, even in sin, as Gen 2:24 says.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 6:18Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Fornication binds the soul to the flesh and sins against one's own body, the wife being a portion of the man; Ambrosiaster rejects Novatian's view that it is an unforgivable sin against Christ's body and the Holy Spirit.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 6:20Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Bought with Christ's blood, believers belong to him and must glorify God by living according to his law.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 7:20–21Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · A slave called to faith should serve his master well and so become worthy of freedom, if it is offered.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 8:1Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Knowledge that idols are nothing puffs up unless tempered by love; eating idol-meat that makes weak brothers stumble shows ignorance of true knowledge.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:34Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · True righteousness is not merely refraining from theft but giving generously; the Corinthians were shamefully misled by teachers ignorant of God.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:49Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Having borne Adam's mortal image through sin, believers must bear Christ's image by righteous living.
  • Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:50Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · 'Flesh and blood' means unbelief and sensual living, which exclude from the kingdom; all rise immortal, but the corrupt to punishment.
  • Commentary on 1 Thessalonians 2:9Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul worked with his hands day and night to set a pattern for Christian life and to expose idle false apostles.
  • Commentary on 1 Thessalonians 4:2–6Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul warns that God’s will is their holiness: to abstain from sexual immorality, to keep their bodies undefiled, and to deal honestly with their brothers.
  • Commentary on 1 Thessalonians 4:7–8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Rejecting the call to holiness is rejecting God, who gives the Spirit, and Paul urges the Thessalonians, taught by God, to grow in brotherly love.
  • Commentary on 1 Thessalonians 4:11Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul urges quiet, industrious lives with their own hands so that their conduct may win the respect of unbelievers.
  • Commentary on 1 Thessalonians 5:14–17Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The strong are to bear with the restless, timid, and weak, repay no evil, and rejoice, pray, and give thanks always.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 1:5–7Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Love from a pure heart is the goal of every command; those who would keep the law’s works after Christ teach what they do not understand.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 1:8–11Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The law is good when used rightly: its temporary works ceased with Christ, the justified live by the law of nature, and the written law was given because that natural law had been despised.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 2:9–10Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Women should pray in humble dress, not displaying wealth, and should learn in silence, subject to men and not teaching or exercising authority.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 2:13–15Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Because the man was created first and the woman was deceived, she is to be humble; she will be saved through the birth of children reborn in faith, since the resurrection waits until all the predestined believe.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 4:7–8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Fasting and bodily discipline profit little without godliness and mercy, which carry promise for this life and the next; the spiritual discipline the body for the resurrection.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 5:6Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · A widow who refused a second marriage to serve God but lives in pleasure is dead while living, an impostor in her profession.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 5:7Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Widows must live blamelessly, having left worldly hopes to serve God.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 5:11Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Young widows should not be enrolled, since many who professed widowhood turned back to pleasures and marriage.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 5:13Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Idle virgins and widows go from house to house among the rich, gossiping and flattering for gifts, against their profession.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 6:1Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christian slaves should honor their masters so that their faithful service may win the masters to the faith.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 6:2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Slaves of Christian masters must serve them all the more, not despise them as brothers.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 6:6Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Contentment with what one has is great gain for the believer, while greed harms oneself and others.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 6:7–8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Since we bring nothing into the world and take nothing out, believers should be content with food and clothing, as Job confessed.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 6:9–10Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The love of money is the root of all evils, and a greedy cleric is especially harmful because many follow his example.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 6:11Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The man of God must flee greed and will be rewarded for it.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 6:12Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Timothy must pursue the virtues opposed to greed and fight the good fight of faith, recalling the confession he made at his baptism.
  • Commentary on 1 Timothy 6:17–19Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The rich must hope in God, not wealth, and share their goods, gaining through this image of life the true and eternal life shown in Christ’s resurrection.
  • Commentary on 2 Corinthians 2:4Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Rebuke given with grief and love shows love rather than causing mere sorrow.
  • Commentary on 2 Corinthians 2:6–7Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The incestuous man, now grieving, should be forgiven and restored lest despair drive him back into sin; true repentance is ceasing from sin.
  • Commentary on 2 Corinthians 2:11Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The repentant must be consoled lest the devil use their despair to drive them back to worldly pleasures.
  • Commentary on 2 Corinthians 4:2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul renounces shameful secrets, both moral and doctrinal, and does not falsify God's word, which God confirms by signs.
  • Commentary on 2 Corinthians 5:9Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers should strive by good works to please Christ in this life and at his judgment.
  • Commentary on 2 Corinthians 6:14Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul urges the Corinthians to be enlarged in heart and to separate from unbelievers' evil works.
  • Commentary on 2 Corinthians 7:1Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers must cleanse themselves from every fleshly vice in God's fear; virtue without faith in Christ is not holiness before God.
  • Commentary on 2 Corinthians 8:13Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Giving should bring equality: believers with means support the saints now, and the saints will repay them in the age to come.
  • Commentary on 2 Corinthians 9:9Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Giving to the poor, and still more to the saints devoted to prayer, is righteousness, since God gave the earth's goods to all.
  • Commentary on 2 Corinthians 11:29Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul shares the weakness of all; by saying he burns with those who stumble in fleshly desire, he encourages them not to despair but to resist.
  • Commentary on 2 Corinthians 12:21Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul fears mourning the unrepentant; that some had repented of sexual sin refutes Novatian's denial of penance and readmission for such sinners.
  • Commentary on 2 Thessalonians 3:6Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers are to keep apart from disorderly brothers so that these may recognize their error.
  • Commentary on 2 Thessalonians 3:7–9Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul worked for his own bread, though entitled to support, to give a pattern of freedom that makes a preacher’s words respected.
  • Commentary on 2 Thessalonians 3:10Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Teachers must practice what they preach, and the poor should work to keep their freedom rather than living by flattery at others’ tables.
  • Commentary on 2 Thessalonians 3:11Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The idle go about as gossips to win meals in rich houses, making their belly their god.
  • Commentary on 2 Thessalonians 3:12Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The idle are to work quietly; the generous must keep doing good; and the disobedient are to be shunned without insult and admonished as brothers until they amend.
  • Commentary on 2 Timothy 2:3–4Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · A cleric, as Christ’s soldier, must keep out of worldly business, which serves greed and involves lying.
  • Commentary on 2 Timothy 2:22Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Timothy must flee youthful pleasures and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace.
  • Commentary on Colossians 3:5Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The sins to be put to death include greed, which is idolatry because, as idolatry steals God's name, greed seizes for one person the goods God made common to all.
  • Commentary on Colossians 3:8–11Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers must put off lesser sins too and put on the new man, renewed in the image of the Creator by good conduct, in which all races are one in Christ; Ambrosiaster distinguishes this image, shared by women, from the image of God in the first man, and digresses on the Scythians.
  • Commentary on Colossians 3:20Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Children please God by honouring and obeying their parents.
  • Commentary on Colossians 3:21Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Fathers should be moderate, remembering they were once sons, so that children may be submissive.
  • Commentary on Colossians 3:22Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Slaves should serve sincerely, since faithfulness in small things prepares faithfulness toward God.
  • Commentary on Colossians 3:23–25Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Slaves who serve as to the Lord will be rewarded in Christ's kingdom as servants of Christ, a title of dignity.
  • Commentary on Colossians 4:1Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · God created all free; slavery arose from human injustice, and before God the true slave is the sinner, so masters, themselves God's servants, must treat slaves justly.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4:1Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul urges the Ephesians to live worthily of their calling, as a physician urges patients to take care.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4:2–3Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Humility, gentleness, and patience preserve unity and peace, while contention breeds discord.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4:19Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Despair of the resurrection blinds the gentiles and leads them to impurity and greed.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4:22Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The 'old man' is the same person living by former vices; one becomes 'new' by changed understanding and conduct, not substance.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4:25Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Reborn in baptism as members of one body, believers must put away lying and speak truth to one another.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4:26Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Anger is natural but must be moderated and not kept past sundown, lest it lead to excessive punishment or give the devil a foothold.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4:28Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The former thief must not only stop stealing but work to give to the needy, which alone earns merit.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4:29Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · A servant of God must keep his speech pure and edifying, since words justify or condemn.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4:31Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Anger leads step by step to blasphemy; all such passions, and hidden malice too, must be removed.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 4:32Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Forgiven by God in Christ, believers must forgive one another, or lose the mercy they received.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 5:3Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Greed, ranked with sexual immorality, is a grave sin incompatible with holiness.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 5:4Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Servants of God must avoid base and foolish jesting, since every idle word will be judged, and speak what builds up and praises God.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 5:5Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Greed is idolatry because it hoards for oneself what God gave for all; believers must not be deceived by pagan appeals to ancient custom.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 5:18Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Sobriety gives the authority to reprove, while drunkenness leads to debauchery.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 6:1–2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Children must obey and honour the parents through whom they exist.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 6:3Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Honouring parents is the 'first' commandment as the first of the second tablet, concerning duties to people.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 6:4Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Fathers must raise children in the Lord's discipline without provoking them, remembering that they too were sons.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 6:5Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christians, though their faith is supreme, must fulfil the duties of their station, so that masters and slaves alike are drawn to the faith.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 6:6–8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Slaves serve God when they serve their masters faithfully, awaiting God's reward, and their example can win their masters.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 6:8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Masters must treat slaves as they would wish to be treated, since God their common Lord judges impartially.
  • Commentary on Galatians 2:1–2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul went to Jerusalem by revelation to show his gospel agreed with the apostles'; the apostolic decree bound gentiles only from idolatry, eating blood and fornication, the Greek text's 'things strangled' being, Ambrosiaster says, an addition.
  • Commentary on Galatians 5:14Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The whole law is fulfilled in loving one's neighbour, which is inseparable from loving God.
  • Commentary on Galatians 5:15Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Mutual biting and accusation destroy love and life.
  • Commentary on Galatians 5:16Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The law of God and the law of sin contend within a person; walking by the Spirit means obeying God's law, which conscience approves, and fleeing the flesh's suggestions.
  • Commentary on Galatians 5:19–21Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The works of the flesh, from adultery to heresies and drunkenness, exclude from God's kingdom and are called fleshly because they arise from the world.
  • Commentary on Galatians 5:22–24Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The ten fruits of the Spirit correspond to the ten commandments; Christ's people crucify the flesh, meaning love of the world, not the body as such.
  • Commentary on Galatians 5:25–26Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Living by the Spirit means a pure and peaceable life without vainglorious rivalry.
  • Commentary on Galatians 6:1–2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The spiritual should restore a fallen brother gently, mindful of their own weakness, and so fulfil Christ's law that wills all to be saved.
  • Commentary on Galatians 6:3–4Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Self-exaltation is self-deception; following Christ's humility, one should examine oneself, not despise sinners like the Pharisee.
  • Commentary on Galatians 6:8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Sowing to the flesh by forbidden acts reaps corruption; sowing to the Spirit by self-restraint reaps eternal life, which is life without punishment, in glory.
  • Commentary on Galatians 6:10Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christians should use their time to do good to all, above all to fellow believers; Paul's own handwriting authenticates the letter.
  • Commentary on Philemon 1:15–16Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Onesimus’s flight led to his conversion, so that he returns as Philemon’s brother, since all descend from Adam and faith removes pride.
  • Commentary on Philippians 2:1–4Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul calls for unity and humility after the example of Christ, who, equal to God in the form of God shown in his works, emptied himself by withholding his power, took the form of a servant in his humiliation, and obeyed to death on the cross.
  • Commentary on Philippians 4:8–9Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul's final counsel is to think and do what is praiseworthy, so as to have the God of peace, who offers peace and pardon rather than compelling submission.
  • Commentary on Romans 1:24Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · God’s “handing over” is a permission: idolaters were left to carry out the shameful desires they had conceived, which defile the body as a sign of the soul’s sin.
  • Commentary on Romans 1:26Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster interprets Rom 1:26 as women having sexual relations with women, rejecting another interpretation.
  • Commentary on Romans 1:27Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster takes Paul’s mention of men as clarifying that the women of v. 26 had relations with women, and calls such acts the recompense for idolatry.
  • Commentary on Romans 1:28Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster explains the vice list of Rom 1:28–30 as growing from malice, and notes that Paul names sexual immorality, which includes adultery, so that the lesser sin, tolerated by Roman law, would not seem unpunished.
  • Commentary on Romans 1:31Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Those who knew by the natural law that such deeds deserve death still did them, and those who consent to them share their guilt.
  • Commentary on Romans 1:32Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster traces the vices to idolatry, recalls Sodom as a warning, and explains that those who consent to wrongdoing by silence or flattery share its guilt.
  • Commentary on Romans 3:8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster rejects the slander that preaching forgiveness encourages sin: those forgiven must sin no more, and sin after faith is dangerous.
  • Commentary on Romans 5:13Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Before Moses sin was known by natural law but not reckoned as liable to God’s judgment, until the law showed that God judges; Ambrosiaster sets out three parts of the natural law.
  • Commentary on Romans 6:1Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Grace is not a reason to keep sinning: God showed mercy so that the forgiven would sin no more and grace would reign.
  • Commentary on Romans 7:7Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The law is not sin but reveals it; through the command “You shall not covet” people learned that desire, thought harmless, is sin.
  • Commentary on Romans 12:1–3Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers, washed from sin, should offer their bodies as a living sacrifice by putting to death the body’s vices, keeping chastity together with justice, and should not claim more than the gifts God has measured out to them.
  • Commentary on Romans 12:8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Exhorters, givers, those who preside and those who show mercy are helped by the Spirit; mercy, which includes forgiving, helping the needy, clothing, feeding, rescuing exposed infants and burying the dead, must be done simply and gladly.
  • Commentary on Romans 12:9Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Love without pretence, practised to please God, is helped by the Spirit.
  • Commentary on Romans 12:14Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christians should practise hospitality like Abraham and Lot, and bless their persecutors instead of cursing.
  • Commentary on Romans 12:17Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christian righteousness exceeds the law’s justice by not repaying evil; and lawful things must be done so as not to scandalize a brother.
  • Commentary on Romans 12:19Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers must not avenge themselves, since anger leads to excess and gives the enemy a foothold, but leave vengeance to God.
  • Commentary on Romans 12:20Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Kindness to enemies either brings them to friendship, rekindling them like dead coals, or increases their punishment if they persist.
  • Commentary on Romans 12:21Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · As Christ overcame evil by not resisting, believers overcome the devil’s provocations by not repaying evil.
  • Commentary on Romans 13:1Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Civil authority and law, which teach the justice that prepares for the higher justice, are ordained by God and must be obeyed.
  • Commentary on Romans 13:8–9Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Love fulfils the law of Moses, whose commandments are summed up in loving one’s neighbour; the new law goes further, to love of enemies.
  • Commentary on Romans 13:10Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Love fulfils the law; the gospel adds love of enemies, which means desiring their good with God, as Christ prayed for his enemies on the cross.
  • Commentary on Romans 13:13Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers must avoid dissolute banquets, drunkenness, sexual impurity, strife and jealousy, and put on Christ, keeping the new garment of the wedding feast.
  • Commentary on Romans 15:25–26Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul’s collection for the poor saints of Jerusalem shows that gentiles owe material help to the Jewish believers who shared spiritual gifts, and that those who hope for mercy must show it.
  • Commentary on Titus 2:2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The virtues of older men mark sound teaching; their opposites mark unsound teaching.
  • Commentary on Titus 2:3–5Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Older women should model good conduct for young wives, whose obedience to their husbands, even unbelieving ones, honors God’s name.
  • Commentary on Titus 2:8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Young men need restraint, and Titus must be the pattern of what he teaches so that opponents are shamed.
  • Commentary on Titus 2:9–10Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Slaves who serve faithfully adorn the gospel, and their masters may even rejoice in a faith that benefits them.
  • Commentary on Titus 2:11–12Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · God’s grace revealed in Christ teaches us to confess the Creator in the unity of the Trinity and to live godly lives, awaiting the glory to be revealed at Christ’s judgment; faith without good works is vain.
  • Commentary on Titus 3:1Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers must obey authorities, do good, and show gentleness to all, so as to draw unbelievers to hope.
  • Commentary on Titus 3:8Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Believers must devote themselves to works of mercy, which bring praise now and a crown at the judgment.
  • On the Destruction of Jerusalem 3.16Anonymous · ca. 370 · The men in the pit urge Josephus to die rather than surrender, citing Moses, Aaron, Saul and Jonathan, and David, and threaten to kill him if he refuses.
  • On the Destruction of Jerusalem 3.17Anonymous · ca. 370 · Josephus's long reply against suicide: life is God's deposit, Scripture's saints awaited God's call, Saul is no model, and to kill oneself is against nature and law.
  • Question 1, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Since God made all things good, evil is no nature but the will’s transgression of good, doing what is not allowed or doing what is allowed out of order, as with a prostitute rather than a wife.
  • Question 1, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Human beings have free choice, so that they deserve honor or blame; without it they would be like beasts, without merit or guilt.
  • Question 1, section 5Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Because we can do either good or evil and cannot always be on guard, one who sins once is not yet condemned if he recovers and does not sin again; the one who strives not to sin is crowned.
  • Question 1, section 7Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · One who resists sin and falls deserves encouragement, but one who consents easily sins gravely; small sins creep up on the diligent, while great ones are deliberate.
  • Question 1, section 8Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Sin arises when we see or hear things contrary to the law, as in worshiping the sun or coveting; the fault lies not in beautiful or useful things but in our negligence.
  • Question 4, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The written law was not needed at first, since the natural law was known; it was given through Moses when habitual sin had obscured that law, to restore its authority.
  • Question 4, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Because the law is flouted with impunity in this life, justice requires a future judgment in which the oppressed are rewarded and the powerful wicked punished.
  • Question 7, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The “ten words” are ten commands; the first tablet holds the four that concern God: no other gods, no images, not taking his name in vain, and keeping the sabbath.
  • Question 7, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The second tablet holds six commandments beginning with honoring parents, which Paul calls the first commandment with a promise.
  • Question 15, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Righteousness must be tempered with mercy, as God’s is; one who is “overly righteous,” punishing every fault, sins.
  • Question 23, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Scripture shows the soul is created and given to the formed body in the womb, as the law on miscarriage distinguishes formed from unformed fetuses; otherwise souls would perish with lost seed.
  • Question 32, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · That God made both rich and poor means they share one nature; neither is to be despised or honored for wealth, but for their conduct toward God.
  • Question 32, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The rich should share with the poor, since God gave the earth to all, so as to be rich in heaven; the godly poor will be rich there when the worldly rich are in want.
  • Question 34, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · God makes poor and rich in that his law rewards the disciplined and generous with plenty and brings want on its despisers.
  • Question 44, section 9Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Israel’s ceremonial precepts were “not good” commands imposed as punishment for rebellion (Ezek 20); the new covenant abolishes them, though not the natural law, and justifies by faith as in Abraham’s time.
  • Question 68, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · God will avenge his servants who cry to him; a Christian who seeks moderate redress without bloodshed does not sin, but does better to leave it to God.
  • Question 69, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The moral commandments remain, while ritual laws have ceased; Christ fulfilled the law by adding a higher righteousness, such as turning the other cheek instead of just retaliation.
  • Question 69, section 5Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Christ fulfilled the law by making its disciples more righteous; he suspended its sentence to allow repentance, which falls more heavily on those who do not amend.
  • Question 70, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The “adversary” with whom one must agree on the way is the law, hostile to sinners; one must be reconciled to it by good conduct before it accuses one at the judgment.
  • Question 79, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The didrachma was a poll tax, for Christ owned nothing; Christians should hold their goods without trusting in them, ready to give them up for the faith.
  • Question 92, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The world gives peace for its own advantage, Christ for the good of those who receive it, and his peace leads to a good life and eternal life.
  • Question 99, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · “Human temptation” is being tested by people for God’s sake, which is wholesome; “divine temptation” is putting God to the test, which brought death on the Israelites in the wilderness.
  • Question 102, section 17Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · From 2 Cor 12:21 Ambrosiaster argues that penance for sexual sin is completed in this life and that those who complete it are readmitted to communion.
  • Question 102, section 26Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The Corinthians were rebuked for tolerating the man living with his stepmother, because his sin was public and needed no accuser.
  • Question 103, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · David, Samuel, and the prophets teach that God values a contrite heart, obedience, and mercy above sacrifice.
  • Question 104, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Peter was allowed to wound but not to kill, for only a judge may put to death with the sword and Christians may not kill; the earlier command to take nothing suited a time of peace.
  • Question 110, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · In a reading of Psalm 1, Ambrosiaster calls blessed the one who does not join the counsel of the ungodly, a conspiracy begun by the devil, whose ungodliness is the gravest of sins.
  • Question 110, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Ungodliness began with rebellion against the one God and issued in idolatry, from which further crimes followed, even against parents, as with Reuben and Absalom.
  • Question 110, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Refusing help in danger and abetting wicked schemes are also ungodliness, and falling into it after knowing God is especially ruinous.
  • Question 110, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Since no one can avoid all sin, the blessed person is the one who does not persist in it but repents; ungodliness is deadly, while sin admits amendment.
  • Question 111, section 6Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Confessing God as Creator is not enough without a good life; the “mountain of the Lord” is heaven, and his holy place is where he appears.
  • Question 111, section 9Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The psalm’s two requirements, purity toward God and honesty toward the neighbor, correspond to the two great commandments on which all the law depends.
  • Question 114, section 7Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Ambrosiaster attacks pagan rites that require castrated, effeminate priests, contrasting them with the Christian law of chastity.
  • Question 115, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Astrology contradicts God’s law, for if people were born good or bad, the law would be pointless and God unjust in punishing.
  • Question 115, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Because God is just, his law presupposes that people can obey it, and so his punishments are just.
  • Question 115, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Astrology is the devil’s invention for insulting God and leading people to break the law and suffer the second death.
  • Question 115, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The faithful study and keep God’s law, while those who want to sin use fate as an excuse, having given up hope of the life to come.
  • Question 115, section 5Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Fatalism, Satan’s device, removes both guilt and merit, contradicting the baptismal renunciation of Satan and making praise and blame meaningless.
  • Question 115, section 6Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Praising good nature like good wine does not answer the problem, since Scripture promises real rewards and punishments, which would be unjust if conduct were fixed by nature.
  • Question 115, section 7Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · If conduct were fixed by nature, the bad would deserve praise as much as the good, and blame would fall on the Creator.
  • Question 115, section 8Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Reward and punishment concern the will, which chooses, not nature, which acts necessarily like the sun or water and earns neither praise nor blame.
  • Question 115, section 9Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Since no one always does good or always evil, character is formed by what people set their minds on, not fixed at birth.
  • Question 115, section 10Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Sinners hide their sins and the good choose when to do good, which shows that conduct comes from will and judgment, not from fate.
  • Question 115, section 11Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Abraham, Zacchaeus, Paul, the martyrs, and many converts were changed from unrighteous to righteous, which shows that character is not fixed at birth.
  • Question 115, section 12Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Wives began to divorce their husbands freely only after Julian’s edict permitted it, which shows that law, not fate, governs conduct.
  • Question 115, section 13Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The law of Moses, unknown for thousands of years and then kept by Jews in every climate, cannot be explained by the stars, whose courses never change.
  • Question 115, section 19Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Unions forbidden by law, practised by Persians and occasionally by others, are restrained by punishment, which shows that law addresses free choices, not fated acts.
  • Question 115, section 27Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The ancient Romans’ integrity came from discipline, not fate, since it neither existed before nor survives now.
  • Question 115, section 28Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Whatever “fate” there is gives way to discipline, custom, chance, and fear of the law, and so has no real authority.
  • Question 115, section 29Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · A good life under God’s law overcomes so-called fate; those who live badly blame fate for what they and the demons who aid them have done.
  • Question 115, section 30Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Sin enters through the senses at the prompting of demons, sweet at first and bitter afterward, and so cannot be blamed on fate.
  • Question 115, section 31Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Temptation fades when the mind is absorbed in divine things, which shows it can be overcome; the tempters are demons, the gods of the pagans.
  • Question 115, section 32Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Constant meditation on God’s law and work protects the soul from demons, who stir up the desires of the flesh.
  • Question 115, section 35Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Even if temperament differs, human beings, unlike animals, can govern their bodies by reason guided by God’s law, which unmasks the tempter.
  • Question 115, section 36Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · A body inclined to passion is to be tamed by restraint in food and drink, as a fire dies without fuel.
  • Question 115, section 37Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The mind must rule the body, and God’s help must be sought against the demons who inflame its desires; without them the flesh is easily controlled.
  • Question 115, section 50Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Christians who envy the prosperous or listen to astrologers show weak faith, since God made the world a testing ground and promised Christians their reward in heaven, not on earth.
  • Question 115, section 51Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Christians told not to love the world should not envy others’ worldly fortune, which may be a misfortune before God.
  • Question 115, section 52Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Worldly prosperity makes people careless of divine things and anxious for more, so the world is really the enemy of those it seems to bless.
  • Question 115, section 54Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Belief in fate denies the coming judgment and makes praise and blame meaningless, yet no criminal in court dares plead fate.
  • Question 115, section 58Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Astrologers who punish those they say were fated to do wrong are themselves unjust, and so their theory refutes itself.
  • Question 115, section 59Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The existence and necessity of law, given because of the wicked, refute the idea that everything happens by fate.
  • Question 115, section 62Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Law and fate cannot cooperate, because the law holds the wicked guilty by their own will while fate denies that will is responsible.
  • Question 115, section 64Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · If fate determined murders and adulteries, laws punishing murderers and adulterers would be unjust, and even the victims would share the guilt.
  • Question 115, section 68Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · A handsome Etruscan who disfigured himself to avoid suspicion shows that choice can overcome what nature or fate seems to give.
  • Question 115, section 73Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The mind, with judgment over itself, can resist nature and make itself better or worse, so not everything should be ascribed to fate.
  • Question 115, section 81Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · What is called fate is the work of evil spirits who tempt each person according to their own tastes, but the will remains free and the fear of God overcomes them.
  • Question 124, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Almsgiving is more praiseworthy in the poor, like the widow with her two coins, because they give trusting in God rather than in their wealth.
  • Question 124, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Theft is worse in the rich, who steal from abundance and often from the poor, than in the poor, who steal from need.
  • Question 124, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Righteousness is more admirable in the poor, who keep it under the pressure of need.
  • Question 124, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Pride is worse in the poor than in the rich, since it has no ground at all.
  • Question 124, section 5Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Humility is more praiseworthy in the rich and powerful, who could claim honor.
  • Question 124, section 7Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Lust is worse in the poor, who lack the means to indulge it, while chastity is more praiseworthy in the rich, and most of all in a king, who could sin with impunity and abstains only for fear of God.
  • Question 126, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Faith in Christ brings forgiveness of all sins, but true knowledge of God must show itself in a changed life.
  • Question 126, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · A Christian must fight against sin; if defeated, his grief shows he wanted to win and gives hope of recovery.
  • Question 126, section 5Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Deliberate sin by one who professes God is worse than the sin of one who does not know him.
  • Question 126, section 6Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Baptismal forgiveness must be followed by a life of struggle in the fear of God to win the reward.
  • Question 126, section 7Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Those who put off baptism to the deathbed so as to sin freely in life are mocking God, who abhors sin and is not mocked.
  • Question 126, section 11Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · To sin deliberately while planning a deathbed baptism is to “do evil that good may come,” and such people can hardly expect pardon.
  • Question 126, section 16Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Faith must show itself in a changed life, for Christians are known by their works, and calling Christ Lord without obeying him is mockery.
  • On Virginity 4Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Pride, greed, envy and the other passions spring mainly from the ties of marriage and the world; the one who withdraws from that torrent, like the angels who do not marry, is free to pursue virtue, a wealth that is never diminished.
  • On Virginity 5Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Bodily virginity serves the soul’s freedom from passion: freed from the claims of the flesh, the soul can turn its power of love wholly to the contemplation of the divine beauty.
  • On Virginity 7Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Like water gathered into one channel or forced up a pipe, the mind that self-control keeps from scattering among many desires rises toward the truth; marriage is the root of the pursuit of vain things.
  • On Virginity 8Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Marriage is blessed by God and those who condemn it as unclean are heretics; virtue lies in the mean, and one who can use marriage with moderation, like Isaac, should not despise it, but for the weak virginity is the safer course.
  • On Virginity 9Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Habit is powerful: many who began chaste were drawn by permitted pleasures into a filthy life, so the weak should take refuge in virginity, which keeps the heart undivided for the love of God; habit can also make the struggle sweet.
  • On Virginity 14Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Virginity is not only bodily: the soul wedded to Christ must keep itself from every sin, since, as a stone disturbs a whole pond, one passion upsets the whole soul, and the virtues stand or fall together.
  • On Virginity 15Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Every vice is an adulterer that defiles the soul’s spiritual marriage to Christ; as a queen who yields to one seducer is condemned, so the virgin soul must keep itself pure from every passion.
  • On Virginity 16Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Virtue is a narrow road between opposite vices; fleeing one passion into its opposite (pleasure into gloom, rashness into cowardice) is no gain, as Christ’s command to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves teaches.
  • On Virginity 17Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Virginity is the foundation on which every other virtue must be built; like partial armour or an unfinished tower, it is worthless if the rest of life is disordered.
  • On Virginity 18Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · The mind must order every power of the soul to its proper use (desire for God, anger against sin, grief for repentance), for true self-control is that harmony; freedom from marriage is not enough without purity in all of life, as Israel passed dry through the sea while Egypt sank.
  • On Virginity 21Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Since only the pure can approach God, one must wall oneself off from all sensual pleasure, especially the pleasures of food and drink, taking need, not pleasure, as the measure of eating.
  • On Virginity 22Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · Self-control must avoid both excess and excessive severity; like a physician balancing the body’s elements or a charioteer managing his horses, the mind should keep the body fit for the soul’s service.
  • On Virginity 24Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · The young should learn the virgin life from a living master (the unnamed bishop, old in youth and young in age) and his disciples, not despairing at others’ failures; crucified with Christ, offering themselves as priests and sacrifices, the pure in heart will see God.
  • Letter 4.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome greets Florentius, whose charity to pilgrims, including Heliodorus, he has heard praised, and offers him friendship.
  • Letter 13.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome begins his appeal for reconciliation with his aunt Castorina with Scripture's warnings against hatred and lasting anger.
  • Letter 14.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome argues from Paul that sexual immorality and greed are forms of idolatry and that a monk may keep no possessions.
  • Letter 14.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Heliodorus, who has vowed the perfect life of a monk, to renounce his inheritance and the dangers of the city.
  • Letter 21.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome explains the dividing of the property as God's gift of free will to humanity.
  • Letter 21.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes self-indulgence as squandering God's gifts.
  • Letter 21.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome interprets the pigs' pods as the vices, and also the pagan literature, that feed demons, and warns clergy against reading the classics for pleasure.
  • Letter 22.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warns Eustochium that if even Paul had to struggle with the flesh, she must guard her virginity in mind as well as body.
  • Letter 22.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes in prophetic images the shame of a consecrated virgin who falls, and urges Eustochium to crush sinful thoughts at their first stirring.
  • Letter 22.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Eustochium to avoid wine as the chief kindler of lust, citing Timothy's permitted medicine and the drunkenness of Noah and Lot.
  • Letter 22.12Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome cites Samson, David, Solomon, and Amnon as strong men brought down by sexual desire.
  • Letter 22.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome denounces professed virgins who live immorally, conceal pregnancies, procure contraception and abortion, and excuse themselves with Scripture.
  • Letter 22.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome condemns the practice of celibate men and women living together as "spiritual" partners (agapetae).
  • Letter 22.27Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warns Eustochium against vainglory, especially the subtle pride of ostentatious humility and showy asceticism.
  • Letter 22.29Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome advises Eustochium on companions, humility toward her maidservants, and avoiding idle widows and affected speech, and asks what pagan literature has to do with Scripture.
  • Letter 22.31Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warns Eustochium against greed and anxiety about material needs, citing Christ's teaching on trusting the Father's provision.
  • Letter 22.32Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome contrasts the showy luxury and charity of rich Roman women with the Scriptures' teaching on contentment and trust in God.
  • Letter 22.33Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells how the fathers of Nitria had a greedy monk's savings buried with him as a warning.
  • Letter 23.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome draws the lesson that Christians should travel light through this world, renouncing wealth and power for eternal things.
  • Letter 33.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome satirizes the learned men of his time, expert in delicacies and inheritances but scornful of true study.
  • Letter 38.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome defends Blesilla's plain dress and food as a widow, contrasting them with painted society women.
  • Letter 43.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome contrasts his and Marcella's distracted Roman life, full of visits, gossip, and money, with Origen's devotion.
  • Letter 45.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome contrasts the luxury of worldly Christians with the ascetic life of Paula and Melania, which each side thinks madness in the other.
  • Letter 52.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome explains the name 'cleric' as meaning that the Lord is his portion, and warns Nepotian against wealth, business, and familiarity with women.
  • Letter 52.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome deplores the legacy-hunting of clergy and monks that led emperors to forbid them to receive inheritances.
  • Letter 52.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome advises moderation in dress, warns against collecting alms for gain, and says each member of the church has its own role.
  • Letter 52.11Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warns Nepotian against feasting with officials and against wine and all intoxicating drink, though he does not condemn wine itself.
  • Letter 52.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warns against seeking popular praise and commends the four cardinal virtues as the true adornment of a cleric.
  • Letter 52.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warns against both speaking and listening to slander.
  • Letter 53.11Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome invites Paulinus to come and urges him to give up his property without delay.
  • Letter 54.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells Furia that cosmetics and fine dress are unfitting for a Christian widow, whose adornment is penitence and perseverance.
  • Letter 54.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome explains that a widow living in pleasure is 'dead while she lives' and that chastity needs continence and frugality.
  • Letter 54.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome explains, from Scripture and medicine, that rich food and wine inflame lust, which alone of the vices is rooted in nature.
  • Letter 54.12Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Furia to give her wealth to the poor.
  • Letter 54.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warns Furia against suspicious company and public display and holds up her relative Eustochium at Bethlehem as a model.
  • Letter 54.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Furia to use her wealth for virgins and widows and her aged father to lay up treasure in heaven.
  • Letter 55.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome gives several interpretations of Paul's saying that the sexually immoral man sins against his own body.
  • Letter 58.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome praises Paulinus for giving up his wealth and says that what matters is not having been to Jerusalem but living well.
  • Letter 58.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome gives Paulinus and his wife practical rules of diet, reading, prayer, almsgiving, and caution with money.
  • Letter 58.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Paulinus to adorn the soul rather than buildings and to distribute his wealth wisely to the truly poor.
  • Letter 64.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome applies the rule that the high priest must not defile himself for parents to the priority of God over family ties.
  • Letter 64.21Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome gives the spiritual meaning of the golden plate and of the linen drawers, which signify chastity known only to God.
  • Letter 66.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes how Pammachius gave Paulina's wealth to the sick and poor of Rome, honoring her grave with almsgiving rather than flowers.
  • Letter 66.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Pammachius to give all his wealth to the truly poor and to follow Christ, making secular learning serve him like the captive woman of Deuteronomy.
  • Letter 66.11Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome praises Pammachius for building a hospice at Portus, comparing him to Abraham in his personal service to guests.
  • Letter 66.12Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Pammachius to offer himself, not only his money, to Christ, since inner self-giving is harder than giving away wealth.
  • Letter 66.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Pammachius to humility, pointing to Christ's sufferings and to Paula and Eustochium, who now do menial work in their monastery.
  • Letter 71.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome praises Lucinius and his wife for living as brother and sister and urges him to give himself, not only his wealth, to God.
  • Letter 71.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome invites Lucinius to come and live in the holy places, since God seeks the soul more than wealth.
  • Letter 77.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome praises Fabiola's charity after her restoration: she sold her property, founded a hospital, and nursed the sick with her own hands.
  • Letter 77.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome praises Pammachius, who with Fabiola founded a hospice for travellers and the poor at Portus, the harbour of Rome.
  • Letter 78.39Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome interprets the thirty-eighth station, Iye-abarim ('heaps of those passing over'), as progress from one virtue to another.
  • Letter 79.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome argues that wealth rightly used gave Nebridius material for virtue, explaining how a rich man may pass through the eye of a needle.
  • Letter 79.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome relates how Nebridius, though married and unable to give up everything, spent his income on the poor, and insists he praises him without self-interest.
  • Letter 79.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome praises Nebridius's chastity as a young courtier, his humility toward the emperors and palace officials, and his use of influence for the poor.
  • Letter 79.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Salvina to avoid dangerous company, to keep to Scripture and prayer, and explains that first stirrings of passion are unavoidable but must be mastered.
  • Letter 96.20Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus closes by urging repentance, prayer, almsgiving, and care for the sick and imprisoned, confesses the Trinity, and announces the dates of Lent and Easter for 401.
  • Letter 98.20Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus urges that knowledge and faith be completed in good works, for which all will give account at the judgement.
  • Letter 98.21Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus urges Origen's followers to flee 'Babylon', whose golden cup of eloquent error leads to ruin, and to guard the soul by continence.
  • Letter 98.25Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus closes with an exhortation to repentance and virtue and announces the dates of Lent and Easter for 402.
  • Letter 100.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Those who could restrain sinners and do not share their guilt; remembering the law and the judgment keeps sin from beginning, while vices drag the soul down to earthly things.
  • Letter 100.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus answers the sinner who wants to change: cease from sin, fast, and meditate on the law, since we are free to do good and the law both punishes and invites the penitent back.
  • Letter 100.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · As pilots steer through waves, Christians should steer by God's law through heresy and changing fortunes, and not turn on former patrons when they fall, as Job's friends reproached him.
  • Letter 100.15Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus condemns avarice as insatiable like hell itself, breeding slander, strife, and murder, and bids Christians bear wealth and poverty with an even mind.
  • Letter 108.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Widowed, Paula gave almost all her wealth to the poor and sick of Rome, telling relatives that Christ's mercy was a better inheritance for her children.
  • Letter 108.15Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes Paula's humility, austerity, tears of penitence, and boundless almsgiving, which he confesses he tried to moderate, and which left Eustochium in debt.
  • Letter 108.16Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Paula gave to all the poor according to need rather than to flatterers, citing Scripture on almsgiving, and preferred to build with 'living stones' rather than buildings.
  • Letter 108.18Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Paula met the envy and hostility she suffered at Bethlehem not by flight, as Jerome advised, but by patience and humility, sustained by many Scriptures on endurance.
  • Letter 108.19Jerome · ca. 370–419 · In sickness, loss of property, anxiety for her children, and slander that called her mad, Paula comforted herself with the Scriptures and armed herself with patience against envy.
  • Letter 108.30Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Paula left Eustochium nothing but debts and a great community to support, having given all to the poor; now she enjoys heavenly riches, and further mourning would seem to begrudge her glory.
  • Letter 116.21Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine asks what Jerome's 'policy' can mean except a 'useful lie', and notes that whether a Christian may ever lie is itself a great question.
  • Letter 117.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells the mother and daughter that he writes to prevent scandal, not from suspicion, and holds up Christ's obedience to his parents.
  • Letter 117.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges the daughter to return to her mother: if she is a virgin she need not fear her mother's watch, and if she has fallen she should marry openly.
  • Letter 117.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome answers the daughter's complaints about her worldly mother: she should bear with her, or live among virgins, but not leave her mother for a man.
  • Letter 117.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome insists that a truly holy man would never separate a daughter from her mother, and that her brother, a monk, should be her protector rather than a stranger.
  • Letter 117.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warns the daughter of the dangers to her chastity at the country houses and banquets she visits with relatives, where flattery and temptation abound.
  • Letter 117.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes how even dark, plain clothing can be worn to allure, warning the daughter that feasting and baths inflame desire.
  • Letter 117.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells the daughter that her brother's tears revealed the situation, and that her servants spread tales about the young cleric who runs her household.
  • Letter 117.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges the daughter to be reconciled with her family or at least to live apart from the cleric, whose public ministry as a reader draws all eyes to her.
  • Letter 117.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome rebukes the daughter for living with a beardless young man and warns that he will leave her for a richer or younger woman.
  • Letter 117.11Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges the mother not to answer her daughter's fault with her own, but to dismiss her companion and bring the family together under one roof with her son the monk.
  • Letter 118.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome, refusing flattery, urges Julian to sell all and follow Christ as the rich young man was told, and to give his dead daughters' shares to the poor.
  • Letter 118.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Julian to follow Pammachius and Paulinus in giving not only his goods but himself to God, citing the poor widow, Abraham, and the apostles.
  • Letter 118.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Julian not to be half monk and half worldling, reminding him that life is short and that Lazarus, not the rich man, was comforted after death.
  • Letter 120.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Answering Hedibia's first question, Jerome urges a childless widow who wishes to be perfect to sell her goods and give to the poor, especially to believers, while allowing a lesser path.
  • Letter 121.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome explains that denying oneself means leaving one's former sinful self behind daily, not only in martyrdom, and being crucified with Christ.
  • Letter 121.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome interprets the parable of the unjust steward as an encouragement to mercy, and quotes Theophilus of Antioch's allegory of Paul as the steward who reduced the debts of Gentiles and Jews.
  • Letter 121.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome expounds Rom 7:7-25: the law reveals sin, several kinds of 'law' appear in Scripture including the natural law, and Paul speaks in the person of the repentant sinner.
  • Letter 123.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warns Geruchia against compromising company and against anxiety over property, citing Paul’s care for his reputation, Jacob, and the poverty of the apostles.
  • Letter 125.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells Rusticus to honor his widowed mother and warns against ascetics who form suspect partnerships with women under the name of spiritual kinship.
  • Letter 125.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome gives Rusticus rules of monastic life—plain dress, moderate fasting, caution even in visiting his mother’s house—with John the Baptist and the sons of the prophets as models.
  • Letter 125.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Against the philosophers’ cure of one passion by another, Jerome urges overcoming vices by love of virtue and by pursuing peace.
  • Letter 125.16Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome satirizes false monks who keep their wealth, pose in public, trade for profit or fall into melancholy, and says monastery life will train Rusticus out of such habits.
  • Letter 125.19Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warns against detraction and listening to it, and urges open rebuke in the manner the Lord commanded instead of secret slander.
  • Letter 128.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome rejects indulging youth, reads 1 Cor 7 allegorically of virginity and marriage, and warns virgins, men and women, against living or sitting alone with the opposite sex.
  • Letter 130.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Demetrias to hold her ground against temptation and to crush sinful thoughts before they become deeds.
  • Letter 130.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Demetrias should choose servants for their character, avoid levity and indecent talk, and govern rather than try to eliminate her passions.
  • Letter 130.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Demetrias to use her wealth for the poor, monasteries, and the servants of God rather than for building ornate churches.
  • Letter 132.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine sets James 2:10 in its context of favouring the rich over the poor, and asks whether it really makes such a person guilty of every sin.
  • Letter 132.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine notes that even if the virtues are inseparable, it does not follow, as the Stoics held, that all sins are equal.
  • Letter 132.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine sets out the philosophical argument that the four cardinal virtues are inseparable.
  • Letter 132.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine distinguishes vices openly contrary to the virtues from vices that imitate them, such as cunning, stinginess, and obstinacy.
  • Letter 132.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine illustrates with Catiline, whose endurance was not true fortitude because it lacked the other virtues.
  • Letter 132.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine argues that since each virtue has two opposed vices, vices outnumber virtues and are not simply inseparable as the virtues are.
  • Letter 132.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine observes that vices can replace one another, but a virtue, bringing the others with it, drives out all vices.
  • Letter 132.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine questions the philosophers' doctrine, since faithful married people truly have the virtue of chastity yet, like all, still sin, as James 3:2 says.
  • Letter 132.11Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine suggests that charity, the fullness of the law, is the virtue that contains all others, so that virtue grows as charity grows.
  • Letter 132.12Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine describes the Stoic view that a person progressing toward wisdom has no wisdom until he is perfect, like a drowning man who is either under water or out.
  • Letter 132.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine prefers the scriptural image of darkness and light: the soul is enlightened gradually, so the saints are righteous in varying degrees yet none is without sin.
  • Letter 132.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine concludes that sins are not equal, and that a person can have more or less of each virtue as charity enlightens him more or less.
  • Letter 132.15Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine defines virtue as charity, which is never perfect in this life, so that all must pray for forgiveness; the commandments show us our need of grace.
  • Letter 132.16Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine proposes that one who offends in one point is guilty of all because every sin violates charity, on which the whole law hangs.
  • Letter 132.17Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine explains that all sin offends against charity and so makes one guilty of all, yet sins differ in gravity according to how far they oppose charity.
  • Letter 132.19Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine explains that James goes on to offer mercy as the daily remedy for the many offences all commit.
  • Letter 132.20Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine concludes that works of mercy and forgiveness are the daily remedy by which the many small sins of all are expiated.
  • Letter 133.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome tells Ctesiphon that the new claim that a man can be free of sin and passion comes from the Stoic and Pythagorean philosophers and is refuted by Paul and common experience.
  • Letter 133.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome cites Scripture to show that no one is without sin, rejecting the claim that a sinless life is possible though it has never existed.
  • Letter 145.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome warns Exuperantius against amassing wealth that Christ commands to be given away.
  • Letter 145.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome urges Exuperantius to give away what he has and join him with his brother.
  • Letter 147.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome recalls Sabinianus's earlier sins and charges him with trying to seduce a virgin in the cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem.
  • Letter 147.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome describes Sabinianus's secret vows to the virgin in the cave and his planned elopement, which was discovered.
  • Letter 148.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer agrees to give Celantia a rule of life from Scripture and insists that faith must be joined to obedience.
  • Letter 148.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer argues from Scripture that confessing God as Lord while ignoring his commands is empty.
  • Letter 148.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer urges that love for Christ is shown by keeping his commandments.
  • Letter 148.5Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer explains that God's commands both forbid evil and require good, and bind everyone equally.
  • Letter 148.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer rejects the Stoic view that all sins are equal but urges fear even of small sins.
  • Letter 148.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer tells Celantia to build her life on innocence, harming no one in deed or intention and also doing good.
  • Letter 148.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer warns Celantia not to follow the crowd or nominal Christians, but to show her faith by a distinct life.
  • Letter 148.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer says Christians, who expect Christ's judgment, must live apart from the vices of unbelievers.
  • Letter 148.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer applies Christ's teaching on the broad and narrow ways to the conduct of life.
  • Letter 148.11Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer lists the vices that mark the broad way and the virtues that mark the narrow way.
  • Letter 148.12Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer points to the apostles and above all to Christ as the pattern to follow.
  • Letter 148.14Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer urges constant reading of Scripture and commends the Golden Rule as a summary of all righteousness.
  • Letter 148.15Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer presents the Golden Rule as a mirror for every act and rejects the complaint that God's commands are impossible.
  • Letter 148.16Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer warns Celantia against speaking ill of others and against listening to slander.
  • Letter 148.17Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer warns against flattery and tells Celantia to seek praise from God rather than from people.
  • Letter 148.18Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer urges Celantia to guard her speech and to bless rather than curse.
  • Letter 148.19Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer forbids lying and swearing and urges Celantia to keep her mind pure as God's temple.
  • Letter 148.20Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer commends true humility and warns against a feigned humility that hides pride.
  • Letter 148.21Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer tells Celantia that noble birth counts for nothing before God, since all are redeemed by Christ's blood.
  • Letter 148.22Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer teaches that fasting is a help to holiness, not holiness itself, and is worthless if the soul is proud.
  • Letter 148.23Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer urges Celantia to guard her reputation as well as her conscience, giving no occasion for slander.
  • Letter 148.27Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer, citing Peter and Paul, tells Celantia to dress simply and to adorn herself with a quiet spirit and good works.
  • Letter 148.32Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The writer closes by urging Celantia to persevere daily in righteousness to the end.
  • Homilies, Migne column 43Amphilochius of Iconium · ca. 376 · The end of Amphilochius's first oration urges Christians to live so that their gentleness, detachment, and purity convert outsiders; the second oration, on the Presentation of Christ, opens with praise of virginity.
  • Homilies, Migne column 75Amphilochius of Iconium · ca. 376 · The sinful woman reasons that only Jesus can save her, goes to him not for bodily healing but for the soul's, and without a word confesses all her sins with tears at his feet.
  • Homilies, Migne column 77Amphilochius of Iconium · ca. 376 · The sinful woman washes Christ's feet with tears, wipes them with her hair, and anoints them with myrrh, surpassing Abraham's hospitality, the ungrateful Jews, and even kings and Magi.
  • Homilies, Migne column 79Amphilochius of Iconium · ca. 376 · Christ honours the woman's repentance; Amphilochius rebukes the Pharisee who, judging her and doubting Christ's knowledge, showed less insight than the Samaritan woman.
  • Homilies, Migne column 81Amphilochius of Iconium · ca. 376 · Amphilochius rebukes the Pharisee for judging the woman and Judas for calling her anointing a waste; God pours out his gifts without counting the cost, and the devil grieves at the woman's salvation.
  • Homilies, Migne column 87Amphilochius of Iconium · ca. 376 · Christ contrasts Simon's neglect with the woman's tears, kisses, and myrrh, and declares her many sins forgiven; Amphilochius urges his hearers to imitate her repentance.
  • On the Holy Spirit 15.35Basil of Caesarea · ca. 374–375 · Baptism imitates Christ's death and burial: the water gives the image of death, and the Spirit gives new life.
  • On the Holy Spirit 30.78Basil of Caesarea · ca. 374–375 · In such a time silence seemed wiser, for love has grown cold and Christians rejoice in one another's falls.
  • Ancoratus 39.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Sarah's staying inside is a pattern of modesty.
  • Ancoratus 56.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Virtue cannot be the image, since Adam was made before any virtue.
  • Ancoratus 65.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The grace of God has appeared in Christ.
  • Ancoratus 66.11Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · We must put to death the flesh and receive the Spirit.
  • Ancoratus 76.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The mind is the soul's governor and discerner.
  • Ancoratus 89.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Hope of resurrection motivates self-control and alms.
  • Ancoratus 102.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Converts put off their particular sins.
  • Ancoratus 102.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Converts give themselves to the good shepherd.
  • Ancoratus 107.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Teachers lead people from idolatry, adultery, and fornication to chastity.
  • Ancoratus 107.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Teachers must practice what they teach.
  • Ancoratus 107.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Like the sun, example teaches silently.
  • Ancoratus 107.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · They inspire many to the monastic life.
  • Ancoratus 109.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · “Where is Sarah?” set her modesty as an example.
  • Ancoratus 109.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Sarah's modesty is a pattern.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 5.3.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · If fate governs all, laws and punishment are pointless.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 9.4.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · A command about shutting windows against the dead is read as guarding the senses.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 16.4.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Freedom to sin or not grounds reward and punishment.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 16.4.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Isaiah's words show that human beings choose.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 16.4.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God gave human beings free will.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 19.6.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Scripture forbids other gods and oaths.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 19.6.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The one who inspired Elxai's oaths is the evil one.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 21.5.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Christ commends continence for the kingdom, against Simon's obscene rites.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 24.3.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Epiphanius charges that Basilides permitted promiscuity.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 24.6.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Evil has no substance; it exists only in those who do it.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 24.6.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God made all things very good; evil began with human choice.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 24.6.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Evil depends on choice and has no root of its own.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 25.6.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Nicolaus suppresses the truth by lust.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 26.11.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Epiphanius charges them with same-sex intercourse.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 26.15.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Wisdom blesses the undefiled barren woman and eunuch.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 26.16.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul's condemnation in Romans 1 applies to them.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 27.4.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They teach that nothing is evil by nature.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.7.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They used magic to help him seduce women.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.7.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The young patriarch went to the hot springs at Gadara, where men and women bathed together.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.7.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The young patriarch accosted a woman at the baths.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.7.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The woman, a Christian, signed herself with the cross.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.7.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · She refused his advances and gifts.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.19.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The saying does not mean Christ ate forbidden food.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.7.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Valentinians claim to be the spiritual order, saved by knowledge whatever they do.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.20.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They say Church members need good works, but they are saved by nature.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.20.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They claim the spiritual cannot be corrupted by any deed.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.20.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Like gold in mud, they say, they are unharmed by what they do.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.21.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Their 'perfect' do forbidden things without fear.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.21.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They eat idol sacrifices and attend pagan festivals and gladiator shows.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.21.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Some indulge the flesh, saying the flesh gets its due.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.21.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Some secretly seduce the women they teach, as returning women have confessed.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.21.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Others openly take other men's wives.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.21.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Others who claimed to live with women as sisters were exposed by pregnancies.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.21.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They teach a saying that spirituals must love a woman, while worldly people are ruined by it.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.21.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Self-control is needed for Church members but not, they say, for the spiritual.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 32.4.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Epiphanes taught that wives should be held in common, citing Plato's Republic.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 32.4.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Isidore advises one tempted to ask a brother to lay hands on him.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 32.4.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Isidore distinguishes needs that are natural and necessary from those only natural, like sex.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 32.5.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They claimed freedom to sin because of their perfection or election.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.5.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The law of retaliation is interwoven with injustice.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.5.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Commanding the death of murderers compelled a second killing.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.6.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Saviour fulfilled the pure commands by forbidding anger, lust and oaths.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.6.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Retaliation was abolished by the Saviour.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.6.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Jesus's command not to resist evil cancels retaliation.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.10.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The law of retaliation aims at the same end as Christ's command.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.10.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Retaliation deterred violence, as turning the cheek does.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.11.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The law threatened the offender, so people refrained from striking.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.11.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The same ethic was kept then by compulsion, now by free choice.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 34.2.11Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The woman repays Marcus with money and her body.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 34.3.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Women who returned to the Church confessed that Marcus used love charms on them.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 34.3.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · A deacon's wife in Asia was seduced by Marcus.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 36.4.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · In Scripture the evil 'matter' is sinful thought, not the body.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 36.4.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Psalm 69's 'mire' is the 'matter' of sin.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 36.6.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Only sin exists apart from God, and it has no root.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.1.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The tree was not evil in itself.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.1.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Death came from disobedience, not knowledge.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.2.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The devil exploits pleasure and desire.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 37.8.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Leave malice behind when coming to church and the sacraments.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 38.2.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They commit sins in the name of angels.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 38.3.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They teach that good and evil are by nature, not choice.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 38.4.11Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Judas was a thief entrusted with the money-box.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 38.5.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · 1 John traces hatred to Cain.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 38.6.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Prophecy of a sin is no excuse for it.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 39.9.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Before Christ the devil never openly blasphemed God.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 40.7.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The God who forbade sin cannot be its author.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 45.3.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The body's God-given appetites, including sexual desire, are not evil in themselves.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 47.2.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Only excess, not wine itself, is forbidden.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 47.2.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Scripture warns against all excess, not against food and drink as such.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 47.2.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul warns against gluttony.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 47.2.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Greed harmed Esau more than wine harmed Noah.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 48.9.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The church honors virginity, widowhood, and marriage, and forbids sexual sin.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 52.3.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Adam and Eve were always naked and unashamed; the Adamians are not.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 52.3.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Adamians have lost modesty.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.2.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Sin comes from the heart, which no one can cut out.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.3.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The castrated are neither men nor women.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.3.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They fit none of the Lord’s three kinds of eunuchs.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.3.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Eunuchs from birth have neither sin nor praise.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.3.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They have no reward, having had no struggle.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.3.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Inability to sin earns no reward.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.4.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Eunuchs for the kingdom are the apostles, virgins, and monks.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.4.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · John and James kept virginity by inner struggle.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.4.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Countless monks have kept continence.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.4.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul’s counsel concerns self-control, not castration.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.4.11Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Either way, castration is done by men, not for the kingdom.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.4.12Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The castrated lose the reward of continence.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.4.13Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Self-mutilation is an offense against the Creator.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 58.4.14Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Sirach shows the eunuch still has desire.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 59.1.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Human weakness calls for mercy, since no one is sinless.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 59.7.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Virtue requires many commandments, not one.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 59.7.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Sirach on sin in buying and selling.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 61.1.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Godliness is by choice, not compulsion.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 61.1.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The necessary commandments are listed.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 61.3.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The church has renunciation without despising marriage or property.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 61.3.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The church praises continence, virginity, and renunciation.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 61.4.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Works of mercy require possessions.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 61.4.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Charity comes from honest property.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 61.4.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The church rejects immorality, adultery, and apostasy.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 61.7.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Breaking a vow brings judgment, but not condemnation.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 61.7.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Some hide immorality under a show of virginity.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 61.7.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Open lawful marriage and repentance are better than secret sin.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 63.1.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They are accused of practicing the sin of Onan.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 63.1.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Their practice is compared to Onan’s.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 63.1.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Their chastity is a pretense to avoid detection.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 63.1.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Others defile themselves by their own hands.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 63.4.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The chaste among them kept the contest honestly.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 63.4.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Elijah, Elisha, and John lived as eunuchs for the kingdom.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.19.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Words should serve deeds, as in medicine.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.19.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Righteousness must be real, not a show.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.23.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Punishment heals the soul.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.24.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Scripture addresses man as free.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.36.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · We restrain sin; God uproots it at death.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.36.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Those who nurture sin are justly punished.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.49.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Free will operates in this life.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.51.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The mind of the flesh is the impulse to sin, called old leaven and a warring law.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.51.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · If the flesh cannot obey, sins of the body would be blameless.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.51.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Otherwise virginity and continence would be impossible.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.51.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Continence shows that the body can obey God.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.51.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The apostles and Paul’s exhortation show the body can serve righteousness.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.51.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul urges presenting bodily members to righteousness.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.52.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The body can be directed toward the good.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.52.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Righteousness requires subjecting the body’s members.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.52.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul’s list of those excluded from the kingdom.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.52.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Mastering these sins shows the body can obey God’s law.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.52.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul targets the flesh’s impulse, including gluttony.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.52.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The body is for the Lord.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.52.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul’s teaching on the body as Christ’s members and the Spirit’s temple.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.53.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The body, kept pure, can receive immortality.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.53.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · It is the visible body that is joined to a prostitute.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.53.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Sexual immorality is sin against one’s own body.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.53.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Sins of soul and of body both exclude from the kingdom.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.55.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Without a commandment there is no culpable desire.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.55.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Desire arises only for what is forbidden.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.55.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The command in Eden awakened desire.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.56.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Man freely chose the serpent’s counsel and was sold to the devil.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.56.11Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · “I do what I hate” refers to unwanted thoughts, not deeds.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.57.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · We cannot stop thoughts, but can refuse to act on them.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.57.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Such thoughts must be suppressed.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.57.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Perfect good refrains even from evil thoughts.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.57.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul on taking thoughts captive.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.58.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul warns against sin and approving of sin.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.58.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Paul’s warning against the sins excluding from the kingdom.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.58.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Unwanted thoughts swarm like flies and must be driven off.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.58.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Troubling thoughts test us for the kingdom.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.58.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Resist evil thoughts like brave soldiers.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.59.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The soul must not yield, for it has no ransom.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.59.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Since temptation is unavoidable, we must not yield.
  • Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.59.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The armour of God against the evil one.
  • On Cain and Abel 1.14Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Pleasure is portrayed as the harlot of Proverbs and the hostess of a debauched feast, inviting all to eat, drink and enjoy life because tomorrow they die.
  • On Cain and Abel 1.15Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Virtue meets the young man and, in the words of Proverbs, warns him against the harlot Pleasure, whose honeyed lips lead to death and whose offers, like the devil's to Christ, are passing.
  • On Cain and Abel 1.18Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Worldly goods punish those who cannot use them; gluttony and drunkenness ruin many, and Christ shuts out those who only ate and drank in his presence, but blesses the hungry.
  • On Cain and Abel 1.20Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Unlike the sober drunkenness of grace, drunkenness with wine kindles lust, an insatiable passion from which the Apostle tells us to flee.
  • On Cain and Abel 1.21Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Avarice is an insatiable sickness of the soul; true riches are the hidden treasures of heaven, poverty of spirit, virtue and faith.
  • On Paradise 30Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · To the objection that knowledge of good and evil is good, Ambrose replies that true knowing is doing what is right; in any case the fault lay in disobeying God's command.
  • On Paradise 31Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Adam was not like an innocent child: even without full knowledge of good and evil he knew enough to obey, and so his sin was justly charged to him.
  • On Paradise 32Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Even without full knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve knew by nature that God's command was to be obeyed, as Eve's own words to the serpent show.
  • On Paradise 34Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Knowledge of evil is not itself evil; sin comes from anger, desire or fear. Eve sinned knowingly in giving the fruit to Adam, though some excuse her as wishing not to be parted from him.
  • On Paradise 36Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Knowing both good and evil is good only when the knowledge is deep and put into practice; otherwise ignorance is more tolerable.
  • On Paradise 37Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · The tree of knowledge was not made in vain; like riches and beauty, gifts can harm those who misuse them, and the blame falls on the user, not the giver.
  • On Paradise 39Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · To pagans, Ambrose answers that Christ chose even Judas to show his will to save all; God imposes no necessity of sin, and his law is written by nature on the human heart.
  • On Paradise 65Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · The sinner covers himself with fig leaves of excuses, blaming the devil, the flesh, or others, or citing the sins of the saints while ignoring Scripture's fruit.
  • Apostolic Canon 22Anonymous · ca. 380 · A man who castrates himself cannot be a cleric.
  • Apostolic Canon 23Anonymous · ca. 380 · A cleric who castrates himself is deposed.
  • Apostolic Canon 24Anonymous · ca. 380 · A layman who castrates himself is excommunicated for three years.
  • Apostolic Canon 25Anonymous · ca. 380 · Clergy guilty of sexual immorality, perjury or theft are deposed but not also excommunicated.
  • Apostolic Canon 27Anonymous · ca. 380 · Clergy who strike people are deposed, following Christ's example.
  • Apostolic Canon 38Anonymous · ca. 380 · The bishop manages church property but may not take it or give it to relatives.
  • Apostolic Canon 42Anonymous · ca. 380 · Clergy who gamble or get drunk must stop or be deposed.
  • Apostolic Canon 43Anonymous · ca. 380 · Minor clergy and laymen who gamble or get drunk must stop or be excommunicated.
  • Apostolic Canon 44Anonymous · ca. 380 · Clergy may not take interest on loans.
  • Apostolic Canon 51Anonymous · ca. 380 · Abstaining from marriage, meat or wine out of abhorrence of creation is condemned.
  • Apostolic Canon 52Anonymous · ca. 380 · Clergy who refuse a penitent are deposed.
  • Apostolic Canon 54Anonymous · ca. 380 · Clergy may not eat in taverns except when travelling.
  • Apostolic Canon 57Anonymous · ca. 380 · Mocking the disabled brings excommunication.
  • Apostolic Canon 59Anonymous · ca. 380 · Clergy who neglect needy fellow clergy are punished.
  • Apostolic Canon 61Anonymous · ca. 380 · A believer convicted of sexual sin may not be ordained.
  • Apostolic Canon 63Anonymous · ca. 380 · Eating blood, or meat torn by beasts or found dead, is forbidden.
  • Apostolic Canon 66Anonymous · ca. 380 · A cleric who kills someone in a fight is deposed.
  • Apostolic Canon 67Anonymous · ca. 380 · A man who violates an unbetrothed virgin must keep her as his wife.
  • Apostolic Canon 71Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians may not bring offerings to pagan temples or synagogues.
  • Apostolic Canon 72Anonymous · ca. 380 · Theft from the church is repaid with a fifth added.
  • Apostolic Canon 73Anonymous · ca. 380 · Consecrated vessels and cloths may not be taken for private use.
  • Apostolic Canon 84Anonymous · ca. 380 · Unjustly insulting the emperor or a ruler is punished.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.1.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Believers are to do everything in obedience to God, since whoever pursues lawlessness is reckoned a lawless nation.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.1.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · The tenth commandment is quoted against greed and injustice.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.1.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Coveting a neighbour’s wife or servants is already adultery and theft in the mind.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.1.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christ’s word on looking with desire shows that he confirms and fulfils the Decalogue, which he himself spoke through Moses.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.1.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · Coveting a neighbour’s animals or field leads to theft and fraud, as the prophet and Moses warn.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.1.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · God’s judgments follow those who covet.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.1.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · The one law for the obedient is the negative golden rule.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.1.8Anonymous · ca. 380 · As one would not want one’s wife looked at with lust, one must not look so at another’s.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.1.9Anonymous · ca. 380 · The golden rule applied to theft.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.1.10Anonymous · ca. 380 · The golden rule applied to violence and insult.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.2.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Believers must bless those who curse them.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.2.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · The wronged must not retaliate but wait for the Lord.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.2.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christ’s command to love enemies is quoted.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.2.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Keeping these commands makes believers children of light.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.3.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Believers must bear with one another.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.3.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · A husband should seek to please his own wife only and not adorn himself to attract other women.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.3.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · If a man yields to a woman he has attracted, eternal death follows.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.3.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Even a man who refuses has sinned by having attracted the woman through his adornment.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.3.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · The man who did not yield will find mercy, since he obeyed the commandments against adultery and coveting.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.3.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · A man whose adornment caused a woman to stumble shares guilt for her sin and inherits the woe on those who cause stumbling.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.3.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · One must pray to be kept from harm and seek to please God, not people.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.3.8Anonymous · ca. 380 · Men must not enhance their natural beauty, but keep their hair cut short and avoid perfume.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.3.9Anonymous · ca. 380 · Men must avoid luxurious dress, rings, styled or dyed hair, and shaving the beard, since the Law forbids them and God hates them.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.4.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Believers should not roam the streets prying, but work at their trade and meditate on Christ’s words.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.5.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Even the rich must not wander idly, but converse with fellow believers about life-giving words.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.6.9Anonymous · ca. 380 · The Decalogue is the true law, the later bonds having been ended or changed by Christ; Kings should be read for examples, and men must use men’s baths.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.7.11Anonymous · ca. 380 · The wise should gather further good counsel from Scripture and reject what is base.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.8.9Anonymous · ca. 380 · Proverbs on the capable wife is completed; wives must not adorn themselves to attract others, since that leads to sin, but should please their husbands, veil in public and not paint their faces.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.9.0Anonymous · ca. 380 · A believing woman must not bathe with men, and should bathe modestly, rarely, and at the tenth hour.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.9.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · A believing woman must always avoid the prying eyes of others.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.10.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Wives should win outsiders to the faith by modesty and gentleness.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 1.10.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · The women are urged to seek further teaching that leads to the kingdom.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.4.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Aid should go first to those in real need, even if not widows.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.4.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Gluttons, drunkards and the idle are not to be helped.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.4.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Proverbs on the sluggard is quoted.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.4.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · Idleness and drunkenness bring poverty.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.4.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Love of drink leads to destitution.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.4.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · Idleness breeds hunger.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.5.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · The Law forbids partiality in judgment.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.7.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Those baptized into Christ’s death must no longer sin.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.7.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · One who sins after baptism and does not repent will be condemned.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.8.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Those slandered for leaving their old vices are blessed.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.8.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · A sinner who is exposed brings blasphemy on the church and its teaching.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.13.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · The sinless should stay so and not need the pains of forgiveness.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.14.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Scripture shows that the righteous do not perish for living alongside sinners, as God himself does good to all.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.14.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Like athletes, only those who contend lawfully are crowned.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.14.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · God does not destroy the righteous with the wicked, as Noah, Lot and Rahab show.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.14.9Anonymous · ca. 380 · Each is judged for his own deeds; living among sinners does not condemn the righteous, only sharing their mind.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.21.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christ, the way of peace, taught that those who forgive will be forgiven.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.21.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Those who refuse to forgive condemn themselves by their own prayer.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.23.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Deliberate sin presuming on God’s mercy has no forgiveness.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.23.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Amon planned to sin and repent later, as his father had.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.24.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · The laity are warned not to plan sin counting on later repentance, like Amon.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.25.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Clergy may live from the church’s goods but must share them with the needy.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.35.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Though freed from the sacrificial law, Christians must still give to the clergy and the poor.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.35.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Care for priests, orphans and widows is the greater righteousness.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.36.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · The commandments begin with love of the one God and the rejection of idols.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.36.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Creation came through Christ; the sabbath is for meditation on the law, not idleness.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.36.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Parents are to be honoured.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.36.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Love of neighbour includes sharing with the needy.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.36.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · Perjury and casual oaths are forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.36.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · Honour God with the fruit of honest work.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.36.8Anonymous · ca. 380 · Even small gifts store up treasure in heaven.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.45.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians should avoid lawsuits and never go before pagan courts.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.45.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Disputes among Christians must not be judged by secular rulers.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.46.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians must keep their disputes from pagans, while paying their taxes as Christ did.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.46.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Better to suffer loss than to quarrel, with believers or unbelievers.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.46.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · The parties must forgive each other without limit, as Christ told Peter.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.46.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christ’s disciples must harbour no anger or hatred against anyone.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.46.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · The clergy must reconcile those who quarrel.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.53.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Judges must be free from anger.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.53.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Anger must be settled quickly before it turns into resentment.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.53.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christ commands reconciliation before offering one’s gift.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.53.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · The Law and David forbid hatred, as Christ commands love even of enemies.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.53.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians must forgive up to four hundred and ninety times.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.53.8Anonymous · ca. 380 · A grudge-bearer who will not forgive hinders his own prayer.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.53.9Anonymous · ca. 380 · Forgiveness should go beyond the number given, so that one becomes a child of God.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.54.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · Those who stir up strife are strangers to God.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.56.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · The laity too must live in peace and win others to the church.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.60.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Work is no excuse, since piety is the believer’s real work.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.60.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · Trades are for livelihood, but piety is the true work, as Christ taught.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.61.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians who attend pagan processions and theatres ignore the example of Jeremiah and Job.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.62.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Believers must not join pagan gatherings, since God has no fellowship with the devil.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.62.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Theatres, processions and all forms of divination and magic are forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.62.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Believers must avoid the festivals and games of pagans, Jews and heretics, going to fairs only for necessary purchases.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.63.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Younger members must work to support themselves and the needy, as the apostles themselves did.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.63.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Solomon points the idle to the industrious ant.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.63.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · The bee too is a model of industry.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.63.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Proverbs warns that laziness brings poverty while diligence brings plenty.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.63.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · More sayings of Scripture against idleness.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 2.63.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Idleness is hateful to God; whoever will not work should not eat.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.4.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Charity must be given to all who are truly in need without favouritism.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.4.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · Isaiah commands care for the hungry, homeless and naked.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.4.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Daniel counsels the king to redeem his sins by almsgiving.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.4.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · Almsgiving purges sins.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.4.8Anonymous · ca. 380 · The Psalms bless those who care for the poor.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.4.9Anonymous · ca. 380 · Mercy to the poor is a loan to the Lord; refusing them brings the same refusal.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.7.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Some widows make begging a trade, hoard money and lend at interest.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.7.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · A widow devoted to money serves mammon and cannot pray rightly.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.12.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Envy and strife are foreign to Christians, especially widows.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.12.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Jealous widows are not Christ’s disciples.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.12.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Widows should rejoice when a fellow widow is helped.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.14.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Donors should give secretly, and the widow should pray for them.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.14.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · The envious widow even curses the donor, forgetting that curses return on the curser.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.15.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · An unjust curse returns on the head of the one who utters it.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.15.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Groundless curses harm only the curser.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.15.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Wrongs done to others recoil on the doer, as the stinging bee and the pit-digger show.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 3.15.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · No cleric or layman may curse; the bishop must care for all.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.1.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Childless believers should adopt orphan boys, and families should take orphan girls as brides for their sons.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.1.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · God will provide for orphans neglected by the rich, whose savings strangers will consume.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.2.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Bishops must provide for orphans, widows and all in need.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.2.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Orphan girls are supported until marriage, and orphan boys until they learn a trade.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.3.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Those who can support themselves should not take what belongs to the needy.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.3.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Woe to those who take alms when they could support themselves.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.3.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Those who receive out of real need are honoured as God’s altar and repay donors by prayer.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.4.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Those who take alms through idleness or pretence rob the poor.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.4.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · The miser is like a serpent guarding treasure, and his wealth will not help him on the day of wrath.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.4.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · The miser trusts in gold as his god and is everyone’s enemy, his own included.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.4.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Ill-gotten wealth will be lost to strangers.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.6.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Gifts from cheating traders are to be refused.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.6.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Offerings from the sexually immoral, adulterers, oppressors and cruel masters are to be refused.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.6.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · A long list of wrongdoers whose offerings must be refused.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.6.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · Little bread honestly earned is better than much from injustice.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.9.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · The people should honour God with first fruits from honest labour.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.9.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Honest offerings feed the poor and ransom captives and those condemned for Christ.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.10.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Gifts are tainted by the giver’s intention, not by their nature.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.10.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Contact with the ungodly is allowed; only sharing worship with them is harmful.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.11.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Fathers must raise their children in the Lord and teach them a fitting trade.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.11.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Parents must discipline their children firmly, as Proverbs and Sirach teach.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.11.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Children must be taught Scripture, kept under discipline and away from carousing.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.11.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · Negligent parents share the guilt of their children’s sins.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.11.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Parents should arrange their children’s marriages in good time to prevent sexual sin.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.12.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Slaves must serve even pagan masters with goodwill, but not share their religion.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.12.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Masters must love their servants and treat them fairly as fellow human beings.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.12.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · A slave with a Christian master should love him as master, brother in faith and father.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.12.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · A Christian master should love a believing slave as a son or brother.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.13.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians must obey rulers in what pleases God and pay all their dues.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.13.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians should owe nothing but love.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.14.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Virginity is a free vow, not a command, and must not be undertaken rashly.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.14.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · A vowed virgin must be holy in body and soul, choosing virginity for devotion, not out of contempt for marriage.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 4.14.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · The virgin must live soberly and avoid bad company.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 5.1.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · All the faithful, through the bishop, should give to imprisoned confessors, even fasting to do so, and the rich should ransom them.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 5.2.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · A so-called brother condemned to death for a real crime is not to be helped, so that the church is not blamed.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 5.10.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians must avoid foul talk, drunkenness and excess, even in Sunday festivities.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 5.10.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians must not sing pagan or lewd songs, which name demons.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 5.11.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians may not swear by idols, name them, or worship them.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 5.12.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · A Christian must not swear by any created thing.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 5.12.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · If Christ forbade swearing even by the true God, swearing by false gods is far worse.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 5.16.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · The baptized, having died and risen with Christ, must be free of sin, for they belong to him.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 5.20.17Anonymous · ca. 380 · The faithful fast every Wednesday and Friday and give what they save to the poor.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 6.11.8Anonymous · ca. 380 · All unlawful and unnatural intercourse is abhorred.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 6.23.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christ deepened the commandments against murder, adultery, theft, hatred and vengeance.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 6.27.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Only impiety and lawlessness, not bodily processes or lawful intercourse, separate the Holy Spirit.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 6.27.8Anonymous · ca. 380 · Only impiety and injustice, not contact with the dead or bodily processes, defile the soul.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 6.28.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians do not abhor the dead or lawful intercourse, which God ordained, but reject unnatural and lawless acts.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 6.28.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Sodomy and bestiality are against nature, adultery and sexual immorality against the law; all are punished.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 6.28.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Unnatural sins undo nature; adultery wrongs another's marriage; sexual immorality corrupts one's own flesh for pleasure.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 6.28.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · The law forbids sodomy, bestiality, adultery and prostitution.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.1.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Moses, Elijah and Christ all set two ways before the people.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.1.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · There are two ways, of life and of death.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.1.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · The way of life is natural; the way of death was brought in by the devil.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.2.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · The way of life is to love God and neighbor and not to do to others what one hates.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.2.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians love and pray for their enemies.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.2.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · No one is to be hated, for all are God's works; only evil purposes are to be shunned.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.2.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians abstain from fleshly desires and do not retaliate.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.2.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians give way to those who compel or rob them.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.2.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians give and lend to all, as the Father gives to all.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.2.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · Alms come from one's own labor, with preference for the saints.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.2.8Anonymous · ca. 380 · Murder of the innocent is forbidden; just killing belongs to rulers alone.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.2.9Anonymous · ca. 380 · Adultery divides one flesh; the corruption of boys, sexual immorality and theft are forbidden, with biblical examples.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.3.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Magic and sorcery are forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.3.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Abortion and infanticide are forbidden and will be avenged.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.3.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Coveting a neighbor's goods is forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.3.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christians should not swear at all, or at least swear truly.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.3.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · False witness is forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.4.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Evil-speaking and grudges are forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.4.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Double-mindedness and double speech are forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.4.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Idle words must be accounted for.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.4.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Lying is forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.4.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · Covetousness and rapacity are forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.4.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Hypocrisy is forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.5.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Malice and arrogance are forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.5.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Judges must not show partiality.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.5.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Hatred is forbidden, but a brother is to be reproved.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.5.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Every evil and its likeness are to be fled.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.5.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · Anger and envy led Cain, Saul and Joab to murder and persecution.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.6.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Augury leads to idolatry and is forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.6.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Enchantments, omens and divination are forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.6.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Desire for evil leads to many sins.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.6.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Foul talk, roving eyes and drunkenness lead to immorality.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.6.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · Love of money is forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.6.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Vainglory breeds arrogance; David's humility is the example.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.7.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Grumbling is forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.7.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Self-will and such vices lead to blasphemy.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.7.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · The meek, like Moses and David, will inherit the earth.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.8.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Patience is great understanding.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.8.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · The merciful are blessed.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.8.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Be guileless and quiet, trembling at God's words.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.8.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Self-exaltation, like the Pharisee's, is forbidden.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.8.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · Rashness leads into evils.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.8.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · Keep company with the wise and righteous.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.8.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · Sufferings are to be accepted, for God rewards them as he did Job and Lazarus.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.10.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Make peace between those who quarrel.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.10.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Judge justly.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.10.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · Transgressions are to be reproved without partiality, as the prophets reproved kings.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.12.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Be as ready to give as to receive.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.12.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Almsgiving ransoms sins.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.12.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Give to the poor without hesitation, for the Lord repays.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.12.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · Do not turn from the needy; share everything with your brother.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.13.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Parents must teach their children the fear of God; masters must not be harsh, and slaves must obey.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.14.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Hate hypocrisy and do what pleases the Lord.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.14.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Keep the Lord's commandments unaltered and confess your sins.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.15.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Honor father and mother.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.15.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Do not neglect your kin.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.16.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Fear the king, honor his officials, and pay taxes willingly.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.18.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · The way of death is ignorance of God and every vice.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.18.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Those on the way of death love evil and oppress the poor.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.29.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Tithes go to orphans, widows, the poor and strangers.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.29.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Food firstfruits go to the priests, other firstfruits to orphans and widows.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 7.31.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Reproof is to be given patiently and kindly.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 8.10.12Anonymous · ca. 380 · Prayer for those who give alms and offerings, and for the newly baptized.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 8.30.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Firstfruits support the bishop, presbyters and deacons; tithes support the other clergy, virgins, widows and the poor.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 8.32.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · A slave's admission depends on his master's testimony, if the master is a believer.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 8.32.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · A believing master who does not let his slaves marry is excommunicated.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 8.32.7Anonymous · ca. 380 · Brothel-keepers and prostitutes must give up their trade.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 8.32.8Anonymous · ca. 380 · Idol-makers must give up their trade.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 8.32.9Anonymous · ca. 380 · Actors, gladiators, soldiers, magicians, concubines and others are admitted only on giving up their practices; catechumens are instructed for three years.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 8.33.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · Slaves rest on Saturday and Sunday to attend church.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 8.33.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Slaves rest during Holy Week and Easter week.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 8.42.5Anonymous · ca. 380 · Alms are given from the dead person's goods.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 8.44.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · As rulers of the church, presbyters and deacons must avoid drunkenness.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 8.44.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Wine is permitted, but not drunkenness.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 8.44.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · The warning against drunkenness applies to all Christians.
  • Apostolic Constitutions 8.45.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · The persecuted are to be helped in their needs.
  • Life of Paul the Hermit 17Jerome · ca. 375–379 · Jerome contrasts Paul's poverty with the luxury of the rich, who will lose Christ's garment.
  • On Virgins 1.2Ambrose · ca. 377 · Ambrose begins on the feast of the virgin martyr Agnes, who at twelve years old refused suitors, faced the executioner without fear, and won a twofold martyrdom of chastity and faith.
  • On Virgins 1.4Ambrose · ca. 377 · Pagan virginity (the Vestals, the priestesses of Pallas, Phrygian and Bacchic rites, a Pythagorean woman who bit off her tongue) is temporary, hired, or failed; Christian virgins such as Agnes conquer even unseen powers.
  • On Virgins 1.5Ambrose · ca. 377 · Virginity’s homeland is heaven and its author is Christ, born of the Father and of a Virgin; the Church is the virgin mother watered by the Trinity; Paul had no command about virgins, because virginity can be desired but not commanded.
  • On Virgins 1.8Ambrose · ca. 377 · The virgin should be like the bee, chaste and industrious, feeding on the dew of God’s word, guarding her speech, and gathering riches for the poor; Christ is the lily among thorns.
  • On Virgins 1.10Ambrose · ca. 377 · Virgins are spared greed and the burdens of brides, who load themselves with jewels like chains and are auctioned to suitors like slaves.
  • On Virgins 2.2Ambrose · ca. 377 · Mary’s life is the pattern of virginity: humble, modest, sparing, studious, seldom abroad, devoted to her kin; she will lead virgins to Christ, who will commend them to the Father, and their minds are altars on which Christ is offered.
  • On Virgins 3.1Ambrose · ca. 377 · Ambrose recalls the address of Liberius, bishop of Rome, when Marcellina received the virgin’s veil at St Peter’s on Christmas Day: Christ, the eternal Son equal to the Father, is her bridegroom, to be loved and honored as the Father loves and honors him.
  • On Virgins 3.2Ambrose · ca. 377 · Youth must be restrained by moderate wine, fasting, and sparing food; Ambrose mocks the pagan fable of Hippolytus, Diana, Neptune, and Aesculapius, and warns virgins against heating foods, banquets, and social calls.
  • On Virgins 3.3Ambrose · ca. 377 · Virgins should seldom pay visits and should speak little, especially in church; Ambrose cites Rebecca, Rachel, and Mary, a pagan boy who endured a burn in silence during Alexander’s sacrifice, and frogs that fell silent at a bishop’s command.
  • On Virgins 3.5Ambrose · ca. 377 · Ambrose reads the bed watered with tears (Ps 6) both literally and of the body, explains the Lord’s “bed of pain,” urges that all be done in Christ’s name, and warns virgins against dancing, which cost John the Baptist his life.
  • On Virgins 3.6Ambrose · ca. 377 · Ambrose dwells on the death of John the Baptist at Herod’s birthday banquet, the reward of a dancing girl, to warn mothers against teaching their daughters to dance and men against the banquets of the wicked.
  • On Noah 30Ambrose · ca. 378-384 · The flood within man is lust and corruption, and the remedy is to let the mind, the 'just man' within, shut up the passions in the ark.
  • On Noah 34Ambrose · ca. 378-384 · In the deeper sense, the death of all things on earth is the death of the senses in the sinner, through lust, evil speech, and anger.
  • On Noah 102Ambrose · ca. 378-384 · God's providence keeps the flood of passions from destroying every soul, so that even sinners should not despair but turn back, as Zacchaeus did.
  • On Noah 112Ambrose · ca. 378-384 · The soul's nakedness comes from unknowing or careless sin, and its first covering is a shame that hides sin and gives hope of amendment.
  • On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 53Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Since anger and desire are common to animals, they cannot define human nature; Moses, free from both yet fully human, shows they are not of the soul’s essence.
  • On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 55Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Macrina defines anger, desire, and the related passions and concludes that they are around the soul but not the soul, like warts growing on its thinking part.
  • On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 57Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Gregory points out that Scripture praises desire, anger, fear, and grief in the saints; Macrina distinguishes the soul’s godlike power of contemplation and judgment, its own by nature, from movements like anger and fear, which came upon it from outside and can be used for good or ill.
  • On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 61Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · The passions were not given for evil: like iron they can be shaped by free choice into tools of virtue or vice; ruled by reason they serve virtue, but when reason drops the reins they make man brutish.
  • On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 63Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Gregory asks for Scripture’s witness; Macrina cites the parable of the wheat and the tares: the soul’s impulses are the good seed, and sin sowed beside them an error about the good that turned them toward the brutish.
  • On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 65Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Desire, anger, and love are left in the soul like the tares, because without them we could not rise to God or fight the enemy; reason must master them, and in themselves they are neither virtue nor vice.
  • On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 119Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · If life began from vice, there would be no providence, no judgment, and no desire for virtue; in fact God’s wisdom begins life, and the soul, created good and free, can choose to close its eye to the good, like a man who shuts his eyes.
  • Homily 3Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–394 · On Eccl 2:4–6 Gregory praises the confession of faults as a lesson for the church, and contrasts Solomon’s houses, vineyards (with the warning of Lot’s drunkenness), parks and pools with the true adornment of the soul: Scripture, the virtues and the spring of divine teaching.
  • Homily 4Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–394 · On Eccl 2:7–11 Gregory condemns the owning of slaves as arrogance against God, since every human being bears God’s image and was made to rule only over irrational creatures, then attacks love of money and lending at interest, and the singers and cupbearers of the banquet, concluding that every pleasure is like writing on water.
  • Homily 5Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–394 · On Eccl 2:12–26 Gregory treats departure from vice as the beginning of the virtuous life, identifies true Wisdom with Christ and vice with the privation of the good, reads “the wise man’s eyes are in his head” of eyes fixed on Christ the head, and answers the objections that death makes wise and fool equal and that eating and drinking are the good.
  • Homily 6Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–394 · On Eccl 3:1–4 Gregory sets due measure and right timing as the criteria of the good, and reads the seasons to be born and to die, to plant and pluck up, to kill and heal, to pull down and build, to weep and laugh, to mourn and dance, of the soul’s birth through virtue, dying to sin, and present mourning that leads to future gladness.
  • Homily 7Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–394 · On Eccl 3:5–7 Gregory reads the stones thrown and gathered as scriptural words used against evil reasonings (rejecting a literal reading of the Sabbath-breaker’s stoning), the embracing of Zion and wisdom, seeking God throughout life and losing vices, keeping what is found, tearing from evil and sewing on to God and the church, and silence about God’s essence but speech about his works.
  • Homily 8Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–394 · On Eccl 3:8–13 Gregory explains how sense-perception, ruling the mind from infancy, misleads human judgment of the beautiful, so that love must be directed to what is truly lovable (God, and Christ given as food) and hatred to the enemy; he describes the spiritual war against the passions and peace with God, and reads the rest of the passage as teaching that God made all things good and the misuse of free choice turns them to evil.
  • On the Making of Man 18Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · The passions came to man through his kinship with the animals; reason can turn them into vices or virtues, and the divine image shows in the virtuous; in the resurrection man will be freed from the need to eat.
  • On the Making of Man 20Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · The forbidden tree bore a “mixed” fruit: evil disguised as good, attractive to sense but deadly; by tasting it man, God’s image, became like vanity.
  • On Tobit 5Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Burying the dead is a great duty of mercy, since the dead cannot repay it.
  • On Tobit 7Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Lending to the needy is good, but lending at interest is evil and forbidden by the law, as Tobit taught his son.
  • On Tobit 8Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Lend freely without expecting return; lost money gains righteousness and mercy.
  • On Tobit 9Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · The rich refuse to lend to the needy, even swearing falsely that they have nothing.
  • On Tobit 10Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · The moneylender, cold to a plea for help, becomes warm at the mention of interest and binds the borrower in lasting debt.
  • On Tobit 11Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · The rich exploit the poor through interest, giving harm where help is sought.
  • On Tobit 12Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · David laments usury in the city before speaking of Judas’s betrayal; the moneylender is like the devil.
  • On Tobit 13Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Lenders who take pledges worth more than the loan are the real debtors.
  • On Tobit 14Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Puns on the words for interest and capital show usury’s worthlessness and cruelty; God freed the fathers from usury.
  • On Tobit 15Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Debt, like sin, puts the debtor in mortal danger.
  • On Tobit 16Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Lent money is restless as the sea and shipwrecks the borrower like Charybdis and the Sirens.
  • On Tobit 17Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Flatterers and sellers of luxuries descend on the borrower and urge him to spend, in the words of Wisdom 2.
  • On Tobit 19Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · After the borrowed feasting comes ruin: the lender hounds the debtor, whose goods and slaves are sold, yet the principal is still owed.
  • On Tobit 20Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · The debtor’s plight is worse than a soldier’s, for his ruin is his own fault.
  • On Tobit 21Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · The ruined debtor remembers Scripture’s counsel to live on his own resources.
  • On Tobit 22Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · The debtor’s regret comes too late; he should have cut expenses at the start.
  • On Tobit 23Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Moneylenders prey on rich young heirs, tempting them to buy with borrowed money.
  • On Tobit 24Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · The lenders lure the young man into pledging his ancestral property, then press him for payment.
  • On Tobit 25Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · The debtor lives in fear of the lender, and God sees both, condemning the one’s greed and the other’s folly.
  • On Tobit 27Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Abandoned by friends, the debtor hides in shame and wishes for death.
  • On Tobit 28Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · For every borrower who repaid, many have been driven to suicide by debt.
  • On Tobit 29Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Ambrose has seen children sold at auction for their father’s debt.
  • On Tobit 30Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Fathers even sell their own children to pay their debts.
  • On Tobit 31Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · God’s rebuke “To which creditor have I sold you?” shows that being sold to a moneylender is the worst punishment.
  • On Tobit 32Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Moneylending leads to apostasy; the debtor sells himself by his own fault.
  • On Tobit 34Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · The lender’s “hundredth” (monthly interest) is a bitter parody of the hundredth sheep that Christ saved.
  • On Tobit 35Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · The lender is the “exactor” of the Gospel, and even the name “creditor” is a deception.
  • On Tobit 36Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Ambrose recalls lenders holding a corpse as a pledge and mocks them for it.
  • On Tobit 37Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Ambrose had the corpse carried to the lender’s house until the lender himself carried it to burial.
  • On Tobit 39Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Even the warlike Huns are enslaved by gambling and moneylenders.
  • On Tobit 40Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · The lender who demands his money back at once is hateful, and his many legal names multiply the debt.
  • On Tobit 41Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Lent money is like a viper that breeds its own brood of evils and kills by its “head,” the principal.
  • On Tobit 42Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Interest breeds like offspring, compounding month by month, as the Greek word tokos suggests.
  • On Tobit 43Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Interest breeds endlessly, unlike nature, which keeps the times Ecclesiastes describes.
  • On Tobit 44Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Ecclesiastes’ insatiable eye and sea picture the moneylender.
  • On Tobit 45Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Unlike living things, money lent at interest grows without limit and never ages.
  • On Tobit 46Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · The law of Moses repeatedly forbids lending at interest, calling it choking the poor, long before Cato said the same.
  • On Tobit 47Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Return pledged garments before sunset, lest the sun of righteousness set for you as it did for Judas.
  • On Tobit 48Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Deuteronomy forbids exacting interest from a brother, who shares our nature and grace.
  • On Tobit 49Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Taking interest in goods instead of money is still interest and evades the law.
  • On Tobit 50Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · The rich take “interest” as free goods for their banquets, feasting on the tears of the poor.
  • On Tobit 51Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · The law’s permission to take interest from foreigners meant only enemies; every fellow believer and fellow citizen is a brother.
  • On Tobit 52Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Leviticus, the Psalms, and Ezekiel all condemn interest, and Ezekiel ranks the usurer with the idolater.
  • On Tobit 53Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Like Samson’s lion yielding honey, the harsh lender should bring forth mercy and forgive the poor debtor.
  • On Tobit 54Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Christ commands lending without hope of return; lender and debtor alike are called sinners.
  • On Tobit 55Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Lend to the Lord by giving to the poor; Christ is the surest guarantor.
  • On Tobit 56Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Christ became poor to make us rich; giving to the poor earns blessing, heaven, and nourishment.
  • On Tobit 57Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Lenders argue that the law forbids only certain pledges, not all.
  • On Tobit 58Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Ezekiel, Job, and Christ show that every pledge should be returned.
  • On Tobit 59Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · The psalm says the just man lends all day long; but what does he lend, if riches make entering the kingdom hard?
  • On Tobit 60Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Peter, who had no silver or gold, lent the lame man healing in Jesus’ name, the true lending of the just.
  • On Tobit 70Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · In Ezra’s time the lenders agreed to return pledges and forgo their loans, binding later lenders.
  • On Tobit 80Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Think how you will repay before borrowing, for interest only grows.
  • On Tobit 81Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Borrowing humiliates the borrower and turns friends into enemies.
  • On Tobit 82Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Neither rich nor poor should borrow at interest.
  • On Tobit 88Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Ambrose answers those who objected that usury is old: so is sin, which Christ came to abolish.
  • On Tobit 89Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Borrowing with a surety turns a friend into an enemy.
  • On Tobit 90Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Stand surety only for what you can afford to pay yourself.
  • On Tobit 91Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Tobit paid his hired man and found him to be an angel; Christ himself may be in the least.
  • On Tobit 92Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Pay hired workers promptly, as we ourselves are Christ’s hired laborers.
  • On Tobit 93Ambrose · ca. 380-390 · Tobit’s counsels on self-restraint, wages, and almsgiving are the true lending that earns eternal interest.
  • 1.1Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius opens his homily on the rich man and Lazarus by attacking luxurious clothing, purple, fine linen, silk, and robes woven with pictures.
  • 1.2Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius urges the devout rich to do the deeds shown in the gospel scenes on their garments rather than wear them, and describes the many vices that luxury requires.
  • 1.3Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius describes Lazarus's sufferings and the rich man's hardness, explains Abraham's bosom as an image pointing to Christ, and says that poverty is praised only when joined to humility.
  • 1.4Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius explains that only the humble poor are blessed, contrasts the funerals of Lazarus and the rich man, and teaches from Abraham's refusal and the great chasm that punishment after death is not lessened.
  • 2.1Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius argues that nothing we have is our own: we are sojourners and stewards, as the image of travellers sharing the shade of one tree shows.
  • 2.2Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius shows that we are not masters even of ourselves, since each sense and limb is bound by God's commands, and that our goods come from God with commands for their use.
  • 2.3Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius compares death to the steward's dismissal, urging the faithful to prepare their account, and cites the rich fool and Paul's longing to depart.
  • 2.4Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius contrasts Paul's longing for death with the steward's grief, explains that after death there is no more work or begging, and interprets the steward's remission of debts as almsgiving with the Master's goods.
  • 3.1Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · At a martyrs' festival Asterius reminds the crowd why martyrs are honoured, recalls the day's readings, and begins his case against covetousness with the devil, Adam, Esau and the tower of Babel.
  • 3.2Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius lists biblical examples of covetousness (Pharaoh, Gehazi, Absalom, Judas, Ananias and Sapphira) and describes the covetous man's lifelong, ivy-like disease.
  • 3.3Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius describes the covetous hoarder of grain who rejoices at shortages and refuses the poor, and urges him to restore what he holds unjustly, since his heirs and his will are uncertain.
  • 3.4Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius reads the chasm in the parable as the barrier of sin, calls covetousness idolatry and the root of all evils, recalls Christians who apostatized for rewards under the apostate emperor, and describes a son's greed for his father's estate.
  • 3.5Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius blames covetousness for the inequality of rich and poor and for wars and their miseries, cites Christ's commands against wealth, and answers the objection that renouncing wealth makes life impossible by appeal to God's providence.
  • 3.6Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius tells how Elisha multiplied the widow's oil to pay her debt, and urges trust in God's providence, which fed Israel in the desert and the crowds with five loaves.
  • 4.1Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius denounces the New Year feast of the Kalends, which coincides with a Christian feast: its origin is unclear, its joy is not shared, and its forced gift-giving flows upward from the poor to the powerful.
  • 4.2Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius describes the miseries the Kalends bring: begging troupes, debts, children taught greed, farmers abused, soldiers mocking authority and dressing as women, and consuls squandering ill-gotten wealth on games.
  • 4.3Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius urges giving to the poor instead of to entertainers, and reminds his hearers of the recent downfall of consuls and prefects as proof that worldly honour is vanity.
  • Homily 5, part 5.5Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius makes one exception: a husband who separates from an adulterous wife is justified, since adultery destroys both purposes of marriage; and he insists that the law of chastity binds husbands as much as wives, against Roman law.
  • 5.6Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius ends his homily on divorce by warning that God judges the sexually immoral whatever human lawgivers allow; the scan then continues with the opening of his homily on Daniel and Susanna.
  • Homily 5, part 6.2Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · In his homily on Susanna, Asterius presents the young captive Daniel as judge of the elders, denounces the lustful elders who slandered a lawful marriage, and sets Susanna beside Joseph as a model of chastity.
  • Homily 5, part 6.3Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius retells Susanna's trial, the elders' false accusation, her appeal to God, and Daniel's cross-examination that condemned them, and urges wives to imitate her chastity; the text breaks off.
  • 8.4Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius says Peter's miracles exceeded even the Lord's, fulfilling John 14:12, defends Peter's renunciation and trade against those who despise him as a poor fisherman, and introduces his walking on the sea.
  • 13.1Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · From Christ's eating with a Pharisee, Asterius rebukes those who think themselves righteous, judge sinners harshly and shut them out of hope, though they themselves need God's mercy.
  • 13.2Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius shows that God receives sinners again after baptism, through tears and repentance, with the examples of Peter, the Jews who believed after the cross, Paul, Matthew, Zacchaeus, David and Nineveh, and suggests even Judas could have been forgiven.
  • 13.3Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius draws on Jonah and the gourd, Christ's command not to judge, the sin offering for the priest, and the parables of the lost sheep and the barren fig tree to teach that priests and people alike should intercede for sinners rather than condemn them.
  • 13.4Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius urges priests to intercede for sinners like Moses and to welcome them like the father of the prodigal son, and urges penitents to imitate the sinful woman's tears instead of living as before while excluded from communion.
  • 13.5Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius contrasts the sick man's change of life with the careless penitent, prescribes the opposite virtue as the remedy for each sin, and urges sinners to confess their hidden sins to the priest as to a father and physician before death overtakes them.
  • 16.1Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius, in a second homily on Psalm 5, explains that the Church is the heiress, the kingdom of heaven the inheritance, and the Gospel Christ's testament, whose heirs are those who fed Christ in the poor.
  • 16.2Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius urges his hearers to read Psalm 5 as the terms of Christ's testament, naming as heirs the meek, those who feed the poor, those who keep the commandments and suffer with Christ, and contrasts this with the eager pursuit of earthly legacies.
  • 17.3Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius warns that God tests our words and our cries before granting our petitions, and urges the congregation to keep the feast with psalms and hymns rather than drunkenness and coarse talk.
  • 19.2Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius sets out Joseph as a type of Christ in his beauty, betrayal, sale, imprisonment and release, and urges the newly baptized to imitate Joseph's chastity, warning free men against concubinage with their slave women.
  • 19.3Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius has Joseph rebuke the baptized man who keeps a slave concubine, and urges the newly baptized to enter by the door of lawful marriage so as to inherit the kingdom.
  • 20.3Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius explains that David does not refuse God's rebuke and discipline but asks that they come without wrath, that God's wrath is not a passion but just judgment, and that the weakness he confesses is weakness of faith.
  • 20.4Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius compares soul and body to a loan from God that must be repaid with interest, and teaches from the parables that repentance and confession are accepted as repayment, and that God disciplines sinners through disease.
  • 20.5Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius explains that David's sickness was God's discipline for adultery and murder, that the troubled “bones” are his thoughts tossed by desire, and urges those tempted to fornication to run to the harbour of the Church and confess their desires to God before they act on them.
  • 21.1Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius introduces Psalm 7 by its title, “concerning the words of Chousi”, and praises the faithful friendship of Chousi (Hushai) for David as stronger than kingship.
  • 21.6Asterius of Amasea · ca. 380-410 · Asterius applies “if I have done this; if there is injustice in my hands” to David's dealings with his father and with Saul, to Joseph falsely accused of adultery and forgiving his brothers, and to Susanna falsely accused by the elders, urging the falsely accused to call on God as witness.
  • Practical Chapters to Anatolius, chapter 61Evagrius of Pontus · ca. 380-399 · The virtues of each part of the soul and their works.
  • Causes of Monastic Matters, chapter 5Evagrius of Pontus · ca. 380-399 · Do not seek wealth for almsgiving; give from what you have, accept help humbly, and do not worry about tomorrow.
  • Causes of Monastic Matters, chapter 8Evagrius of Pontus · ca. 380-399 · Avoid luxury and leaving the cell; work with your hands; in trade accept a small loss, or leave trade to another.
  • Theological Oration 1 (Or. 27), Against the Eunomians 7Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Instead of cultivating prayer, fasting, and self-control, the disputers neglect the virtues and reward impiety with licence.
  • On the Beatitudes 1199Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · As there are two kinds of wealth, so there are two kinds of poverty: lacking virtue is wretched, but being poor in vices is blessed; poverty of spirit is voluntary humility, the one divine trait humans can imitate, after the example of Christ who became poor for us.
  • On the Beatitudes 1203Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · The cure for pride is to see what human nature is: made from clay, born in shame, and ending in a heap of bones; the young man proud of his looks and fine clothes should look at the skulls in the common grave and see himself.
  • On the Beatitudes 1205Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Mature men in office grow arrogant, imagining themselves lords of life and death, though they are like actors in a stage procession and are often carried from their thrones to the grave; the ruler who is poor in spirit, seeing the equality of human nature, gains the kingdom of heaven.
  • On the Beatitudes 1207Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Homily 1 ends: true poverty of spirit sheds earthly wealth to rise light toward God and shares with the poor, so as to reign with Christ who became poor. Homily 2 begins: the Beatitudes are like the rungs of a ladder, though the earth seems oddly to follow heaven.
  • On the Beatitudes 1215Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Christ does not demand impossible freedom from all passion, but meekness, the restraint of passion by reason; anger shows by contrast how blessed meekness is, for it turns a man into a raging beast.
  • On the Beatitudes 1217Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · The meek man who calms his anger is blessed, the angry man pitiable; meekness grows from humility, for one who knows the lowliness of human nature cannot be insulted, and honour belongs only to the soul.
  • On the Beatitudes 1233Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Appetite is the beginning of strength, but appetites differ, for bodily food and for the food of the soul; Christ blesses not hunger as such but hunger for true righteousness, the good desired for its own sake.
  • On the Beatitudes 1235Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Justice in the ordinary sense, the virtue of rulers and judges giving each his due, cannot be what is meant, since most people hold no office and Lazarus had nothing; the righteousness Christ blesses must be open to all, and the soul must learn to tell nourishing food from poison.
  • On the Beatitudes 1237Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Christ accepted hunger but refused the devil’s suggestion to turn stones into bread, that is, to turn appetite toward what is unnatural; those who load their tables with silver plate and luxury beyond need are “eating stones.”
  • On the Beatitudes 1243Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Righteousness here stands for every virtue; pleasures never fill, like a leaking jar, and they fade at once, but virtue gives a lasting joy that can be enjoyed without satiety throughout life.
  • On the Beatitudes 1245Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · The fullness Christ promises increases the desire for virtue rather than ending it; pleasure is like chasing one’s shadow, but virtue becomes the possession of the one who seeks it, and gladdens past, present, and future.
  • On the Beatitudes 1251Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Mercy, which corrects the inequalities of life, is defined as voluntary grief at another’s evils, or a loving fellow-feeling with the distressed; it is the intensification of love, the highest virtue, and lies in the will, not in material means.
  • On the Beatitudes 1253Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · If all were merciful, inequality, envy, hatred, and war would vanish and peace and justice would reign; mercy is the father of goodwill and the bond of friendship; but the promise “they shall obtain mercy” also points to a future reward.
  • On the Beatitudes 1255Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Good and evil depend on our own choice, for evil has no existence apart from choice; God’s judgment, like a mirror, returns to each what he has chosen, as the sheep and the goats and the rich man and Lazarus show.
  • Canonical Letter, Migne PG 45:223Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390 · Gregory compares penance to medicine and divides the soul into reasoning, desiring and spirited parts, describing the right action and the vice of the reasoning part and the right action of the desire.
  • Canonical Letter, Migne PG 45:225Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390 · Gregory describes the right actions and failings of the desire and of the spirit, then sets lifelong penance for willing apostasy and a fixed term for those who denied under torture, and begins on those who consult sorcerers.
  • Canonical Letter, Migne PG 45:227Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390 · Gregory distinguishes apostasy to sorcery from deceived recourse to it, then defines sexual immorality and adultery: there is one lawful union, and adultery, which wrongs another, receives double the penance.
  • Canonical Letter, Migne PG 45:229Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390 · Gregory sets nine years of graded penance for sexual immorality, which the bishop may shorten for earnest penitents, double that for adultery and sins against nature, and begins on murder, distinguishing voluntary from involuntary.
  • Canonical Letter, Migne PG 45:231Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390 · Gregory sets twenty-seven years of graded penance for voluntary murder and nine for involuntary, both shortenable, allows communion to the dying, and turns to covetousness, which the Fathers left without penalty.
  • Canonical Letter, Migne PG 45:233Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390 · Gregory notes that covetousness goes unpunished and is common among clergy, then sets penance for robbery (as for murder) and for secret theft (almsgiving or labour), and distinguishes pardonable from unpardonable grave-robbing.
  • Canonical Letter, Migne PG 45:235Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390 · Gregory finishes grave-robbing, notes that sacrilege, stoned in the Law, receives less penance than adultery, insists that the penitent's disposition matters more than time, and closes the letter.
  • On the Lord's Prayer 1153Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · “Hallowed be thy name” asks that God’s name be glorified in our lives rather than blasphemed by the bad conduct of Christians; a pure and virtuous life makes even outsiders glorify God.
  • On the Lord's Prayer 1163Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Christ, the true physician, heals our sickness, which came from separation from God’s will, by union with that will; to pray “Thy will be done” is to confess the past and ask that virtue, above all love, drive out the vices; we need God’s help because it is harder to recover than to fall.
  • On the Lord's Prayer 1169Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · “Give us bread” asks for necessities, not for the long list of luxuries for which people mine, trade, and sail; what nature owes the body is only bread, and luxury is the enemy’s weed among the wheat.
  • On the Lord's Prayer 1171Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Like a serpent that cannot be drawn back once its head is in a crevice, pleasure must be stopped at its first entry; once it enters through taste, it leads to gourmandizing, luxury, and greed that ruins others.
  • On the Lord's Prayer 1173Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Gluttony ends in licentiousness; bread is enough, seasoned by a good conscience and by hunger, and earned by the toil of keeping the commandments.
  • On the Lord's Prayer 1185Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · All die in Adam and so share his need of forgiveness; but each person’s own conscience suffices, for no one is sinless in sight, hearing, taste, or touch, the “windows” through which death enters the soul.
  • On the Lord's Prayer 1187Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Sins of thought and will are countless, and no one is pure; so all must ask for forgiveness, but the prayer is useless unless we forgive others, since the creditor who imprisons his debtor and charges interest condemns himself.
  • On the Lord's Prayer 1189Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · The parable of the unforgiving servant shows how small our neighbours’ debts are beside ours to God; the master who rages at a slave should remember that slavery comes from power, not nature, since God gave humans dominion only over animals, and that he himself has deserted his own divine Master.
  • Homily 1.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · As courtiers adorn themselves and fill the emperor's treasury for his birthday, Christians should prepare for Christ's birthday with purity of soul and generous alms to the poor.
  • Homily 4.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · As the winter solstice heralds Christ's birthday, Christians should prepare by clothing the soul in virtue, like Christ's garment that no fuller could whiten, and by cleansing conscience through almsgiving.
  • Homily 16.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · A sermon against the pagan festivities of the January Kalends, with their masquerades as women and beasts and their taking of auspices for the new year, urging Christians not to look back like a ploughman to such vanities.
  • Homily 21.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · The angels promise peace to men of good will; the soul conceives Christ as Mary did; and the Magi, who gave up their magic after finding Christ, shame Christians who return to the pagan Kalends.
  • Homily 24.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · The apostles believed after one miracle at Cana; since Christ's works are always present to God and to us through Scripture, Christians who have received so many benefits should believe in deed and not only in word.
  • Homily 36.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Before Lent the preacher explains Christ's rule for fasting: not with a show of gloom like the hypocrites, but with alms and sincere joy, though true sorrow for sin is not rejected.
  • Homily 37.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Christ's temptation in the wilderness is retold with the devil's imagined bewilderment at the virgin-born, sinless man; the preacher then lists the virtues by which Christians sanctify their Lenten fast.
  • Homily 38.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Lent's forty days are divinely set and fall in spring, when creation revives; as the thorn brings forth the rose, fasting turns sins into virtues, after the pattern of Christ, who hungered for our salvation.
  • Homily 42.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · In the temptation Christ answered the devil with Scripture so that the devil could neither prevail nor discover that he was God; Christians conquer the devil by clinging to Christ and fasting from vices.
  • Homily 43.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · The preacher retells the three temptations, showing how Christ's answers concealed his divinity from the devil, and teaches that a good fast includes almsgiving, self-control, forgiveness, and hunger for righteousness.
  • Homily 44.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Comparing the forty-day fasts of Moses and of Christ, the preacher explains why only Christ hungered, and insists that Christians fast from vices, quarrels, usury, and lies as well as from food.
  • Homily 49.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · As Ulysses bound to the mast escaped the Sirens, so the cross, the Church's mast, carries believers safely past the world's pleasures; the bronze serpent on the pole foreshadows Christ crucified, the cure for the poison of sin.
  • Homily 58.2Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · At Easter Christians pass with Christ from death to life and are renewed in a spiritual infancy of innocence; the child the apostles must become like is Christ himself, who did not return evil for evil.
  • Homily 64.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Stephen saw the Son of Man at God's right hand to confound unbelief, became the first martyr though a deacon, and prayed for his persecutors; Christians must likewise forgive enemies, since without love no good work profits.
  • Homily 65.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · On the feast of John the Baptist's birth the preacher recounts the wonders of his conception and birth and applies his call, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” to moral reform, since the people's vices open the way to barbarian invaders.
  • Homily 78.2Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · A memorial sermon for a holy bishop of the city, praised after death as one safe in harbor, who healed the spiritually blind, deaf, and dead, guarded the windows of the senses, and drove vices from his people's hearts.
  • Homily 78.3Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · The conclusion of the memorial sermon: God set the holy bishop before his people as a model, like a portrait for a painter, so that each may copy one of his virtues and be received by him at the end.
  • Homily 79.2Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Cyprian, martyred at the vintage, gives the new wine of martyrdom; Christians, the Lord's vineyard, must not bear the thorns of worldly care and avarice but share their harvest and vintage with the poor.
  • Homily 82.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Martyrs became martyrs by living the Gospel before they died; the whole Christian life is a cross, but avarice, which drives merchants, soldiers, and officials alike, keeps people from it, while the virtues are riches that follow their owner to paradise.
  • Homily 85.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Humility and patience are the way to the narrow gate of heaven; the millstone of Matt 18:6 is read as the pagans' stone idols, the penalty of those who persecute Christians.
  • Homily 91.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Citizens who flee their threatened city out of fear for their wealth desert their mother homeland; the city is saved by the presence and prayers of the just, as with Nineveh and Lot.
  • Homily 95.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · The first Christians held all things in common, but now Christians hoard and even plunder; like Ananias they keep back what they promised God, and should now provide for the refugees in the city.
  • Homily 96.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Ananias's avarice warns against Christians who profit from the barbarian invasion by buying plundered goods and captive Romans; one may buy only in order to restore.
  • Homily 97.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Almsgiving quenches sin as water quenches fire; the spring of mercy is Christ, who at the well gave the Samaritan woman living water, so that she returned home chaste and a preacher.
  • Homily 103.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Christ was born amid pagan festivals so that Christians would leave them; the preacher condemns New Year's drunkenness, the bought kisses and forced strenae gifts of the Kalends of January, and its omens.
  • Homily 106.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · David teaches the fear of the Lord by first commanding control of the tongue, the devil's instrument from the serpent in Eden onward; Christians should pray, with David, that God guard their mouths.
  • Homily 107.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · David's prayer for 'goodness, discipline and knowledge' (Ps 119:66) teaches the balance of kindness and correction, shown in Peter, Paul and John the Baptist; true knowledge includes faith in the one substance of Father, Son and Spirit.
  • Homily 114.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Soldiers and officials cannot excuse their extortion by their office; John the Baptist's words to tax collectors and soldiers condemn unjust exaction, and apply also to clergy who trade or prey on widows.
  • Homily 116.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Christ healed the withered hand by a word in anger; the withered right hand is the scribes who withheld Christ from the people, and ultimately Adam's sinning hand, which Christ heals in all who stretch out their hands to the poor and to God.
  • Homily 117.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · The camel and the needle's eye describe rich men whose cares kept them from church on the feast of Epiphany; the preacher urges them to fear God's judgment more than a civil judge.
  • Sermon 25.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Maximus condemns Lenten fasting that is spent in hunting, cruelty to slaves who are brothers in Christ, and miserly saving, and teaches that true fasting includes church-going, prayer, reading, humility, and giving one's meals to the poor.
  • Sermon 82.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Following the Anaunian martyrs, who died for rebuking a pagan purification rite, Christians must reprove pagan practices rather than tolerate them by silence, since connivance shares the guilt; officials should enforce the Christian emperors' laws against pagan cults.
  • Sermon 99.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Zacchaeus shows that riches, rightly given away, can bring a rich man to the kingdom despite the camel and the needle's eye.
  • Sermon 100.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Zacchaeus gave half his goods to the poor and restored fourfold what he had taken, so in effect he gave all; true alms come from one's own goods, and robbers must first restore what is not theirs.
  • Sermon 105.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Christ promises a reward even for a cup of cold water, so that no one is too poor to give; the rich must give more, like the widow who gave all; spiritually, hearers who believe the preacher's word give him drink, as the Samaritans did Christ.
  • Sermon 109.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Paul rebukes as a loving father; his words 'do not be yoked with unbelievers' (2 Cor 6:13–16) mean that justice and iniquity, light and darkness, Christ and the devil cannot share one heart.
  • Sermon 110.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Scripture, inspired by God, teaches and rebukes; Christ's word on adultery in the heart (Matt 5:28) guards chastity by forestalling sin at the very glance of the eyes.
  • Sermon 111.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · Paul's command 'let no evil word come out of your mouth' (Eph 4:29) cuts off sin before it is born; Scripture's examples of evil speech are Simon Magus, Potiphar's wife, Naboth's murderers and Judas, and Christ's word restrains the eyes as Paul's restrains the tongue.
  • Sermon 115.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · A single sentence listing the vices a Christian must overcome, from pride and avarice to bribery, lies and idolatry, in order to conquer the devil.
  • Sermon 116.1Maximus of Turin · ca. 400-465 · The true goods are virtues such as honesty and mercy, which cannot be lost or left behind, unlike gold; the rich man and Lazarus show where each kind of wealth leads.
  • Chapter 12Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana · ca. 380–414 · Nicetas illustrates the resurrection by the seed that dies and rises (1 Cor 15:36) and says eternal life is for the faithful who live chastely, not for pagans, unbelievers or vicious Christians.
  • Fragment 3Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana · ca. 380–414 · Nicetas teaches that before confessing the faith the candidate must sincerely renounce the devil and his works, including pagan cults, shows and vices, and condemns vain male and female adornment.
  • Chapter 8Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana · ca. 380–414 · Nicetas describes the benefits of vigils, which drive out fear and vice, strengthen chastity and wound the devil, and says night prayer is more effective than prayer by day.
  • Liber Orsiesii 9Orsiesius · ca. 380-390 · Superiors must treat all alike, never abandon an offending brother in anger, and forgive as they hope to be forgiven.
  • Liber Orsiesii 54Orsiesius · ca. 380-390 · The monks are to put away anger quickly, forgive, imitate the meekness of the saints, and love one another.
  • Book of Heresies 57.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The Florians or Carpocratians practise promiscuous intercourse at night.
  • Book of Heresies 79.7Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Trials prove the righteous and correct or remove the sinner.
  • Book of Heresies 107.6Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Seventy times seven means unlimited forgiveness.
  • Book of Heresies 131.3Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Cain was told to master his evil thought.
  • Book of Heresies 131.5Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The gospel and the psalm teach the mastery of anger.
  • Book of Heresies 131.6Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Evil thoughts must be driven out at once.
  • Canons on the Letters of Paul 27Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · Bad company corrupts good morals; disputes destroy rather than build up.
  • Canons on the Letters of Paul 33Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · The saints' bodies are temples of God and a living sacrifice; they must avoid the works of the flesh, and virgins remain virgins, as Paul counsels.
  • Canons on the Letters of Paul 37Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · The righteous reject avarice through voluntary poverty, content with food and clothing.
  • Canons on the Letters of Paul 41Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · Paul became all things to all; Christians should imitate him and shine like lights.
  • Canons on the Letters of Paul 49Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · Christians should choose the good, prefer love to all virtues, redeem the time, and pursue peace and humility.
  • Canons on the Letters of Paul 51Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · Those who judge others while doing worse sin more; those who consent to sinners share their sin.
  • Canons on the Letters of Paul 58Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · Believers are justified by deeds, not words only, for the kingdom of God is in power.
  • Canons on the Letters of Paul 60Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · Paul thanks those ready to give alms and urges others to give.
  • Eleven Tractates 1.24Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Like the unfaithful wife of Hosea returning to her husband, believers turn from the works of the flesh, where demons such as Saclas belong.
  • Eleven Tractates 2.43Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Saragossa's memorandum censured none of them; they teach that those who renounce all for God should not be hindered, while those who achieve less still have hope.
  • Eleven Tractates 4.78Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Fasting means works of mercy; Christ, our Passover, took on the full shame of human birth.
  • Eleven Tractates 8.121Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Absalom, David's third son, figures the sins born from us; sin proceeds from desire, to consent, to the deed.
  • Eleven Tractates 9.123Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · The gospel favours the poor, but the rich are not without hope if they are rich in good works and climb step by step toward God.
  • Eleven Tractates 10.136Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Between the two kingdoms stand the virtues of the Spirit and the vices of the world; we are safe while we hold to the Lord's words.
  • Pilgrimage (Itinerarium) 45.3Egeria · ca. 381-395 · The bishop questions the candidates' neighbours about their life.
  • On the Complaints of Job and David 1.9Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · The rich man who wakes to heavenly things finds his wealth was an empty dream that never satisfied.
  • On the Complaints of Job and David 2.5Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · Like Job and David, we should meet insults with silence rather than self-defence.
  • On the Complaints of Job and David 2.6Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · Paul went beyond Job’s laughter to blessing, taught by Christ, who prayed for his persecutors.
  • On the Complaints of Job and David 2.9Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · We should laugh at false accusations and keep silence, for God’s judgment, not men’s, decides.
  • On the Complaints of Job and David 2.12Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · The wicked have “grown old” in riches, which bring anxiety and shame at death; the blessed man’s inheritance is the Lord.
  • On the Complaints of Job and David 2.17Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · Prosperity breeds pride and forgetfulness of God, as with the rich man in the Gospel, who thinks God does not see.
  • On the Complaints of Job and David 2.20Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · Job lists the oppressions of the wicked against orphans, widows, and the poor.
  • On the Complaints of Job and David 2.22Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · The wicked have no true posterity; their hoarded wealth is empty as a cobweb, and the miser’s mind is a mine from which nothing comes out.
  • On the Complaints of Job and David 3.28Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · God is the psalmist’s whole portion; having Christ he has all, and imitates him out of love of virtue, not for reward.
  • Petition to the Emperors (Libellus precum) 23Faustinus · ca. 383–384 · The petitioners disclaim any wish for bloodshed, which the old covenant permitted but Christian law forbids, yet complain that their churches have been seized and their clergy imprisoned, exiled and beaten to death.
  • Against Helvidius 22Jerome · ca. 383 · Jerome contrasts the cares of married life with the virgin's freedom for God, while saying he does not disparage marriage or the Old Testament saints.
  • Against Helvidius 23Jerome · ca. 383 · Jerome explains Paul's counsel on virginity and answers Helvidius's taunt about unworthy virgins.
  • Second Apology of David 12Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Power gave David the opportunity to sin; Scripture warns against looking at a woman’s beauty, since no one is strong for long.
  • Second Apology of David 13Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · No one can carry the fire of lust in his heart without being burned, as Solomon warned.
  • Second Apology of David 14Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · The harlot enters by the window of the eyes; one must avoid every encounter with wantonness, as Proverbs warns.
  • Second Apology of David 17Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Avoid the occasions of sin: looking at a strange woman tosses the mind like a ship in a storm.
  • Second Apology of David 18Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Drunkenness inflames lust, as with Noah and Lot; avoid what leads to a fall.
  • Altercatio, chapter 2, speech 40Evagrius of Gaul · ca. 400 · Theophilus defines circumcision of the heart as cutting away the vices, kept by Enoch, Noah, Job and Melchizedek before the law.
  • Catechetical Oration 40Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Baptism without a changed life is only water: the baptized must show the character of God who begot them, restoring what they have taken, since the goods and punishments to come, the unquenchable fire and undying worm, are beyond description.
  • On the Life of Moses 299Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Gregory accepts his friend’s request for an account of the perfect life and argues that virtue, like every good, has no limit except its opposite.
  • On the Life of Moses 301Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Since the divine Good is unlimited, participation in it can never come to rest, so human perfection lies in always growing in the good; Scripture offers examples, as Isaiah points to Abraham and Sarah.
  • On the Life of Moses 327Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Beginning the spiritual contemplation, Gregory reads Moses’ birth as the birth of virtue: since a changeable nature is always being born, we are in a sense our own parents, and by choice can bring forth the “male” offspring of virtue that the tyrant fears.
  • On the Life of Moses 347Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · God does not cause vice: being “given up” to passion or “hardened” means that whoever refuses to know God falls by his own choice, as one who will not look at the sun falls into a pit; the frogs die when Moses stretches out his hands, a figure of Christ on the cross.
  • On the Life of Moses 353Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · The death of the firstborn teaches us to kill the first beginnings of evil, desire and anger, as Christ taught; the blood on lintel and doorposts figures the soul rightly ordered, reason above desire and spirit, guarded by faith in Christ.
  • On the Life of Moses 409Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · To see God’s back is to follow him, never to face him as an opponent; one who follows God is beyond the reach of vice, as Moses was beyond the reach of envy, the root of evils from Eden to Cain and Joseph, which Gregory describes at length.
  • On the Life of Moses 419Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Keeping to the king’s highway signifies virtue as the mean between excess and deficiency — courage between cowardice and rashness, wisdom between serpent and dove, self-control between licence and the condemnation of marriage; when the people grow in virtue, the devil turns to secret plots through Balaam.
  • On the Life of Moses 423Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · The Israelites, unbeaten in battle, were conquered by the Midianite women; Phinehas’s spear stopped God’s anger. Pleasure is the hardest enemy of all, which is why Christ cut out its root in the lustful look.
  • On the Life of Moses 427Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Moses ends his life on the mountain as “the servant of the Lord,” a living death that leaves no grave; Gregory sets out the whole journey as a programme for the reader, whose end is to become God’s servant.
  • On the Life of Moses 429Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Gregory concludes, addressing Caesarius: Moses, God’s servant and friend, is the pattern of perfection, and true perfection is to avoid vice not from fear of punishment nor to do good for reward, but to fear only the loss of God’s friendship.
  • Letter 1 to Himerius of Tarragona, chapter 3Siricius, bishop of Rome · 385 · Apostates who sacrificed to idols are excluded from communion, must do penance for life, and are reconciled only at death.
  • Letter 1 to Himerius of Tarragona, chapter 5Siricius, bishop of Rome · 385 · Penitents who return to military service, the shows, new marriages, or sexual relations are barred from communion except as viaticum at death.
  • Letter 1 to Himerius of Tarragona, chapter 6Siricius, bishop of Rome · 385 · Monks and nuns who have broken their vows and had children are to be expelled and do penance, receiving communion only at death.
  • Letter 1 to Himerius of Tarragona, chapter 7Siricius, bishop of Rome · 385 · Siricius condemns priests and deacons who beget children after ordination, arguing from the Levitical priests' temple service that clergy must be continent, and sets penalties.
  • On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.1Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Virtue can be taught, and reason, though it cannot uproot desire and anger, can restrain them.
  • On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.5Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Pleasure and pain lead the other passions, and temperance, taught by the law's food precepts, restrains them.
  • On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.9Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Scripture shows that the virtues are taught, and that righteousness is acquired by learning and obedience, which led to death in Adam and to life in Christ.
  • On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.10Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Guilt comes from our own will, not the flesh; our members become weapons of righteousness or of sin according to how we use them.
  • On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.37Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Weakness and poverty do not hinder the just man, whose life consists in sharing his goods with the poor and in temperance, patience, and courage.
  • On Jacob and the Happy Life 1.38Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The just man fears nothing but the loss of virtue; Elijah and Moses, Elisha and David are equally happy in different conditions, and the wise man, like a lyre player whose instrument is broken, delights in his inner good.
  • On Naboth 1Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The story of Naboth is repeated daily, as the rich covet and seize the land of the poor, who are driven out with their families.
  • On Naboth 2Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The earth was made common to rich and poor alike; nature begets all naked and the grave makes all equal.
  • On Naboth 3Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Riches buried with the rich man profit no one, and the wealth he leaves burdens good heirs or is wasted by bad ones.
  • On Naboth 4Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich man is truly poor, since avarice grows with wealth and he combines the ambition of the rich with the craving of a beggar.
  • On Naboth 5Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · King Ahab, rich in means, was poor in spirit, while Naboth, poor in land, was content; greed makes the rich man poor.
  • On Naboth 8Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Ahab's 'Give me' is a beggar's plea, but spoken not from need or humility but from greed and impudence.
  • On Naboth 9Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Ahab acknowledges the vineyard is Naboth's, yet covets it more than his own.
  • On Naboth 10Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Ahab offers money rather than land, wanting Naboth to own no land at all.
  • On Naboth 11Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich seek to exclude others more than to gain for themselves, claiming for a few a world created for all.
  • On Naboth 12Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Isaiah's woe on those who join field to field condemns the rich, who, unlike the animals that seek company, drive out their neighbors.
  • On Naboth 13Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Naboth refused to sell his ancestral inheritance; the rich should likewise not squander their inheritance on vice.
  • On Naboth 14Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Ahab sulked because he could not have Naboth's vineyard, as the rich grieve at anything not theirs.
  • On Naboth 15Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Ahab did not eat his own bread because the rich live on bread taken from others.
  • On Naboth 16Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The poor fast from need; the rich fast from avarice, neither using their wealth nor letting others use it.
  • On Naboth 17Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The miser starves himself to hoard wealth for heirs who wish him dead and will squander it.
  • On Naboth 18Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Ambrose tells of a rich miser who rationed his own bread and grudged eating an egg, an instance of God's justice punishing greed by self-inflicted hunger.
  • On Naboth 19Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · True fasting gives the cost of feasting to the poor; the rich man's table is made from the blood of the poor.
  • On Naboth 20Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The luxury of the rich costs the lives of the poor who labor and die to supply it, as Herod killed John the Baptist for a dancer's reward.
  • On Naboth 21Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Ambrose describes a poor man, ruined by a powerful creditor, forced by hunger to decide to sell his own children.
  • On Naboth 22Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The father agonizes over which of his children to sell first, finding reasons to keep each.
  • On Naboth 23Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The father imagines bargaining over his son and the son's reply that Joseph was sold by brothers, not by his father, and that he would not be sold to the rich.
  • On Naboth 24Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The father, torn between selling one child and seeing all starve, despairs at the shame of the deed.
  • On Naboth 25Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich man ignores the poor man's plight and Scripture's command to spend for a brother, while his wife spends on luxury what could free the poor.
  • On Naboth 26Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Women spend fortunes on jewels and silks that burden and chill them; polished stones should teach the polishing of hard minds.
  • On Naboth 27Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Riches cannot lengthen life, cure illness, or free from death, and the rich who gave nothing to the poor find nothing at the end.
  • On Naboth 28Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich man, like Dis, god of the dead, is an insatiable whirlpool of greed, a slave of sin more wretched than any slave.
  • On Naboth 29Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich man cannot sleep for greed, like the rich fool in the parable, to whom God said that his soul would be required that night.
  • On Naboth 30Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich fool's 'What shall I do?' is the cry of a starving poor man contemplating death for want of food.
  • On Naboth 31Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich fool complains of want amid abundance, more wretched than the poor, since he alone is to blame.
  • On Naboth 32Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich fool should have opened his barns to the hungry instead of building bigger ones.
  • On Naboth 33Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich fool, hoarding for higher prices, should have imitated Joseph and fed the poor; his barns are storehouses of iniquity.
  • On Naboth 34Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The cost of new barns would have fed the poor.
  • On Naboth 35Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The greedy man profits from scarcity and fears abundance lest it reach the poor, claiming the earth's produce to deny it to others.
  • On Naboth 36Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Riches are goods only when given to the poor, by which one lends to God and becomes bread to the hungry and father to orphans.
  • On Naboth 37Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The safest storehouses for grain are the poor, widows, and infants, where it is kept forever and returns with increase.
  • On Naboth 38Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Death comes by night to the greedy fool, who hoped in eating and drinking, while mercy brings the just to the day of paradise.
  • On Naboth 39Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The miser's hoard will go to others; better to be a generous steward and father of orphans, since only grace goes with us to judgment.
  • On Naboth 40Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The poor are not cursed but blessed; mercy gives according to need, not merit, and must not be postponed.
  • On Naboth 41Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich should not even seize others' goods; Jezebel figures avarice, which promises possessions by false charges and murder.
  • On Naboth 42Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Jezebel is the recurring figure of the avarice of the rich, a destructive flood.
  • On Naboth 44Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich fast and attend church to further their crimes, but God rejects such fasting and demands justice and care for the poor.
  • On Naboth 45Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Ambrose confronts the rich man who uses contracts and false witness against the poor, setting God's law and the judgment of conscience against him.
  • On Naboth 47Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Ahab feigned grief at Naboth's death and then took his vineyard, as the rich pretend sorrow over the harm they cause.
  • On Naboth 48Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · God's sentence that dogs would lick Ahab's blood where they licked Naboth's avenged the poor man by a fitting punishment.
  • On Naboth 49Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The harlots washing in Ahab's blood signify his bloody luxury; the rich should flee avarice, the Jezebel that drives to crime.
  • On Naboth 50Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The greedy rich man always feels poor and fears exposure, as Ahab's guilty conscience shows when he meets Elijah.
  • On Naboth 52Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Riches, like a well, stagnate unless drawn off; almsgiving quenches the fire of sin, which otherwise threatens the rich man as it did Dives.
  • On Naboth 53Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · What is given to the poor is not a gift but the return of what belongs to them, since the earth was given in common to all.
  • On Naboth 54Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich man's pride in birth and luxury is vain; all are born alike, and the gold he displays is dug by the poor, who are denied it.
  • On Naboth 55Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Gold is a stumbling block, and the rich man who keeps himself from it is so rare as to be marveled at, as Sirach says.
  • On Naboth 56Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich adorn walls and horses with marble and gold while the naked and hungry cry at their doors; a single jewel could save a whole people.
  • On Naboth 57Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Job, the model rich man, rescued the poor, widows, and orphans and yet lost everything but the fruit of mercy; how much worse for the rich who give nothing.
  • On Naboth 58Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich man is only steward of his wealth; he should sell it to buy eternal life, as Christ told the rich young man.
  • On Naboth 59Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · Wealth hoarded is shared with moth and rust; wealth given makes God the Father and Christ, who is fed in the poor, our debtors.
  • On Naboth 60Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · True riches are faith, mercy, simplicity, and wisdom; the rich who give to the poor lend to God.
  • On Naboth 63Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · 'Men of riches' are possessed by their wealth; not using it for the poor, they sleep their own sleep, not Christ's, and will not rise with him.
  • On Naboth 67Ambrose · ca. 386-390 · The rich should pray and render to God, through the poor, the gifts he gave them; God seeks not sacrifices but faith, praise, and mercy.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.2Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Ambrose argues from Scripture that the first thing to learn is silence, since speech so easily leads to sin.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.3Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Silence is not muteness: the Christian must guard both heart and mouth, keeping speech under the rein of humility and measure.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.4Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Guarded speech makes a man gentle and denies the devil the snares he sets through our words.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.5Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · When provoked, the just man stays silent and conquers by yielding, rather than letting the tempter stir him to retaliate.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.6Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · David’s silence under Shimei’s curses shows that the righteous are better off despising abuse than resenting it.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.9Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Against the philosophers’ division of duty into the virtuous and the useful, Ambrose measures both by eternal life, so that worldly advantages count rather as losses.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.10Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · The seemly is taught first in Scripture, and David, earlier than the philosophers, teaches measure in speech, learned like any skill by practice.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.11Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Duties are “middle” or “perfect,” as Christ’s answer to the rich young man shows, and mercy to the poor makes the Christian perfect like the Father.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.17Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · The duties of youth begin with the fear of God and modesty, shown in Isaac, Joseph, Moses, and Jeremiah.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.19Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Seemliness requires a consistent order of life and a natural, unaffected bearing, dress, and voice; beauty adds grace but is not virtue.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.21Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Anger must be foreseen, restrained, or at least kept from the tongue, after the examples of Jacob, children, Christ, and David.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.22Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Thought and appetite must obey reason; speech, whether conversation or teaching, should be calm, measured, and chiefly about the Scriptures.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.23Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Clergy should avoid all jesting, which Scripture does not sanction, and use a simple, clear, manly voice.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.24Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Right action requires appetite subject to reason, moderation, and fitness of order and time, all shown by Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Job, and David, who had the four cardinal virtues.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.25Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Ambrose explains why he teaches by the forefathers’ examples rather than by definitions, and shows the four virtues in Abraham, Jacob, and Noah.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.27Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Prudence, the first source of duty, is bound up with justice, whose order of piety runs to God, country, parents, and all, and the virtues are all akin.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.28Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Christian justice rejects the philosophers’ permission to retaliate and their view of private property, teaching mutual help from Scripture, while avarice and ambition destroy justice.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.29Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Justice and good faith bind even in war, as Moses, Joshua, and Elisha show, and faith in Christ is the foundation of justice, whose form is the Church.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.30Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Beneficence joins good will to giving: it must be honest, unboastful, ordered by need, faith, kinship, and circumstance, after Paul’s teaching on equality in 2 Corinthians 8.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.31Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Benefits should be returned more fully than received, like seed from the earth, and Solomon’s banquet is read as the feast of good works and God’s word.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.32Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Scripture is a banquet to be repaid in good works; benevolence, which can return gratitude even without means, binds friendship and human life from the family outward.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.33Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Benevolence grows within the Church’s fellowship of faith and sacraments and among the like-minded, as with David and Jonathan, but not between unlike characters such as Esau and Jacob.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.34Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Benevolence turns away anger, makes friends one, makes rebuke welcome, and can outweigh even kinship.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.36Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · True fortitude defends the wronged and conquers oneself, despising external goods for the sake of virtue, and the clergy above all must scorn worldly gain and trade.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.38Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · The brave man prepares his mind beforehand against dangers and losses, foreseeing what may come, and bears adversity like Job.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.39Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Fortitude fights all vices, above all avarice, anger, and love of glory, and Job is its supreme example.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.43Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Temperance begins with modesty and the company of approved elders, and requires judging what befits each person, time, and age.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.46Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Seemliness is general (the consistency of a whole life) and special (in particular acts), and it consists in living according to nature, as in creation and the human body.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.47Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Seemliness shines in a consistent life and pleasant speech, and it requires that appetite (Greek hormē) be ruled by reason, especially when anger rises.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.48Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Those wronged fall into three classes—the weak who retaliate, the advancing who keep silent, and the perfect who bless—and David under Shimei’s curses reached the third, looking to the perfection of the life to come.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 1.49Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Christians must keep the image of Christ and of the virtues, not the devil’s image of anger and avarice, for riches are vain and strip us of God’s image.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.1Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Book 2 opens: the blessed life, which Scripture calls eternal life, lies in the honourable and in seeking reward from God alone, not from human glory.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.2Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Against the philosophers’ varied views of happiness, Scripture places eternal life in the knowledge of God and in good works, as David taught long before them.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.3Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Scripture holds that only the honourable is good and that virtue is blessed in every state, even in suffering.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.4Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Virtue’s blessedness is neither lessened by pain nor increased by pleasure or wealth, as Moses, Aaron, Daniel, Elijah, and the Beatitudes show.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.5Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Riches and pleasures hinder blessedness, while virtue alone suffices for it, so that Naboth, the patriarchs, Joseph, David, and Job were blessed in their sufferings.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.6Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Ambrose defines the useful not as monetary gain but as piety, so that the useful, the honourable, and the just coincide, as in chastity and widowhood.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.7Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Nothing is more useful than to be loved, as the gentleness of Moses and David shows; love and trust, which follow from kindness and faithful friendship, are the first things that commend us.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.12Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Counsel is sought only from those whose lives are upright and who are approachable, not from the vicious or the inaccessible.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.14Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Prudence joined with justice makes a man fearless and contemptuous of money, and those in high office above all must not serve wealth.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.15Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Liberality includes discreet aid to the ashamed poor, ransoming captives, paying debts, caring for orphans and widows, and, for those without money, the gift of counsel and service.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.16Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Liberality needs measure against fraudulent beggars and a spur against hoarding, and Joseph, who sold grain and fixed a fifth as tribute, is the model of provident generosity.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.17Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · A counsellor must be a pattern of virtue, humble and content like Joseph and Paul, free from deceit and greed.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.19Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Equity sustains authority; benevolence and sincere, unflattering speech win favour, since God sees what is hidden.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.21Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Reputation grows by defending the oppressed and by hospitality, as with Abraham and Lot; liberality must be distinguished from prodigality, and the bishop must spend fittingly on churches, the poor, strangers, and clergy.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.25Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Benefits should go to the poor rather than the rich, for the poor are grateful and make the Lord their debtor, and Peter healed rather than enriched the lame man.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.26Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Avarice is an ancient vice, as Achan, Balaam, and Delilah show, and wealth beyond one’s use brings only the burden of guarding it.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 2.30Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Book 2 closes by urging the clergy to shun the wicked and envious, to act with forethought, to burn with zeal for God, and to keep peace and love among themselves.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 3.2Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · The honourable and the useful are one; perfect duty seeks the good of others, and the just never increase their own advantage at another’s loss.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 3.3Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · To take from another for one’s own advantage violates the example of Christ, the meaning of “humanity,” the unity of the body, the law of God, and the law of nature.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 3.4Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Harming another wounds one’s own conscience; one’s good is the common good, so a Christian may not save his life at another’s cost, even against a robber.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 3.5Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Against Plato’s fable of Gyges’ ring, true examples show the just man avoiding sin even when he could escape detection: David sparing Saul and John the Baptist refusing to keep silent.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 3.6Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Hoarding grain to raise prices in famine, however defended as industry, is avarice condemned by Scripture; Joseph opened the granaries, and the rich fool’s barns brought him nothing.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 3.7Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Expelling strangers from a city in famine is both shameful and useless, as a recent expulsion from Rome showed, whereas an aged prefect kept the strangers fed by a collection from the wealthy.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 3.8Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Joshua and Caleb chose the honourable over apparent safety and entered the promised land, while those who preferred safety perished in the desert.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 3.9Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Love of the honourable rules out hunting for inheritances and taking sides in money cases; David spared and mourned Saul, Naboth died rather than sell his inheritance, and all fraud is condemned.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 3.10Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Good faith must govern all contracts; Joshua, deceived by the Gibeonites, kept the peace he had sworn and punished their fraud only by servitude.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 3.11Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Ambrose passes over the philosophers’ examples of fraud (the Syracusan fish trick) and shows from Ananias, the Gospel, and Doeg’s betrayal of Ahimelech that Scripture condemns all fraud.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 3.12Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Promises that require a shameful act should not be kept, as Herod’s oath and Jephthah’s vow show; Jephthah’s daughter, keeping faith freely, surpasses the philosophers’ Damon and Phintias.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 3.14Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Elisha spared the captured Syrians, John rebuked Herod’s marriage, and Susanna chose death over disgrace: the honourable always proves useful.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 3.16Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Tobit’s burial of the dead and Raguel’s honest warning to Tobias about his daughter surpass the philosophers’ debates about disclosing defects in a sale.
  • On the Duties of the Clergy 3.22Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · The work closes with friendship: it must yield to the honourable and to truth, yet be faithful, frank in reproof, equal, and constant, after the patterns of Scripture and of Christ, who calls his disciples friends.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 1.2.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The psalm puts a good life before knowledge, as Hosea and Psalm 1 also do.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 1.6.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ’s word about cleansing the inside of the cup shows that teaching without a pure life is worthless.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 1.9.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · If shame before a human witness can stop a sinner, how much more the thought that angels are everywhere present.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 1.10.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Whoever believed that God and his angels witness every thought would fear to sin even in secret.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 1.10.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The secret sinner is like a blind man who thinks he is alone; his own conscience accuses him.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 1.12.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The fornicator is never alone: the Father, the Son, and the angels are present.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 1.12.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ sees the adulterer, who has entered the brothel already in his thoughts.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 1.12.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · By adultery in the heart, Christ says, a man makes himself a brothel.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 1.15.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Since Adam was put to shame by sin, we must keep all the commandments, for breaking one is enough to condemn.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 2.1.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The young man who corrects his way has first erred and now, confused, weighs how to amend his life.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 2.37.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · On verse 16: we must meditate on God’s righteous acts by doing them.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 3.37.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · God resists the proud, above all those who despise their poor brothers.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 4.8.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Those free of lust are like angels; those ruled by lust are flesh and even neighing horses.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 5.28.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The shows of the circus and theater are vanities from which the eyes must be turned.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 5.30.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Lust and covetousness let death in through the windows of the eyes.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 5.30.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Shut the windows of the eyes against another’s wife and against the harlot.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 5.30.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Death enters also through the window of seductive words; guard yourself from another man’s wife.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 5.30.4Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Death enters by kisses, by speech and by silence, and through the ears.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 5.32.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Greed snares rich and poor; delight should be in God’s precepts, not passing successes.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 5.38.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Some Christians too fear God without knowledge, imposing precepts too harsh for human nature.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 6.14.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Bearing abuse without returning it wins God’s protection.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 6.20.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The eyes are windows by which lust and greed bring in death.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 6.32.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The greedy man, however much land he adds, is cramped by his own greed; the seeker of God’s testimonies walks in a broad place.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 7.19.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Like a father or physician with a raving patient, the good man grieves for the sinner and keeps trying to heal him.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 7.20.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The righteous man treats his injurer as one sick with madness and pities him.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 7.31.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Night incites sin; it was night when Judas betrayed and Peter denied.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 7.32.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · At night we should recall God’s precepts on chastity to quench lust.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 8.23.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Mercy to the poor is justice, for God gave the earth in common; greed made it private property.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 8.35.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The man who looks at a woman to lust has already sinned; another falls by a sudden glance for lack of forethought.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 8.35.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Forethought guards against lust; even after a sudden glance, turning to God’s testimonies frees one from captivity.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 8.35.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · One gripped by love for a woman should consider Christ and dash his desires against the rock of Christ.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 8.42.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Almsgiving and intercession for the condemned loose our own bonds of sin.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 8.55.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Whoever comforts mourners and serves prisoners, the sick, the naked, and the hungry is Christ’s companion.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 8.57.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Ambrose confesses that he falls short; only one who helps the God-fearing in need can claim to be their companion.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 9.21.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Peter, without silver or gold, truly preferred God’s law; the greedy and legacy-hunters do not.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 10.3.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Patience under blows is a sign of humility, as desolate Jerusalem must learn.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 10.21.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The wise man both hears and does Christ’s words.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 10.25.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · In the poor we honor the one in whose image they are made, Christ himself.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 10.26.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · We walk among Christ’s images; to harm the poor is to insult their maker.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 10.26.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ will judge us not only for neglecting the poor but for injuring them, for what is done to the least is done to him.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 10.41.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · On verse 78: the psalmist does not curse his enemies but, like a physician, wishes them to blush and be healed.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 10.41.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Some sinners even boast of fornication and oppression, glorying in their shame.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 10.42.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Being exercised in God’s precepts means helping even an enemy; vengeance permitted by the law is not allowed by the gospel.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 10.43.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Paul calls us to be justly sober: sober not only from wine but from injustice.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 10.46.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ teaches that evil comes from the heart; we must cleanse the inside first.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 11.6.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · We should long for God’s salvation, not money, another’s wife, ambition, or fraud.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 11.18.4Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · By chastity, continence, and righteousness we tread on the serpent and scorpion.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 11.28.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Only grace-given life keeps God’s commandments; the psalmist longs for Christ’s coming, which fulfills the law by forbidding even adulterous desire.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 11.28.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ, the Father’s mouth, forbade even adultery in the heart, advancing chastity.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.8.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Taking the moral sense first, Ambrose urges imitation of heaven’s steady order.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.8.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Heaven’s seasons give a pattern for life: always sow seed for future fruit.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.8.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Heavenly seeds must be tended patiently, not allowed to run riot, until their fruit ripens.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.9.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · As the sky changes its seasons, youthful wantonness should give way to sober maturity.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.9.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Sun, moon and year keep their appointed courses without transgression.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.12.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Whoever lives the angelic life in integrity and self-control is called “heaven,” as the fallen one is called “earth.”
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.15.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Sloth and drowsiness bolt the door against Christ, who seeks a watchful bride.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.28.4Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · We fight best by turning the other cheek, leaving vengeance to God, and disciplining ourselves.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.31.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Potiphar’s wife tempted Joseph to adultery and had him imprisoned; then prosperity tempted him.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.37.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The rich young man found God not enough; the apostles, who left everything, could say “I am yours.”
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.39.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The worldly man is claimed by many masters: lust, avarice, luxury.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.39.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Luxury and ambition each claim the worldly man as their slave.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.39.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Ambition enslaves those it makes rulers, as the devil offered Christ the kingdoms for worship.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.40.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ answers that only one whose life matches his words, who denies himself, is truly his.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.40.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ disowns the lustful, the grasping, the angry and the drunken, whom the devil claims as his own.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.41.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Only one free of sin and constant is Christ’s; changeable passions each claim the soul.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.41.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Only one with a clear conscience, like Paul, belongs wholly to Christ; Ambrose confesses he is divided.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.42.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · While others heap up property, the prophet’s whole inheritance is God’s statutes and Christ.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.44.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Alternatively, sinners tried to lure the prophet into sin, but understanding God’s testimonies saved him.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.44.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · True understanding shows itself in deeds, such as feeding the poor.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.52.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The commandment of love, which includes enemies, is the broadest of all.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.52.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christians, unlike others, must be at peace with all and love even enemies.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 12.52.4Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The broad commandment is to bless persecutors, as David prayed for those who slandered him.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 13.16.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The prophet teaches how to keep one’s feet from the slippery way of sin.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 13.16.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The evil way is the world’s vanity; resist desires that ravage the soul’s field.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 13.27.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Claiming to keep the commandments while breaking them is ignorance, not understanding.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 13.27.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · God’s words cannot be sweet to a deceitful tongue; Peter bids us put away guile.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 13.27.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Honey under the tongue means blessing those who curse and hating only iniquity.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 13.28.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · We rightly love God’s servants and our enemies, and rightly hate God’s enemies and sin.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 13.28.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Hatred of worldly things guards against lust and pride; Christ became poor and sought no praise.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 14.7.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The oil is humility and mercy, as the Samaritan poured oil on the wounded man.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 14.7.6Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · A clean conscience makes the whole person bright; a dark one darkens the body.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 14.12.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · One who forgets the word after church walks in darkness and does the works of darkness.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 14.14.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · One swears rightly only when one knows what one swears and is firm in mind.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 14.14.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · An oath should be preceded by knowledge of the truth.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 14.14.4Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ forbade oaths because he spoke to the weak, so that they would not swear falsely.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 14.20.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Only Christ can teach humility; it is hard to keep it in every respect.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 14.23.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · We imitate God by doing everything through the word and with reason.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 14.28.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · God’s deep judgments are learned from Christ: repay injury with kindness.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 14.28.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ did not return evil for evil but prayed for his persecutors.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 14.30.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Whoever rules himself is a king whose heart is in God’s hand, and no one snatches him from it.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 14.34.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The soul that keeps the law and uses wealth for the poor ascends white, and the heavenly powers marvel.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 14.36.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Riches are the devil’s snare, which Christ, owning nothing of the devil’s, broke.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 14.37.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Avarice and luxury are the bait of the devil’s snare.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 14.37.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Dead to the world and alive in Christ, the saint flees the city’s snares of usury and deceit.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 15.22.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · David hated lawlessness, not the lawless persons, in keeping with the Gospel command to love enemies.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 15.37.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · A spiritual nail fixes the flesh, including fleshly thoughts, to Christ’s cross.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.3.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The eye tempts, but Christ places the sin of adultery in the heart, not the eye.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.6.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Seeing orphans’ property in order to protect it makes the eye a spring of good.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.6.4Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Defending a widow, so that she need not remarry for protection, makes the eye a spring of justice.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.6.5Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Burying the poor dead makes the eye a source of redemption.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.7.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Coveting and seizing an orphan’s field makes the eye a source of eternal death.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.7.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Wronging a widow or scorning the poor makes the eye a source of sin.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.12.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Scripture shows the devil instigates incontinence and avarice.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.13.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Sinners belong to the devil; the chaste and merciful are Christ’s, whom the devil cannot claim unless they fall.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.13.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · David did Christ’s works: just judgment for orphan, widow and poor.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.14.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Judgment and justice are public virtues; virginity and frugality profit chiefly oneself.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.14.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Justice alone serves others at all times, at its own cost.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.40.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Only one free of avarice, like Peter, can truly love God’s commandments above gold.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.45.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · One may avoid one vice but fall into another; youth is especially prone to lust.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.45.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Avoiding one sin often leads into another, as frugality can turn to avarice.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.45.4Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Avarice, ambition, and clinging to ancestral error are other wrong ways; changing for the better is virtue.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 16.45.5Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Shows or country leisure keep people from church; one who hates every evil way is wholly corrected.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 17.4.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Lam 4:16: they did not honor the saints; mercy is owed especially to the fallen noble.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 17.10.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Read prophet and apostle first, then the Gospel with its stronger precepts, such as love of enemies.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 17.16.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The soul keeps its sandal of flesh clean by chastising the body.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 17.16.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Modesty is the soul’s sandal and wisdom its mantle; the body should serve, not rule.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 18.16.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Our inner temple must not become a house of trade or a den of robbers through greed.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 18.31.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Youth is prone to pride, so humility in the young needs great maturity.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 18.35.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Human good works are rare, partial, or a mere show of righteousness.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 18.35.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Only God’s righteousness is eternal; true righteousness extends even to enemies.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 18.46.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The truly understanding are godly: they pardon, give to the poor as a debt, and help the afflicted.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 19.19.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · To “anticipate” is to be mature in youth; late devotion in old age earns little praise.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 19.19.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The crown belongs to those who master their flesh in a hard contest.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 19.28.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Those sealed with Christ’s image must seal truth in word and deed by works of mercy.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 19.34.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Persecutors draw near but move away from God’s law of love; the brother is bought by Christ’s blood.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 20.4.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Humility commends the lowly; pride debases even the noble and gifted.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 20.16.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · There is also a humility of virtue, kept by the righteous even in prosperity.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 20.17.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Imitate Christ, who emptied himself; despise no one for lowly station.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 20.33.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · In the Gospel Christ takes on various roles to teach us, such as the good shepherd.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 20.36.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · As a good judge Christ does nothing by private will but judges by law and evidence.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 20.37.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ’s “I cannot” comes from integrity, not weakness; judges should learn from him.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 20.38.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Pilate claimed power Christ himself declined to claim, and so condemned himself.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 20.39.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · A judge follows the law, not his will, as a magistrate follows imperial decrees.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 20.39.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ teaches judges to prefer truth to human will, which is swayed by passions.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 20.45.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · All the godly suffer persecution from vices, each an evil spirit.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 20.47.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Every victory over temptation makes one a martyr, a witness of Christ.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 20.47.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Defending the orphan and widow, or choosing humility, makes one Christ’s witness.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 21.17.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Let the peace that surpasses understanding rule over every passion.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 21.17.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Peace of mind is the goal of wisdom, righteousness and even courage.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 21.18.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The righteous who give all away are often despised, even in church.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 21.18.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The generous should not be troubled by contempt; reward here diminishes the eternal reward.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 21.19.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Those with great peace do not stumble; causing the weak to stumble is grave.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 22.7.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · We draw near to Christ by imitating him, and through him to the Father.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 22.11.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Ambrose admires the holy fool who despises wealth, honors and philosophy.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 22.20.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Hedge your ears and tongue against worldly talk and slander.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 22.20.4Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Bind your tongue with silence; the thorns are contrition and fear of judgment.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 22.21.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · All God’s commandments are righteousness, summed up in love.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 22.21.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Murder, adultery, theft, covetousness and contempt are all failures of love.
  • Exposition of Psalm 118 22.34.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Bear Christ’s image in deeds: turn the other cheek, love enemies, take up the cross.
  • On the Happy Life 25Augustine of Hippo · 386 (November) · Augustine argues that the wise man, whose mind is perfect, is not made wretched by bodily needs, death, or pain, since he avoids what he can and wills only what is in accord with virtue.
  • Against the Academics 3.27Augustine of Hippo · 386 (autumn) · Augustine argues that sense illusions do not touch ethics, where he knows at least the disjunction that the highest good lies in nothing, the mind, the body, or both.
  • Against the Academics 3.35Augustine of Hippo · 386 (autumn) · Augustine argues that the Academic doctrine would excuse a young man who commits adultery because it seemed probable to him, making error and even sin impossible to blame.
  • Against the Academics 3.36Augustine of Hippo · 386 (autumn) · Augustine argues that the Academic doctrine would excuse every crime and that the Academics surely saw this, though even Cicero could not refute one who says 'I know that it seems so to me.'
  • Letter 22.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine hopes that Aurelius and church councils can correct the disorders of the African church, especially drunkenness and strife, which are tolerated while sexual sin is punished.
  • Letter 22.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine complains that drunken feasts are tolerated, even held daily at the martyrs' shrines, while sexual sin is rightly punished by exclusion from communion.
  • Letter 22.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine says strife and jealousy, born of pride and love of praise, are worse among the clergy, and that a cleric should accept honour only for the good of others.
  • Letter 22.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine reflects on the difficulty of not delighting in praise, confessing that he himself is often wounded in this struggle.
  • Letter 26.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine warns Licentius that in fleeing the bonds of wisdom he is binding himself to the harsher bonds of worldly ambition.
  • Letter 26.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine contrasts Licentius's care for correct verse with his neglect of an ordered life, and takes up his poem's line 'only bid me' by bidding him give himself to God.
  • Letter 29.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine reports that, when the people of Hippo protested against the banning of the festival of 'Gladness', he preached on Christ's saying about dogs and swine.
  • Letter 29.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · At the beginning of Lent Augustine preached on Christ's cleansing of the temple, arguing that he would far more drive out drunken feasts.
  • Letter 29.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine reminded the people that Israel feasted in drunkenness only once, before the golden calf, and urged them not to do as Christians what Israel did for an idol.
  • Letter 29.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine read the people Paul's lists of sins that exclude from the kingdom, including drunkenness, and his rebuke of feasting at the Lord's supper, arguing that no banquets belong in the church.
  • Letter 29.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine read the people Paul's lists of the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, asking how Christians could be known by the fruit of drunkenness.
  • Letter 29.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answered the example of drinking at St Peter's in Rome by reading Peter's own letter against drunkenness, and invited the people to a midday service of readings and psalms.
  • Letter 31.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine wants Paulinus and Therasia in Africa as a visible example, since their renunciation of great wealth fulfils gladly what the rich young man heard with sadness.
  • Letter 38.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine reports the death of the primate Megalius and warns that anger, even just anger, if harboured, grows into hatred.
  • Letter 44.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine notes Donatist violence and answers Fortunius's question about killing by citing Elijah, while granting that such deeds are not done by good men now.
  • Letter 46.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Publicola, a landowner, asks Augustine eighteen questions on oaths sworn by pagan gods, food and objects connected with idols, and self-defence.
  • Letter 47.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that using the good faith of someone who swore by false gods is not a share in his sin, and that oaths are forbidden to guard against perjury.
  • Letter 47.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers the questions on food offered to idols, temple produce and wells, and on acting with an uncertain conscience.
  • Letter 47.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rejects killing in self-defence except for soldiers and officials acting for others, and holds that one is not guilty of harm arising from lawful things such as a wall.
  • Letter 47.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers that a starving traveller should refuse food known to be offered to an idol but may eat it if this is unknown.
  • Letter 48.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges the monks to persevere, not to refuse service to the church out of love of leisure, and to avoid both pride and sloth.
  • Letter 48.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges the monks to do all their works, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and mutual forbearance, for the glory of God.
  • Letter 55.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine distinguishes astrology, which he condemns, from observing natural seasons and from using creation as figures of sacred truths.
  • Letter 55.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine distinguishes legitimate uses of the stars in farming, navigation, and teaching from astrology's search for fated outcomes.
  • Letter 55.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that of the Ten Commandments only the sabbath is to be kept figuratively, as spiritual rest, while the others are kept literally.
  • Letter 55.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine interprets the three days of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection: the cross is the present life of mortifying sin, the burial and resurrection are held in faith and hope.
  • Letter 80.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine asks Paulinus to explain more fully how we recognize God’s will when it calls us to change a decision that was not in itself wrong.
  • Letter 80.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine asks Paulinus how to discern God’s will through circumstances that call one to change a course of action.
  • Letter 82.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that Jerome’s ‘arrangement’ (dispensatio) is simply a dutiful lie under another name.
  • Letter 82.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine insists that the authors of canonical Scripture never lie, and praises Paul’s just freedom and Peter’s humility in accepting correction as the better answer to Porphyry.
  • Letter 91.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine points Nectarius to Cicero’s On the Republic, whose praise of virtue is truly taught in the churches, and argues that imitating the pagan gods corrupts morals.
  • Letter 91.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues, citing Terence and Cicero, that imitating the pagan gods makes men worse, as with the young man in Terence who excused his lust by Jupiter’s example.
  • Letter 91.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine mocks the claim that the myths of the gods are interpreted allegorically, pointing to the public celebration of Jupiter’s adulteries and the obscene games of Flora.
  • Letter 91.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine distinguishes degrees of guilt among the people of Calama and asks that the guilty be spared life and livelihood but deprived of the wealth that enables their wickedness.
  • Letter 93.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Love can strike and gentleness can deceive; God himself both comforts and chastises those he loves.
  • Letter 93.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The same act differs by motive: the Father, Christ and Judas all handed Christ over, and Paul himself handed men over to Satan for their correction.
  • Letter 95.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine agrees that one must die to the world, but asks how to live among worldly people without being drawn into their pleasures, and notes the temptation of inner self-praise.
  • Letter 95.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine confesses daily uncertainty about when and how to punish or forgive in the church, citing conflicting Scriptural commands.
  • Letter 95.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine states the general rules of Christian living and that grace determines what each can do, and asks Paulinus to seek counsel on living among men.
  • Letter 104.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Nectarius should fear luxury, not poverty, for his people; Augustine never wished them reduced to want.
  • Letter 104.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Love sometimes withholds what is asked, as one keeps a sword from a child or pulls a boy away from snakes; a good ruler serves the people's good, not their wishes.
  • Letter 104.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · A Christian forgives readily and never seeks vengeance, but forgiveness does not exclude restraining and correcting.
  • Letter 109.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Severus praises Augustine's ministry for leading readers through love of neighbor to the love of God, which has no measure.
  • Letter 111.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine teaches that women who suffer rape without consent remain chaste, since the guilt is the attacker's alone.
  • Letter 112.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine reports the universal praise of Donatus's administration and reminds him that true worth lies in the deeds themselves, not in popular fame.
  • Letter 118.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine warns that seeking fame as a means to wealth, marriage, or honors only leads from one unstable good to another, whereas the truth is near and free.
  • Letter 118.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine shows Dioscorus that the knowledge needed is how to be happy: the highest good lies not in the body or the mind but in God.
  • Letter 118.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine tells Dioscorus that the way to truth is humility, first, second, and third, as the orator said of delivery.
  • Letter 122.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine writes to his clergy and people at Hippo, asking them not to be saddened by his absence and urging them to persevere in good works in view of eternal life.
  • Letter 122.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges the people of Hippo to resume their custom of clothing the poor and to store up treasure in heaven as the world's troubles increase.
  • Letter 125.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rejects the idea that Pinianus's oath, given under the crowd's pressure, could lawfully be broken, citing Regulus and the Roman censors.
  • Letter 125.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that an oath binds according to the known expectation of those to whom it is sworn, so Pinianus may travel but must keep his promise to reside at Hippo.
  • Letter 126.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that the people loved Pinianus's renunciation of wealth rather than coveting it, as they had loved his own renunciation of his small inheritance.
  • Letter 126.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine tells Albina that an oath must be kept even when given under fear, as even soldiers keep oaths sworn to enemies.
  • Letter 126.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine denies that residence at Hippo is a form of exile and insists that the oath was offered, not extorted.
  • Letter 126.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that the people expect only that Pinianus reside at Hippo with the intention of returning from any journey, and that the necessity clause was withdrawn by Pinianus himself.
  • Letter 126.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges that Pinianus keep his promise for the sake of the weak, and defends his own acceptance of the oath.
  • Letter 127.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges that this life be made the servant of eternal life by taking Christ's easy yoke, under which a good will finds rest.
  • Letter 127.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine distinguishes Christians who love the world from those who despise it, citing the parable of the houses built on rock and on sand.
  • Letter 130.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · A true widow must count herself desolate and not set her heart on pleasures, caring for the body only for the sake of health.
  • Letter 130.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Many saints gave their riches to the poor; Proba must at least not set her heart on her wealth, and the judgment of her conduct belongs to God.
  • Letter 130.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Honors and a sufficiency of goods may be fittingly sought, not for themselves but for the good of others and of bodily health.
  • Letter 130.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · All temporal goods must be referred to eternal life with God; we love God for himself and ourselves and our neighbors for his sake, but are not yet happy.
  • Letter 133.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine begs the tribune Marcellinus not to put to death the Donatist clerics and Circumcellions who confessed to murdering and maiming Catholic presbyters.
  • Letter 133.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges Marcellinus, who obtained the confessions without torture, to show the same mildness in sentencing, so that Christian gentleness may be seen.
  • Letter 134.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine tells Apringius of the Donatists' confessed crimes and begs him not to sentence them to death.
  • Letter 134.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The sword is given to the magistrate, but the church's cause calls for clemency, and Augustine appeals to Apringius as a fellow Christian.
  • Letter 134.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that executing the Donatists would discredit the church's martyrs and asks Apringius to spare them so that they may have time to repent.
  • Letter 136.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Marcellinus reports Volusian's further objections: why God changed the sacrifices, and how Christ's teaching on non-retaliation can be compatible with the state, given the evils under Christian emperors.
  • Letter 137.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The two great commandments contain physics, ethics, logic, and the true well-being of the state, surpassing all philosophy and law.
  • Letter 137.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers those who say Christianity harms the state: they want impunity for vice, but God's grace sustains the faithful in adversity and prosperity until the heavenly city.
  • Letter 138.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · To the charge that Christ's teaching on non-retaliation harms the state, Augustine replies that Roman authors themselves praised those who preferred to pardon injuries.
  • Letter 138.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Romans applaud forgiveness in their own authors but accuse the church that preaches it; a city is a multitude bound by concord, which their quarreling gods could not teach.
  • Letter 138.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Christ's precepts of non-retaliation aim to overcome evil with good, so that the wrongdoer may be corrected and restored to concord.
  • Letter 138.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The command to turn the other cheek is not to be taken literally but as teaching patience: temporal things should be yielded for the sake of eternal ones.
  • Letter 138.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Christ and Paul, when struck, did not literally turn the other cheek, showing that the precept concerns the heart's readiness more than the outward act.
  • Letter 138.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Patience lives in the heart, but correction, like a father's or even a just war, may be applied with goodwill for the wrongdoer's good; the prosperity of vice is God's sharpest punishment.
  • Letter 138.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Christian teaching does not forbid military service, as John the Baptist's words to soldiers show; citizens formed by it would be the state's salvation.
  • Letter 138.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · God sent the cross of Christ as help against moral corruption; Rome's civic virtues built an earthly city, but true religion makes people citizens of the city whose king is truth and whose law is love.
  • Letter 139.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine again asks that the Donatist murderers not be executed, reports the Donatist bishop Macrobius's activity, and cites an imperial precedent of clemency.
  • Letter 140.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Human life begins entangled in the senses, but at the age of reason one can, helped by God, choose the inner life whose happiness is eternal; the soul stands between the body and its Creator.
  • Letter 140.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The soul uses temporal goods well when it keeps them in order beneath eternal ones; even when it uses goods badly, God uses evil well and orders sinners justly in punishment.
  • Letter 140.45Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · 'You who fear the Lord, praise him' means 'love him'; fear is the beginning of wisdom, preparing a place for love, which then casts out fear.
  • Letter 140.53Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Love casts out servile fear of punishment but keeps the chaste fear of losing God, like a loving wife who fears her husband's absence rather than his anger.
  • Letter 140.62Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Love lives by the heavenly bread; its breadth is good works, its length patient endurance, its height the hope of eternal life, and its depth the hidden grace of God's will, as in Ephesians 3.
  • Letter 140.68Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · 'My soul lives for him': believers must live not for themselves in pride but for Christ, doing his will as he did the Father's, and so become the good seed that serves God.
  • Letter 140.75Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The wise virgins' reply is humble; their lamps are good works done for God's glory and fed by the oil of a good conscience, while the foolish virgins' lamps fail when human praise is withdrawn.
  • Letter 140.77Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The virgins signify continence and the five senses, the lamps good works, and the oil the inner intention of loving God; the foolish lack it because they ascribe their good works to themselves and delight in praise.
  • Letter 144.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Even the pagan Polemo's reform by Xenocrates was God's gift, since continence comes only from God; so the Cirtans' conversion is to be credited to God, not to Augustine.
  • Letter 145.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine reflects that the world is more dangerous when it allures than when it troubles, and that the will is not truly free without God's grace.
  • Letter 145.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The law reveals human weakness and drives us to grace; the Spirit pours love into our hearts, and love fulfills the law, whereas those who trust their own strength find the law a chain.
  • Letter 145.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Abstaining from sin only for fear of punishment is not righteousness; the righteous fear sin itself out of love, the chaste fear that perfect love does not cast out.
  • Letter 145.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Righteousness should be served out of delight, as sin once was; mature love of righteousness persists even under torture, letting good works shine.
  • Letter 145.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Paul's 'Who will separate us from the love of Christ?' shows that we cling to Christ, who is our righteousness, by love and not by fear of punishment.
  • Letter 152.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Macedonius, vicar of Africa, writes to Augustine asking whether episcopal intercession for criminals is consistent with religion, since it seems to approve their crimes, especially when they keep their gains.
  • Letter 153.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Bishops intercede not because they approve crimes but because they hate the vice and love the human being, who can amend only in this life.
  • Letter 153.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Even those who relapse after the church's once-only public penance are not beyond God's patience, and their repentance still profits them for the life to come.
  • Letter 153.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · God alone is good by nature; human beings are good by sharing in his goodness through his Spirit, and are called good when their good deeds prevail.
  • Letter 153.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · There is a merciful punishment and a cruel leniency; killing differs in guilt by intention, and one is not guilty of every death one occasions.
  • Letter 153.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Civil severity and episcopal intercession are both useful; Paul's teaching in Romans 13 shows the ruler's sword is from God, and both must act from love.
  • Letter 153.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · True repentance requires restoring stolen property when possible; bishops intercede for debtors only to prevent needless cruelty, not to block restitution.
  • Letter 153.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Not every payment taken from the unwilling is unjust, but judges and witnesses must never sell their verdicts or testimony, even when just.
  • Letter 153.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Customary fees taken by court officials may be given to the poor, but what was taken by theft or extortion must be restored, as Zacchaeus did.
  • Letter 153.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · An advocate who wins unjust cases has more reason to restore his fees than a minor official; usury too is wrong possession, though no court will order its return.
  • Letter 153.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Only the just truly possess what they have; civil law restrains bad possessors until the godly reach the eternal city, and Augustine closes his letter to Macedonius.
  • Letter 155.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The philosophers lacked true piety because they sought to make themselves happy by their own virtue, and so absurdly allowed the wise man to kill himself to escape suffering.
  • Letter 155.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Cicero's Tusculans show the contradiction of philosophers who call the wise man always happy yet advise him to kill himself under extreme suffering; the remedy is to pray to God.
  • Letter 155.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Macedonius's civic virtues are not true virtues if they aim only at people's earthly security and not at their worship of the true God.
  • Letter 155.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Civic virtues become true when referred to the worship of God, and in eternal life the four virtues will be one: clinging to God.
  • Letter 155.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Virtue in this life is loving what ought to be loved, above all God, to whom we go not by walking but by loving.
  • Letter 155.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Love of neighbor extends to all human beings by the fellowship of nature, as even Terence's famous line, applauded in the theaters, shows.
  • Letter 155.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · There are only two great commandments because one loves oneself rightly only by loving God; love of neighbor means leading others to worship God.
  • Letter 155.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The virtues are given by God through Christ the mediator; the saints are called happy amid torments only in hope of their eternal goal.
  • Letter 157.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Those who avoid grave crimes and cleanse daily sins by mercy and prayer will die free of sin, but sinlessness cannot be an excuse for license.
  • Letter 157.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Christ told the rich young man that keeping the commandments leads to life and that selling everything is the counsel of perfection, so the rich who keep the commandments can be saved.
  • Letter 157.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Paul's instruction to the rich in 1 Timothy 6 shows that riches themselves do not condemn, but pride and trust in wealth.
  • Letter 157.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Christ's saying about the camel and the needle must be read with his assurance that what is impossible for men is easy for God.
  • Letter 157.35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · True Christian rich people use their wealth for hospitality and charity and are ready to lose wealth, family, and life for Christ.
  • Letter 157.36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Many rich Christians became martyrs, and those who keep their wealth but show mercy to Christ in the needy will stand at his right hand.
  • Letter 157.40Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine briefly answers that the church on earth contains good and bad, and advises avoiding oaths, while noting that Paul himself swore.
  • Letter 167.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine sets out the context of James 2:1–11 and the apparent consequence that partiality to the rich makes one guilty of every crime.
  • Letter 167.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine distinguishes the philosophers' doctrine that the virtues are inseparable from the Stoic doctrine that all sins are equal, which Jerome refuted against Jovinian.
  • Letter 167.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The philosophers' argument for the inseparability of the four cardinal virtues.
  • Letter 167.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Each virtue has two opposing vices: one plainly contrary, one deceptively similar.
  • Letter 167.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Catiline's endurance was not courage but hardness, because it lacked the other virtues.
  • Letter 167.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Because each virtue faces two vices, the vices are more numerous and do not hang together as the virtues do.
  • Letter 167.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Vices replace one another, but a virtue entering drives out all vices.
  • Letter 167.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Faithful spouses have the virtue of chastity yet are not without sin, so one virtue does not bring all; even the apostles say “we all stumble in many things.”
  • Letter 167.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Love, which is piety and the fullness of the law, is the true virtue and admits of more and less.
  • Letter 167.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rejects the Stoic image of the sage emerging suddenly from water into air.
  • Letter 167.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Progress in virtue is like gradually coming out of a cave into light: the righteous live by faith, yet no one here lives without sin.
  • Letter 167.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Even if the virtues are inseparable, sins are not equal; virtue, as love, exists in degrees in different acts and persons.
  • Letter 167.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Virtue is love of what ought to be loved; it is never full in this life, so all must pray “forgive us our debts,” and the commandments show us our need of grace.
  • Letter 167.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · One becomes “guilty of all” because every sin offends against love, on which the whole law hangs.
  • Letter 167.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Guilt is greater or less according to how far one acts against love, so sins are not equal even though each makes one guilty of all.
  • Letter 167.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Partiality is a grave sin if it concerns church offices; in ordinary seating it is sin when one inwardly judges the rich better.
  • Letter 167.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The law of liberty is the law of love; James offers works of mercy as the daily remedy for daily sins.
  • Letter 167.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · God unites mercy and judgment; those who forgive and give find mercy for their daily sins.
  • Letter 173.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Donatus's attempt to drown himself was free but destructive; rescuing him against his will was an act of love, and suicide is never permitted.
  • Letter 173.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · 1 Cor 13:3 does not commend suicide but the choice to suffer rather than do evil, as the three young men in Daniel did.
  • Letter 177.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · “Whoever is born of God does not sin” refers to love, which grows in this life while desire remains until it is extinguished in the next.
  • Letter 180.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Figurative speech, such as Christ's saying that the Son does not know the day, is not lying, as Hilary showed.
  • Letter 180.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Paul's rebuke of Peter in Gal 2:14 is plain speech, not figure, and must be true.
  • Letter 185.35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The Catholics do not covet Donatist property; they wish to share church goods, which belong to the poor, with those who join them.
  • Letter 189.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine sums up his advice to Boniface in the two commandments of love, which he should grow in by prayer and good works.
  • Letter 189.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Military service does not exclude pleasing God, as David, the centurion, Cornelius and the soldiers instructed by John the Baptist show.
  • Letter 189.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Monks fight for soldiers by prayer and soldiers for monks by arms; in this world the good must live among the wicked until the proper time.
  • Letter 189.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine counsels Boniface to keep faith even with enemies, to wage war only of necessity for the sake of peace, and to show mercy to the conquered.
  • Letter 189.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges Boniface to conjugal chastity, sobriety and detachment from riches, to humility and prayer, and to ready forgiveness of others.
  • Letter 192.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine replies to the deacon Caelestinus with a meditation on love as a debt always paid and always owed, even to enemies.
  • Letter 192.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Unlike money, love grows by being given and demanded, so Augustine both repays and still owes Caelestinus love, as Rom 13:8 commands.
  • Letter 196.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · To avoid Judaizing one must drop the ceremonial observances, which were shadows, and keep the moral law of love, attributing all progress in it to grace.
  • Letter 203.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges Largus, after his worldly misfortunes, to despise the vanities of this world and turn to the hope of the godly.
  • Letter 204.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues from Scripture that suicide is murder, since even killing a dying man at his request is forbidden.
  • Letter 204.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers the Donatists' appeal to Razis in 2 Maccabees by arguing that not every deed recorded in Scripture is to be imitated, and that Razis acted from pride.
  • Letter 204.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine says Scripture narrates rather than praises Razis's suicide, and that by Sirach's standard he showed impatience rather than wisdom.
  • Letter 204.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that Razis's death, though great, was not good, since either he was not righteous or his killing himself was the killing of a righteous man.
  • Letter 210.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine writes to the nuns Felicitas and Rusticus that God's goodness even to the wicked shows what he prepares for the faithful, and urges them to bear with one another in love.
  • Letter 210.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine teaches the nuns how to give and receive correction in love and urges them to end quarrels quickly before anger corrupts the heart.
  • Letter 211.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine sets out the first rule of the monastery: one heart and soul, common property, and distribution to each according to need.
  • Letter 211.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine warns poor sisters against pride in their new status and rich sisters against disdain or pride in their gifts, urging all to honor God in one another.
  • Letter 211.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that sisters of delicate upbringing and the convalescent may receive more, and urges all to count frugality as true riches.
  • Letter 211.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine instructs the nuns on modest dress and conduct in public, warning that unchaste looks destroy chastity even without bodily sin.
  • Letter 211.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine prescribes a procedure of private warning, witnesses, report to the prioress, and correction or expulsion for sisters who persist in faults.
  • Letter 211.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rules that clothes be kept in common and work done for the common good, since love puts common things before its own.
  • Letter 211.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine directs the nuns to end quarrels quickly, ask and give forgiveness, avoid harsh words, and keep their love spiritual rather than carnal.
  • Letter 211.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine concludes the rule, asking that it be read weekly as a mirror for self-examination.
  • Letter 217.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine says the devil, unable to repent, works unbelief in the unbelieving and permits seemingly good works among them, such as Roman virtues, which without faith do not please God.
  • Letter 220.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that Boniface's armed followers force him to feed their worldly desires by doing what God forbids, citing 1 John 2:15–17.
  • Letter 220.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges Boniface, whatever wrongs he has suffered from the court, not to repay evil for good or evil for evil, but to love his enemies as Christ commands.
  • Letter 228.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges fearful clergy to fear spiritual ruin of their flocks more than bodily harm, adding that rape without consent does not violate chastity.
  • Letter 229.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine praises Darius for ending war by words rather than the sword, asks for a reply, and greets the pledge of peace he has obtained.
  • Letter 231.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains, from Paul, that praise should be sought not for oneself but for the good of those who praise, and says Darius's praise spurs him to become what he is praised for.
  • Letter 243.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine writes to Laetus, a young monk tempted to leave, urging him as Christ's recruit to build the tower and fight like the king in the Gospel parable.
  • Letter 243.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that renouncing all one's own includes hating private family ties, since a mother as mother is temporal, but as a sister in Christ is shared eternally.
  • Letter 243.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine tells Laetus that his mother hinders him only as his private mother, not as a sister in the Church, and that he must also hate private affection in his own soul.
  • Letter 243.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that hating and losing one's parents, like hating one's own soul, means killing the fleshly affection that binds them to the world, not harming them.
  • Letter 243.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine contrasts Laetus's mother, who holds him back from God's service, with the mother of the Maccabees and the Spartan mothers.
  • Letter 243.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges Laetus to kill the fleshly affection his mother appeals to, while still showing her filial gratitude where higher duties do not call.
  • Letter 243.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine reminds Laetus that the Church is mother to him and his mother alike, and needs his help against heresy and lukewarmness, as Christ endured all for him.
  • Letter 243.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine cites Christ's answer “Who is my mother?” as an example of putting heavenly kinship above earthly ties, while noting that Mary also did the Father's will.
  • Letter 243.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges Laetus to repay his mother with spiritual benefits but not let her draw him back, comparing her appeals to Eve and the serpent's cunning.
  • Letter 243.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine urges Laetus to take up his cross, the mortality of the flesh, and crucify it so as to follow Christ.
  • Letter 243.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine tells Laetus to give his family estate to his mother and household, then not let family troubles hold him back, for ordered love puts greater things first.
  • Letter 244.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine writes to Chrisimus, who in grief over losses was rumored to have contemplated suicide, to remind him that earthly goods cannot compare with heavenly ones.
  • Letter 245.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine advises Bishop Possidius not to forbid married women all ornaments, but to forbid uncovered hair and cosmetics, since true adornment is good character.
  • Letter 246.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that all law and discipline presuppose that the will causes sin, and that astrologers themselves punish their wives rather than blame the stars.
  • Letter 246.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that anyone who blames fate refutes himself by punishing and rewarding others, and promises a fuller book if Lampadius wishes.
  • Letter 247.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rebukes the landowner Romulus for demanding a second payment from poor tenants who had already paid his agent.
  • Letter 247.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine refutes Romulus's excuses, showing that the tenants could not tell what he had ordered and must not be made to pay twice.
  • Letter 258.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that without agreement in divine things there is no true agreement even in human things, so Marcianus is only now truly his friend.
  • Letter 259.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine rebukes Cornelius, a baptized old friend from his Manichaean days, for keeping many concubines while asking praise for his chaste dead wife.
  • Letter 262.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine tells Ecdicia that losing her husband's soul outweighs the good of her alms, since rescuing a man from the devil is the greater mercy.
  • Letter 268.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine tells the congregation of Hippo that he borrowed seventeen solidi to pay the tax debt of Fascius, who had taken refuge in the church, on condition that the people be asked if Fascius failed to repay.
  • Letter 268.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine asks the congregation to repay the loan for Fascius as an act of charity to a brother in the faith, citing Gal 6:9–10 and 2 Cor 9:6.
  • On Order 2.25Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine sets out the moral rule of life for young students of wisdom: abstinence from pleasures and ambition, moderation in anger and punishment, the golden rule, friendship, and the worship of God in faith, hope, and love.
  • Soliloquies 2.16Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Reason and Augustine note that lead may be called false silver but not silver false lead, and touch on men who wear women's dress before returning to the point that the false always imitates the true.
  • Homilies on Matthew 1.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christian teaching is loftier and simpler than the philosophers' (virginity, the double love command), and its commonwealth is heavenly; Chrysostom then lists the questions raised by Matthew's genealogy and urges his hearers to attend as eagerly as they do at the theater.
  • Homilies on Matthew 2.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Moral exhortation: worldly cares cloud the soul like smoke; Christians know theater songs but not psalms; lay people need Scripture more than monks; hearing God's word reforms, as it reformed the Corinthians and David.
  • Homilies on Matthew 3.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Matthew omits Esau's line because the Arab peoples have no share in Israel; he names Tamar to show that Christ was not ashamed of our sins and to humble Jewish pride in ancestry; the patriarchs born of slave women show that only virtue counts.
  • Homilies on Matthew 3.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The foreign and sinful women in the genealogy show that Christ came as physician and bridegroom of a church that had played the harlot, as Ruth figures; moral exhortation on humility, forgetting one's good deeds, and David's meekness toward Shimei and Saul.
  • Homilies on Matthew 4.7John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The name Jesus, given from heaven, promises salvation from sins, which only God can give; moral section: the baptized must be recognizable by their life, but many live like the unbaptized, at races and theaters.
  • Homilies on Matthew 4.8John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom rebukes Christians whose vices make them like beasts and demons; they examine their hair in a mirror but not their souls, though Scripture and the lives of the saints are a spiritual mirror; one who tames lions should tame his own anger.
  • Homilies on Matthew 4.9John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Anger is a beast within that must be tamed; its remedy is the blood of Christ received with confidence, the hearing of Scripture, and almsgiving; the passions enslave as completely as Paul served Christ; vainglory is self-defeating.
  • Homilies on Matthew 4.10John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Seeking glory brings ridicule, as Nebuchadnezzar's image did; the three youths, captives with nothing, outshone the king by philosophy alone and answered him briefly and without insult at the furnace.
  • Homilies on Matthew 4.11John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The three youths served God from love, not for reward, and prayed for their whole people; today the golden image is mammon, and Christians should prefer the furnace of poverty to its worship, as Lazarus did, rather than face the furnace of sin.
  • Homilies on Matthew 4.14John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Closing exhortation of Homily 4: almsgiving is the dew that joins us to the poor in their furnace and quenches the fire of hell; the poor who give thanks are like the three youths; despising the world makes one worthier than the world.
  • Homilies on Matthew 5.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · James and the Lord's kinsmen gained nothing from kinship until they showed virtue; the prayers of saints avail only if we repent, as Scripture's examples show (Moses, Samuel, Jeremiah, Noah, Job, Daniel, Abraham); God prefers to give grace to us directly.
  • Homilies on Matthew 5.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Closing exhortation of Homily 5: the saints' prayers do not replace our own effort; almsgiving, even from ill-gotten gain, is lending to God at a higher interest; usury is condemned as cruelty disguised as kindness.
  • Homilies on Matthew 6.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Moral section of Homily 6: Christians are cold where Paul and the first believers burned; the spiritual fire produces compunction and tears that unite us to God, as with the sinful woman and Hannah, provided they are not for display.
  • Homilies on Matthew 6.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ wept but never laughed; we will give account for every sin, so dissipation is folly; frivolity comes from the devil, who built the theaters; spectators who applaud blasphemous and lewd mimes are more guilty than the actors and dishonor marriage.
  • Homilies on Matthew 6.8John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Closing exhortation of Homily 6: the theater's mimed adulteries and naked performers corrupt spectators and households; nakedness began with disobedience; Chrysostom wounds his hearers deliberately to heal them.
  • Homilies on Matthew 7.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Moral section of Homily 7: Christians should leave worldly ways as the magi left Persia; unworthy communicants are like Herod; we should offer gold to Christ in the poor, sick, and imprisoned, yet many will not cross a street to church but run to the theater.
  • Homilies on Matthew 7.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Preferring the theater's naked swimming women to the eucharistic 'spring' is spiritual shipwreck, worse than Pharaoh's drowning; spectators sin by desire even without the act; Chrysostom sends men to learn from their wives, and even from the ant.
  • Homilies on Matthew 7.7John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Closing exhortation of Homily 7: Christ's command against lustful looking binds married laymen as much as monks; husbands owe their wives the same chastity they demand of them; Chrysostom threatens a sharper sermon until the theater is abandoned.
  • Homilies on Matthew 8.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Closing exhortation of Homily 8: Egypt, once worshiping cats and onions, now has monks who work with their hands to feed the poor and shame wealthy Christians; Antony's Life proves the truth of the faith; no birthplace or ancestry excuses us from virtue.
  • Homilies on Matthew 9.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · No one is truly wronged: injustice suffered is reckoned for remission of sins or for reward, as with David and Lazarus; the innocents lost nothing and God would not have taken them had they been destined for greatness; Herod's dreadful death; Jer 31:15 shows God foreknew; God permits without causing, and works through opposites.
  • Homilies on Matthew 9.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Earthly homeland and noble descent count for nothing, as Scripture shows (the patriarchs seeking a better country; Samuel's and Moses' sons; Esau; Israel); only virtue matters; wealth, which bars the way to heaven, should be despised, as the rich man's poverty in Hades shows.
  • Homilies on Matthew 9.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Closing exhortation of Homily 9: hoarded wealth invites famine, murder, and plots; love of mammon enslaves and blinds, as with the foolish virgins and Judas; only love of heaven frees us from it.
  • Homilies on Matthew 10.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · John's ascetic life in the wilderness from childhood recalled Elijah and anticipated freedom from the curse; his hair garment taught detachment, unlike the vain Cynic philosophers; his belt was the dress of active saints; Christ praised his rejection of soft clothing.
  • Homilies on Matthew 10.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · If John, the greatest of the prophets, lived so austerely, our luxury is inexcusable; his preaching of heaven, not of earthly wars, drew all Judea to confession; now is the time of confession for catechumens and baptized alike, for the judgment is near.
  • Homilies on Matthew 10.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The end comes when the Gospel has been preached to all, as testimony against unbelievers; we must wake from present dreams and repent by doing the opposite of our sins; peace with God must be pursued by cutting off anger and excess.
  • Homilies on Matthew 10.7John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Closing exhortation of Homily 10: persevere in prayer, for God delays and permits trials to draw us to himself, as parents frighten wandering children back to their arms; the saints shone in trials; bear afflictions with thanksgiving.
  • Homilies on Matthew 11.7John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · While on the threshing floor we can still change from chaff to wheat; humility, not display, survives the fire; almsgiving escapes the unquenchable fire, and faith without life will not save; Chrysostom laments that hearers carry home blank tablets, letting the devil overwrite his teaching.
  • Homilies on Matthew 11.8John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Closing exhortation of Homily 11: learn virtue like children learning letters, one at a time, beginning at home with not swearing and not insulting, practicing with one's wife and household and imposing penances on oneself, until virtue becomes second nature.
  • Homilies on Matthew 12.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Closing exhortation of Homily 12: Christians who build mansions and buy estates contradict their claim to be bound for heaven and confirm pagans in worldliness; as salt and light they will be judged for others' ruin; love of money must be broken.
  • Homilies on Matthew 13.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The three temptations sum up all temptation (belly, vainglory, greed), the devil works also through people, and as with Job he uses both wealth and poverty, but is overcome by refusing him in deed as well as word.
  • Homilies on Matthew 14.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The sinner must feel and confess his sins before the judgment while there is time, and the rich in particular are shown to be prisoners bound by the love of money.
  • Homilies on Matthew 15.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ withdraws to the mountain to teach, speaking to the disciples but for all, and begins with the blessedness of the poor in spirit, that is, those who humble themselves by choice.
  • Homilies on Matthew 15.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Humility is the foundation of the new life because pride is the root of all evil; then those who mourn for sin, the meek, and those who hunger for righteousness are called blessed, with rewards both present and to come.
  • Homilies on Matthew 15.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The beatitudes on those who hunger for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted are expounded, with the greatness of their rewards.
  • Homilies on Matthew 15.8John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Virtue cannot be hidden and will be admired even by those who slander it, and Christians are urged to live so that no one has a just reason to speak ill of them, as Nebuchadnezzar came to praise the three youths.
  • Homilies on Matthew 15.9John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christians must shine by their lives, avoid the greed and vainglory that bring reproach on the faith, look to God as debtor for their alms, make peace between those who quarrel in public, and forgive their debtors.
  • Homilies on Matthew 16.8John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Small insults lead to enmity and murder, so Christ graduates the punishments for anger, “raca”, and “fool” to protect love, which God values above all and whose loss roots every wickedness.
  • Homilies on Matthew 16.9John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ puts reconciliation with a brother before the offering of a gift at the altar, applies this to prayer and alms, and urges settling with an adversary quickly before the matter reaches the judge.
  • Homilies on Matthew 16.11John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The adversary is taken to be an earthly opponent and the threat of court and prison a deterrent from present things; virtue becomes light when done for Christ, who fights with us, as with the three youths in the furnace.
  • Homilies on Matthew 17.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ extends the commandment against adultery to the lustful look, which kindles desire and leads to the deed, while permitting a chaste looking and love for one’s own wife; the warning applies equally to women who make themselves objects of desire.
  • Homilies on Matthew 17.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Plucking out the offending eye means cutting off friends or relatives who lead us into sin, which serves both parties; the theater is condemned, and the next lemma on divorce is introduced.
  • Homilies on Matthew 17.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ forbids oaths by heaven, earth, Jerusalem, or one’s head because all belong to God, rejects excuses of compulsion, and teaches that the oath was a concession to past weakness, as weaning shows that the breast, once good, is outgrown.
  • Homilies on Matthew 17.7John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The habit of swearing can be overcome easily by practice and the watchfulness of one’s household; Chrysostom refuses applause in place of obedience, threatens to bar persistent swearers from the mysteries, and warns by the example of Eli.
  • Homilies on Matthew 18.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The law of retaliation was a wise concession that restrained violence, but Christ, transferring blame to the evil one, teaches us to overcome evil by suffering it and to offer the other cheek.
  • Homilies on Matthew 18.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Bearing a blow and yielding the cloak in a lawsuit disarm the aggressor and win him over, and the one who lives so will not be left naked.
  • Homilies on Matthew 18.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Going naked for virtue is no shame; yielding more than is demanded teaches the aggressor philosophy; the second mile, giving and lending, and love of enemies lead step by step to the summit of virtue.
  • Homilies on Matthew 18.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Love and prayer for enemies are the ninth and highest step of a ladder of virtue whose reward is likeness to God; Christ’s own forgiveness on the cross makes it possible, and the angry man is to be pitied as one sick, while the whole sermon is shown to uproot anger, desire, and greed.
  • Homilies on Matthew 18.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Praying for persecutors crowns the commands; Christ uses the rewards more than threats, shaming his hearers by comparison with tax collectors and Gentiles, and Christians are urged to greet their enemies first.
  • Homilies on Matthew 19.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ forbids almsgiving done to be seen, judging the intention rather than the outward act, and mocks the hypocrites who trumpet their alms while seeking their own glory.
  • Homilies on Matthew 19.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Alms are to be given in such secrecy that the left hand does not know, with God as spectator and future rewarder before the world; the hypocrites who pray in public to be seen already have their reward.
  • Homilies on Matthew 19.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Forgiveness of others is singled out after the prayer because it makes us masters of our own judgment; the last petitions are expounded, the devil being the evil one and God the King to whom all power belongs; and the hearers are made aware of the many sins they commit even in church.
  • Homilies on Matthew 19.11John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Forgiving enemies is the easiest way to the remission of sins, while praying against them insults God and turns the tongue into a beast’s teeth; Chrysostom rebukes the noise of his congregation during the reading of Scripture and urges reconciliation.
  • Homilies on Matthew 20.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · One who does virtue for spectators insults virtue itself; then, having uprooted vainglory, the root of avarice, Christ gradually teaches contempt for money, warning against treasure on earth exposed to moth and thieves.
  • Homilies on Matthew 20.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Treasure on earth is lost to moth and thieves and enslaves the heart; the single eye that lights the body stands for the mind, which avarice blinds, darkening the whole life.
  • Homilies on Matthew 20.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Avarice enslaves the mind, a worse fate than prison, and robs the rich of the very pleasure and security they seek; darkened by it, they fear imaginary dangers and are soft in everything except the service of money.
  • Homilies on Matthew 20.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The rich, like rope dancers, dare everything for money and nothing for virtue, blinded doubly; the love of money is not true desire but slavery, and the only safe treasure is one deposited in heaven, which is also a seed bearing deathless fruit.
  • Homilies on Matthew 21.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · No one can serve God and mammon, which enslaves its lovers as Job, its master, was not enslaved; then Christ shows that freedom from anxiety is possible, from God’s gift of life and body and from the birds, who are fed without care.
  • Homilies on Matthew 21.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Many still live the apostolic life of complete renunciation, but Chrysostom asks his hearers for now only to give up greed and luxury and to give alms generously, as a first step toward the summit.
  • Homilies on Matthew 22.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The lilies, mere grass thrown into the oven, are clothed more gloriously than Solomon, so God will much more clothe those he values above all creation; the Father who made human nature needy knows its needs and will provide, and anxiety for these things is the mark of the Gentiles.
  • Homilies on Matthew 22.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Anxiety gains nothing, since God provides; we must seek the kingdom first and the rest is added; tomorrow’s trouble is not to be added to today’s; delay of judgment should be used for repentance, as Manasseh’s case shows.
  • Homilies on Matthew 23.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom explains that “judge not” does not forbid reproof and correction, which Scripture commands, but forbids those full of great sins from harshly condemning others for small ones.
  • Homilies on Matthew 23.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Correcting a sinner is right if done as a physician, not an enemy; Christ calls the harsh judge who ignores his own great sins a hypocrite.
  • Homilies on Matthew 23.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ makes his commands easy by adding persevering prayer for the right things, sums up virtue in the golden rule, and shows that even the narrow way is easy because it passes and ends in life.
  • Homilies on Matthew 23.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Calling the way narrow makes us watchful; the false prophets are hypocrites of corrupt life wearing a mask of virtue, and are to be guarded against.
  • Homilies on Matthew 23.7John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The false prophets are known by their fruits, since a bad man bears no good fruit while he remains bad; the loss of the kingdom is a punishment worse than hell itself.
  • Homilies on Matthew 23.9John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The pursuits of this life are children’s games with a punishment attached; the almsgiver and the patient man are shown to be far greater than the rich man and the man in power.
  • Homilies on Matthew 24.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ requires doing the Father’s will, not only professing faith, and quietly reveals himself as the judge who will reject even those who worked miracles without a good life.
  • Homilies on Matthew 24.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Gifts and miracles do not save without a good life, since God has given them even to the unworthy; the one who does Christ’s words stands like a house on the rock, safe from all storms, while wickedness is weak even when it holds power.
  • Homilies on Matthew 26.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · No one standing should be confident and no one fallen despair, against the Manichaean claim that wickedness cannot change; David’s adultery and murder are set out in full to show the greatness of his recovery.
  • Homilies on Matthew 26.7John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · David is admirable because, after so grave a fall late in a glorious life, he rose at once and repented so fully that God honored him even after death; his example should produce fear, not carelessness.
  • Homilies on Matthew 27.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ everywhere answers the purpose behind a request; he forbids the disciple to go and bury his father because nothing may come before heavenly things, and the dead, an unbeliever, would not lack burial.
  • Homilies on Matthew 27.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Nothing is to be put before spiritual things; the sinner living in luxury is a corpse worse than the dead, and his friends must bring him to Jesus as Lazarus’s sisters did, until he is raised.
  • Homilies on Matthew 28.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The licentious and the covetous are worse than the demoniacs among the tombs; the covetous man, a monster in his desires, can be freed only by seeing how his greed brings him loss even in money.
  • Homilies on Matthew 29.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ heals soul and body and does not rebuke the slow crowds; so we must correct blasphemers and enemies of the truth with gentleness, as God himself does, and not with anger.
  • Homilies on Matthew 30.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ dines with Matthew and the tax collectors to heal them, as a physician bears with the sick; he answers the Pharisees from common reason and from Scripture, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”
  • Homilies on Matthew 32.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The Pharisees’ slander is self-refuting, for Christ does what no demon would; moved by compassion he sends the Twelve to the lost sheep of Israel, empowered to heal, to preach the kingdom, and to take nothing, since the laborer deserves his food.
  • Homilies on Matthew 32.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The apostles are to stay only with the worthy and not move from house to house, to give their peace as a blessing, and to go without possessions, so that their virtue may commend them even before their signs.
  • Homilies on Matthew 32.7John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The church has become a marketplace of chatter; Chrysostom asks for love, since all share one table and one cup, and teaches that God stopped the signs because virtue, not miracles, is the true proof and health of the soul.
  • Homilies on Matthew 32.8John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Virtue is greater than miracles, as Paul and Christ teach; the Christian who turns to almsgiving, leaves the theater, guards his eyes and sings psalms works the true signs.
  • Homilies on Matthew 33.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Having freed the apostles from care, Christ foretells their sufferings and sends them as sheep among wolves, to conquer by gentleness and innocence through the power of the one who sends them.
  • Homilies on Matthew 33.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ shows his power by sending the apostles as sheep and doves, joining serpent-like wisdom that guards the faith to dove-like innocence that never retaliates; he foretells councils, kings, and family betrayals, and consoles them with his name, the Spirit, and endurance to the end.
  • Homilies on Matthew 33.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christians must train in peace like athletes so as to be ready for persecution; Job, trained in contempt of wealth, care for his children and chastity, bore not only his visible losses but also harder unseen trials.
  • Homilies on Matthew 33.7John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · If people now, with all the hopes of the Gospel, despair over the loss of a little gold, Job’s endurance deserves countless crowns.
  • Homilies on Matthew 34.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · If bodies did not decay the cities would be full of corpses and no one would care for the soul; true beauty belongs to the soul, which colors the body even in life, and is the beauty Christians should seek.
  • Homilies on Matthew 35.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom explains Christ’s “sword” and the division of families (Matt 10:34–38) as the cutting off of the diseased part so that heaven may be joined to the better, and shows that the Old Testament teaches the same.
  • Homilies on Matthew 35.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ asks his disciples to hate even their own lives and promises rich rewards to those who receive them, even for a cup of cold water; Chrysostom then rebukes those who give to entertainers but abuse the poor as idle.
  • Homilies on Matthew 35.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Paul’s “if anyone will not work, let him not eat” was addressed to the idle, not to the givers, who are told not to grow weary in doing good; the poor should not be insulted for their importunity.
  • Homilies on Matthew 35.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom shows that the rich, who rage at servants over a small delay, are more shameless than the poor, and urges that alms be given gently, even in person, since God himself sends the poor.
  • Homilies on Matthew 37.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The threat against the cities applies also to Christians who shut their doors to strangers and their ears to the apostles; Chrysostom begins his attack on the theater, whose shameful songs defile the ears of the soul.
  • Homilies on Matthew 37.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom describes the lewdness of the theater and argues that it overturns marriages, makes adulterers and stirs up riots, so that those who attend it, not those who would close it, overturn the city.
  • Homilies on Matthew 37.7John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The theater breeds sorcery, licentiousness and the ruin of others, for which spectators share the blame; Christians should find their pleasure in gardens, martyrs’ shrines, wife and children, and flee the theater as Joseph fled Potiphar’s wife.
  • Homilies on Matthew 38.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ explains that all things are delivered to him by the Father and that he alone knows the Father as the Father knows him; he then calls the weary to his kind yoke and light burden, which is lighter than the burden of sin.
  • Homilies on Matthew 38.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Virtue’s yoke is light, as the joy of the voluntarily poor and of the martyrs shows, while covetousness, anger and love of the body weigh the soul down; Chrysostom urges his hearers to take up Christ’s yoke.
  • Homilies on Matthew 39.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The priests are guiltless by law, and Christ, Lord of the temple and of the sabbath, is greater; the sabbath trained Israel for a time, but Christians keep a spiritual feast continually and should strive beyond what is commanded.
  • Homilies on Matthew 40.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The Pharisees’ envy drives them to plot against Christ, who withdraws in meekness as Isaiah foretold; when he heals the blind and dumb demoniac they call it the work of Beelzebul, and Chrysostom begins a moral discourse on envy, the worst of vices.
  • Homilies on Matthew 40.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Envy harms the envious, not the envied, as Cain, Esau and Joseph’s brothers show; Chrysostom rebukes envy in the church, and shows that honors, authority and popular repute are dangers rather than goods to be envied.
  • Homilies on Matthew 40.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The man of popular repute is enslaved to as many masters as the crowd has heads, and pleasure harms the soul more than grief; Christians should flee the glory of the many for the glory that abides.
  • Homilies on Matthew 41.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ refutes the charge that he casts out demons by Beelzebul with four answers (the divided kingdom, the exorcisms of their own sons, the binding of the strong man, and “he who is not with me is against me”), then explains why blasphemy against the Spirit is unpardonable; Chrysostom urges his hearers to judge and condemn their own sins now.
  • Homilies on Matthew 42.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ answers the Pharisees with the parable of the tree and its fruit: they cannot fault his works yet slander him; their evil words, like those of a brood of vipers, flow from the abundance of an evil heart.
  • Homilies on Matthew 42.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Every idle word will be judged, and we are judged by our own words, not by others’ words about us; Chrysostom shows from David and Saul and from Jacob and Laban that to suffer wrong makes one stronger, and to do wrong weaker.
  • Homilies on Matthew 42.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · When David wronged Uriah he became weak, and Joab’s just vengeance brought him only evils; Chrysostom forbids speaking evil of others even truthfully, and urges each to judge his own soul daily before the tribunal of conscience.
  • Homilies on Matthew 42.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Each night, alone on his bed, a Christian should judge his own thoughts and deeds; instead we let evil thoughts defile the soul like adulterers, though even the easy parts of virtue, such as not speaking evil, cost no toil.
  • Homilies on Matthew 43.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom defends preaching about Gehenna as a healing, urges his hearers to live so that pagans see the kingdom in them, and insists that marriage, children, work and city life are no obstacle to virtue.
  • Homilies on Matthew 44.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ’s answer to those who told him his mother and brothers were outside does not deny his mother but corrects the vainglory with which they called him away from his teaching, and teaches that kinship with him profits nothing without doing God’s will.
  • Homilies on Matthew 44.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · True kinship with Christ, open to men and women alike, is to do the Father’s will, which is more than to have borne him; Christ then goes out and sits by the sea to teach the crowds in parables.
  • Homilies on Matthew 44.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · We are responsible for the loss of the word, for it is not wealth but the deceitfulness of wealth that chokes it; the good ground bears different measures of fruit, and salvation needs attentive hearing, courage and contempt of riches together.
  • Homilies on Matthew 44.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Luxury is a thorn that chokes the soul and ruins the body more than care does; the throat was made for singing to God and prayer, not for gluttony, and the abused belly punishes the whole body.
  • Homilies on Matthew 45.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ’s words show that those who turn can be healed and that sin is not of nature; the disciples are blessed beyond the prophets; the parable allows a hundred, sixty or thirtyfold, so that each can give to Christ in the poor what he can.
  • Homilies on Matthew 45.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Giving a cup of cold water to the poor is like serving Christ as a priest; since Christ asks so little in return for so much, those who neglect the needy deserve the fire prepared for the devil.
  • Homilies on Matthew 46.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The apostles were great not because of their signs but because of their contempt for money, glory and worldly affairs; John, Elijah, Job, David and the patriarchs shone by their life, and signs without virtue harm.
  • Homilies on Matthew 46.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Signs exist for the sake of a good life, which is the greater thing; fasting is good but last in the choir of virtues, while love and almsgiving surpass even virginity and make one equal to the apostles.
  • Homilies on Matthew 47.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Harvest and sowing name different things; the treasure and the pearl teach that the preaching must be preferred to everything, and the net warns that faith without a good life does not save; the scribe of the kingdom brings out old and new, and Chrysostom draws the members of virtue, whose head is humility.
  • Homilies on Matthew 47.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Matthew himself, humble, merciful and courageous, is an image of virtue; almsgiving, the heart of virtue, is necessary for salvation, while hoarded wealth rots the soul and the voluntarily poor are rich beyond kings.
  • Homilies on Matthew 48.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom explains the law of levirate marriage, which permitted marrying a brother’s widow only when he had died childless, so that Herod’s marriage to his brother’s wife who had a child was unlawful; he condemns the satanic banquet, the dancing at weddings and Herodias as the architect of the murder.
  • Homilies on Matthew 48.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Herodias asks for John’s head on a platter so as to silence his tongue; God permits the murder, crowning John and consoling all who suffer unjustly; Chrysostom warns against rash oaths and shows how sexual immorality breeds murder.
  • Homilies on Matthew 48.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Herodias’ murder only exposed her sin, which is hidden not by further sin but by repentance; the evangelist tells the story without abuse, teaching us not to revile sinners; Chrysostom condemns the banquets of his own day, with their dancers and ill-gotten luxury.
  • Homilies on Matthew 48.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ hungers and thirsts in the poor while the rich feast; Chrysostom rebukes those who spend their goods on parasites and buffoons rather than on Christ, who will be gentle as judge to those who share their table with him.
  • Homilies on Matthew 48.7John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The poor should be fed for love and for Christ’s sake, not for the amusement of their insults; Chrysostom urges the rich to make their table companions helpers in good works and readers of Scripture, so that the house becomes a church.
  • Homilies on Matthew 49.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ looks up to heaven to show that he is from the Father, multiplies existing bread to refute Marcion and Mani, and the homily turns to almsgiving as the true craft of the rich and against useless luxury such as ornate shoes.
  • Homilies on Matthew 49.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom ridicules young men who sew silk into their shoes while Christ goes hungry in the poor, calling the fashion effeminate, cruel, and a device of the devil to turn their eyes from heaven.
  • Homilies on Matthew 49.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Love of finery makes young men petty, greedy, cruel to the poor and vainglorious; Chrysostom asks fathers to train them in small things and prays that the young may be chaste like Joseph.
  • Homilies on Matthew 50.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ himself gives the Eucharist through the priest as at the Last Supper, so communicants must be free of robbery and enmity, and he is honored not by golden vessels bought by injustice but by care for the poor, who are his body.
  • Homilies on Matthew 50.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Gifts to adorn churches are acceptable, but almsgiving must come first, since Christ hungry, naked and imprisoned in the poor is a truer temple, and almsgiving cleanses sin and opens heaven.
  • Homilies on Matthew 51.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ sets aside the food laws gently, from the nature of things, defends God’s law against the Pharisees’ traditions (against the Manichaean reading of the uprooted plant), rebukes the offended disciples, and teaches that defilement comes from the heart; Chrysostom applies this to worshipers who wash hands but not souls.
  • Homilies on Matthew 51.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · One who would not pray with filthy hands should not pray with a tongue soiled by insult and anger; Chrysostom urges that the tongue be cleansed by repentance, bridled, and adorned with gentleness, before approaching the awesome God.
  • Homilies on Matthew 51.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · No one can be wronged except by himself: the robber harms himself as a fevered man harms himself by snatching water, so the robbed should pray for the robber, and all should flee love of money, a madness worse than a madman’s sword.
  • Homilies on Matthew 52.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The woman’s persistence succeeds where the apostles failed; Christ heals the crowds on the mountain at once to leave the ungrateful without excuse, and Chrysostom resumes his teaching that almsgiving is the best of all crafts.
  • Homilies on Matthew 52.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Every other craft depends on many others, but almsgiving needs only the will, as the widow’s two mites show, and it builds heavenly dwellings, outlasts death, pleads for us before Christ, and holds human life together.
  • Homilies on Matthew 52.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · God planted mercy in nature itself, so that mercy is what makes a man a man and like God; but alms given from robbery heal nothing, for the robber must restore many times over, and offering the goods of the poor is like killing a son before his father.
  • Homilies on Matthew 53.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ refuses heavenly signs to those who would not believe the lesser ones, rebukes the disciples’ anxiety over bread so as to free them from the food laws, and Chrysostom teaches that every life mixes grief and joy, and that only virtue and a good conscience give lasting joy, especially at death.
  • Homilies on Matthew 54.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The cross, which saved the world and routs demons, is the Christian’s boast before scoffing pagans; as soldiers of a King who is near to all, Christians can draw near to him by justice and almsgiving, which Isaiah 58 promises he will answer at once.
  • Homilies on Matthew 54.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · God’s commands to the merciful are easy, and the prize of Isaiah’s promised “early light” unfolds into all the joys of heaven and deliverance from Gehenna, so no sacrifice should keep us from showing mercy.
  • Homilies on Matthew 55.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · After rebuking Peter, Christ teaches that his followers too must be ready to die, but without compulsion: following him means freely denying oneself, as one disowns a stranger, and not sparing the body in trials.
  • Homilies on Matthew 55.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Taking up the cross means being ready daily for a shameful death, and following Christ means suffering for his sake with every virtue; Christ demands this not from harshness but from love, as a father does not spare his son and a general does not keep his soldiers idle.
  • Homilies on Matthew 55.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · To save one’s life wrongly is to lose it beyond recovery, for neither the whole world nor any kingdom can buy back a lost soul, as no wealth can cure an incurable body; so all our zeal belongs to the soul.
  • Homilies on Matthew 56.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · God asks not hard labors but easy obedience: release from unjust loans and help for the poor; Chrysostom denounces Christians who lend at interest, trading on the poverty of others, and urges them to lend instead to God, who repays a hundredfold.
  • Homilies on Matthew 56.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The poor man’s gratitude for a loan at interest is forced, like Abraham’s yielding of his wife; interest is forbidden by Scripture and despised even by Roman law for senators, it ruins lender and borrower alike, and alms paid from it are unacceptable to God.
  • Homilies on Matthew 57.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Fasting joined to prayer drives out demons, gives wings to the soul, and frees from avarice; luxury and drunkenness, the devil’s favorite tools, turn men into worse than swine, yet the fault is in the drunkard, not in God’s gift of wine.
  • Homilies on Matthew 57.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Wine was given for gladness and health, as Paul’s counsel to Timothy shows, but drunkenness makes men worse than animals, wrecks soul and body like a storm-tossed ship, and shuts them out of the kingdom of God.
  • Homilies on Matthew 58.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · By making the sea pay the tax Christ shows himself Lord of nature and honors Peter, whose humility Mark’s silence shows; when the disciples, jealous of Peter, ask who is greatest, Christ sets a child before them as the pattern of humility needed to enter the kingdom.
  • Homilies on Matthew 58.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The child is a pattern of natural virtue, refuting the Manichaeans; receiving the humble is receiving Christ, and harming them deserves worse than drowning with a millstone; arrogance, the devil’s captivity, makes men pride themselves even on their ancestry, whether noble or humble, though every lineage contains both.
  • Homilies on Matthew 58.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Lineage is an empty name, since every family mixes the humble and the illustrious, and war, sickness and death make no distinction; true nobility is the freedom of soul of John the Baptist and Elijah, whereas the courtier with wealth and rank is more a slave than the slave of a slave, surrounded by masters and rivals.
  • Homilies on Matthew 58.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Worldly honors make masters into enemies and rivals, while among Christians each member shares the joys and griefs of the others; the glory of office adds nothing to body or soul but breeds vice, and only the one freed from passions is truly free and royal.
  • Homilies on Matthew 59.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Cutting off the hand or eye means cutting off harmful friends, which shows that wickedness is of the will; Christ commands honor for the humble, whose angels see the Father’s face, and teaches by the parable of the lost sheep that the Father wills none of them to perish.
  • Homilies on Matthew 59.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Since God rejoices over one lost sheep and did not spare his Son, Christians must spare no effort to save even the humblest brother, like soldiers who fight for their comrades, instead of forming friendships on every ground but piety.
  • Homilies on Matthew 59.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · We must not call a brother wicked or give up on him after two warnings, since God never stops exhorting us; Chrysostom rebukes parents who care for possessions rather than the souls of their households, leave their sons unbridled instead of marrying them early to keep them pure, and educate them only for money.
  • Homilies on Matthew 60.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ teaches the wronged to reprove the offender privately, then before two or three, then before the church, seeking his healing rather than revenge, and binds the incorrigible; he promises that those who agree in prayer will be heard, though prayer fails when it asks what is harmful, seeks vengeance, or comes from the unrepentant.
  • Homilies on Matthew 60.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ’s promise to be among two or three gathered in his name shows him as giver equal with the Father, but it requires friendship whose chief ground is Christ; worldly friendships break under injury, while love for Christ’s sake, like his love for his enemies and executioners, never fails.
  • Homilies on Matthew 61.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · On Peter’s question about forgiving seven times, Chrysostom explains “seventy times seven” as limitless forgiveness, introduces the parable of the unforgiving servant, and begins to list God’s benefits to show how great our debt to him is.
  • Homilies on Matthew 61.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom lists God’s benefits and then the daily sins of soldiers, tradesmen and landowners, and explains why the king threatened the debtor with sale and then forgave him the whole debt.
  • Homilies on Matthew 61.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The forgiven servant’s cruelty to his fellow servant revokes his own pardon; bearing a grudge is a sword against oneself, and God will not be called the Father of the unforgiving.
  • Homilies on Matthew 61.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom urges his hearers to forgive from the heart: the one who wrongs us only harms himself, and Christ, Joseph, Moses, Paul and Stephen show how to love and pray for enemies.
  • Homilies on Matthew 62.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom explains “those to whom it is given” as help given to the willing, then turns to Christ’s blessing of the children, praising the child’s guilelessness, and contrasts Saul’s malice with David’s simplicity.
  • Homilies on Matthew 62.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Saul’s envy ruined him while David’s gentleness spared his persecutor; the love of glory defeats itself and makes a man a slave, so Christians should lay aside such passions and love virtue.
  • Homilies on Matthew 64.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The thrones mean sharing Christ’s glory and condemning unbelieving Israel; leaving wife means preferring godliness, not breaking marriages; the parable of the laborers teaches that late converts can receive the full reward, while faith without a worthy life and even one neglected virtue can shut one out of heaven.
  • Homilies on Matthew 64.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom urges almsgiving as the oil that strengthens the soul, and tells his hearers to look to Christ and the saints, not to the rich who give nothing, and to judge themselves rather than others.
  • Homilies on Matthew 65.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ answers that the seats at his right and left are given not by favor but to those whose works make them worthy, since the throne at the Father’s right belongs to the Son alone; he rebukes the ten’s indignation by contrasting Gentile rulers with his own example of service unto death.
  • Homilies on Matthew 65.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · True height belongs to the humble, who are free of the passions and honored by choice, while the boaster, who despises men yet craves their honor, is low and easily caught like a bird that flies on the ground.
  • Homilies on Matthew 65.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The devil fell by pride and Pharaoh was humbled by it, while the humble, like Abraham, stand with the angels and are loved by God and men; pride brought mortality on the first man, humility gains what we lack.
  • Homilies on Matthew 66.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The owners’ yielding of the donkey and Christ’s humble mount foreshadow the call of the Gentiles and teach simplicity of life; turning to his hearers, Chrysostom rebukes their stinginess toward Christ in the poor and shows that Antioch’s rich could easily feed all its poor.
  • Homilies on Matthew 66.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Even giving from a tenth of their revenues would let the rich of Antioch feed the poor; they pay the emperor’s taxes under compulsion and should pay God’s first, since the poor are an army praying against the demons on their behalf.
  • Homilies on Matthew 66.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Almsgiving is a tax God collects gently and transfers to heaven as a loan to himself, a better inheritance for one’s children than money, since the giver keeps it too.
  • Homilies on Matthew 67.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Neither the sinner should despair nor the virtuous grow careless, since Scripture shows great reversals (Manasseh, Solomon, Judas, Matthew, Paul, Simon), and Christ still bids the paralytic of sin rise and take up his bed.
  • Homilies on Matthew 67.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The labor of repentance and virtue is short and its reward eternal and partly enjoyed even now, while worldly labor brings uncertain, late and short-lived fruit.
  • Homilies on Matthew 68.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Contrasting the theater’s bitter pleasures with the monks’ life, Chrysostom describes the monks of the mountains, free of care, like Adam before the fall and like the angels, rising before dawn to sing hymns and pray for a good defense at the judgment, then working for the poor.
  • Homilies on Matthew 68.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom contrasts the theater’s choir of harlots, which inflames desire and ruins homes, with the monks’ choir of psalmody, their study of Scripture and their pure speech, and urges his hearers to visit the monks at once and to entrust their affairs to God.
  • Homilies on Matthew 69.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The parable shows the call widened to all comers, but warns believers too: the wedding garment is a life kept clean after the grace of the call, and the man without it is cast into darkness; Chrysostom urges his hearers to adorn the soul rather than the body.
  • Homilies on Matthew 69.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The desert monks wear the true wedding garment and live like soldiers encamped against the devil, with tents in place of houses and a simple table of bread, water and fruit that angels visit.
  • Homilies on Matthew 69.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The monks’ life of mutual service, untroubled evenings and heavenly conversation shows them equal to the angels, while worldly Christians are worse than ants or beasts; Chrysostom urges his hearers to go to the monks and put on the clean garment.
  • Homilies on Matthew 70.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ answers the tax question from the coin itself, rendering to Caesar what does not harm godliness and to God what is God’s; he then refutes the Sadducees’ story of the seven brothers from Scripture and God’s power, and Chrysostom turns to the monks who already live like the angels, having slain the desires of the belly.
  • Homilies on Matthew 70.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom contrasts the monks’ simple table, where the desires of the belly and of lust lie dead, with the luxurious, unjust and degrading banquets of the rich, and urges his hearers to visit the monks and learn their peace.
  • Homilies on Matthew 71.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ answers the lawyer with the two great commandments, praises his confession of the one God without denying his own Godhead, and by the question about David’s son proclaims himself Lord; Chrysostom then attacks vainglory, especially in almsgiving, which robs the treasure in heaven.
  • Homilies on Matthew 71.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Almsgiving is a mystery to be done behind closed doors, as the church’s prayers for the possessed, the penitents and the faithful are all prayers for mercy; display defeats even the glory it seeks.
  • Homilies on Matthew 72.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ bids the people obey the scribes and Pharisees who sit on Moses’ seat but not imitate their works; Chrysostom explains that “all” means the moral law, that the teachers’ office is to be respected though they are corrupt, and that their hypocrisy and harshness make their guilt greater.
  • Homilies on Matthew 72.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The Pharisees’ vainglory shows in their love of display: broad phylacteries, large fringes, first seats and greetings; Chrysostom explains these customs and laments the evils that love of precedence has brought on the churches.
  • Homilies on Matthew 72.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ forbids the disciples to be called Rabbi, father or leader, since God is the true teacher and father and Christ the one leader (which shows the Father and the Son share these titles); humility is the cure, and Chrysostom finds it among the monks, who serve one another with one table and no “mine and yours.”
  • Homilies on Matthew 72.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Among the monks one soul of love removes all ground for pride: they compete to serve, care for the sick and the poor, and are kept humble by manual work and solitude; Chrysostom urges his hearers, who have the examples of Scripture and of living saints, to visit them often.
  • Homilies on Matthew 73.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom expounds Christ’s woes on the scribes and Pharisees: devouring widows’ houses under cover of prayer, shutting others out of the kingdom, making proselytes worse than themselves, tithing herbs while neglecting justice, mercy and faith, and cleaning only the outside of the cup.
  • Homilies on Matthew 73.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The gnat and the camel show that bodily purifications are trifles beside mercy, judgment and faith, which cleanse the soul; Christ does not reimpose the legal observances but shows them superfluous, and the image of whitewashed tombs fits many Christians too.
  • Homilies on Matthew 73.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christians who are temples of God become tombs when they harbor evil desires; Chrysostom rebukes men who come to church to gaze at women and boys, recalls that the partitions between men and women were added only later, and contrasts the women of the apostolic age with those of his own day.
  • Homilies on Matthew 73.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom rebukes Christian women for vanity and both spouses for neglecting each other’s virtue, condemns marriages contracted for money, urges men to seek a pious wife rather than a rich one, and rejects the proverb that pleasure is worth choking for, citing Sirach and Proverbs.
  • Homilies on Matthew 74.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · As we spare no expense on sick servants, we should bring our sick souls to the spiritual physicians—Paul, the evangelists, the prophets, Christ—whose remedies for the fever of covetousness (contentment, treasure in heaven, sharing with the needy) cost nothing and make us richer.
  • Homilies on Matthew 77.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ hides the hour of the end and of each death so that we may always be ready; the parable of the faithful and wise servant, whose questions no more prove ignorance than God’s questions in Scripture, applies to teachers, rulers and the rich, who must administer what they have faithfully and wisely for others.
  • Homilies on Matthew 77.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The wicked servant’s “my master delays” comes from his wickedness, not from the hidden day; the rich are stewards of what belongs to the poor and will be punished, like the servant, for spending it on luxury; virtues that benefit one’s neighbor, above all love, surpass those that benefit only oneself.
  • Homilies on Matthew 77.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Love that serves one’s neighbor surpasses even martyrdom, as Paul’s choice to remain and Christ’s charge to Peter show; every husband and wife has a flock to feed, and almsgiving gives prayer and fasting their power, so that no one is saved who does not seek the common good.
  • Homilies on Matthew 78.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The parables of the virgins and the talents, like that of the servants, urge help to one’s neighbor; the foolish virgins, though they mastered the stronger passion, were overcome by the love of money and found no oil when the bridegroom came, because the poor who sell it are found only in this life.
  • Homilies on Matthew 78.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Oil can be bought only from the poor in this life; the foolish virgins’ late eagerness avails as little as the rich man’s in Hades; the parable of the talents condemns those who do not use their gifts for others; and our tongue, which receives the Lord’s flesh, should be made like Christ’s by gentleness and meekness, not like the devil’s by curses and insults.
  • Homilies on Matthew 79.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · In the last judgment, set before the whole world, the sheep are distinguished from the goats by their fruitfulness in mercy; the condemned are without excuse, since the requests were light, the one asking was Christ himself in the poor, and every believer in need is his brother.
  • Homilies on Matthew 79.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The blessed are judged by comparison with their fellow servants and receive a kingdom prepared for them from the beginning, the cursed a fire prepared not for them but for the devil, so that both the justice of the sentence and the grace of the reward appear; Christ then foretells his passion at the Passover.
  • Homilies on Matthew 79.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ softened the news of his betrayal by joining it to the Passover; the many chief priests show the decay of the Jewish order, and their plot proceeds from anger and blindness; Christ’s love for his crucifiers, whom he made sons of God, should shame us out of envy and revenge.
  • Homilies on Matthew 79.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Mindful of our own debts, we should hasten to forgive and even grieve with those who suffer, as God wills; reconciliation is to be sought first, grudges lead to death, and no wicked man can harm one who lives by Christian philosophy.
  • Homilies on Matthew 80.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The woman’s deed is sung throughout the world while the exploits of kings are forgotten; Christ protected her budding faith, as we should not overturn gifts already offered to the church, though gifts not yet made should go to the poor; at that very moment Judas, one of the twelve, went to sell his Master, as the evangelists frankly record.
  • Homilies on Matthew 80.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Judas, though taught daily by Christ, sold him for a little money because he let the love of money grow through carelessness; this unnatural passion makes a man useless and wretched even as a king, while the virtuous poor man, whom no one can harm, is truly rich.
  • Homilies on Matthew 81.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ’s gentle rebuke of the traitor teaches forbearance; Judas is guilty because he acted from wickedness, though Christ’s wisdom turned his crime to our salvation, and no one is wicked by necessity; the love of money that blinded him is a madness worse than demon possession.
  • Homilies on Matthew 81.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The covetous go about the city naked of virtue, unashamed because so many are like them; they live in a moral desert, are themselves tombs carrying dead souls, wound themselves with cares, and at the judgment will be punished in every parable of Christ.
  • Homilies on Matthew 81.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Right belief does not save the covetous, who are hated even by their own kind; love of money, unlike other passions, cannot be blamed on bodily temperament; life is a sea with a different storm at each age, and only those who resist the passions at each stage reach harbor with spiritual cargo.
  • Homilies on Matthew 83.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ went to meet his betrayer to show that his passion was voluntary; Judas’s kiss, trading on his Master’s gentleness, shows the frenzy of covetousness, which tyrannizes even more than lust, while the money it hoards is neither enjoyed nor secure, and only poverty is beyond the reach of every plotter.
  • Homilies on Matthew 84.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ reminds his captors that he taught openly and could not have been taken unwilling; the Sanhedrin, forgoing even the Passover, stages a sham trial, and the high priest forces a verdict of blasphemy, while their public condemnation of him only made the truth of his death plainer; so too defeat borne nobly is the true victory.
  • Homilies on Matthew 84.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The Christian conquers not by doing evil but by suffering it, as martyrs and saints did and as Joseph did when, silent and imprisoned, he overcame both his brothers and the Egyptian woman, a type of Christ condemned in silence.
  • Homilies on Matthew 85.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Mark’s second cock-crow agrees with Matthew; Judas repented only when his sin was complete, and his suicide, the devil’s work, condemns the priests, who in turn are troubled only after the crucifixion, while their “See to it yourself” convicts them.
  • Homilies on Matthew 85.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · By disowning Judas’s silver yet pressing on to the crucifixion the priests convicted themselves, and the Field of Blood proclaimed their guilt; alms from plunder insult Christ, and because the faithful do not give, the church has been forced to hold property, turning bishops and priests into estate managers instead of servants of the poor.
  • Homilies on Matthew 86.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Passions once admitted are hard to expel, and the devil leads men from small sins to great ones—as with Saul, Cain and Judas—then to despair, and also deceives under a guise of piety, as when wives refuse their husbands for the sake of continence, or men abhor foods or grieve immoderately; Scripture arms us against each of these ways.
  • Homilies on Matthew 87.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The division of the garments, the vinegar and the taunts at the cross complete Christ’s humiliation, yet the robber confesses him; remembering this and sealing the breast with the cross quenches anger, since insult harms only the insulter, flattery is more dangerous than abuse, and only our own conscience can disgrace us.
  • Homilies on Matthew 88.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The women’s courage shames men who will not feed Christ in the poor, though to tend the poor on his word alone is a greater proof of reverence than to have fed him in person; Chrysostom will not stop preaching almsgiving while the congregation’s sins leave it unfit to fight Jews, pagans and heretics, and he rebukes the worldly talk that turns the church into a stable.
  • Homilies on Matthew 89.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ rose within the three days while his enemies guarded the tomb, so that their precautions proved the resurrection; the angel and then Christ himself send the women, the first witnesses, to the disciples. We may still hold his feet in the mysteries, but women who load themselves with gold while the poor go hungry cannot.
  • Homilies on Matthew 90.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The grave cloths left in the myrrh, the bribe and the admission that the body was gone all confirm the resurrection; in Galilee the risen Christ sends the disciples to baptize all nations with the promise of his presence to the end. His commands are easy; it is the love of money, not poverty, that enslaves, and poverty is a safe harbor and a school of self-command.
  • Homilies on Matthew 90.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Poverty is a beautiful maiden and avarice a monster: the saints shone in poverty, its eye and mouth are pure, and the insults and hunger of the poor are shared by Paul and by Christ; Peter was blessed not for healing the lame but for leaving his money, and the hearers should at least spend on the needy and seek no more than they need.
  • On 1 Cor 7:2, section 4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom argues that a married man who has relations with any woman, even a prostitute or slave, commits adultery, since by 1 Cor 7:3–4 his body belongs to his wife, against civil laws that punished only wives.
  • On 1 Cor 7:2, section 5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom describes the misery that a husband's unfaithfulness brings on his wife, warns of hell and of prostitutes' sorcery, contrasts the bitterness of the prostitute with the wife, and ends with 1 Cor 7:2–4.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 5:24Jerome · ca. 386 · Jerome urges that marriage modelled on Christ and the church be holy and free of bodily passion, setting the Ephesians' higher teaching above the concession of marital relations given to the Corinthians.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 5:25-27Jerome · ca. 386 · Jerome explains the holy love Paul enjoins on husbands, answers heretics who reject marriage, urges abstinence during pregnancy, and gives a tropological reading of soul and body.
  • Commentary on Ephesians 5:33Jerome · ca. 386 · Jerome explains that “love your wife as yourself” expresses confirmation, not mere likeness, and that the wife's “fear” of her husband is to be understood as reverence.
  • On Abraham 1.4.25Ambrose · ca. 387–390 · Ambrose warns men preparing for baptism that any intercourse outside marriage is adultery, that the same chastity binds husband and wife, and that such sin gives wives an occasion for divorce.
  • On Fleeing the World 1Ambrose · ca. 387-391 · Fleeing the world is easy to speak of but hard to do, since our thoughts are not in our power; so the psalmist prays for it.
  • On Fleeing the World 3Ambrose · ca. 387-391 · The senses are windows through which death enters; one who would ascend should prefer mourning to pleasure.
  • On Fleeing the World 17Ambrose · ca. 387-391 · To flee the world is to abstain from sin and imitate God; we must flee lust, avarice, and faithlessness.
  • On Fleeing the World 56Ambrose · ca. 387-391 · Good flight means avoiding sinners’ counsel, drunkenness, the strange woman, fools, and evil guides.
  • On Elijah and Fasting 27Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The rich man of the parable, who feasted daily while Lazarus starved, now thirsts in hell; drinkers drink without ever being satisfied.
  • On Elijah and Fasting 76Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · We can redeem our sins by almsgiving, turning money, the instrument of greed, into an aid to mercy.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 1.31Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Evil is not a substance but a perversion of the will; we are its cause, and outward misfortunes are not true evils.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 1.38Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Since the day begins and ends in light, Christians should walk as in the day; Book 1 ends with a doxology.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 3.4Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The marsh stands for vice, out of which faith and purity have been gathered into the church.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 3.28Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fodder came first because God cares for small things and to teach frugal, natural eating.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 3.31Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Humans, God's offspring made in his image, should sow spiritual seed true to their kind as plants do.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 3.51Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The trellised vine teaches equality in the church and the love that binds believers to one another and to God.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 4.13Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Astrology destroys moral responsibility; the apostles, the thief, Jonah, Peter, and Paul were saved by grace and faith, not by their stars.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 4.31Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The moon's waning teaches the instability of earthly things; the fool, not the wise man, changes like the moon, and creation waits on our conversion.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 5.9Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fish keep to their own kind, rebuking men who breed mules and make eunuchs against nature.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 5.13Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Big fish eat smaller ones and are eaten in turn, a warning against the greed of the powerful.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 5.14Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The greedy rich man is like the sheatfish full of smaller fish: he too will be caught.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 5.21Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The octopus that takes the colour of the rock to trap fish is like the deceiver who changes his face to suit each company.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 5.23Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Do not be a crab preying on others; simple innocence and modest poverty with the fear of God are better.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 5.26Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Each kind of fish keeps to its own region and takes only what it needs, a natural law of sufficiency.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 5.27Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Unlike fish, the greedy rich move boundaries, claim the sea as property, and rob their neighbours, whom God will judge.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 5.52Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The cranes' rotation of duty mirrors an early human commonwealth corrupted by the lust for permanent power.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 5.54Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The crows' loyalty to the storks rebukes human inhospitality, which brought ruin on Sodom and Egypt.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 5.55Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Young storks feed and carry their aged parents, shaming men; the Greek word for returning kindness comes from “stork.”
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 5.58Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Crows care for their young; human mothers refuse to nurse, expose infants, or procure abortions, and fathers disinherit sons.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 5.61Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The phēnē adopts the rejected eaglet, while humans abandon children they know to be theirs.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 5.87Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The bat is part bird, part beast; bats hang together in clusters, an image of love rare among men.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 6.5Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Ambrose's plain fare, like Elisha's wild herbs made sweet, is better than luxurious mixed dishes that fault the creator.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 6.10Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Animals are bent toward the earth and the belly; man, made upright, should not live like them in gluttony, lust, or cruelty.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 6.11Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The lazy ass warns against sloth.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 6.16Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The small ant, working by foresight without a master, is the model Scripture sets before the sluggard.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 6.17Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Faithful dogs teach gratitude and courage in defending Christ's flock; Tobias's dog accompanied Raphael.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 6.47Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God has painted the soul in his image; women who paint their faces with cosmetics deface God's work.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 6.48Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Murderers destroy God's work; humans dig pits for one another, so that Christ has nowhere to rest his head in them.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 6.50Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Knowing oneself as God's image means guarding thoughts, eyes, and speech, using one's powers to save others, and seeking repentance when wounded.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 6.51Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Riches pass like a shadow; in the tomb rich and poor are alike, so the rich should remember God and their mortal flesh.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 6.52Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The poor share the beauty of creation, God's great house, and sound sleep, and will be rewarded hereafter.
  • Hexameron (Exameron) 6.53Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Both poverty and riches tempt; Proverbs asks for sufficiency, and the rich must not credit their own strength.
  • On Joseph 3Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Joseph's story teaches not to repay evil; before the gospel he loved his enemies as Christ later taught.
  • On Joseph 20Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Joseph shows slaves that the mind can be free in servitude, while the greedy and lustful are slaves even in freedom.
  • On Joseph 22Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Joseph ruled himself and kept his beauty chaste; the guilt of Potiphar's wife's desire was hers alone.
  • On Joseph 23Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Joseph resisted the eyes, words, and persistence of Potiphar's wife, showing himself truly master and free.
  • On Joseph 25Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Joseph fled leaving his garment, stripped but not naked, clothed in modesty, unlike Adam, who kept his clothes yet was naked through sin.
  • On Joseph 78Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Joseph's warning not to quarrel on the way teaches the avoidance of anger, as Christ left his disciples his peace and sent them without means of revenge.
  • On the Blessings of the Patriarchs 33Ambrose · ca. 387-392 · Morally, we must stay awake against the serpent of avarice and lust, unlike Judas, who slept the sleep of riches and was thrown down by the devil.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.14.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Since the contest is of the soul, which has no sex, the reward is the same for both.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.15.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Blessedness lies not in wealth, power, birth, beauty or health.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.17.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Doers of good are blessed in the very act; abstainers from evil only at the end of a sinless life.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.18.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · For rational beings, abstaining from sin is the first step to goodness.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.18.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The ascent of virtue is like Jacob's ladder, step by step.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.18.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The first step, abstaining from sin, already lifts us from the earth.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.19.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The rich man who claimed to keep the commandments could not take the next step.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.20.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Ps 1:1 names three kinds of sin: thought, deed and persistence.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.20.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Two ways of reading the three stages of Ps 1:1.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.20.6Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Rising order: not persisting, not standing, not even thinking evil.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.21.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Sudden suggestions from the enemy are not yet guilt; deliberate thoughts are.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.22.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Scripture asks not sinlessness but that we not remain in sin.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.22.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Like Israel told to leave Babylon, the sinner must go out of the confusion of vice.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.23.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The seat of pestilence is the seat of pleasure, avarice and ambition, like that of the Pharisees.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.24.5Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Neither prosperity nor adversity should hold up the traveller; but he must choose his way.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.25.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · There are two ways; our life itself becomes one of them.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.25.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The way of the just is narrow and its reward future; the way of sinners broad and its pleasure present.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.27.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Long habit makes sin incurable; one must leap away from it at once.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.27.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Some persist in vice into old age; evil counsel is fire in the bosom.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.27.5Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · A spark of sin becomes a blaze; withdraw your foot at once.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.28.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Like mud, sin defiles the more the longer one wallows in it.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.28.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Riches are an evil sickness, as Ecclesiastes says.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.28.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The rich cannot sleep for anxiety over their wealth.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.28.5Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Every corruption of the world is a plague to be avoided.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.29.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Vice spreads like contagion among companions in sin.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.29.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · In taverns vice is praised and modesty mocked, and corruption spreads.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.31.5Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The first virtue is steadiness in both fortunes, crediting success to God.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.36.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The Pishon, "change of mouth", flows where gold is: avarice makes men break their word.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.41.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Virtues without faith, among pagans or Jews, are leaves without fruit.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.42.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Faith and works belong together, like fruit and leaf.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.46.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The powerful ungodly man is dust, soon gone.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.46.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Wealth, display and office pass like a shadow; better to feed the poor.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.46.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · We leave the world naked; possessions pass to others and cannot save from death.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 35.6.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The unjust harm themselves; the just benefit others and themselves.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 35.7.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Justice serves the common good, as David showed in sparing Saul.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 35.8.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · A guilty conscience is the heaviest punishment and a self-chosen slavery.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.2.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Psalms 33 (34) and 36 (37) are the chief moral psalms.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.2.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Psalm 36 (37) teaches gentleness, the best salve for the heart.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.11.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The pious must not envy and imitate the dishonest rich.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.18.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Anger is a heavy passion that turns correction into killing.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.18.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Anger destroys even the wise; it must be given a limit.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.18.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · "Be angry and do not sin" concedes the feeling but limits it, like a physician.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.18.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The prophet, like a physician, does not forbid anger outright but bids it cease.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.18.5Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Paul bids anger end by sunset, lest the devil feed it in the night.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.18.6Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The devil's goads to revenge lead to the ruin that Proverbs describes.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.28.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Not riches as such but the riches of sinners are condemned.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 36.68.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The just man speaks judgment without passion, weighing what to say and what to keep silent.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.5.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Whoever lives by the Spirit and restrains the flesh condemns sin in the flesh and imitates Christ.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.6.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Paul, disciplining his body, is the model of one condemning sin in the flesh.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.24.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Rahab followed Joshua, a figure of Jesus; money redeems the soul when given to the poor.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.30.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The luxurious man does not smell his own wounds, like the rich man of the parable.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.33.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The devil works through the loins to bring adultery and sexual immorality.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.45.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Blessed is he who does not return insult, like Christ.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.45.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The just man imitates Christ, the silent lamb.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.45.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Christ answered a blow gently; it is better to overlook an injury.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.2.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Provoked by enemies, human and spiritual, David meditated and chose patience.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.2.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Silence is a shield; David held his tongue when provoked.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.6.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Those who trouble the just are the devil's ministers; David's silence guarded him.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.8.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Those of our own household are often driven against us; patience and silence are the remedy.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.9.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Be silent under insult and pray God not to leave you; he who has God is not alone.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.10.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The just man is silent, prays, blesses, and loves his enemies.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.10.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Praying for enemies is more than silence.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.10.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Loving enemies is higher still; God is love.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.10.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Praying for persecutors is the fullness of the gospel, as Job prayed for his friends.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.23.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Faith serves God, avarice the tempter; the rich man does not know his heir.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.23.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Riches pass to unknown and often ungrateful heirs.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.27.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Like Jacob before Laban, let the devil find nothing of his in you.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.27.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Give to the poor rather than be troubled in vain over riches.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.34.5Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Luxury fattens sin; Paul chastised his body; sin is of guilt, not nature.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 38.35.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The greedy, like spiders, build in vain without Christ as foundation.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 40.22.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Divine sanctification can convert the depraved, as Zacchaeus the tax collector shows.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 40.22.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Man is free to choose good or evil; Judas, who betrayed his table companion, chose evil.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.8.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The promise of long life for honouring parents must mean eternal life, since in this life the dutiful often die young.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.9.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The nations are the passions; the church fights not with weapons but against the war within, conquering itself in Christ.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.22.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · We are freed when the hostile powers and the wisdom of the flesh are put to shame in their vices.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.23.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Walking honourably as in the day, the saint seeks future grace rather than present praise; nothing is hidden from God.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.75.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · As the sirens’ song, not the shore, wrecked sailors, so worldly pleasures, not the flesh itself, endanger us.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.79.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Each person makes himself light or darkness; the same inner sense is dark in the sinner and bright in the innocent.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.93.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Since poverty opens heaven, let us neglect earthly riches, as the first Christians laid their money at the apostles’ feet.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.93.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The saints of old practised gospel poverty, as the apostles left everything to follow Christ.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.14.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The day has come; let us put on the garment of light and live soberly.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 47.7.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Passing over from vice to virtue, from earthly to eternal, is great virtue; God is with the one who passes over.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 47.8.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Those who have struggled to master themselves marvel at others’ progress yet fear relapse, for human nature can turn either way.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 48.5.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The common call of rich and poor teaches humility and equality, for Christ became poor to save both.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 48.17.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The faithless have no true riches; the greedy man’s “fruits” are only money, and Christ bids him sell all.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 48.20.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The base man, like a neighing horse, stumbles by his folly and blesses with the mouth but not the heart.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 61.19.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · He who stands with God does not fall; every passion tries to move the mind, but Peter was told to come behind Christ.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 61.21.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The enemies sought to destroy not only the emperor’s life but his good name; our true “price” is chastity, mercy, faith, reputation and simplicity.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 61.21.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Simplicity is rich and fearless, unlike cunning; the enemies took the emperor’s gold but rejected his faith.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 61.31.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The false balance is the hypocrisy of the greedy; avarice, the root of all vices, must be fled by the baptized.
  • Explanation of Twelve Psalms 61.32.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Do not set your heart on riches that flow past; only the Jordan of baptism turned back to its source.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 1.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Evodius asks whether God is the author of evil; Augustine distinguishes evil done from evil suffered and argues that evil cannot be learned, since learning and understanding are good.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 1.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Testing why adultery is evil, Augustine rejects the law, the golden rule, and condemnation by courts as the reason and locates the evil in lust (libido), which makes even the unfulfilled desire guilty.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 1.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Through the case of a slave who kills his master from fear, Augustine and Evodius define blameworthy lust as the love of things that one can lose against one's will.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 1.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Evodius argues that human law rightly permits killing in self-defense and war to prevent greater evils, yet doubts that those who kill for perishable goods are free of sin before divine providence; Augustine approves the distinction between human law and divine punishment.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 1.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Augustine distinguishes temporal law, which can justly change with the condition of a people, from the eternal law, the supreme reason by which it is just that all things be perfectly ordered.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 1.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Since neither a higher nor a lower nature can force the mind to serve lust, only its own will and free choice can do so; the mind's resulting slavery to lust is itself a just and heavy penalty.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 1.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Leaving open whether the soul lived wisely before the body, Augustine shows that we have a will, that a good will surpasses all external goods, and that whether we have it lies in our will itself.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 1.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Augustine shows that one who loves his good will has prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice, and so lives a praiseworthy and happy life, which is gained simply by willing it above fleeting goods.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 1.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · All want happiness but not all want to live rightly, and since the eternal law joins happiness to the will to live rightly, the miserable fail to reach what they want.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 1.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Lovers of eternal things live under the eternal law, lovers of temporal things under the temporal law, which can punish only by taking away temporal goods; such goods are not evil, but their bad use is.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 1.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Evil-doing is turning from eternal to temporal things, and it comes from the free choice of the will; Evodius asks whether God should have given free choice, which Augustine defers to the next book.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 2.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Augustine argues that man is a good from God who can live rightly only by willing, so God had to give him free will, which was given for acting rightly; otherwise just punishment and reward could not exist.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 2.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Truths such as that one should live justly and prefer the eternal to the temporal are seen by each mind yet common to all; these rules and lights of the virtues belong to wisdom and are as unchangeable as the rules of number.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 2.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Having shown that God exists and that every good is from him, Augustine argues that free will, without which no one can live rightly, is a good like the eyes and hands, which can be misused yet are rightly given.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 2.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Augustine ranks the virtues as great goods, bodily beauty as least, and the powers of the mind, free will among them, as middle goods; sin is the will's voluntary turning from the unchangeable common good to its own, external, or lower goods.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 3.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Unlike a stone's natural fall, the soul's turning from the unchangeable good is its own voluntary and blameworthy motion; otherwise praise, blame, and admonition would make no sense.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 3.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · No one can rightly choose not to exist, since non-existence is nothing; even those who take their own lives desire rest, which is more being, not annihilation.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 3.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · God owes no one anything, while every creature owes him what it is and what it ought to be; since neither one's own nature nor another's forces anyone to sin, sin comes from one's own will and cannot be attributed to the Creator.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 3.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Asked why some creatures sin and others do not, Augustine answers that the wicked will, the avarice that is the root of all evils, is the first cause of sin, and no cause before the will need be sought.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 3.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Sins done in ignorance or under the necessity of the flesh are a just penalty inherited from man's condemnation; ignorance and difficulty are not human nature as created but the punishment of sin.
  • On Free Choice of the Will 3.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Sins are due to the will alone; if ignorance and difficulty are natural, they are a starting point like an infant's speechlessness, blameworthy only if one refuses to progress, and God is praised for every stage.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine explains that this book answers the two Manichaean lures, their attacks on the Scriptures and their show of chastity, by setting out the catholic teaching on life and morals from both Testaments.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Everyone wants to be happy, and happiness means loving and possessing what is best for a human being, which must be better than a human being and impossible to lose against one's will.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Without deciding whether a human being is soul and body or soul alone, Augustine argues that a human being's highest good is not the body's highest good.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Since the soul is the body's highest good, a human being's highest good must be whatever makes the soul best, and morals concern the soul.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · The soul gains virtue by following something above it, which cannot be a wise man, who can be lost, but only God; following God is living well, and reaching him is living happily.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · From Christ's command to love God with all one's heart, soul, and mind, and from Paul's words in Romans 8, Augustine concludes that God is the highest good.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Following God by love is the desire for happiness and reaching him is happiness itself; Augustine explains phrase by phrase why nothing in Rom 8:38–39 can separate us from God's love.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Paul's phrase “any other creature” shows that the mind too is a creature; it becomes like God by humble submission in love, not by proud claims to equality, and must not be drawn from him by love of the sensible world.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Christ is the Power, Wisdom, and Truth of God, to whom we are conformed by love poured out by the Holy Spirit, who, since he restores us to wholeness and is unchangeable, is God and not a creature.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · God, the threefold unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is the highest good of human beings, and we cleave to him only by love.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine defines the four cardinal virtues, temperance, fortitude, justice, and prudence, as forms of the love of God.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Temperance restrains the desires that turn us from God; it means stripping off the old man, Adam, and putting on the new, as both Paul and the Psalms teach.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Temperance turns love away from visible things, so the Manichaean worship of the sun and moon is not Christian; God alone is to be loved, and the world only used for life's needs.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Temperance also despises popular glory and curious, prideful study of the physical world; the New Testament forbids love of the world, and Ecclesiastes declares all such things vanity, to be used, not loved.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Fortitude is love bearing the loss of all things, including pain and death, which the soul fears because of its attachment to the body; if lovers of gold and pleasure endure so much, lovers of God should endure more.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · As examples of patience from the Old Testament, Augustine points to Job, who held his riches lightly, and above all to the mother of the seven martyred sons in 2 Maccabees, strengthened by Scripture's precepts of fortitude.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Justice serves God alone and rules other things rightly; prudence keeps watch against evil creeping in little by little; both Testaments teach both.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Living well is loving God wholly, which the four virtues express; eternal life, the knowledge of God, is the reward of that love, so love and authority must come before knowledge and reason.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Whoever loves God rightly loves himself, and the second commandment, to love one's neighbor as oneself, means bringing one's neighbor to God and doing him no harm, which is the first step toward the love of God.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Love of neighbor cares for the body by works of mercy, which even the untroubled wise man performs and should be called merciful for; God too is called merciful.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Discipline heals the mind by fear and love, the Old Testament stressing fear and the New love; the two great commandments the Manichaeans praise come from the Old Testament, which they therefore cannot consistently reject.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine praises the catholic Church as mother of Christians, who teaches worship of God alone and love of neighbor in every human relationship, wives and husbands, parents and children, slaves and masters, rulers and peoples, and so kindles the fire of divine love.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Against Manichaean boasts of abstinence, Augustine describes catholic hermits and especially the communities of monks and nuns in the East and Egypt, with their common property, manual work, deans and fathers, fasting, and generous almsgiving.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine also praises the many holy bishops, presbyters, and deacons he has known, whose virtue is harder to keep amid the people they must heal.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine describes communities of Christian men and women at Milan and Rome who live by manual work and practice severe fasts, yet, following Paul, never treat food or wine as unclean and make love their rule.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine challenges the Manichaeans to compare their life with that of true catholics, not with nominal Christians, such as those who venerate tombs and pictures or feast over the dead, whom the Church condemns and tries to correct until the final separation.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · The highest good is God, who exists supremely and unchangeably, so that nothing is contrary to him except not being; Augustine proposes to approach the question step by step.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine examines the Manichaean “three seals” of mouth, hands, and breast, and shows that the division cannot consistently cover all sins.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · The worth of abstinence depends on its end; Augustine contrasts a frugal man who takes a little lard and wine with a Manichaean Elect who feasts on costly vegetarian delicacies, showing the absurdity of judging holiness by meat and wine alone.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · On the Manichaean seal of the hands, Augustine argues from Christ's cursing of the fig tree and the herd of swine that we share no bond of law with plants and animals, and exposes the cruelty and inconsistency of rules that forbid plucking fruit for a dying man yet let Hearers do the plucking and allow the killing of vermin.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine argues that by treating procreation as worse than intercourse and urging the avoidance of conception, the Manichaeans in effect forbid marriage, as 1 Tim 4:3 foretold, and their doctrine of freeing souls from seeds through eating invites grave suspicion.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine recounts what he saw and heard in his nine years as a Manichaean Hearer at Carthage: Elect breaking their rules, harassing women in the street, an assault at a vigil, mutual accusations of adultery, theater-going, and a teacher who seduced a consecrated virgin and excused himself by Mani's teaching on Adam.
  • On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine tells how a wealthy Manichaean Hearer at Rome gathered the Elect into his house under a bishop to live by Mani's rule, until quarrels exposed their crimes and the bishop fled; he concludes that the Manichaeans cannot fairly judge the catholic Church by its worst members.
  • On the Greatness of the Soul 16Augustine of Hippo · 387–388 · 'Greater' differs from 'better': as the circle excels by its form, not its size, so virtue, the harmony of life with reason, makes the soul better, not larger, as it progresses with age.
  • On the Greatness of the Soul 19Augustine of Hippo · 387–388 · The soul 'grows' by learning only in a transferred sense, and, as with the body, its growth may be natural (good disciplines), superfluous (curious arts), or harmful (refinements of sense pleasure).
  • On the Greatness of the Soul 34Augustine of Hippo · 387–388 · Since nothing created is nearer to God than the soul, the soul must worship no creature, only the one unchangeable God; other souls are to be loved, imitated, and helped, and true religion reconciles the soul to God and makes it free.
  • On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine reads man's dominion over animals also spiritually, as reason ruling the soul's animal-like impulses, and notes that plants given as food to carnivores show the passage is not meant only literally.
  • On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine applies the six days to the spiritual growth of each believer, from the light of faith to the ordering of the soul under reason, after which comes the rest God gives.
  • On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · The four rivers of paradise signify the four virtues: prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice, which orders the other three.
  • Sermon on the Eight Beatitudes 2Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388-407 · Chromatius explains the first two steps: voluntary poverty for God's sake, and meekness, which is possible only for those who have renounced worldly cares.
  • Sermon on the Eight Beatitudes 3Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388-407 · Chromatius explains the third step: mourning for one's sins, which the meek soul begins when it examines itself, and which brings God's consolation.
  • Sermon on the Eight Beatitudes 4Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388-407 · Chromatius explains the fourth step: after repentance the soul hungers and thirsts for God's righteousness and is filled.
  • Sermon on the Eight Beatitudes 5Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388-407 · Chromatius explains the fifth step: one who has received mercy becomes merciful to others, even enemies, and will receive more mercy at Christ's coming.
  • Sermon on the Eight Beatitudes 6Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388-407 · Chromatius explains the sixth step: those who have climbed the earlier steps are pure in heart and will see God's brightness without hindrance.
  • Sermon on the Eight Beatitudes 7Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388-407 · Chromatius explains the seventh step: the greater peacemaking is bringing pagans, sinners, heretics and divided churches to peace with God.
  • Sermon on the Eight Beatitudes 10Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388-407 · Chromatius closes by inviting his hearers to 'trade' at this spiritual market, offering the virtues of the beatitudes to gain the pearls of the kingdom.
  • Tractates on Matthew 3.2Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that the blessed poor are those who renounce worldly riches for God, like the apostles, or who keep humility of spirit.
  • Tractates on Matthew 3.3Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that the blessed mourners are those who weep for their own sins or for the sins of others, like David, Samuel, Jeremiah, Daniel and Paul.
  • Tractates on Matthew 3.4Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains the blessing of the meek, following Christ and Moses, who will inherit the land of the future life, and especially their own glorified bodies.
  • Tractates on Matthew 3.5Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, which is faith in Christ and Christ himself, will be filled, unlike those who hunger for wealth.
  • Tractates on Matthew 3.6Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains the blessings of the merciful, who will receive mercy, and of the pure in heart, who will see God face to face in the kingdom.
  • Tractates on Matthew 3.7Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that peacemakers are those who keep the peace and unity of the Catholic Church and seek to restore those who dissent.
  • Tractates on Matthew 5.3Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that Christians, lit by faith, must shine by good works to enlighten others, not hide their light like the servant who buried his talent.
  • Tractates on Matthew 5.5Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that Christians glorify God by good works, and that the lamp may also be Christ in his humble incarnation, set on the lampstand of the cross.
  • Tractates on Matthew 6.2Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius teaches that no commandment is to be set aside and that teachers must practise what they teach, as Christ did.
  • Tractates on Matthew 6.3Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees sought human praise, and that Christians must surpass it with true righteousness and faith.
  • Tractates on Matthew 7.1Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that Christ fulfilled the Law by forbidding even anger, the root of murder.
  • Tractates on Matthew 7.2Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains the sayings on 'Raca' and 'Fool': Christians must guard their tongues, since they will give account for every idle word.
  • Tractates on Matthew 7.3Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that a gift at the altar is acceptable only after reconciliation, as the offerings of Abel and Cain show.
  • Tractates on Matthew 9.1Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that Christ forbids not only adultery but the lust that is its root, citing Sirach, Proverbs, Job and James.
  • Tractates on Matthew 9.2Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that the eye and hand to be cut off are the evil desires of the heart, or, as some think, kin who lead one from the faith.
  • Tractates on Matthew 10.2Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that Christ forbids all swearing, since a Christian's every word must be true, and that God swears only for the sake of unbelievers.
  • Tractates on Matthew 10.3Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius gives two meanings of the prohibition of swearing by heaven, earth, Jerusalem and one's head: to avoid venerating creatures, and because such oaths are oaths by God.
  • Tractates on Matthew 11.1Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that Christ replaces the law of retaliation with patience, which trains Christians for martyrdom.
  • Tractates on Matthew 11.2Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius teaches that Christians should give up even more than a litigant demands, training them to despise possessions in persecution.
  • Tractates on Matthew 11.3Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that going the second mile shows love beyond what is required, and spiritually means leading someone from belief in the Father to faith in the Son and the Spirit.
  • Tractates on Matthew 11.4Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius urges generous giving and lending to the poor and to brothers in need, citing Tobit, the Psalms and Job.
  • Tractates on Matthew 12.1Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains Christ's command to love enemies, foreshadowed in Isaiah, the Psalms, Job and the law about an enemy's fallen ox.
  • Tractates on Matthew 12.2Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius teaches that Christian love must go beyond loving those who love us, imitating the Father's goodness.
  • Tractates on Matthew 12.3Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius teaches that righteous deeds must be done to please God alone, not to win human praise.
  • Tractates on Matthew 12.4Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that almsgiving must not be publicised to win praise, or its reward is lost.
  • Tractates on Matthew 12.5Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius interprets the left and right hands as sinners and the just: good works should not be paraded before unbelievers.
  • Tractates on Matthew 14.6Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that we must forgive others as we ask God to forgive us, or our own prayer condemns us, as in the parable of the unforgiving servant.
  • Tractates on Matthew 15.3Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius interprets anointing the head as mercy to the poor, done to Christ the head, and washing the face as purity of conscience.
  • Tractates on Matthew 16.1Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius warns against storing up earthly treasure, recalling the rich fool and the rich young man.
  • Tractates on Matthew 16.2Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that treasure is laid up in heaven by works of mercy and giving to the poor, as Christ told the rich young man.
  • Tractates on Matthew 16.3Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that those who store treasure in heaven keep their hearts there, and cites Paul's instruction to the rich.
  • Tractates on Matthew 17.3Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that no one can serve two masters, God and the devil, and that mammon is the avarice the devil inspires.
  • Tractates on Matthew 17.4Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius concludes that one cannot love both God and the devil, the author of avarice, and must obey the one who calls to life.
  • Homily 1.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The words of Scripture are more precious than pearls and sweeter than honey to the healthy soul, and anyone, like the penitent thief, can change his life at once if he wills it in earnest and shows it in works.
  • Homily 1.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom urges his hearers to prepare their souls as good ground and to keep away from the theater, recalling that at baptism they renounced Satan, his angels and his pomp.
  • Homily 3.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom praises his hearers’ eagerness and urges them to talk over the sermons at home and to teach their children Scripture while they are young, since a soul with God’s law written on it is safe from the devil.
  • Homily 3.5 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Vainglory blinded the Jewish leaders, who believed in Christ but feared expulsion from the synagogue; it enslaves its victims to the fickle crowd, gives no real pleasure, and springs from a mean soul.
  • Homily 3.6 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The opinion of the crowd is worthless and vainglory is the source of every evil, so Christians should seek God alone as their spectator, for he gives glory and wealth to those who do not love them.
  • Homily 4.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ came to free us from worshiping creatures, so we must not reduce him to a creature, and must join right faith to right living, above all by mastering anger and bearing wrongs meekly as God commands.
  • Homily 5.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · God draws people by their own choice, not by force; the light of Christ enters through faith and stays with a pure life, while sin is a darkness that blinds, frightens and disgraces those who live in it.
  • Homily 7.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The Son is begotten radiance of the Father, co-eternal yet with his own hypostasis against Sabellius and Marcellus; rather than pry into God, Christians should repent through confession, forgiving others, almsgiving, prayer and fasting.
  • Homily 8.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · That many do not know God no more disproves him than the sick disprove the sun; “the world” that did not know Christ means those attached to worldly things, so Christians must leave the service of mammon, whose yoke is heavy, for Christ’s, and give to the poor.
  • Homily 9.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The Jews’ envy at God’s grace to the Gentiles was folly, since Paul shows that all, Jew and Greek, have sinned and are justified freely; pride, the root of all sin, which cast down the devil and Adam, must be uprooted by humility.
  • Homily 10.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · God draws people by persuasion and kindness, not force, and turns to punishment only when kindness is refused; even those who killed Christ were offered repentance, as Paul the persecutor’s conversion shows.
  • Homily 10.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Grace is God’s part and faith man’s; baptism gives the new birth “of God,” but keeping it pure depends on our effort, lest we be cast out like the foolish virgins or the guest without a wedding garment.
  • Homily 13.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Praise of God must be given by deeds, above all by almsgiving, the oil of the lamps and a living sacrifice greater than the old sacrifices, but only if it comes from honest gain and not from robbery.
  • Homily 14.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · As Christ fulfilled the types, stretching out his own hands on the cross where Moses’ hands had to be held up, and replaced the law’s curse with rest, those who have received so great a grace owe greater virtue, and the preacher’s rebukes are meant to heal.
  • Homily 15.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · “In the bosom of the Father” shows that the Son alone knows the Father’s essence exactly, being of one essence, eternal and genuine Son; the clearer revelation through the Son calls for a higher life, in which Christians treat one another as members of one body.
  • Homily 16.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Against those who claim to know God as he knows himself, Chrysostom denounces pride as worse than sexual sin and urges the rich to send their wealth ahead to heaven through the poor.
  • Homily 18.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ came down to take human nature as his bride; Chrysostom explains “the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world,” the conduct of John’s two disciples and Jesus’ question to them, and urges constant hearing of Scripture instead of talk about dancers and prostitutes.
  • Homily 19.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Jesus begins to show his divinity by prophecy, renaming Simon in humble terms; Chrysostom explains biblical renamings, urges Christians to live worthily of Christ’s name, and teaches that wealth is for distribution, not hoarding.
  • Homily 20.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Philip follows Jesus at a single word and brings Nathanael, whose doubt about Nazareth rests on the prophecy of Bethlehem; the ref also contains, displaced in the scan, the end of Homily 19 on sowing wealth through almsgiving.
  • Homily 20.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Jesus wins Nathanael by showing that he saw him under the fig tree and praising his honest doubt; Nathanael confesses him Son of God, and Chrysostom urges hearers to show their joy in Christ by obedience and gifts to the needy.
  • Homily 21.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Jesus’ reply to his mother guarded against suspicion and taught her rightly; as Mary’s motherhood profited her only with faith and virtue, so no one is saved by pious relatives without good works of his own.
  • Homily 22.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ’s miracles surpass nature; as he changed water into wine, he can change cold and unstable people, and Chrysostom describes the harm of luxury and gluttony to body and soul, urging delight in the Lord instead.
  • Homily 23.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ left the saying about the temple of his body veiled because it could not yet be understood; his resurrection is the chief sign of his divinity, and the Spirit later reminded the disciples of his words; Chrysostom ends by urging almsgiving as the oil for our lamps.
  • Homily 24.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Nicodemus’s “how” shows the folly of measuring divine things by human reasoning, as heretics do with Christ’s incarnation and begetting; Chrysostom urges reverent faith, a pure life, and almsgiving, the evergreen olive that death cannot wither.
  • Homily 25.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The baptized must live worthily, and catechumens must hasten to baptism, for they are strangers to the faithful and in danger of Gehenna if death finds them uninitiated; Chrysostom urges lending to Christ in the poor while the season for sowing lasts.
  • Homily 26.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ’s “we testify to what we have seen” claims exact knowledge, and his mild “no one receives our testimony” teaches gentleness; Chrysostom exhorts against anger and shouting, especially toward servants.
  • Homily 27.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Since God gave his only Son for us, it is shameful to spare our money; Chrysostom urges clothing and feeding Christ in the poor rather than adorning ourselves, for almsgiving saves the giver from Gehenna.
  • Homily 28.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Unbelievers condemn themselves by loving darkness, fleeing a Christ who came to pardon, because they will not give up their wicked deeds; Chrysostom doubts that pagans truly live virtuously and explains that Christ spoke of the general case.
  • Homily 28.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Unbelief springs from love of an evil life and above all from slavery to glory, which kept pagans and Jews from faith; Chrysostom explains why Jesus taught Nicodemus at length and Nathanael briefly.
  • Homily 29.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Truth hides nothing, as Christ showed by teaching openly in Judea; Chrysostom explains why John kept baptizing while Jesus’ disciples did, and how John’s jealous disciples started a dispute about purification; the ref also contains, displaced in the scan, the end of Homily 28 on empty glory.
  • Homily 29.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · John rejoices that the bride has come to the bridegroom and declares, “He must increase, but I must decrease”; Chrysostom traces his disciples’ jealousy to empty glory, which ruins churches, cities, and even monks, and counsels setting heavenly glory against it.
  • Homily 30.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · John checks his disciples’ vainglory by contrasting the one who comes from above with himself, who speaks from the earth, and explains “what he has seen and heard” as a concession to make Christ’s words credible; the ref also contains, displaced in the scan, the end of Homily 29.
  • Homily 31.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Faith in the Son brings life, but faith without a right life does not save; Christ withdraws from Judea to quiet envy, wishing his true humanity to be believed.
  • Homily 31.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ's weariness at the well teaches frugality and freedom from pride, and the Samaritan woman's gentle questions contrast with the Jews' hostility.
  • Homily 31.5 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · If a Samaritan woman listened so patiently, we have no excuse for impatience with God's word; life is given for preparing for the life to come.
  • Homily 32.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Shamed by the Samaritan woman's zeal, Christians should read and know the Scriptures rather than prize fine books or the races and shows; the Bible shows the righteous wrestling with the devil.
  • Homily 33.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · True worship in spirit and truth replaces the types; Christ reveals himself as the Messiah to the woman, and the disciples' reverent silence leads to a reflection on John's humility and the danger of pride.
  • Homily 34.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The Samaritan woman, kindled by Christ's words, leaves her water jar and evangelizes her city; Christ calls the salvation of people his food.
  • Homily 34.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Like the Samaritan woman we should not hide our sins from men but repent before God, applying remedies opposite to our sins, because the judgment and the end are near.
  • Homily 35.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ is honored in Galilee and Cana; the royal official's weak faith is reproved and healed along with his son, teaching us to serve God without waiting for miracles.
  • Homily 36.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The pool of Bethesda prefigures baptism, in which the Spirit, not the water alone, looses sins; the paralytic's patience shames our sloth, and toil was joined to virtue because ease corrupted us.
  • Homily 37.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The healed paralytic boldly confesses his healer before the hostile Jews; Christ withdraws so the deed may speak for itself; envy, worse than other sins, destroys love and must be uprooted.
  • Homily 38.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Sin often brings bodily disease as a remedy for the soul; the paralytic's long suffering shows that punishment is measured by the nature of sin, not its duration, and we must bear every blow with thanksgiving.
  • Homily 38.5 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The love of precedence and vainglory breeds heresy and unbelief; we should seek the glory that comes from God and stop living as slaves to earthly cares.
  • Homily 39.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ's humble words about judging as he hears show the unity of his will with the Father's, spoken to suit his hearers; we should forgive others, love our neighbor, and give our goods to buy heaven.
  • Homily 40.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · John's testimony, Christ's works and the Father's witness in the Scriptures testify to Christ; the Scriptures equip us completely, and love of money, the root of evils, must be cast out.
  • Homily 41.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Wickedness is folly that harms the wrongdoer, while virtue, rooted in the fear of God, is true wisdom; we should pity those who do wrong, not those who suffer it.
  • Homily 42.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Human glory is worthless beside God's; money spent applauding dancers and prostitutes while the poor go hungry ruins both giver and receiver and leaves no defense at the judgment.
  • Homily 43.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The crowd seeks Christ only for food, though his walking on the sea surpassed Moses' crossing; we should pray, as the Lord's Prayer teaches, for spiritual rather than earthly goods.
  • Homily 44.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ rebukes the crowd for seeking him only for bread and bids them labor for the food that endures; this does not forbid work, which should be done in order to give to the needy.
  • Homily 45.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Gluttony blinds the Jews, who demand a sign like the manna; Christ points them from Moses' manna to the Father's true bread from heaven, himself, the bread of life.
  • Homily 47.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ neither exposes nor hides Judas, warning all; his choosing Judas shows that his teaching is free of flattery and that God's call persuades but does not force.
  • Homily 47.5 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Judas, though an apostle, was ruined by love of money; we betray Christ when we neglect the poor or receive the mysteries unworthily, and should spend on the needy rather than on luxury.
  • Homily 48.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · From Christ's unbelieving brothers came James, first bishop of Jerusalem; Christ answers them meekly, and we too must master anger, which is worse than madness.
  • Homily 49.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ's teaching is his own yet the Father's, since their teaching is one; he defends his Sabbath healing by the law of circumcision and bids his hearers judge not by appearance but justly.
  • Homily 50.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ foretells his departure; the Jews wonder whether he will go to the Greeks; Chrysostom warns that sinners will not go where Christ is, and urges almsgiving so that the lamp of the Spirit is not quenched.
  • Homily 51.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The “living water” is the Spirit, given after Christ’s glorification on the cross; Chrysostom explains why Christ did not answer the confused crowd and warns against revenge, urging Christians to leave vengeance to God.
  • Homily 52.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom urges his hearers to glorify the Son by their works as well as by right faith, to be light, salt, and leaven to others, and to see sin’s foulness and flee greed.
  • Homily 53.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom urges his hearers to read the Scriptures, above all the Gospels, with care and reverence, since even hearing without doing begins to bear fruit, and the story of Christ’s birth teaches contempt for wealth.
  • Homily 54.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ shows that only the Son can give true freedom, and that the Jews who seek to kill him are children not of Abraham or God but of the devil; Chrysostom urges his hearers to seize the kingdom of heaven by casting off wealth.
  • Homily 55.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom warns against the callousness of the soul and above all against envy, which destroys the envious and is the mother of all evils.
  • Homily 56.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom reconciles Paul’s and Christ’s uses of “night” and urges his hearers to build houses in heaven by giving to the poor rather than spending on splendid houses on earth.
  • Homily 57.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The healed man answers the Pharisees truthfully; the division among them leads Chrysostom to teach that there is good discord and bad concord, and to urge separation from wicked company and care not to give offense.
  • Homily 58.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The healed man argues that God does not listen to sinners, and is cast out; Chrysostom urges boldness for Christ and rebukes his hearers for flocking to shows and races while neglecting the Scriptures.
  • Homily 58.5 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom answers those who ask what harm there is in the shows: time given by God for learning piety is being wasted, and he urges his hearers to turn from the theater to the Scriptures.
  • Homily 59.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom urges his hearers to stay under the good shepherd by obeying his voice, warning that love of money is the worst slavery, and urging rich and poor alike to give to Christ in the poor.
  • Homily 60.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ’s “command” from the Father shows their oneness of mind; he bears silently being called possessed, teaching meekness; Chrysostom urges mourning for sin and mercy, especially visiting prisoners.
  • Homily 60.5 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom urges his hearers to visit prisoners instead of going to the theater, to show mercy to the wicked as God does, and to remember their own sins, including injustice in buying and selling.
  • Homily 62.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom rebukes the excessive and theatrical mourning of Christian women as a denial of the resurrection, permitting quiet tears but urging mourning for sins and help for the dead through almsgiving and offerings.
  • Homily 63.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Right faith profits nothing without a pure life; Chrysostom condemns adultery by married men, arguing that a wife may separate from an unfaithful husband though not from an unbelieving one, and bars the unrepentant adulterer from the church.
  • Homily 64.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ’s prayer at the tomb is a condescension for the crowd, not a sign of weakness, and his command “Lazarus, come out” shows his authority; the Pharisees, moved by envy, plot to kill him, and Chrysostom laments the envy and greed of his own day.
  • Homily 65.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom denounces the love of money as a slavery and a form of idolatry, the source of Judas’s betrayal and countless evils, and urges his hearers to build their houses in heaven.
  • Homily 68.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Chrysostom urges his hearers not to cut off members of the church who are spiritually sick, but to keep caring for them and bear one another’s burdens.
  • Homily 69.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ’s word will judge those who reject him; his humble language about receiving a command expresses his oneness of will with the Father; Chrysostom urges women to give up costly ornament for almsgiving and so win their husbands.
  • Homily 70.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ teaches humility by deeds, washing even the traitor's feet to draw him back by persuasion, and showing his love for his own to the end.
  • Homily 70.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ's washing of the disciples' feet, Peter's refusal and yielding, and the meaning of “clean” lead to an exhortation to protect widows and orphans.
  • Homily 71.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ bids the disciples wash one another's feet after his example, and Chrysostom rebukes those who despise their fellow servants and demand honors.
  • Homily 71.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ's foot-washing pulls down pride; his forbearance toward Judas, and Joseph's toward his brothers, teach us to forgive and to pray for those who wrong us.
  • Homily 72.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Receiving Christ's messengers is receiving Christ; Christ, troubled at Judas, points him out to John, the disciple whom he loved, and Satan enters the traitor.
  • Homily 72.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ lets Judas go and calls his coming death glory; foretelling his departure, he gives the disciples the new commandment of love as their mark.
  • Homily 72.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Love, not miracles, marks Christ's disciples and wins unbelievers; the vices of Christians keep the Greeks in their error and cause God's name to be blasphemed.
  • Homily 73.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and knowing him is knowing the Father; sins are washed away by baptism and afterward above all by almsgiving, but not almsgiving from injustice.
  • Homily 73.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Alms given from robbery defile the altar and the souls of the saints; inner cleanness matters more than washed hands, and almsgiving must come from honest means.
  • Homily 74.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christians must put their passions to death as a living sacrifice; the love of money is neither natural nor necessary and leaves us without excuse, since God asks for alms by the measure of the will.
  • Homily 75.5 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The Spirit made the fearful apostles fearless; virtue depends on the will, not on having or lacking a body, so the flesh is no excuse for the passions.
  • Homily 76.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ withdraws with the disciples to let them listen without fear, and in the parable of the vine teaches that they bear fruit only by abiding in him, under the Father's care.
  • Homily 76.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The fruitless branch is cast out and burned, but those who keep Christ's commandments abide in his love and glorify the Father by bearing fruit.
  • Homily 76.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Love must be shown in deeds; Chrysostom attacks greed, the tyranny of mammon, and concern for the opinion of the crowd, and praises poverty endured for virtue.
  • Homily 77.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ comforts the disciples so that their joy may be complete, gives the commandment of love modeled on his own, and calls them friends whom he chose and planted to bear lasting fruit.
  • Homily 77.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Looking to Christ and to the crowns makes suffering, chastity, and almsgiving easy; those who turn away and insult the hungry poor will answer for it at the judgment, as the rich man did for Lazarus.
  • Homily 77.5 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Since Christ gives us heaven, the sun, and his own body and blood, we must not refuse him bread and clothing in the poor; greed makes the rich cruel, while alms laid up with the poor lead to God.
  • Homily 78.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Concord and friendship multiply each person's strength and safety; even monks in the mountains are bound to others in love, and the church's kiss in the mysteries and its common prayers express this unity.
  • Homily 79.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ will speak plainly after the resurrection; the disciples' faith is still imperfect, but he has conquered the world, so Christians, as strangers and sojourners, should not be troubled by death or by insults.
  • Homily 79.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Insults from kin are lighter to bear since we are members of one body; Chrysostom shames his hearers by the devotion lovers show harlots, asking at least as much love for God, who promises heaven.
  • Homily 79.5 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Men give everything to harlots but begrudge alms to the poor; the life of virtue brings greater pleasure and freedom, and like the prodigal son the fallen may return to the Father.
  • Homily 80.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The Son is true God although the Father is called the only true God; he asks the glory he had before the world for his flesh. Chrysostom then attacks luxury, many servants, and needless wants as slavery, praising simplicity and freedom from need.
  • Homily 81.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Like children dazzled by clay toys, many admire earthly wealth; Chrysostom urges daily almsgiving from honest means as the soul's food and medicine.
  • Homily 82.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ prays for the unity of all believers, a peace greater than signs, and that they may behold his glory; Chrysostom closes by rebuking those who neglect even their own relatives.
  • Homily 82.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Looking down on human life from a height would show its folly: luxury, usury and corrupt courts while the poor starve; Chrysostom calls for works, not mere words in church.
  • Homily 83.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Peter's sword, the healing of Malchus, Jesus before Annas and Caiaphas, Peter's denials, and the blow in the high priest's court show Christ's forbearance and Peter's weakness without God.
  • Homily 83.5 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ bore mockery and blows in silence; Chrysostom teaches that insults only harm those who resent them and urges month-by-month correction of faults as a climb up Jacob's ladder.
  • Homily 84.1 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ's long-suffering before Pilate; Pilate declares him innocent, offers him for release, and has him scourged and mocked hoping to appease the crowd, which still cries “Crucify.”
  • Homily 84.3 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Remembering the mockery Christ bore should quench our anger; Chrysostom warns that faith without a matching life condemns, and urges daily use of Scripture and provision for death.
  • Homily 85.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · From the cross Christ commits his mother to John, dies by his own authority, and from his pierced side flow water and blood, the sources of baptism and the Eucharist; Joseph and Nicodemus bury him.
  • Homily 85.5 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Since Christ rose naked, costly burial is vainglory that profits the dead nothing; the true grave clothes are almsgiving, which rises with the dead.
  • Homily 85.6 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Restraint at funerals shows Christ's power over death; the dying should leave Christ as heir through almsgiving, the best grave clothes for the resurrection.
  • Homily 87.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · John wrote only what suffices for faith; at the sea of Tiberias the risen Christ provides a miraculous catch and a meal; Chrysostom turns to the longing to see Christ and against love of money.
  • Homily 87.4 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Love of money estranges a man from kin, friends, God and himself, and makes him money's slave; the pleasure of almsgiving is safe and joyful, unlike the ruinous pleasure spent on prostitutes.
  • Homily 88.2 on JohnJohn Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ checks Peter's curiosity about John; John vouches for his own testimony as written without flattery; Chrysostom closes by urging Scripture reading, mourning for sin, and almsgiving free of greed.
  • On True Religion 38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine argues that even those who worship nothing are slaves to the threefold desire of pleasure, pride and curiosity (1 John 2:16), which Christ overcame in his three temptations.
  • On True Religion 45Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Even bodily pleasure and pride, rightly understood, point back to the unity and power that belong to God, and it is better to be conquered by a man than by a vice such as envy.
  • On True Religion 46Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Whoever loves God above all and his neighbor as himself cannot be conquered, because what he loves cannot be taken from him; the neighbor is to be loved as a man, not for fleshly ties or advantage.
  • On True Religion 47Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · The man who loves in others only what he has perfectly in himself, and who clings to God alone, envies no one, uses all things and people rightly, and cannot be conquered or robbed of happiness.
  • On True Religion 48Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · True freedom and rule come from loving God above oneself and loving each thing in its due measure; even pride is a shadow that points back to true freedom.
  • On True Religion 53Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Those who love the true ends of knowledge, action, and bodily life, namely truth, peace, and health, receive a foretaste of them now and their perfection after the resurrection.
  • Homily 13Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390–394 · On Song 5:8–12 Gregory explains the bride's oath "by the powers of the field" as the gospel's "Yes" (sound faith and a pure life), the wound of love as Christ's love for sinners, and begins the description of the bridegroom as Christ in his incarnate economy and his body the church: white and ruddy for his flesh, "chosen" for his virgin birth without labour, his golden head the sinless first fruits of our nature, his locks the apostles, his eyes the church's overseers.
  • Homily 14Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390–394 · On Song 5:13–16 Gregory continues the description of the bridegroom's body as the church: the cheeks are teachers who give plain, guileless food; the lips are preachers whose lily-bright words drip the myrrh of dying to the world (Paul with Thecla, Peter with Cornelius); the golden hands are faithful stewards (Judas the warning); the belly is the pure heart as a tablet of the law; the legs are the pillars of the church, or the two great commandments; and "this is my close one" is Christ as the Good Samaritan.
  • Life of Hilarion 3Jerome · ca. 390–392 · After two months with Antony, Hilarion returned home, gave away his inheritance, and at fifteen settled in the desert near Gaza.
  • Life of Hilarion 27Jerome · ca. 390–392 · The generous Sabas's vineyard, blessed by Hilarion after prayer, yields three times its estimate, while the stingy monk's wine turns sour.
  • Life of Hilarion 36Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Landing in Sicily, Hilarion offers his Gospel book as fare, which the captain refuses.
  • Life of Malchus 10Jerome · ca. 390–392 · The pair escape to a Roman camp; Malchus returns to the monks and the woman to the virgins, and Jerome draws the lesson that chastity cannot be taken captive.
  • Matthaei, chapter 17Nemesius of Emesa · ca. 390-400 · Nemesius divides desire into the four passions of desire, pleasure, fear and pain and names their causes and cures.
  • Matthaei, chapter 18Nemesius of Emesa · ca. 390-400 · Nemesius distinguishes pleasures of soul and body, classes bodily pleasures as necessary, natural, or neither, commends true pleasures of contemplation and virtue, and argues against defining pleasure as a coming-to-be.
  • Matthaei, chapter 19Nemesius of Emesa · ca. 390-400 · Nemesius names four kinds of pain, calls all pain evil, and contrasts the passionlessness of the contemplative with the moderation of the good man.
  • Matthaei, chapter 21Nemesius of Emesa · ca. 390-400 · Nemesius defines anger, its three kinds, and its role as the bodyguard of reason.
  • Matthaei, chapter 29Nemesius of Emesa · ca. 390-400 · Nemesius introduces the voluntary and the involuntary and sets out tests for distinguishing them.
  • Matthaei, chapter 30Nemesius of Emesa · ca. 390-400 · Nemesius defines the involuntary by force, treats mixed actions done under constraint, and denies that acts of desire or anger are involuntary.
  • Matthaei, chapter 31Nemesius of Emesa · ca. 390-400 · Nemesius distinguishes acting through ignorance from acting in ignorance, holds that self-caused ignorance does not excuse, and lists the particular circumstances whose ignorance makes an act involuntary.
  • Matthaei, chapter 32Nemesius of Emesa · ca. 390-400 · Nemesius defines the voluntary, excludes natural processes, and argues that acts done through anger and desire are voluntary.
  • Matthaei, chapter 33Nemesius of Emesa · ca. 390-400 · Nemesius shows that choice is not the voluntary, appetite, wish, opinion or deliberation, and defines it as deliberative appetite for things in our power.
  • Matthaei, chapter 34Nemesius of Emesa · ca. 390-400 · Nemesius distinguishes counsel from inquiry and shows that we deliberate only about things in our power, through us, of unclear outcome, and equally contingent.
  • Matthaei, chapter 39Nemesius of Emesa · ca. 390-400 · Nemesius proves that some things are in our power, since human actions cannot be ascribed to God, necessity, fate, nature, fortune or chance, and since deliberation, the virtues, exhortations and laws presuppose it.
  • Matthaei, chapter 40Nemesius of Emesa · ca. 390-400 · Nemesius explains what is in our power, namely voluntary actions, the works of the soul, the arts and the virtues, answers objections from Scripture, and shows how providence, bodily temperament and choice combine.
  • Matthaei, chapter 41Nemesius of Emesa · ca. 390-400 · Nemesius explains that free will comes with reason and changeability with created being, defends God against blame for human vice, and shows that vice lies not in our powers but in states acquired by choice.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 1Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · People who judge city ascetics superior to desert monks are like the unskilled judging an art: they count only sins of act and ignore the hidden victories and defeats of thought.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 2Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Inner purity matters more than outward; even a virtuous city ascetic is as far behind the desert monk as a mere hand-healer is behind a physician who knows the causes of disease.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 3Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Sin grows from sight to thought, desire, pleasure, consent and act, and must be stopped at the start by guarding the senses under a sober mind.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 4Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The desert monk fights the memory of passions directly and so can conquer them, while the city ascetic's mind is flooded with ever-changing images and never cleansed.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 5Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The city ascetic's senses are battered all day by sights and sounds; in quiet the passions, left unstirred, grow weaker until only bare memories remain.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 6Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · In quiet the passions are unlearned as a sated man loses appetite; the methodical desert ascetic is like a general who wins by strategy rather than by reckless frontal attack.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 7Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Our nature already has the fire of desire; the senses supply the kindling, as in the law about fire spreading through thorns, so small sins must be avoided because they lead to great ones.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 8Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Passions must be crushed at their first appearance, like the serpent's head or Babylon's infants dashed against the rock; once grown they are hard to defeat, and only then comes the peace of contemplation.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 9Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Only after the battle is over can the enemy's tricks be seen and the victories remembered; the city ascetic busy helping others neglects his own soul, though every tradesman minds his own affairs first.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 10Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Praising the city ascetic who helps others is like praising a man who leaves his house burning to help friends; the senses feed the fire of passion, as Jeremiah's image of gathering wood shows.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 11Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The senses give shape and fuel to formless passions; quiet keeps them from being seen, remembered and stirred, which is why Moses pitched his tent outside the camp.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 12Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Joshua, Elijah, John, Jeremiah and Christ himself sought solitude; city ascetics grow callous to the harm they suffer, like bare feet that no longer feel thorns.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 13Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Those who live among distractions do not notice the harm they suffer until night or solitude, when the images they took in rise up against them.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 14Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Impressions taken in through the senses grow like thorns or the hydra's heads; even charity toward a needy woman can kindle desire, so one must not help others at the cost of one's own soul.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 15Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The angel told Lot to save his own life and not look back; caring for others at the cost of one's own salvation is wrong, and the monk who tends his soul in quiet pleases God more.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 16Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Christ preferred Mary, who sat undistracted at his word, to Martha busy with serving, gently rebuking Martha's zeal for hospitality.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 17Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The Levites and Nazirites served God apart; Abel and Dinah came to harm by going out; and Scripture repeatedly praises staying within, which keeps the soul safe.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 18Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The solitary fights an unarmed enemy, the city ascetic an army; it is folly to choose a road full of robbers over a safe one.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 19Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · No one sensible prefers a dangerous road; the city ascetic's passions are fanned daily into habit, while the solitary has only bare natural reminders to fight, which fade with time.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 20Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Passions are strong when their objects are present and weak without them; memories can be overcome by prayer and Scripture, but one who lives in the world cannot escape its stains.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 21Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Harm absorbed gradually goes unnoticed, like poison taken in small doses; even David, after a life of virtue, let his eye wander and fell into adultery and murder, so one must flee bad company.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 22Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Life among the wicked makes one like them; Holofernes was undone by the sight of Judith's sandal, and the senses are constantly ensnared by beauty, wealth, scents and food.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 23Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · A mind freed from vain cares turns to prayer, reading and contemplation of creation, and can watch its passions decline; the busy ascetic has no leisure to know his own state.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 24Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Passions dulled by distraction are like snakes torpid in winter, not dead; a desert monk counted his good and bad thoughts each day with pebbles, which no busy person could do.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 25Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The solitary walks virtue's road in daylight, the city ascetic in the dark, buffeted by praise, contempt and pride; alone with God the monk escapes these, though he must guard against praising himself.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 26Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Virtue done before others is spoiled by praise; city ascetics are like doves whose chicks are taken for slaughter, desert monks like turtle-doves that send their young safely to God.
  • Excellence of Monks, chapter 27Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Even a blameless city ascetic suffers from witnessing injustice and may even blame God, as Habakkuk did; the desert monk's virtues are seen by God alone, who rewards them with eternal life.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 4Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The first monks, free of possessions, luxury and lawsuits, made their life an imprint of the apostles' virtue.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 5Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Among the first monks conscience was judge, goods were shared, and the only rivalry was in humility.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 6Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Nilus laments that monks have turned back to business and gain, against Christ's command not to be anxious and to trust the Father.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 7Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Monks now acquire land, livestock and profitable trades, use the habit as a pretext, and are rightly despised.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 8Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Untrained men take the monastic habit for show, flee the monasteries, and live as parasites of the rich in the cities.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 9Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Wandering false monks bring the whole monastic life into disrepute and are trusted less than thieves.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 10Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Correction is useless to those who love gain; monks who renounced the world should not entangle themselves in it again.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 11Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Monks must not scandalize the simple by love of possessions; let them either amend or give up the monastic name.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 12Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Monks are rebuked by lay people for quarrelling over property, which weighs them down in the race against their spiritual enemies.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 13Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Love of property ruined Naboth and divided Lot from Abraham, while God fed Israel in the desert and Elijah without farming.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 14Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · God can sustain life without food, as with Elijah and Moses; monks who trust in their own hands are like the unclean animals of the law.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 15Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The soul must bend to the body's needs only briefly and spring up again; to crawl always toward pleasure is what the law calls unclean.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 16Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The murder of Ishbosheth, whose doorkeeper dozed over her wheat, teaches that the mind must not entrust its guard to the senses; the body needs only bread, water and plain clothing.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 17Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Even Babylonians honored Jeremiah, and the Shunammite and the widow of Zarephath provided for the prophets because of their virtue.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 18Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Through freedom from need the prophets spoke boldly to kings, and virtue proved stronger than royal power.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 19Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Unlike the saints, who would rather die than flatter the rich, monks now fawn on the wealthy and farm for gain, though every harvest depends on God.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 20Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · God provides even in sickness; monks should return to the desert, as the crowds who left the cities to see John the Baptist show.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 21Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Virtue outlasts riches; Nilus attacks men who learn only the outward forms of monastic life and at once set up as teachers.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 22Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Every craft must be learned except, it seems, godliness; untrained men rush to lead others and make the monastic life contemptible.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 23Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Eli's fate and Job's care for his sons warn untrained superiors who take charge of others before healing their own passions.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 24Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · A guide must know the war with the passions from experience and pass it on, as Joshua set up inscribed stones at the Jordan; many superiors treat the brothers as slaves.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 25Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · True leaders teach by example, like Gideon, Paul and Christ; those who rule by command and punishment blind their own contemplation.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 26Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · As in Jotham's parable the fruitful trees refused to reign and only the bramble accepted, so those who have the fruit of virtue decline to rule others.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 27Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Ruling souls is the hardest of tasks, dangerous for an inexperienced teacher and his disciples alike.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 28Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The temple's solid lampstand and laver-bearing oxen show that a guide must be blameless, bear the burdens of others, and know the enemy's designs.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 29Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The devil hides behind disguises, as Paul and Job show; one who teaches spiritual discernment without secure knowledge endangers his hearers.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 30Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The lost axe-head of Elisha's disciple figures teaching borrowed from others; repentance, hidden before the cross, was revealed through its wood.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 31Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Only one who has subdued his passions should turn from warfare to cultivating others; to the rest Scripture says to beat ploughs into swords.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 32Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Israel did not farm until its enemies were destroyed; so the spiritual life must follow its order from the beginnings to perfection, as Jacob had to serve for Leah before Rachel.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 33Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Untrained men eagerly gather disciples and, to keep them, indulge their desires like a charioteer who drops the reins.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 34Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Like the women of Ezekiel who sewed pillows for every elbow, indulgent superiors destroy souls; Christ forbade even the apostles to be called Rabbi.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 35Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · One compelled to lead others must teach by his life and answer for them; the saints formed disciples better than themselves.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 36Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Ezekiel's brick shows the teacher forming disciples under his own eyes; he must warn them, or answer for their souls.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 37Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · One must not go back to dwell on conquered passions, as Moses warned and as Jacob buried the foreign gods at Shechem.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 38Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Burying the gods at Shechem is praised but a secret idol is cursed: shameful thoughts must be buried, not cherished in the memory.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 39Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Evil thoughts must be stopped at their first approach; failing that, comparing where two temptations end exposes them, as Samson tied the foxes tail to tail.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 40Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Examples: vainglory that leads to sexual sin, and gluttony that ends in sadness, are exposed by looking at where they end.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 41Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · One who leads others must know the war against the passions and live at peace himself; then obedient disciples can be shaped like material by a craftsman.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 42Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Disciples should trust their teacher as passengers trust a helmsman, and renounce everything without holding back, remembering Ananias.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 43Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Renunciation must be total, like Elisha slaughtering his oxen and Christ's command to the rich man; then kin and family must be forgotten.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 44Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The cows that drew the ark without turning back to their calves, and Joseph sent on to Dothan, teach detachment from family.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 45Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Leaving kin is necessary for perfection; newly renounced monks should keep stillness, which is hard at first but heals the mind.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 46Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Beginners should stay in stillness and avoid crowds, as Israel stayed indoors from the destroyer and the young Joshua kept to the tent.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 47Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Dinah's curiosity warns against undertaking what is beyond one's strength; one must withdraw so far that even the noise of the world ceases.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 48Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · As a riverbed can be seen only when the stream is checked upstream, the mind can be cleansed of passions only when the senses stop feeding it.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 49Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Passions must be destroyed while small, like Babylon's seed or the infants of Ps 137, before the 'ant' becomes a 'lion.'
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 50Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The latticed temple windows teach guarding the senses with the thought of judgment; Ahaziah's fall through the lattice shows what happens otherwise.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 51Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The trained mind does not feel the blows of temptation; the war of the four kings against the five of Sodom figures the war of the objects of sense against the senses.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 52Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · From childhood the senses serve their objects; reason must rebel and stay firm, or the soul falls like the kings of Sodom into the bitumen pits.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 53Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The slave who chooses to stay, the woman who seized the wrong thing, and Lot's wife show the danger of turning back to the world after renouncing it.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 54Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Habit becomes a second nature; the soul sits on its idols like Rachel, giving form to formless things like wealth and glory.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 55Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Extravagance gives form to formless things; gluttony is the root from which love of money, anger and sadness grow.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 56Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Following Philo's allegory of the priestly rites, Nilus distinguishes the perfect, who removes anger and pleasure entirely, from those who master or wash them.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 57Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The belly cannot be cut out as anger can; beginners remove its fat, the advanced its contents, and the perfect cast off all beyond need.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 58Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Gluttony feeds sexual passion and, like Nebuchadnezzar's 'chief cook' who razed Jerusalem's walls, pulls down every virtue.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 59Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · As the barley cake overturned Midian's tents, a frugal diet overthrows sexual passion; virtue is a wall, vice a flimsy tent.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 60Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The saints fled the cities and lived simply, like Elijah, Elisha and John the Baptist; the manna teaches living one day at a time.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 61Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The saints fled to the desert because beasts, unlike men, do not teach vice; the lions honored Daniel's virtue.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 62Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Monks should be like Job's wild ass, free of the city's taxes, or like the ass loosed for the Lord's use, grazing on the words of Scripture.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 63Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Monks cling to worldly things like children to toys because they do not grasp how much greater the eternal goods are.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 64Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · As sailors throw cargo overboard in a storm and athletes strip to compete, monks must cast off possessions to fight their naked spiritual enemies.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 65Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The monk must be naked of cares to fight the demons: Joseph escaped by leaving his garment, and Adam was naked until he was defeated.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 66Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The monk must enter the contest stripped and oiled; cares are the dust that lets the devil take hold.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 67Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The perfect soul is carefree like the lily among thorns; the ungodly spend all their life caring for the body and none for the soul.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 68Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The body's need is the measure of possessions; those who judge otherwise are like the blind judging colors.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 69Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Achan buried the silver under the stolen goods as the greedy bury reason beneath matter; beyond need, desire has no limit.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 70Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Once past natural need, desire moves step by step to wine, fine wool, embroidered silk, and even silver chamber-pots.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 71Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Animals keep to the diet God gave and mate only in season; human extravagance in food breeds unceasing sexual desire.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 72Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Possessions breed every passion; monks who seem to have defeated the devil are killed while stripping his spoils, like greedy soldiers stripping the fallen.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 73Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The five foolish virgins conquered lust but fell to avarice; the devil still offers the world as he did to Christ, and only godliness defeats him.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 74Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Beginners must check the passions' actions, the advanced must guard their thoughts; as a passion absorbs the mind, so should zeal for virtue.
  • Monastic Exercise, chapter 75Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · As a strong passion absorbs the mind, so love of philosophy should absorb it in contemplation; the monk seeks praise from God, not from men.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 1Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Having earlier rebuked careless monks, Nilus now praises those who keep the rule of having nothing, for God will reward their care for the soul as he rewards the merciful.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 2Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Having nothing is not involuntary poverty but a freely chosen contentment with little, hard at first until practice makes it a habit.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 3Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The saints of old, homeless and persecuted, surpassed every modern monk, for they lived by Christ's teaching on the birds and the lilies.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 4Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Unlike modern monks who stock food, clothing and money, the old saints cared for the body only under compulsion, counting time spent on it a loss.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 5Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The labor of virtue bears lasting fruit, and God rewards even good intentions that necessity prevented; but the aim behind a deed can change it for better or worse.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 6Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Christ's commands to pray and give in secret show that the desire for praise, like a moth or a thief, destroys the treasure of good works.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 7Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · As the law pardons killing a thief by night but not by day, a sudden evil thought is pardonable, but consent to a recognized evil is guilt; thoughts must be struck down at once.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 8Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Like David rescuing sheep from the lion and Jacob repaying lost animals, the monk must snatch back at once what passion steals, for the devil prowls like a lion.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 9Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Whoever is in the lion's mouth may escape or be swallowed by his own choice; on the narrow road to the kingdom one cannot walk weighed down by money or by care for praise.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 10Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Christ and Paul teach both having nothing and indifference to glory; one who has done all he was commanded must call himself an unprofitable servant who has only paid a debt.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 11Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Paul's “weapons for the right hand and the left” warn against both praise and blame, snares on either side of the race toward perfection.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 12Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Human verdicts count for nothing at God's judgment, which sees deeds and thoughts as they are, so it is vain to labor for the good opinion of gossiping people.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 13Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · There are three ways of life, but the first, ordained by the Creator, was without possessions; God commanded Adam a plain diet and has since adapted his commands to human weakness.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 14Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · God gave Adam a carefree life and one commandment to train him in obedience; after the fall he gave him a second life of labor and plain garments of skin.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 15Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Adam's carefree life in paradise, nourished by God's gifts and conversation, was better than the toilsome farming to which he was condemned; so is having nothing better than a life of possessions.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 16Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Farming is exposed to every kind of loss, but providence feeds those who trust it, as it fed Israel in the desert with manna, quail and water from the rock.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 17Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · God fed Elijah and Elisha's company without farming, while farmers often go hungry; hope in God is secure, and those who serve him receive their food as a first wage.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 18Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The first, possessionless life, which the saints lived, is fitting for the rational creature: owning nothing, it receives all it needs from God's providence and creation serves it.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 19Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The saints of Scripture, friends of Christ through their purity, commanded creation: manna, drought, fire and hail, the opening earth, the parted sea, the furnace and the lions, and deliverance from prisons.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 21Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · John the Baptist and the apostles, with whom monastic life began, owned nothing; this is not the idleness of Adelphius and Alexander, who used continual prayer as an excuse not to work.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 22Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Prayer prolonged in idleness becomes a battlefield of thoughts: the body kneels while the mind wanders to friends, enemies, feasts, business and imagined church office.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 23Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · True prayer is a mind possessed by God and free of every other thought; those who refuse work for the sake of prayer only want to eat at others' expense, while alternating work and prayer refreshes both.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 24Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Idleness feeds the passions, above all at prayer; Paul therefore commanded the Thessalonians to keep away from the idle and to work and eat their own bread.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 25Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Paul's severe rebuke shows that idleness breeds evils, while work is the anchor that keeps the mind steady against the storms of thoughts.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 26Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Those who refuse manual work for the sake of prayer do not truly pray, for an idle body lets the mind wander, while work holds it in place.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 29Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The middle way, which works with its hands only for necessity and gives most of its time to prayer and reading, ranks second after the saints' total poverty.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 30Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The lowest kind of monk serves the body by farming and trade to rival the rich, seeking distinction by extravagance, which is as unfitting as men or women wearing each other's adornment.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 31Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The middle way is akin to the possessionless saints, not to monks of many possessions, who quarrel over property instead of serving God without care.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 32Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The possessionless shine like stars and are rightly admired, while monks who live contrary to their habit cause God's name to be blasphemed.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 33Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · A monk who claims to have renounced the world yet chases its affairs is like an Israelite longing for Egypt, a ploughman looking back, or Lot's wife.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 34Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The monk has left all to follow Christ and died to the passions; one burdened with herds and fields has no time to remember God, pray or watch his thoughts.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 35Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Evil thoughts first appear in respectable guise; and a monk busy with property is kept awake at night by quarrels over boundaries, crops and water, with no peace for prayer.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 36Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Paul says the unmarried should be free of care for the Lord; an unmarried monk who toils for possessions is more blameworthy than a married man providing for his children.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 37Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · We owe the flesh only a little; care for possessions beyond need is a fruitless wandering, and monks who chase them scandalize the people they should be examples to.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 38Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The bad example of venerable monks scandalizes the simple, who imitate evil more readily than good; even the Rechabites and Greek philosophers like Diogenes chose to own nothing.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 40Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Monks who have Christ's teaching should be ashamed to be outdone in poverty by Jews and pagan philosophers; Nilus's rebuke is for the careless, not for Magna's community.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 41Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Long habits are hard to break: the sluggard will not learn from the ant, and monks entangled in property will not learn from the birds that God feeds.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 42Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Nilus praises Magna's community as friends and soldiers of Christ who work only for need and, like naked wrestlers or Joseph fleeing without his cloak, give the enemy nothing to grasp.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 43Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Magna's community, free of possessions like Job's wild ass, should keep or raise the standard of their fathers, for as children of the heavenly Father they are to imitate him.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 44Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · We must imitate God's nature, not look at other people; it is hard, especially for late starters, but zeal can do much in little time, like the eleventh-hour workers.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 45Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · We were made in God's image to show his features of mercy and goodness; the soul shows its kinship with God by needing little, and the quiet, prayerful monk is God's living image.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 46Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Christ calls us to imitate the Father's compassion; God, free of envy, gladly shares his glory, and Paul spells out the virtues that make up the likeness.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 47Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The imitator of God shows his gentleness and does good even to enemies, shaming them into goodness; Paul spurs us on by calling us God's temple, children of light and members of Christ.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 48Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Paul wants us dead to the world and alive to God, a living sacrifice in which the passions are put to death but strength for good remains.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 49Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Those who live in the Spirit have taken sin's law captive and turned their members from weapons of unrighteousness into weapons of righteousness, though reshaping a habit is hard.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 50Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The same members can serve wrong or right; Magna's community, a living sacrifice and light of the world, should persevere and excel, earning a threefold reward by their example.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 51Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Monks with many possessions are to Magna's community what the Pharisees were to the apostles, like the tribes who stopped short east of the Jordan; persevere, and pity them.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 52Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Do not argue with possession-laden monks; they ignored Christ's words to the rich man, and the needle's eye admits no burdened soul, while having nothing trades for eternal goods.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 53Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Guard the movements of the mind, for sin can be committed and hidden in thought; a monk venerable outside but foul within is like a whitewashed tomb, only worse.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 54Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Outward gravity can hide inner disorder; the inner life must match the outer, and this is possible by cutting off sin at its root in perception, as one crushes a snake's head.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 55Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Joy and grief over possessions are not godly but a demonic attachment; no monk has so conquered his passions that he can afford to fill his mind with vain thoughts.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 56Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Anxiety over what we cannot control is a dream that leaves us thirsty; all our time belongs to thanksgiving, study of the law and unceasing prayer.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 57Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Scripture's commands exceed our strength so that we stay humble and keep striving; virtue, unlike a craft, has no fixed end and always stays a little ahead, like the place Abraham saw from afar.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 58Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Virtue's goal always stays ahead to keep us striving; no one has fully achieved love, which rejoices in a brother's success and grieves at his fall as at one's own.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 59Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Love makes all one body; but the demons use our senses, anger, vainglory and pride against us, so a wandering mind cannot finish the road or escape their snares.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 60Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The demons who cast down the devil by pride try to snare the high-minded; any thought outside the contest gives them a hold, so Scripture bids us think only on what is just and good.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 62Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · God teaches us by the ant, the bee, the migrating birds and the sea that keeps its bounds, shaming rational beings into keeping his commandments of their own free will.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 64Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Growth is seen only over time; we should learn contentment from the stars and wisdom from creatures, and Magna's community, though different in their tasks, sound together like a tuned psaltery.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 65Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · The newer members of the community fight gluttony, vainglory and pride: gluttony fuels lust, vainglory forfeits God's reward, and pride is groundless since each receives his own wage.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 66Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Pride is as harmful as neglect; in Magna's community humility rules, the advanced and the beginners do not envy one another, and all imitate Christ's obedience and love.
  • Voluntary Poverty, chapter 67Nilus of Ancyra · ca. 390-430 · Magna's community has imitated Christ's gentleness, turning the other cheek and living out all the beatitudes, and so has the kingdom of heaven within it.
  • On Two Souls 15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine defines sin as the will to keep or gain what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain, a truth known to everyone from shepherds to bishops.
  • On Two Souls 17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Since God justly condemns only souls that sin, and sin requires will, souls evil by nature cannot sin and so cannot exist; the Manichaeans' evil kind of souls is nothing.
  • Sermon 2.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Abraham's test teaches us not to prefer God's gifts to God, who is to be loved for his own sake.
  • Sermon 2.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Abraham's faith and work both pleased God; Paul's "justified by faith without works" is shown by the dying believer and the thief, while true faith works through love in the heart.
  • Sermon 4.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Bearing others' sins means rebuking sinners while patiently tolerating them, out of the love without which nothing profits.
  • Sermon 4.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Jacob's "deceit" was a figure, not a lie: having bought the birthright, he truly was the firstborn, and Isaac confirmed the blessing.
  • Sermon 5.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those about to be baptized are warned to forgive, like the forgiven servant in the parable; forgiveness lies in the heart, and loving correction, as God practises it, is not hatred.
  • Sermon 5.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ, who forgave his crucifiers and laid down his life freely, is our model and our price; the Church bears with the wicked among her until judgment separates them.
  • Sermon 8.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The fifth commandment against adultery is opposed by the plague on cattle: the adulterer lives like a beast, though reason and the image of God enable a human being to restrain desire.
  • Sermon 8.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The sixth commandment against murder is opposed by the plague of boils: murderous souls burn with anger like festering sores.
  • Sermon 8.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The seventh commandment against theft is opposed by the plague of hail: the thief gains outwardly but his heart is laid waste by God's providence.
  • Sermon 8.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The eighth commandment against false witness is opposed by the plague of locusts, which harm by biting.
  • Sermon 8.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The ninth commandment against coveting a neighbor's wife is opposed by the plague of darkness: to attempt another man's wife is the thickest darkness of madness.
  • Sermon 8.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The tenth commandment against covetousness is opposed by the death of the firstborn: legacy hunters, coveting others' goods under a show of right, lose the firstborn of their heart, which is faith.
  • Sermon 8.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Keeping God's commandments, Christians store up inner riches safe from all loss, and their exodus from Egypt goes on continually.
  • Sermon 9.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The adversary with whom we must agree is God's word, which contradicts our sins against each commandment: superstition, belittling Christ, a carnal sabbath, dishonoring parents, hatred, and especially husbands' adultery.
  • Sermon 9.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine dwells on adultery because it is widespread: custom lets husbands sin with slave women while wives are prosecuted, but before God the sin is equal and husband and wife owe each other the same fidelity.
  • Sermon 9.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Decalogue is divided between the two great commandments: three strings for God, who is a Trinity, and seven for the neighbor, beginning with honor of parents, which Paul calls the first commandment.
  • Sermon 9.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who keep the commandments only out of fear carry the psaltery without singing; only the new man, who keeps them with delight in love, sings the new song.
  • Sermon 9.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As a patient who hates his fever agrees with his doctor, so sinners who hate their vices agree with God's word and come to delight in its commands.
  • Sermon 9.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine strikes the fifth string, adultery: husbands who go to their slave women sin as wives would; a chaste wife keeps faith for Christ's sake even when her husband does not.
  • Sermon 9.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Men who say chastity is impossible are shamed by their chaste wives; custom laughs off husbands' sins with slave women while condemning other crimes, as though the man conquered by lust were the real man.
  • Sermon 9.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · In God's show the lyre-player is also the hunter: playing each of the ten strings kills a beast of vice, from superstition to greed.
  • Sermon 9.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The unmarried man who goes to prostitutes breaks no single commandment by name, but he breaks the rule that contains all the commandments: do not do to another what you do not want done to you.
  • Sermon 9.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The man who goes to prostitutes wrongs God himself, for he corrupts in himself God's image and temple, just as stoning a man's portrait insults the man.
  • Sermon 9.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Masters who demand fidelity from their slaves but refuse service to God do to God what they would not suffer; the one rule contains all the commandments.
  • Sermon 9.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Avoid magic and the shows; small daily sins, deadly by their number, are cleansed by almsgiving, fasting and prayer, and perfect almsgiving includes forgiving those who hurt us.
  • Sermon 9.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Grave sins like adultery require a change of life, not almsgiving; daily almsgiving cleanses only small daily sins, such as harsh words, excess in food, or intercourse with one's wife beyond what procreation requires.
  • Sermon 9.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians, redeemed by Christ's blood, give less than the Pharisee's tithe; they measure their giving against those who give less, though in wealth they always compare themselves with the richer.
  • Sermon 9.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · "I am keeping it for my children" is often a cloak for avarice: a parent who loses a child should send that child's share ahead to Christ by giving it to the poor.
  • Sermon 9.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Avarice and lavish gifts to performers are both condemned; Christ in the poor asks for what we have, and by good works, prayer, fasting and alms, forgiving as we are forgiven, we walk safely on Christ the way to the eternal sabbath.
  • Sermon 10.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The two women also signify love and pretence within the one Church; both were harlots, since all come to grace from sin, but the child is God's gift, as God brings good out of human sin.
  • Sermon 11.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Works of mercy are possible only in this life, where there are hungry, naked, strangers and sick; God lets his saints be in need so that the rich may share with them and be received with them into eternal life.
  • Sermon 11.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God, who could feed Elijah by ravens, made him need the widow of Zarephath so she might be tested and blessed; God "commanded" her not by a word but by inspiring her heart, and her two sticks prefigure the cross.
  • Sermon 11.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The widow's unfailing flour and oil were a sign of the endless reward to come, not a payment; we should do good expecting our harvest in eternity, not here.
  • Sermon 13.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · "You who judge the earth" means those who master their bodies, as Paul did; whoever does not judge the earth becomes earth, the serpent's food.
  • Sermon 13.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The righteous must serve God in fear, crediting their righteousness to him; whoever trusts in himself perishes from the just way, and to trust in another man is as ruinous as to trust in oneself.
  • Sermon 13.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Rulers and judges too must remember that they are sinners judging sinners, as Christ showed with the woman taken in adultery, turning the Pharisees' trap back on them as he did over Caesar's coin.
  • Sermon 13.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Whoever seeks judicial power, even by purchase, must first judge himself in the court of his conscience, punishing his sins by repentance, and then judge his neighbor in the same way.
  • Sermon 13.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A judge must pursue the sin and not the sinner, stopping short of death so that the man may repent; penalties are allowed, but only in a spirit of love and correction.
  • Sermon 13.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As a father who loves his son disciplines him, and would be cruel to spare him, so judges must combine love with discipline.
  • Sermon 14.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The "poor man" left to God in Psalm 10 is not simply the beggar, of whom there are many, but the poor in spirit, among whom all Christians must be.
  • Sermon 14.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The great danger of riches is pride; the humble rich man, like Zacchaeus, is the truly poor.
  • Sermon 14.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Riches are full of dangers and are only an inn on the road; the rich must use them as travellers, remembering that we go naked into the earth.
  • Sermon 14.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul, another poor man, shows that the root of evil is the desire to be rich: a beggar who covets riches is worse than a rich man who has set a limit to his greed and makes friends with his wealth.
  • Sermon 15.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The command to love and pray for enemies is hard, but its promise is great, to be sons of the Most High; the willing heart is gold, and its struggle against the flesh is the dross God purifies.
  • Sermon 16.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · People love their estates to be good more than their lives; a good life should be preferred to a long one, for eternal life follows, and here we must redeem the time, even at temporal cost.
  • Sermon 16.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The "good days" of the Psalm are not the feasting days for which flatterers lie, but the days of the land of the living, for which one keeps from deceit even under threat of death.
  • Sermon 17.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God sees the adulterer and the would-be thief, though he keeps silent; those who say God does not care, because the wicked prosper, suspect that God is like themselves.
  • Sermon 17.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · People neither forgive nor ask forgiveness; Christ's rule of correction ends in treating the unrepentant as a heathen, who, however devout his outward signs, is dead.
  • Sermon 18.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · All our deeds are laid up in a treasury: the good know they are storing works of mercy with a faithful and powerful keeper; the wicked do not know that they are storing up wrath.
  • Sermon 18.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · At the judgment Christ will open each person's treasury: those who gave to his needy members will receive the kingdom, those who did not will find nothing; late repentance will be useless, but God counts a sincere will to do good as done.
  • Sermon 20.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The sinner must accuse himself, not excuse himself by blaming fortune, fate or the devil; God turns his face from the sins of one who acknowledges them, for sin must be punished either by the penitent or by God.
  • Sermon 21.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Sin is not loving something bad, since every creature of God is good, but loving a good creature in a disordered way; love must be set in order, using lower goods and enjoying the highest.
  • Sermon 21.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · People see and demand faithfulness from others, especially their slaves, whom they reward with freedom, yet refuse it to God, who created and redeemed them; the Gospel is the record of their purchase by Christ's blood.
  • Sermon 21.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Masters who claim to have given their "blood" (money) for their slaves should remember that Christ bought them with his real blood and death, and owe him the faithfulness they demand.
  • Sermon 21.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Gold is God's good gift; those who blame God for it should give distinction to gold by using it for the poor, as they claim they would if they had it.
  • Sermon 23.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Without peace no one will see God, so quarreling about how God is seen destroys the very eye that would see him; faith, love, and peace prepare the heart.
  • Sermon 25.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Evil men make the days evil, but even the just find war within themselves, flesh against spirit, wherever they go.
  • Sermon 25.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · All want life and good days, but the psalm requires a tongue kept from evil; past sins may pass with the evil days if we hold fast to the word of the Lord.
  • Sermon 25.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who envied Zacchaeus for receiving Christ can receive him now in the poor, especially in winter.
  • Sermon 29.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The bad man wants everything good, horse, house, wife, and clothes, except his own soul; he should first become good himself.
  • Sermon 30.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Every honest person feels the war of flesh and spirit; Augustine wants not merely to resist but to be wholly healed, flesh included, since one Creator made both, and the conflict is the penalty of the soul’s desertion of God.
  • Sermon 30.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The defender of a healthy nature shuts out the Savior; as ruin came through Adam and rebuilding through Christ, so the believer, who cannot be free of evil desire, must by grace refuse to let sin reign.
  • Sermon 32.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The devil cannot force anyone; he enters only through the two doors of desire and fear, which we can close.
  • Sermon 32.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · To live well we must love God’s promises more than the world’s and fear his threats more than the world’s; sin is preferring what is seen and present to what God promises.
  • Sermon 32.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Riches given to worldly men lead to oppression and spending on shows, so God’s refusal is mercy; earthly gain is always another’s loss, but righteousness can be shared without loss.
  • Sermon 32.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The psalm’s picture of many children, adorned daughters, full barns, and flocks is the “happiness” of the proud, Goliath-like man; like the rich fool in the Gospel, those who rest in it are rejected, however innocently they gained it.
  • Sermon 33.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Love fulfills the Law; as there are two commandments of love, so the Decalogue was given on two tablets, three commandments for love of God and seven for love of neighbor.
  • Sermon 33.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The three commandments of the first tablet correspond to the Trinity: one God (the Father), not taking the Lord’s name “to vanity” (the Son is no creature), and the Sabbath (the Holy Spirit’s gift of rest), kept spiritually by avoiding sin.
  • Sermon 33.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The seven commandments of the second tablet concern the neighbor, beginning with honoring parents, which is why Paul calls it “the first commandment.”
  • Sermon 35.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine raises a difficulty in Prov 9:12 (Greek): how can the evil man suffer evil “alone,” when the members of Christ’s body share one another’s good and ill?
  • Sermon 35.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · No one is good or evil by another’s good or evil; but the good man, by his own goodness, loves his neighbor, while the evil man, loving iniquity, does not even love himself.
  • Sermon 35.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The good neighbor rejoices in another’s goodness and grieves over his sin, and both are good for him; so the wise are wise for others too, while the wicked suffer evil alone.
  • Sermon 36.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Scripture commends humble rich people, since pride is the disease of riches; the proud rich man is like a wineskin blown up with air, not filled.
  • Sermon 36.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Believers are rich within, as a living root in winter, and their riches will appear when Christ comes; the rich of this world too belong to Christ if they are humble and do not trust in uncertain wealth but store treasure in heaven.
  • Sermon 36.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul counsels the rich to hope in God and be rich in good works, giving readily; the rich man and Lazarus show where the false life of riches ends.
  • Sermon 36.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The rich fool stored his harvest in barns instead of redeeming his soul by alms; the bellies of the poor are a safer storehouse, keeping treasure in heaven.
  • Sermon 36.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The one poor in inner riches gives way to threats and bears false witness; the one rich within, like the martyrs, can lose only outward things and fears the lie that kills the soul more than death.
  • Sermon 37.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Church works for Christ, not for herself; her wool and flax, the outward and the inward, must go together, so that neither showy almsgiving without God nor private worship without the Church will do.
  • Sermon 37.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The distaff holds the work still to be done, the spindle the work already done; in prayer we can appeal only to good works already accomplished, so all our effort should pass onto the spindle.
  • Sermon 37.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · What we have stored up must be passed to the “spindle” by giving to the poor; some poor need our hands, while Christ’s ministers seek the fruit of our faith.
  • Sermon 37.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Church surpasses the heresies by charity, the “more excellent way” without which tongues, miracles, alms, and even martyrdom profit nothing, and from which hangs the whole cluster of the Spirit’s fruit.
  • Sermon 38.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Two laborious virtues are required in this life: continence, which refrains from the world’s goods, and endurance, which bears its evils, while we wait for the Lord.
  • Sermon 38.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Faith is the first commandment: with continence and endurance we look for the life that will “increase at the last,” since life here only decreases as we live it.
  • Sermon 38.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The rich young man, afraid of death amid his riches, asked about eternal life but would not move his treasure to heaven; by loving it wrongly he lost it.
  • Sermon 38.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Treasure hidden in the ground is neither safe nor enjoyed, but what is given to the poor is lent to God, who forbids usury to men yet pays back eternal riches for temporal gifts.
  • Sermon 38.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God bids us move our riches from earth to heaven and has made the poor our porters, citizens of heaven who will repay there what we give them here.
  • Sermon 39.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · We brought nothing into the world and are guests at God’s table; Paul condemns not wealth but the desire to be rich, which plunges people into ruin.
  • Sermon 39.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The rich must put away pride and trust in uncertain wealth and be rich in good works, for God feeds the poor through them.
  • Sermon 39.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Money should not be loved but used for good works; those who hoard it live a false life, like a beggar dreaming of riches who wakes with nothing in his hands.
  • Sermon 39.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God makes some poor to test the rich; each should give according to his means, even a cup of cold water, but alms avail only for those who change their life, not as a bribe to sin with impunity.
  • Sermon 40.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God’s promise of pardon is true, but those who put off conversion only add evil days to evil days, for a day cannot be good when the man is bad.
  • Sermon 41.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine takes Sir 22:23 (“hold faith with your neighbor in his poverty”) and first explains its plain sense: a true friend stays loyal when his friend becomes poor.
  • Sermon 41.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Rightly understood, keeping faith with the poor means making them friends by alms, so that they may receive us into the eternal dwellings.
  • Sermon 42.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God wants not sacrifices but ourselves; the Christian’s sacrifice is alms, of two kinds: forgiving those who wrong us, which costs nothing, and giving to the needy, which seems costly.
  • Sermon 42.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Each should give according to his means; what is given to the poor is lent at interest to God, who repays eternal things for perishable ones and receives on earth what he gives from heaven.
  • Sermon 42.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · When we pray to be delivered from the evil man, we must first ask to be delivered from ourselves, from avarice, lust, and anger; no one can harm a just Christian, as Stephen’s death shows.
  • Sermon 45.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The promised land and mountain must not be understood as earthly estates, for restraining desire now in hope of greater earthly gain is still avarice, like children who serve rich parents for their inheritance; true piety serves for nothing, like Job.
  • Sermon 45.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Defilement of the spirit is lust, defilement of the flesh is the act of adultery; perfect sanctification cleanses both, not only the deed out of fear of men.
  • Sermon 45.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Only the fear of God perfects sanctification: fear of men may restrain the body from adultery, but the fear of God cleanses the heart, and a clean heart keeps the body clean.
  • Sermon 46.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A bad shepherd might win crowds by promising that God forgives everything and allowing the shows and drunken feasts, even in church; but this would be feeding himself, not the sheep.
  • Sermon 47.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A good conscience is not enough if careless conduct leads a weak brother, who cannot see into one’s conscience, to do wrong.
  • Sermon 47.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul’s refusal to please men and his command to please all in all things agree: we seek not our own glory but others’ salvation, while relying on our conscience against slanderers.
  • Sermon 47.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ’s commands to let good works shine and not to do righteousness before men agree: the works are seen so that God, not we, may be glorified.
  • Sermon 47.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · We must keep both a good conscience and good conduct, so that weak brothers are not misled.
  • Sermon 47.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The trees in the plain are ordinary married believers, who bear their own fruit in works of mercy when the rain of God’s word falls on them.
  • Sermon 48.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Micah teaches that God wants not sacrifices but ourselves: first judgment on ourselves, praising God for our good and blaming ourselves for our evil, then justice toward our neighbor.
  • Sermon 48.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Even now it goes badly with the wicked, because they suffer their own evil selves; riches are goods to do good with, but only judgment and justice make a person good.
  • Sermon 49.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · We judge ourselves by Scripture as by an honest mirror, and then judge our neighbor with love, hating the vice but loving the man, and leaving to God what we cannot see.
  • Sermon 49.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · When two of one’s friends fall out, one should remain the friend of both, betray neither, and gently show the angry friend that his real enemy is his own hatred.
  • Sermon 49.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Anger nursed becomes hatred, as a speck becomes a beam; whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and justice means hating vices while loving people.
  • Sermon 50.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God says the gold and silver are his so that the rich will neither refuse to give to the poor nor grow proud when they give.
  • Sermon 50.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God administers gold and silver as a just judge: they give the good occasions of kindness and torment the bad with fear of loss.
  • Sermon 50.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Something truly belongs to the one who uses it well; all the more do gold and silver belong to God, who created them and justly distributes them.
  • Sermon 50.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Gold is a lesser good given to good and bad alike; it is called “mammon of iniquity” because only iniquity calls it riches, while true riches adorn the inner man and end all want.
  • Sermon 50.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Gold in a merciful man’s hands does great good; blaming gold for greed is like blaming the sun, which the Manichees worship, for quarrels over light.
  • Sermon 50.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Lord condemns avarice but teaches the right use of earthly wealth: use the “mammon of iniquity” to make friends, so as to receive the true riches that are one’s own.
  • Sermon 51.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Jesus was subject to both Mary and Joseph as his parents, an example of obedience for children.
  • Sermon 51.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Eating and marriage sustain the human race; the wise come down to both out of duty, as Elijah ate to live, while the lustful fall into them; a man who marries only for children would welcome children without intercourse.
  • Sermon 53.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · On a virgin martyr’s feast Augustine turns to the beatitudes: everyone wants happiness, but must do now the work that earns it; to be poor in spirit is to be humble.
  • Sermon 53.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The meek, who do not resist God but are displeased with themselves, will truly possess the earth by clinging to its Maker.
  • Sermon 53.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The merciful receive mercy: rich in temporal goods but beggars before God, we will be treated by God as we treat the poor.
  • Sermon 53.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Each beatitude’s reward fits its precept: the humble get a kingdom, the meek the land, mourners comfort, the hungry fullness, the merciful mercy, the clean of heart the sight of God.
  • Sermon 53.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Our faith differs from the demons’ faith because it works through love and hopes for God’s promises; faith, hope, and love together cleanse the heart.
  • Sermon 53.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The breadth, length, height, and depth of Ephesians are good works, perseverance, hope of heavenly reward, and the hidden grace of God.
  • Sermon 53.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The four dimensions fit Christ’s cross: crossbeam, upright, top, and buried foot signify good works, perseverance, hope, and hidden grace; through these we come to know Christ’s love and be filled with God.
  • Sermon 54.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ’s two commands, to let our light shine before men and not to do our justice before men, seem to contradict each other and trouble the weak.
  • Sermon 54.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul fulfilled both commands: he commended himself before men and also sought glory only in his own conscience before God.
  • Sermon 54.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The difference lies in intention: one who wants his own glory breaks both commands, while one who lets his works be seen so that God is glorified keeps both.
  • Sermon 54.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who let their works be seen while counting their justice as God’s gift keep both commands; Paul pleased people not for himself but for their salvation.
  • Sermon 55.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ’s warning that whoever calls his brother a fool is liable to hell frightens believers, especially since, as James says, no man can tame the tongue.
  • Sermon 56.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Besides grave sins that exclude from the altar, countless small sins of eye, ear, tongue, and thought accumulate like sand, so the daily cleansing of the Lord’s Prayer is needed by all.
  • Sermon 56.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · We must love our enemies, who share our nature and are our brothers; pray, as the Church prayed for Saul, against their malice but for themselves, so that an enemy becomes a friend.
  • Sermon 56.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Few love their enemies, yet all who receive the eucharist pray “as we forgive”; Augustine cannot tell them not to pray, so they must both say it and do it.
  • Sermon 56.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · At the very least, forgive an enemy who asks pardon; Christ on the cross and Stephen under the stones forgave even those who did not ask.
  • Sermon 56.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Forgiving means letting go of hatred, not of discipline; whoever refuses pardon to one who asks harms himself, like the unforgiving servant of the Gospel.
  • Sermon 57.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God tempts no one to evil, though he tests; but by hidden judgment he abandons some to the tempter; after baptism concupiscence remains, and we must fight it within, asking God not to abandon us.
  • Sermon 57.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Other sins can be healed through the petition for forgiveness; but the desire for revenge is a dreadful temptation, because it destroys the very means of being forgiven.
  • Sermon 57.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Of all the petitions Christ singled out only the one about forgiving others for comment, because if it is lost there is no remedy for our many daily faults.
  • Sermon 57.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Pray for victory over your own anger, which God wants more than you want rain; seek first his kingdom, and trust the God who loves us so much that he gave his Son for creatures of dust.
  • Sermon 58.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Emperor and beggar, slave and master all say “Our Father,” and so are brothers; masters should not disdain slaves whom Christ calls brothers.
  • Sermon 58.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Anger is the lust for revenge; nursed, it becomes hatred, the beam in the eye, and whoever hates is a murderer; we must cleanse our hearts and forgive, as God, whom we daily offend, forgives us.
  • Sermon 58.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Temptation conceives sin only by our consent; we must refuse concupiscence its embrace, for we leave behind what we sin for and carry the sin itself into death.
  • Sermon 58.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Small daily sins must be pumped out like bilge water by prayer with two wings, forgiving and giving; deliverance from evil comes by turning from evil and doing good.
  • Sermon 59.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Under one heavenly Father all Christians, master and slave, rich and poor, are brothers, heirs of a Father who does not die but remains for us to come to him.
  • Sermon 60.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Man, made in God’s image, is troubled in vain, heaping up treasure without knowing for whom; life is toil, and the miser’s soul burns with anxiety.
  • Sermon 60.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Even if wealth flows in, the miser is troubled in vain, for he will die, and his sons too will die or squander it or repeat his vanity.
  • Sermon 60.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The hoard may fall to thieves or invaders, as many have recently suffered; since the miser can only say “perhaps,” he does not know for whom he gathers, and is troubled in vain.
  • Sermon 60.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ’s counsel is to store treasure in heaven, for where our treasure is, there our heart is; but greed keeps treasure and heart in the earth.
  • Sermon 60.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As the world is falling, God counsels us to move our treasure to heaven by giving to the poor, as a friend would counsel moving grain from damp ground to higher ground.
  • Sermon 60.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who lost their wealth to invaders regret not having sent it ahead; the poor are our porters, carrying what we give to heaven, for Christ receives it.
  • Sermon 60.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · At the judgment Christ names only works of mercy as the reason for reward or punishment, passing over all other virtues and crimes.
  • Sermon 60.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ names alms alone at the judgment because alms redeem sins: the saved are not sinless but have redeemed their sins by mercy, while the condemned failed to.
  • Sermon 60.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God, who needs nothing, chose to hunger in his poor, so that feeding the poor is feeding Christ, and despising them is despising him.
  • Sermon 60.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Repentance without works of mercy is barren; John the Baptist’s “fruits worthy of repentance” are sharing clothing and food, and only one who forgives and gives will be heard.
  • Sermon 61.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Only God, always good, makes evil men good; earthly goods like money cannot make us good, but we can do good with them, giving to the poor and so increasing justice.
  • Sermon 61.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Giving money to gain justice is good trading; since justice comes only from God, become his beggar, for he who urges us to ask will not refuse.
  • Sermon 61.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Since we are God’s beggars, we must recognize our own beggars, who are men, mortal, frail, and wretched like us, as we all were at birth.
  • Sermon 61.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Rich and poor are equal at birth and in death; newborns and old bones cannot be told apart, for we bring nothing in and take nothing away.
  • Sermon 61.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Scripture condemns not riches but the greed to become rich; the rich are charged above all not to be proud, for pride is the worm of riches.
  • Sermon 61.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul charges the rich not to be proud or trust uncertain riches, but to be rich in good works and share, storing up a foundation for the true life; giving is not loss but moving one’s goods.
  • Sermon 61.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Rich and poor need only food and covering; the rich may keep their habitual luxuries, but should give their superfluities to the poor, their companions on the same road.
  • Sermon 61.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine preached this because the poor begged him to plead for them; he is their ambassador, and the congregation’s applause is only leaves, while fruit is what is sought.
  • Sermon 62.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The centurion, calling himself unworthy to receive Christ under his roof, showed himself worthy to receive him in his heart, unlike Simon the Pharisee.
  • Sermon 62.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ turned away a proud volunteer but called a reluctant man away from burying his father, for unbelievers are the dead who bury the dead; God is the soul’s life as the soul is the body’s.
  • Sermon 62.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians called to the heavenly banquet must not recline at feasts in idol temples, for this leads the weak to idolatry; Paul, the least apostle, is the fringe of Christ’s garment that heals those who touch it.
  • Sermon 62.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Fear of offending the powerful is no excuse: parents, country, and all superiors must be obeyed only within obedience to God, who is greater; the Church, healed and beautified by Christ’s blood, must forget her former people.
  • Sermon 62.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians who feast in idol temples become stumbling stones to pagans and wound the weak, sinning against Christ, who is God; at such tables they learn to doubt his divinity.
  • Sermon 62.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Excusing attendance at feasts before the Genius of Carthage as “not a god” fails, for its altar shows that pagans treat it as divine, and Paul forbids partnership with demons.
  • Sermon 62.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians must not press on Christ’s body as pagans do; the best way to win pagans is to abandon their festivals, leaving them ashamed of their small numbers.
  • Sermon 62.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A good superior nourishes, a bad one tests; the world is a furnace where chaff burns and gold is refined; Christians must stand firm against threats and be filled from God’s banquet, not the idols’.
  • Sermon 62.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians obey authorities, but when the emperor commands what God forbids, such as attending in an idol temple, the greater Authority must be obeyed.
  • Sermon 62.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Like Christ, who suffered before his glory, we must labor for eternal life, which is far more worth labor than money we must lose.
  • Sermon 62.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians must not destroy pagan idols without lawful authority, as the Circumcellions do, but may and should remove them where an owner, now Christian, gives the property or asks for it; pagans, heretics, and Jews unite in complaint against the Church.
  • Sermon 63.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · An insult is the wind and anger the wave; we must wake Christ, who forgave his crucifiers, so that he may calm the storm of revenge in the heart.
  • Sermon 63.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · In every temptation we should wake Christ, whom wind and sea obey, and obey him ourselves, so as to sail in calm to our homeland.
  • Sermon 64.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Doves live in fellowship and quarrel peacefully, as Paul’s discipline corrects a brother without enmity; martyrs’ feasts should be kept soberly, in praise of the God who crowns them.
  • Sermon 65.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A living body may carry a dead soul: the feet that walk to adultery and the tongue that lies show that the soul is dead, because God, its life, has left it.
  • Sermon 72.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A person must first become a good tree before bearing good fruit.
  • Sermon 72.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Charity is the root of all goods; outward goods like health, wealth, and honor are good only for those who are good.
  • Sermon 72.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · People want everything they own to be good except their own lives; their very possessions accuse them before God.
  • Sermon 78.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Peter must come down from the mountain to labor in charity, which seeks not its own, as Christ came down to suffer.
  • Sermon 81.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The meek are those who take pleasure in nothing but God in their good deeds and are not displeased with God in their sufferings; the “world” of the woe is the bad within the world.
  • Sermon 81.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A stumbling block is a dear one who urges evil, as Peter urged Christ not to suffer; such a member must be “cut off” by refusing consent.
  • Sermon 81.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · To the friend who says “every man is a liar,” the meek answer that a lying mouth kills the soul, and they fear God rather than those who kill the body.
  • Sermon 81.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Rome is the Romans, not its buildings; the city may be chastised but cities and the world pass away, and Rome’s gods had already failed Troy; Christians should answer by hospitality to the refugees.
  • Sermon 82.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The speck in the eye is anger and the beam is hatred, which grows from anger fed by suspicion.
  • Sermon 82.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Anger, as in a parent’s discipline, can coexist with love; hatred is far worse, for it puts out the eye.
  • Sermon 82.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Whoever hates another harms himself first, losing innocence and light, while the other loses only outward goods.
  • Sermon 82.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Rebuke must come from love for the sinner, whom it gains; sinning against a brother is sinning against Christ.
  • Sermon 82.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Sin against a brother is deadly but quickly remedied by reconciliation, which God seeks before any gift at the altar.
  • Sermon 82.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The one who did the injury must humble himself and ask pardon.
  • Sermon 82.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, so sins of the flesh such as adultery profane God’s temple.
  • Sermon 83.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine retells the parable of the unforgiving servant, which follows Christ’s teaching on rebuke and his answer to Peter about forgiving seventy times seven.
  • Sermon 83.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Everyone is God’s debtor and has others as debtors; the two works of mercy, forgiving and giving, are the rule God will apply to us.
  • Sermon 83.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Forgiveness has no numerical limit; Christ forgave us thousands of sins, and the servant’s debtor owed more than “seventy-seven” and yet had to be forgiven.
  • Sermon 83.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Forgiving from the heart does not abolish discipline; like a surgeon, one must sometimes correct firmly, privately or publicly as the sin requires.
  • Sermon 85.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ’s word to the rich young man is plain: whoever wants life must keep the commandments, if not the greater counsels then at least the lesser ones.
  • Sermon 85.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ said it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom than for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye; but the poor must not boast of poverty, for the godly rich may outdo them.
  • Sermon 85.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul commands the rich of this world not to be proud nor to hope in uncertain riches, but in the living God.
  • Sermon 85.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The rich must be rich in good works, giving and sharing their bread here to receive Christ, the living bread, hereafter.
  • Sermon 85.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The rich need not give everything, but their giving should exceed the Pharisees’ tithe, for Christians must surpass the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.
  • Sermon 85.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The poor must be content with what suffices, for godliness with sufficiency is great gain, and the desire to become rich is avarice, the root of all evils.
  • Sermon 85.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Rich and poor meet on the road of this life, both made by God: the rich must help, the poor must not defraud, so that all may reach the kingdom.
  • Sermon 86.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ does not want us to lose our goods but to store them in heaven, so that our hearts may go before us where Christ our head has gone.
  • Sermon 86.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The rich young man went away sad, though Christ did not tell him to lose his wealth but to keep it safe in heaven by giving it to the poor.
  • Sermon 86.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ himself receives what is given to the poor and repays more, so almsgiving is lending to the one creditworthy debtor.
  • Sermon 86.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Unlike earthly debtors who hide, Christ will himself summon those who gave to the poor and repay them with the kingdom.
  • Sermon 86.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ repays earthly gifts with heavenly ones, above all with himself, the living bread; a holy “avarice” for this reward should replace the greed for money.
  • Sermon 86.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Avarice and luxury, two contrary mistresses, pull a man in opposite directions, one urging him to hoard and the other to spend on himself.
  • Sermon 86.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Avarice cannot promise a future, and saving for children is no excuse: children often lose inherited wealth, and they can acquire it as their parents did.
  • Sermon 86.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ bids us keep and provide for an eternal future; a dead Christian child is alive with Christ, so his share of the inheritance should be sent to him by giving it to the poor.
  • Sermon 86.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Parents should count Christ as one more child and give his share to the poor.
  • Sermon 86.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Giving one child’s share to Christ is easy counsel; luxury’s “do well by your soul” is answered by the parable of the rich fool.
  • Sermon 86.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ, risen from the dead, counsels us to do well by our souls by giving alms generously before it is too late.
  • Sermon 88.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · To cry out to Christ is to live by his commands; the crowd that tries to silence the blind men stands for lukewarm Christians who discourage the zealous, who must persevere until Jesus stands still and heals them.
  • Sermon 88.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Tobit, though blind, taught his son that almsgiving keeps one from darkness, meaning the inner light.
  • Sermon 88.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Good Christians must cry out to Christ amid bad Christians, for example by refusing the theater, and must not leave the Church for the heretics.
  • Sermon 88.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Rebuke must be given without pride, firm outwardly but gentle within.
  • Sermon 90.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The wedding garment is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and unfeigned faith, without which tongues, prophecy, alms, and even martyrdom profit nothing.
  • Sermon 90.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Following Christ and Stephen, who prayed for their killers, Christians should pray not for their enemies’ death but for the death of their enmity, since God hates the fault, not the nature he made.
  • Sermon 91.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Until we see face to face we walk by faith and do good works, each giving another what he has, money, counsel, learning, or simple service, bearing one another’s burdens.
  • Sermon 96.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ’s command to deny oneself is not hard, because love makes every burden light, as even sinful loves show; one who loves Christ finds himself by denying himself.
  • Sermon 96.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Self-love was man’s first ruin and drives him out to love external things, like the prodigal son; to return he must come back to himself and go on to the Father, denying himself and trusting God, not man.
  • Sermon 98.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The three dead signify three kinds of sinners: sin consented to in the heart, sin carried out in the deed, and sin buried under habit; Christ raises all three.
  • Sermon 98.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Sin advances in four steps, pleasure, consent, deed, and habit, like Lazarus four days dead; God alone gives life inwardly, while the disciples, the church’s ministers, unbind the one revived.
  • Sermon 102.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine urges all to do good works for the poor, sowing now in trust like a farmer, to reap with joy at the harvest.
  • Sermon 106.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · True almsgiving begins with mercy to one’s own soul, by judging oneself and loving God and neighbor, and by feeding the soul with Christ, the living bread; without this, even the largest gifts are nothing.
  • Sermon 107.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine introduces Christ’s command to beware of all greed, asking why he said “all.”
  • Sermon 107.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · “All greed” includes keeping one’s own greedily, not only seizing what belongs to others, for life does not consist in possessions; the rich fool, whose land prospered, planned only to store his surplus.
  • Sermon 107.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God called the rich man a fool because he wanted many good things but did not want his soul to be good; his soul was required of him that very night.
  • Sermon 107.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · “All greed” includes lust beyond one’s wife, idolatry, and even honest attachment to one’s own property, which can lead a judge to give an unjust verdict for fear of losing what he has.
  • Sermon 107.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Even a poor man faces the test of greed if a powerful man threatens to take his savings unless he bears false witness; Christ tells him to let his goods go, for no one can take Christ from him.
  • Sermon 107.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Beyond greed for money there is greed for life: one who is threatened with death unless he lies should let his body be killed rather than kill his soul by false witness, perhaps becoming a martyr.
  • Sermon 108.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The psalm that promises life and good days demands in return that we keep our tongues from evil and our lips from deceit; the wage of life without end is given only to those who work.
  • Sermon 108.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God’s command for so great a reward is light: to restrain the tongue from lies and slander, to speak as one thinks, to turn from evil and do good, and to seek peace.
  • Sermon 109.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The adversary is the word of God, which opposes our sinful will by saying “do not,” but only for our good; agreeing with it by keeping the commandments loses nothing and finds oneself.
  • Sermon 113.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ’s “least ones” are those who have left everything to follow him; “mammon of iniquity” means riches, and alms must be given from honest labor, not from plunder or usury, since God cannot be bribed like a corrupt judge.
  • Sermon 113.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who already hold ill-gotten money should, like Zacchaeus, give it to the poor and restore what they took, but must not remain evil themselves.
  • Sermon 113.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · In another sense the mammon of iniquity is any worldly wealth, even honestly gained, which iniquity calls “riches”; true riches are those Job had when he had lost everything.
  • Sermon 117.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ, the Wisdom of God, teaches first not the secrets of creation but humility; as a tree roots downward to grow upward, believers must humbly keep God’s commandments in love to grow in understanding.
  • Sermon 123.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Every rich person is God’s beggar, asking daily for bread; Christ asks the rich to give him, in the poor, from what he gave them, promising to repay heavenly and eternal things.
  • Sermon 125.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The number forty signifies the fulfillment of righteousness, which is fasting from love of the world; love is like the soul’s hand, which cannot grasp God while it clings to the world, so those who possess must hold their goods without being held by them.
  • Sermon 125.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The law is fulfilled only by love of God and neighbor; the sick man of thirty-eight years lacked two of forty, the two commandments of love, without which all else is worthless; Christ, who came to give love and fulfill the law, healed him and told him to carry his bed, that is, to master the flesh.
  • Sermon 125.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · One should test one’s love of the world while things go well, letting go in the heart before possessions are lost; friendship with the world makes one God’s enemy and always disappoints, while God alone, who made the soul in his likeness, satisfies it without ever growing cheap.
  • Sermon 128.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Life is a wrestling between flesh and spirit; the right order is the soul subject to God and the flesh to the soul; Paul tells us not to “fulfill” the desires of the flesh, a phrase Augustine undertakes to explain.
  • Sermon 128.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The fight within is between the delight of adultery and the delight of chastity; the flesh’s desire against the spirit, unknown in paradise, came from the first sin and is felt only where the spirit is.
  • Sermon 128.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · “So that you do not do what you will” means that the saints, who want no evil desire at all, cannot yet be rid of such desires; full victory comes only in the resurrection.
  • Sermon 128.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Since desires cannot yet be removed, sin must not be allowed to reign: by the Spirit we hold back our members from serving lust, which, finding no consent, learns not to rise.
  • Sermon 128.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · To “fulfill” the desires of the flesh is to consent to them: one who has decided to commit adultery is already an adulterer, even if he lacks the opportunity.
  • Sermon 128.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The three dead whom Christ raised, the girl in the house, the young man carried out, and Lazarus in the tomb, stand for sin decided in the heart, sin committed, and sin become habit; none is beyond Christ’s power to raise.
  • Sermon 132.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The faithful who receive the Eucharist must live chastely: husbands must keep the fidelity they demand of their wives, and unmarried young men must keep themselves as pure as they want their brides to be, out of fear of God who sees everything.
  • Sermon 133.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Being mistaken comes from weakness, lying from iniquity; a man lies when he says as true what he thinks false, with a double heart. Whether lying is ever necessary is left for another time.
  • Sermon 137.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ in heaven suffers in his members on earth, as the tongue cries “You are treading on me” when the foot is trodden on; so he says “I was hungry” of the needy.
  • Sermon 145.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Law, especially “You shall not desire,” terrifies the self-reliant and shows the law of sin in their members; one who refrains from adultery only for fear of hell has not yet the love of righteousness that grace gives, by which God’s sweetness is tasted.
  • Sermon 149.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · One who hides his alms entirely sets no example; one who flaunts them seeks praise and is like the foolish virgins without oil; the oil is a conscience that seeks to please God.
  • Sermon 149.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Both commands are kept when good works are done openly for the sake of example and God’s glory, while the intention, known only to God, remains in secret.
  • Sermon 149.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Lord forbids acting with the goal of being seen, but bids good works be seen so that God may be glorified; Paul likewise rejoiced that God was glorified in him, pleasing men only for their salvation.
  • Sermon 149.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The left hand is carnal desire, the right hand spiritual love: the left hand knows what the right does when alms are mixed with desire for temporal advantage.
  • Sermon 149.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ and Stephen loved their enemies; the old command to hate one’s enemy may be read as hatred of the devil, while human enemies, who may yet be converted, are to be loved and prayed for.
  • Sermon 149.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Every human being is a neighbor, enemies included, since we do not know whom God will bring to repentance; we love all men and hate only the devil.
  • Sermon 149.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The “coals of fire” heaped on an enemy by kindness are the repentance that burns away his enmity.
  • Sermon 150.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · All people, philosophers, Christians, good and bad alike, want the happy life; the bad seek it by evil, which runs in the opposite direction from the good they seek.
  • Sermon 151.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The righteous man’s life is still a war, as Rom 7 shows, and its triumph will come with the resurrection; meanwhile Gal 5 tells the baptized not to “fulfil” the desires of the flesh but to follow the Spirit.
  • Sermon 151.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · It would be better to have no evil desire at all, as the Law commands, and in the resurrection it will be healed away, since it is our own sickness, not another nature as the Manichees claim; for now we must not follow it.
  • Sermon 151.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A baptized drunkard has his past sins forgiven but must still fight the habit; refusing consent weakens it daily, and so long as it is not obeyed the desire of the flesh is not “fulfilled.”
  • Sermon 151.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul did not do what he wanted in that he felt desire he did not want, never in that he consented to sin; he described his fight so that we would not despair when we feel the same motions.
  • Sermon 151.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The saint does good in not consenting, but does not accomplish good, which would be not to desire; the enemy does evil in stirring desire, but does not accomplish it; this war lasts until the resurrection removes sin, death’s sting, which the Law only made more guilty.
  • Sermon 151.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul, a veteran of this war, cried out for deliverance and was answered by the grace of God through Christ; until the resurrection we serve God’s law with the mind and feel the law of sin in the flesh without consenting to it.
  • Sermon 152.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Serving the law of sin with the flesh means only feeling desires without consenting; we pray to be free even of the desires, but in this life we can only refuse consent.
  • Sermon 153.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · No one, not even a debauched man, would call “You shall not desire” evil; a Manichee who does so wants to desire with impunity.
  • Sermon 153.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Society praises the drunkard and lets a married man use harlots or his slave-girl without legal penalty, but God’s Law says “You shall not desire”; hearing it, the sinner recognizes his sin, tries to resist, fails, and becomes a transgressor.
  • Sermon 153.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The commandment checked desire like a dam, but desire, growing stronger, burst it and overwhelmed the sinner, who failed because he relied on himself.
  • Sermon 153.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The commandment not to desire was meant for life, a sweeter life than the pleasures of desire; but only God gives the delight that makes his law sweet, so the sick soul must pray to be healed.
  • Sermon 154.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine distinguishes the wholly carnal man who consents to desire from the fighter who desires but does not follow his desires, whose victory comes only in the resurrection.
  • Sermon 154.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul agrees with the Law because his will rejects the desire the Law forbids, even though he still feels it; the “doing” is desiring, not consenting.
  • Sermon 154.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul can will and resist but not yet accomplish the good, for desire still riots in the flesh until death's contention ends; resisting is much, but not perfection.
  • Sermon 155.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine explains that Paul calls carnal desire “sin” because all sins spring from it; it loses its reign now when we refuse consent and perishes in the resurrection.
  • Sermon 155.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · “No condemnation now” means that while desire remains until the resurrection, the mind helped by grace can refuse it and keep the body's members from serving sin.
  • Sermon 155.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Law's righteousness is fulfilled now in those who, helped by grace, refuse the flesh's desires; Baptism blotted out past sins, and daily slips are forgiven through the Lord's Prayer.
  • Sermon 156.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Our work in this life is to put to death, by the Spirit and with God's help, the delights of the flesh one after another by refusing consent.
  • Sermon 159.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The first degree of loving righteousness is to let it delight us more than everything else, even lawful pleasures of the senses, which Augustine distinguishes from unlawful ones sense by sense.
  • Sermon 159.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Tempted to bear false witness for gold, a person must choose truth, just as he values a faithful slave; he should be faithful to the Lord who promises eternity.
  • Sermon 159.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · We should avoid sin from love of righteousness, not fear of punishment; as sin's sweetness once drew us, so righteousness should draw us by its greater sweetness, as Paul says “in human terms.”
  • Sermon 159.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · What Paul held back is that righteousness deserves more than sin received: for it one must endure pain, despising not only delights but prisons, torture, and death, as an adulterer's love does not.
  • Sermon 161.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Because Christ took a body and is our head, our bodies are his members; anyone who commits sexual immorality or adultery despises Christ in himself.
  • Sermon 161.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Our bodies are Christ's members and the Spirit's temple; the adulterer honors his wife's bedroom but not God's temple, and though he outlives the chaste, he will be cut off from the land of the living.
  • Sermon 161.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · One who refrains from adultery only for fear of hell is not yet to be praised, though Christ commands that fear; such fear is a guard and tutor that keeps the place for love, which makes one not want to sin.
  • Sermon 161.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As love enters, slavish fear of punishment departs, but love brings chaste fear, the fear of displeasing a loving Father, which keeps one from sin even without witnesses.
  • Sermon 162.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine poses the difficulty of 1 Corinthians 6:18: how can every other sin be “outside the body” when all the sins Paul lists, even those of the mind, are done in or through the body?
  • Sermon 162.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · First solution: Paul magnifies sexual immorality above other sins because in it alone lust so absorbs the mind into the body that it becomes the body's slave and can think of nothing else.
  • Sermon 162.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Second solution: Scripture also speaks of a general fornication, the soul's cleaving to the world instead of God; in this sense whoever loves the world sins against his own body, while other sins of frailty are outside it.
  • Sermon 162.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine sums up the two possible readings of 1 Corinthians 6:18: sexual immorality as the sin that most enslaves a person to the body, or the soul's general fornication, love of the world that turns away from God.
  • Sermon 163.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul as architect builds the new (walking by the Spirit) and pulls down the old; since fleshly desires cannot be removed in this life, the believer must refuse to carry them out.
  • Sermon 164.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The burdens each bears himself are sins; Christ calls the burdened to be refreshed, while avarice and sloth pull a man in opposite directions and avarice drives him across the seas instead of giving to the poor at his door.
  • Sermon 164.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The merciful should persevere in doing good even to the ungrateful; and if an avaricious man approaches the altar beside them, they need not fear, for each bears his own burden, provided they do not share his sin.
  • Sermon 164.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Poverty is the poor man's burden and wealth the rich man's; by giving, the rich man lightens both burdens, as two fellow travelers on God's road share provisions.
  • Sermon 167.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · To redeem the time means to give up some money or property rather than be drawn into lawsuits, buying quiet for God as one buys goods in the market.
  • Sermon 167.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A Punic proverb and Christ's command to give up one's cloak teach that it is better to lose money than peace; but the bishop as judge warns the slanderer who exploits this that he will face judgment.
  • Sermon 169.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · “My own righteousness from the Law” is keeping the commandments from fear of punishment, which restrains desire like a frightened lion or wolf without changing it; God's righteousness is the delight in good that he alone gives.
  • Sermon 174.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ, already received into Zacchaeus's heart, entered his house; Zacchaeus gave half to the poor and kept the rest to make restitution, showing that to receive Jesus is to receive him into the heart.
  • Sermon 177.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Taking 1 Timothy 6:7–10 as his text, Augustine notes that almost everyone condemns avarice in words but keeps it in deeds; not having it is far greater than denouncing it.
  • Sermon 177.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Pagan philosophers also condemned avarice, but only Christ's school adds “flee these things and pursue righteousness, faith, love”; Christians, adopted sons, should use goods like an inn on a journey, not an estate.
  • Sermon 177.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · On life's short journey, one needs only food and clothing; one should flee the love of money, master gold by giving it, and pursue the inner riches of righteousness and faith that no thief or shipwreck can take, as Job did.
  • Sermon 177.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Enough for the present suffices; hoarding treasure binds the heart to the earth and makes the response “Lift up your heart” a lie, though Augustine grants a distinction between being rich and wanting to be rich.
  • Sermon 177.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul condemns wanting to become rich, for desire always seeks what it lacks; avarice is like dropsy, in which the more one drinks, the more one thirsts.
  • Sermon 177.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · One who is already rich must not want to be rich nor be proud: the rich and poor are equal before birth, death, fever, and decay; the rich should possess without love and not be possessed.
  • Sermon 177.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God alone, who made all things and holds their patterns in himself, suffices; the soul that leaves him to have more, like the prodigal son, loses everything, and Adam's first sin was avarice, for God did not suffice him.
  • Sermon 177.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The rich should prove their freedom from love of money by giving readily, an exchange in which they give earthly things and receive heaven and God himself; against anxious fears for the future, God's promise “I will not leave you” is a written bond.
  • Sermon 178.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Most “contradict” not by words but by bad lives; if the rich fool who only hoarded his own crops was condemned, how much worse those who seize other people's property.
  • Sermon 178.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God's “Fool” is a sentence of damnation; and the rich man of Luke 16 was condemned not for robbery but only for his lack of mercy to Lazarus, so robbers can expect worse.
  • Sermon 178.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Alms given from robbery are not accepted by God: the robber feeds one Christian by despoiling another, and if those who failed to clothe Christ go into eternal fire, what of those who stripped him?
  • Sermon 178.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Robbing pagans to give to Christians is also forbidden, for it hinders their conversion; the claim that it is discipline would be believable only if the goods were returned once they became Christians.
  • Sermon 178.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · No one contradicts the sermon against robbery in words, but many do in deeds; Augustine urges both robbers and their victims, who may only lack the power, to give up the desire to seize.
  • Sermon 178.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The blessed are those who could do wrong unseen and did not: returning a deposit made without witnesses or a purse found on the road, as God's Law commands found things to be returned.
  • Sermon 178.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A poor Christian schoolmaster's assistant at Milan returned a purse of nearly two hundred solidi and refused any reward until compelled, then gave it all to the poor; whoever keeps what he finds has stolen it.
  • Sermon 178.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Refraining from evil only out of fear does not change the heart, as a wolf scared from the fold remains a wolf; one must do good from love of righteousness, not only from fear of hell.
  • Sermon 178.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Chaste love desires to see God himself: whoever would be terrified if God, removing every threat of punishment, said only “I will deny you my face” loves freely, and that spark should be nourished until it burns up carnal desires.
  • Sermon 179.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Hearers already do now what all will do in heaven, where the Word himself teaches; all must be doers of the word both inwardly, as against lustful looks, and outwardly, as in feeding the hungry, before God who sees the heart.
  • Sermon 180.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · James 5:12, echoing Christ's command not to swear at all, raises a hard question, since it forbids not only perjury but swearing, and does so “above all.”
  • Sermon 180.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Swearing is not itself sin, since God swore and the saints swore; perjury lies in the mind, as when one swears to what one thinks false, even if it proves true; because men are easily deceived and swear constantly, Scripture's shortcut is: do not swear.
  • Sermon 180.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Swearing truthfully is not sin, but it walks on the edge of the precipice of perjury, since human minds are easily deceived; only God swears securely, so the safe course is not to swear.
  • Sermon 180.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Law commands rendering oaths, so swearing truly is not condemned, but perjury is deadly and true oaths dangerous; Augustine, who always avoided this question, believes God led him to it today.
  • Sermon 180.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul swore, as the Greek of 1 Corinthians 15:31 shows (νή, “by,” as in νὴ τὸν θεόν, “by God”), and elsewhere called God as witness, so truthful swearing is not sin.
  • Sermon 180.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Calling God as witness (“God knows,” “God is witness”) is an oath just as much as “by God,” and those who deny it only want to lie with God as witness.
  • Sermon 180.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · To swear is to render right to what one swears by, pledging it to God; perjuring oneself by God is worse than by one's child, for although God cannot be harmed, the perjurer harms himself and deceives his neighbor.
  • Sermon 180.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The perjurer who seems to prosper is already dead in soul, for as the soul is the body's life, God is the soul's life and departs at perjury; his luxuries are the worms of a dead soul.
  • Sermon 180.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · James says “above all, do not swear,” not because swearing is worse than murder or adultery, but to put us on guard against the habit of constant oaths, which most leads to perjury.
  • Sermon 180.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine confesses he once swore habitually and overcame it by fear; he now swears only when necessary for the good of an unbelieving hearer, and the “evil” beyond yes and no is then the hearer's unbelief, as with Paul's oath to the Galatians.
  • Sermon 180.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · One who demands an oath from someone he knows will swear falsely is a murderer; some thieves refuse to swear when accused, claiming Christian scruple, yet swear constantly in idle talk; the daily habit of needless oaths must be cut off.
  • Sermon 180.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The habit of swearing requires extra vigilance because the tongue slips easily; even pagans fear to swear falsely by their stone idols, and a Christian who swears falsely by an idol is still a perjurer, since he deceives his neighbor before God.
  • Sermon 180.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine asks his hearers to admonish one another at home, assuring them from experience that if they avoid swearing for three days the habit will die.
  • Sermon 181.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Confession, humility, prayer, and tears heal the daily sins we cannot avoid, though a good Christian does not commit the deadly sins; God forgives our debts on the fixed condition that we forgive others.
  • Sermon 183.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · All heretics, and bad Catholics too by their deeds, deny Christ come in the flesh; faith without works is like the demons' faith, which confessed Christ from fear, unlike Peter's confession from love.
  • Sermon 198.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians are separated from pagans by what they believe, hope, and love, and must show it by giving alms, going to church, and fasting instead of joining the New Year revels.
  • Sermon 198.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Instead of New Year's gifts Christians should give to the poor, and they should keep away from the shows and spectacles in which demons delight.
  • Sermon 209.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Lent is the time to end enmities, which live by negligence, obstinacy, and proud shame, and to overcome them by memory, mercy, and humility.
  • Sermon 210.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · What is saved by fasting belongs to the poor, and forgiveness, which anyone can give since it needs only the will, must be granted especially in Lent.
  • Sermon 211.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Lent calls for reconciliation; the Lord's Prayer binds us to forgive as we hope to be forgiven, and anger must not be allowed to grow into hatred.
  • Sermon 211.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Whoever hates his brother is in darkness and is a murderer, imprisoned in his own heart; if he seeks reconciliation and is refused, he is free.
  • Sermon 211.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · One refused pardon after sincerely asking may trust God; those who have wronged others must ask pardon without shame, and a master who wrongs his slave should at least show it by gentle speech.
  • Sermon 211.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · One who has been wronged should not falsely ask pardon, but should be ready to forgive from the heart and pray that the offender may seek pardon.
  • Sermon 211.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine asks that all be reconciled before Easter, following Christ who sinned against no one, and that prayers for vengeance become prayers for the enemy's conversion.
  • Sermon 216.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ paid our debt; the candidates, longing for the land of the living, must put to death sexual immorality and greed and, with the exorcisms of the Church, fight and renounce the devil.
  • Sermon 217.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ wills that his own be with him in the secure home of heaven; we reach that good place by feeding, sheltering, and welcoming the needy in this bad place.
  • Sermon 224.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The newly baptized are members of Christ by grace; they must imitate the few good Catholics, not the bad, and keep from sexual immorality, adultery, and other sins.
  • Sermon 224.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The devil tells adulterers that sins of the flesh are light, as he deceived Eve in paradise; but God's word proved true and the excuse did not avail.
  • Sermon 224.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Husbands must keep only to their wives and the unmarried come chaste to marriage; a married man's concubine, even his own slave, is a harlot, and keeping her leads to Gehenna.
  • Sermon 230.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The day the Lord has made is the light of his word in believers' hearts; those who spend Easter in drunkenness and quarrels are darkness, not that day.
  • Sermon 231.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Everyone wants happiness, but seeking it in gold, honor, or any earthly thing is “loving vanity and seeking a lie.”
  • Sermon 232.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine rebukes public penitents who go on sinning or stay in the order of penitents without amendment, urging them to change before sudden death.
  • Sermon 236.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ, recognized as a guest in the breaking of bread, is received in every needy Christian; in heaven all need will end, and our whole business will be the praise of God.
  • Sermon 239.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God lets his servants be in need so that others may do good; no one should be proud of giving, since Christ was poor and a guest, and the giver may need far more.
  • Sermon 239.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Lend to God, who repays a hundredfold; when lending to people, take no interest and do not press a debtor who cannot yet repay or force him to sell his home.
  • Sermon 239.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · We can still receive Christ as a guest, since he is in need in his members until the end of the world; believing without seeing, we recognize him in good works.
  • Sermon 248.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · 153 is the sum of the numbers 1 to 17, and 17 is the ten commandments plus the sevenfold Spirit, since no one fulfills the law without grace.
  • Sermon 249.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The first catch shows the Church now, good and bad mixed and schisms tearing the nets; the good must live well among the bad without breaking away, to be found on the right after the resurrection.
  • Sermon 249.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Decalogue is fulfilled only when the sevenfold Spirit is added, for the letter kills and the Spirit gives life; ten plus seven gives seventeen, whose sum from one is 153.
  • Sermon 250.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The first catch figures the Church now, full of good and bad; the good must not be discouraged by the apparent happiness of the wicked, and the bad must be tolerated, not separated, until the judgment.
  • Sermon 250.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The second catch, on the right, figures the saints after the resurrection, unbroken in unity; 153 is the sum to 17, the ten commandments with the sevenfold Spirit, without whom the letter kills.
  • Sermon 251.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The catch on the right signifies the fixed number of saints who will reign with Christ; many now in the Church are beyond the number, so believers must not imitate bad Christians.
  • Sermon 251.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The large fish are those who both do and teach the commandments; their righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, who say and do not do.
  • Sermon 251.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Without the Spirit the law only makes transgressors; with the Spirit’s help the saints keep God’s law gladly, out of love of righteousness rather than fear of punishment.
  • Sermon 251.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The adversary to be reconciled on the way is the word of the Law; God reconciles us by forgiving sins and inspiring righteousness through the Spirit.
  • Sermon 252.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who seek carnal things in the Church, inside or outside, are chaff; but unlike real chaff men have free will and can become wheat, and what matters is how the last winnowing finds them.
  • Sermon 252.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The forty days of Lent are kept in labor and fasting, the fifty of Easter in gladness that signifies eternal rest; but Easter must not be kept with drunkenness, for living well is better than understanding much.
  • Sermon 257.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · “Every man is a liar” is no excuse for lying, since God destroys liars; it teaches that we are liars of ourselves and truthful only by fleeing to God.
  • Sermon 259.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Until the eternal rest, works of mercy are the daily remedy for sin; mercy is twofold, forgiving those who wrong us and giving to the needy, and God repays both far beyond what we give.
  • Sermon 259.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Giving alms with one’s own hand adds humility to kindness; treasure entrusted to Christ through the poor is safe, and even the widow’s two coins buy the kingdom of heaven.
  • Sermon 259.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As the Easter holidays end and the law courts reopen, Augustine urges gentleness and invites his hearers to demand of him, by Christian law, the explanations he still owes.
  • Sermon 260.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · To the newly baptized at the Easter octave: keep chastity, married or vowed; the unmarried may marry only partners whose former spouses are no longer living; those vowed to continence must keep their vow.
  • Sermon 261.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God cannot be pointed out but is known from his works; to see him the heart must be cleansed of phantoms and of avarice, which drags mud into it.
  • Sermon 261.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · To see God the heart must be cleaned for his coming; avarice fills the chest and breaks the conscience, while Job, having lost everything, was full and brought forth praise.
  • Sermon 261.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Word is not grasped because the heart is darkened by bad works and evil desires; it must be cleansed by effort and by prayer.
  • Sermon 261.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Both great commandments are fulfilled in Christ: we love God in the Word who was God, and neighbor in the Word made flesh.
  • Sermon 261.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Even the just are not without sin, for besides crimes there are daily sins of eye, ear, and thought; so believers should abound in mercy and forgive quickly.
  • Sermon 261.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · After baptism God gives daily remedies, the Lord’s Prayer and almsgiving, by which the judge will separate right from left; minor sins overwhelm by their number, as raindrops fill rivers.
  • Sermon 265.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine admits he does not know why the Spirit was given twice, but proposes that the two givings commend the two commandments of the one charity: on earth for love of neighbor, from heaven for love of God.
  • Sermon 266.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The psalm’s better sense is that a righteous man’s rebuke is mercy, while the sinner’s oil is flattery, which swells the head with pride.
  • Sermon 270.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Spirit came ten days after the fortieth day because forty (ten times four) signifies the law preached through this age, while the single ten signifies the law fulfilled by grace; the letter alone kills, the Spirit gives life.
  • Sermon 270.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Charity, the gift of the Spirit, fulfills the law; fear of punishment makes obedience slavish, while chaste fear, like a faithful wife’s, remains forever.
  • Sermon 278.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As a sick man recovers only gradually by following the physician, so those who keep God’s commands are not yet healed but are on the way, and recovery is slow lest sin seem a game.
  • Sermon 278.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ the physician commands faith and temperance; those who obey are not yet fully healed, and the tribulations they suffer are the surgeon’s healing hand, not the judge’s sentence.
  • Sermon 278.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Lord’s Prayer petition for forgiveness is the antidote against all sins, of which there are two kinds, against God and against neighbor, matching the two great commandments.
  • Sermon 278.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · One sins against God also by corrupting one’s own body, his temple bought by Christ’s blood, even when no other person is harmed.
  • Sermon 278.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who say they harm no one by gluttony, drunkenness, or sexual immorality are not innocent: love of neighbor is measured by love of self, and they wreck God’s dwelling.
  • Sermon 278.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Even in what is permitted one can sin by excess, as in married intercourse beyond the purpose of begetting children named in the marriage contract, or drunkenness with one’s own wine; the remedy is the Lord’s Prayer.
  • Sermon 278.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Excess even in permitted things offends God, whose temple we are; the remedy he gives is to forgive others, so that he will forgive us.
  • Sermon 278.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Whoever refuses to forgive others has no promise of salvation; Augustine will not promise pardon God has not promised, as the serpent did, but only what Scripture promises: forgiveness of past sins to the converted and baptized.
  • Sermon 278.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Grave sins after baptism are forgiven through the Church’s keys by earnest penance; light, unavoidable sins overwhelm by their number, and God forgives them too, but only if we forgive others.
  • Sermon 278.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Hatred corrupts the heart as vinegar spoils a wine jar; harm no one, and for unavoidable excess forgive others quickly so that the Father may forgive you.
  • Sermon 279.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Death cannot be avoided, but eternal punishment can, by living well; Christ’s death and resurrection show both, so believers should confess him without shame, as Paul, who seized in the morning, divided the food of the word in the evening.
  • Sermon 283.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Pleasure entices and pain drives people to sin; against them God gives continence and patience, and sets his own promises and threats above the world’s.
  • Sermon 283.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Continence, like patience, is God’s gift; the one who does not know whose gift he has is ungrateful and loses it.
  • Sermon 283.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Spirit of God makes us know his gifts and be grateful; the proud lose what they have, while the humble who thank God for little receive more, and must hope in him alone.
  • Sermon 286.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A sick believer who refuses amulets and incantations offered as cures conquers the devil and becomes a martyr in bed.
  • Sermon 289.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · John, the greatest of men, humbled himself so that Christ might be known as more than man; John and the apostles are lamps that shine from the fountain of Christ’s fullness, set on the lampstand of the cross, and must keep humility.
  • Sermon 296.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · When people ask why Rome, holding the apostles’ tombs, is laid waste, Augustine answers that the memorials are there but not in their hearts, and urges patient obedience to God’s will, after Christ’s example in Gethsemane.
  • Sermon 296.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · If the world suffers more now, it is because God’s will has been made known by the Gospel and is despised; the servant who knows his master’s will and stores treasure on earth, not in heaven where the Goth cannot take it, is beaten with many stripes.
  • Sermon 296.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Rather than murmur, praise God who corrects his children; the apostles’ tombs were not meant to preserve Rome’s theaters, and the prosperity of the unpunished wicked is a sign of God’s greater anger.
  • Sermon 296.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · We show love for God by loving his gains, the sheep, since we can give God nothing for himself; what is done to the least of Christ’s brothers reaches him, so the church must not be closed to those who knock.
  • Sermon 297.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Loving life is not blamed, provided one does not sin for it; everyone wants life and good days, so let them do the work the psalm names: keep the tongue from evil, turn from evil, do good.
  • Sermon 297.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · If we love life, let us choose a good one now and a happy one later; we want everything good except ourselves, and those who sin, even kill or remarry adulterously, to preserve this wretched life lose eternal life.
  • Sermon 297.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Good days are not found in this life; we make our days bad, since most evils come from people; pray to be delivered from the evil man, oneself, for then no other evil man can harm you.
  • Sermon 301.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · What awaits the righteous in heaven cannot be explained; so believers should not envy the wicked or count worldly riches happiness, which is a burden and a danger, but pass beyond everything changeable to the unchangeable God.
  • Sermon 301.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Life is short and uncertain, even Adam’s long life now nothing; let us live as pilgrims by faith, knowing that all passes but the word of the Lord abides forever.
  • Sermon 302.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · People do everything to delay death by a day, yet hardly anything for eternal life; they should do something so as never to die.
  • Sermon 302.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · People will give up all their goods to the treasury to live a little longer, but not superfluities to Christ to live forever; begging in this world and reigning with Christ cannot even be weighed against each other.
  • Sermon 302.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The lover of this present life gives up everything for it, but life itself answers that it is foul, hard and fleeting, able to strip him but not to make him happy.
  • Sermon 302.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Lawrence, the archdeacon, when ordered to bring out the Church’s wealth, brought the poor in carts and said these were its wealth; he was burned on a gridiron, and his act teaches that what is given to the poor is kept safe by God.
  • Sermon 302.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · To profit from the martyrs’ feasts we must imitate them, loving eternal life, living well, and persevering to the end.
  • Sermon 302.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Raging against evil people only makes two evil people; Christians should conquer evil with good, and to vent fury even on the dead is madness, not justice.
  • Sermon 302.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · It is not enough not to do or want evil; Christians must prevent it; evil people have rulers to punish them, and ‘do good and you will have praise from the authority’ holds even for Lawrence, killed by it, since it gave him the occasion of praise.
  • Sermon 302.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Even if the dead man was evil and an oppressor, he had judges; to kill him without authority is murder, as even an official who struck a condemned man out of order would be a murderer.
  • Sermon 302.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ’s word ‘let him who is without sin cast the first stone’ shamed the raging accusers of the woman taken in adultery, and he, the judge, showed her mercy.
  • Sermon 302.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · It is malice, not soldiering, that makes soldiers oppress; John the Baptist corrected soldiers, toll collectors and all the people alike, and everyone should hear and live in peace.
  • Sermon 302.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · One who complains of oppression as a merchant should ask whether he himself traded honestly; only the evil rage against the evil, while a judge must sometimes punish by duty; ordinary people should pray to be delivered from evil, beginning with themselves.
  • Sermon 302.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine warns his people away from bloody deeds; an evil man’s death calls for double grief, since he dies both in time and in eternity, and their part is to grieve, not to rage.
  • Sermon 302.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Since every household in Hippo has more Christians than pagans, public crimes like the lynching could be prevented if Christians restrained their sons, slaves and dependants.
  • Sermon 302.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God does not fear crowds: he punished the whole world in the flood and Sodom and Gomorrah with fire, and in his wrath he joins those who do evil with those who fail to prevent it.
  • Sermon 302.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine ends by urging his people to live peaceably, leave punishment to the authorities, keep away from mob violence, and restrain those in their households, so that God may have mercy.
  • Sermon 304.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians can follow Christ without martyrdom by imitating his humility and obedience even to the cross, by not seeking revenge, and by setting their minds on things above.
  • Sermon 306.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Everyone wants to be happy, though people disagree about the way of life that brings happiness, whether soldiering, farming, law, judging or trade; no one life pleases all, but the happy life does.
  • Sermon 306.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Not everyone wants any particular way of life, but all want life and health; where there is perfect life and perfect health, nothing more ought to be sought.
  • Sermon 306.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Life and health that might end are not true life, for fear torments; true life is both eternal and happy, certain to last, in God’s just and everlasting kingdom, which the good seek confidently by keeping the commandments.
  • Sermon 306.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · In the life to come there will be no deceit or false suspicion, which now causes many evils; Christ commanded love of enemies so that we would not hate even friends we wrongly suspect.
  • Sermon 306.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Even if death and sickness were taken away, we would still want truth, to know one another’s hearts without suspicion; the happy life is life with truth, and to reach the life where no one is deceived we must now live without deceiving.
  • Sermon 307.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · False swearing is so grave a sin that Christ forbade swearing altogether, telling his disciples to let their yes be yes and their no be no.
  • Sermon 307.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God himself swore to Abraham and swore that Christ is a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, whose offering the faithful recognize; God’s oaths are true and he does not repent of them as Herod did.
  • Sermon 307.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Swearing truly is not a sin, but because false swearing is grave, Christ forbade all oaths, so as to keep us far from the edge; God alone, who cannot lie, swears safely.
  • Sermon 307.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine tells his people that he once swore daily but, fearing God and asking his help, broke the habit, so that not swearing is now easy for him.
  • Sermon 308.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Herod, having sworn rashly, was caught between perjury and murder and chose murder; Augustine warns that the only escape from such a two-headed noose is never to swear rashly.
  • Sermon 308.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · David swore rashly to kill Nabal but, persuaded by Abigail, broke his oath rather than shed blood; he chose the lesser sin, yet false swearing remains a great evil, so the habit of swearing must be fought.
  • Sermon 308.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · One who swears because another demands an oath to clear a suspicion does not sin as the one who demands it; swearing comes ‘from evil’, the common evil that we cannot see one another’s hearts.
  • Sermon 308.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Whoever compels another to swear knowing he will perjure himself is worse than a murderer, since he kills two souls, the perjurer’s and his own.
  • Sermon 308.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine tells of Tutuslymeni of Hippo, who forced a debtor to swear falsely and in a dream was beaten by a heavenly judge, waking with the marks; such sin is worse for those warned, so the habit of swearing must be given up.
  • Sermon 311.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians who honor Cyprian for despising riches, honor and even health should despise them too and follow him through Christ, the door opened by the lance, from whose side flowed water for cleansing and blood for redemption.
  • Sermon 311.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Love of earthly things is birdlime on the wings of virtue that carry us to God; the more it delights the more it strangles, and wisdom asks for conduct, not applause.
  • Sermon 311.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ’s words ‘we sang and you did not dance’ need explaining, since until recently the martyr’s shrine was profaned by all-night dancing and lewd songs, which the bishop of Carthage ended by instituting holy vigils.
  • Sermon 311.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The ‘dancing’ Christ asks for is not bodily but moral: he sings who commands and he dances who obeys, and the Church’s song is ‘do not love the world’.
  • Sermon 311.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · We ‘dance’ to the Gospel’s song by harmonizing our conduct with it, rooting out greed and planting love; people do change, as the apostles, many senators, and Cyprian himself did.
  • Sermon 311.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Times are not bad in themselves, since days and seasons harm no one; it is people who harm people, and many who complain would do the same if they could.
  • Sermon 311.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Gold is good, as God created it; in the hands of the evil it corrupts justice, in the hands of the good it feeds the poor and redeems captives; the good possess gold rather than being possessed by it.
  • Sermon 311.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Gold, like the tongue, is good or bad according to its user; some goods belong only to the good, such as faith and love, others like money and health are shared by good and evil; to the objection that God should give earthly goods only to the good, Augustine replies that it is meant to teach us.
  • Sermon 311.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God gives earthly goods to the wicked too so that the good will not prize them; riches given in answer to prayer often make a person worse, and God, as a Father, urges us to ask him for better things, for himself.
  • Sermon 311.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God has made the world bitter, as nurses smear their breasts to wean a child, yet people still cling to it; if they were told they would stay here forever in their misery they would rejoice, which shows how unhappy that love is.
  • Sermon 311.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · There is another life after this one: Christians who hear ‘Lift up your heart’ daily should send their treasure ahead to heaven, the rich by doing good and the poor by not murmuring, for having God is everything.
  • Sermon 323.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The curse that struck the Cappadocian family warns children to obey and parents to fear anger, since the mother was heard and punished all the more.
  • Sermon 330.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Following Christ means following him to heaven in hope, and denying oneself means losing one's soul as a farmer loses seed, in order to find it.
  • Sermon 330.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Perverse self-love, turning to money and outward things, makes one lose oneself; the prodigal son and the martyrs returned to themselves and then gave themselves back to God, which is to deny oneself.
  • Sermon 332.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The martyrs became Christ's friends by keeping his command to love one another as he loved them, a love distinct from the companionship of theatre-goers and drinkers.
  • Sermon 332.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine urges husbands to be faithful: the Apostle's word that the wife has no authority over her own body is matched by the husband's having none over his, so a husband's adultery is forbidden as much as a wife's.
  • Sermon 335.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The martyrs' voice is Paul's “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?”; they first overcame the world's delights, then its pains.
  • Sermon 335.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The greedy endure for gold all that Paul lists, so only the cause, as on the three crosses, distinguishes the martyrs, whose causes we must choose.
  • Sermon 336.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · At a church dedication Augustine teaches that believers are God's house, being built by love, the new commandment and new song, and enlightened only by coming to God.
  • Sermon 337.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The basilica, built for a time through works of mercy, is a good temporal work leading to the eternal house; believers are to build in themselves a house of faith, hope and love.
  • Sermon 338.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Good works shown openly feed others by example; the church is the city on the mountain, the stone that grew to fill the world, which cannot be hidden.
  • Sermon 338.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The one who does good is a lamp, and boasting only in Christ's cross is its lampstand, so that others may see and imitate.
  • Sermon 338.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ's commands to let works shine and to beware of doing righteousness before men agree: he forbids not being seen but acting in order to be praised.
  • Sermon 338.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Good works are to be seen so that God, not the doer, is glorified.
  • Sermon 339.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Whoever was bad yesterday should be good today; people who want everything good, even their boots, should want a good life, whose passing pain brings endless joy.
  • Sermon 339.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Pleasure is sweet for a time and bitter afterwards, so Christians should toil briefly on the road to reach eternal joy in the homeland.
  • Sermon 343.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Susanna, a model of conjugal chastity, chose death rather than sin before God, and God, who saw what the judges could not, freed her through Daniel's exposure of the false witnesses.
  • Sermon 343.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Death would not have harmed Susanna's chastity; Christ himself died through false witnesses, and both the three young men who escaped the fire and the Maccabees who perished were crowned.
  • Sermon 343.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As God freed Susanna, he freed Mary from Joseph's benevolent suspicion; virginal and conjugal chastity both please God, with unequal rewards in one eternal life, and married people must carry Christ's light yoke.
  • Sermon 343.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Wives should keep chastity for God, pray for suspicious husbands, and guard their reputation; men have their example in Joseph, who loved the inner beauty of chastity more than Potiphar's wife loved his body.
  • Sermon 343.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A man who loves chastity in his own wife and daughters must love it in other men's wives and in himself.
  • Sermon 343.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Like Susanna and Joseph, a tempted man must fear the eyes of God, and if he suffers for chastity, as Joseph did in prison, God delays his help to test him and to reward him more.
  • Sermon 343.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Since people endure much for perishable property, they should be willing to suffer for wisdom and chastity, the treasures that no shipwreck can take away.
  • Sermon 343.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Job, stripped of everything, still had God and answered his wife's temptation; God, unlike spectators at the games, helps those who fight when they call on him.
  • Sermon 344.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Love of the world and love of God contend in every temptation; Christ came to change our love, and the martyrs, burning with love of God, overcame the flesh, which will be honoured in the resurrection.
  • Sermon 344.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ did not abolish love of family but ordered it below love of God and the Church, which matters most when relatives urge a martyr not to die.
  • Sermon 345.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · On Easter Augustine warns the rich that this life and its riches are a dream, like a beggar dreaming of treasure; the rich man of the parable woke in flames with nothing in his hands.
  • Sermon 345.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who give everything to barbarians to save a short life should give something to Christ for eternal life, and make terms with him who was captured and killed for them.
  • Sermon 345.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who love their riches should store them in heaven by giving to the poor, entrusting them to Christ, a safer guardian than any slave or hiding place.
  • Sermon 345.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ is found on earth in his members, the poor, as his words to Saul and the judgment parable show; giving to them moves one's treasure and heart to heaven, as the liturgy's “Lift up your heart” demands.
  • Sermon 345.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The kingdom of heaven is worth more than any estate; the angels, who need nothing, are the truly rich, while earthly riches bring only hunger, cares, and sleepless nights.
  • Sermon 345.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Giving away possessions is not enough without following Christ along his way of suffering, as the women martyrs of Suburbitum did, whose feast is celebrated that day.
  • Sermon 346.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Only eternal life is true and blessed life; Christ is both the way and the goal, and the rich are told to lay hold of true life through almsgiving.
  • Sermon 347.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Scripture repeatedly commends the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom, since wisdom is given to those who keep justice and justice requires fear.
  • Sermon 347.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Isaiah's seven gifts descend from wisdom to fear so that we may climb from fear to wisdom, from the valley of weeping in repentance to the mountain of peace.
  • Sermon 347.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The seven steps from fear to wisdom in Isaiah correspond to the first seven beatitudes, from poverty of spirit to peacemaking, and the eighth exhorts us to endure persecution.
  • Sermon 348.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · True courage begins with the fear of God; fear is to be cast out only by perfect love, not by proud self-assurance.
  • Sermon 348.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · One who would be free of fear must examine whether perfect love of God and neighbour has cast it out; self-love that fears nothing is pride, as the fearless robber shows.
  • Sermon 348.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Epicureans and Stoics boast of fearlessness, but the one loves vain pleasure and the other a pitiless numbness, which is not health but death of the soul without God.
  • Sermon 348.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The fear of punishment, which love casts out, differs from the chaste fear of losing God, which abides for ever.
  • Sermon 349.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine divides love into three: lawful human love, unlawful human love, and divine love.
  • Sermon 349.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Lawful human love, of wife, children, friends, and fellow citizens, is shared even by unbelievers and beasts; it earns no praise, but its absence deserves condemnation.
  • Sermon 349.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Unlawful love joins the members of Christ to a prostitute, making one flesh as marriage does, which Paul calls unthinkable for those bought by Christ's blood.
  • Sermon 349.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Even if impunity were promised, divine love would not permit unlawful love; as a man keeps a prostitute away from his wife, mother, and sister, he must not lodge her love beside the love of God.
  • Sermon 349.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As the blind man cried out to Christ despite the crowd, Christians should long for Christ the light and cry out by good lives, overcoming even fellow Christians who discourage them.
  • Sermon 349.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Family must be loved, but Christ more; where love of Christ is still weak, fear of being without him should lead the way, like a slave escorting a child to the teacher.
  • Sermon 350.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Love grasps and keeps the whole teaching of Scripture; Christ, who died in the flesh and rose, made a new man by the new commandment of love, which is the root of all goods.
  • Sermon 350.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Since the whole Law and the Prophets hang on love of God and neighbour, whoever holds love in his life holds both what he understands of Scripture and what he does not.
  • Sermon 350.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A hymn to love: its working in the saints of both Testaments, Paul's praise of it in 1 Corinthians 13, and its strength to endure all things because it hopes for the life to come.
  • Sermon 351.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Repentance is necessary because God resists the proud and draws near to the humble, as the tax collector shows; the law was given to reveal sin and lead us to seek grace through Christ.
  • Sermon 351.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Even the most upright baptized person, and especially the ministers of word and sacrament, must remain humble and do daily penance for the faults and dust gathered in this life.
  • Sermon 351.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Lay Christians, entangled in business and marriage, commit many lesser sins, such as lawsuits, intercourse not for procreation, idle talk, and greed at table, which together are deadly unless healed by daily penance.
  • Sermon 351.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Everyone, bishops included, beats his breast and prays “Forgive us our debts” for daily sins; the Christian life is a struggle in which the old and new man coexist, and humility and confession defeat the enemy.
  • Sermon 351.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who persist in grave sin cannot hope for salvation outside the kingdom, for at the judgment all not judging with Christ will be divided into sheep and goats, though the baptized were washed from such sins.
  • Sermon 351.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A baptized person bound by grave sins should judge himself, go to the bishops who hold the keys, accept the satisfaction they impose, and if need be do public penance without shame.
  • Sermon 351.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Penitents should not excuse themselves by the bad lives of some clergy, who are like milestones that point the way without walking it; Christ, the apostles, and the martyrs are examples to follow.
  • Sermon 352.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The second, daily repentance is shown in the Lord's Prayer, “Forgive us as we forgive”; we cannot skip that clause or escape God the creditor, so we must forgive, which costs nothing and enlarges love.
  • Sermon 353.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine urges the newly baptized, as newborn infants, to keep the innocence of spiritual infancy by putting away malice, guile, flattery, envy and slander, and above all pride.
  • Sermon 353.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The newly baptized, temples of God, must not ruin themselves by sins against God; having crossed the Red Sea of baptism, they should journey through the desert of life by the cross, not returning to their former ways.
  • Sermon 354.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine tells those vowed to continence that slander tests whether they seek human praise or God's, and that enemies, whom they must love and pray for, are needed to try the good like gold in a furnace.
  • Sermon 354.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Married people too are members of Christ's body, and humble married people are better than proud celibates; pride, mother of envy, ruins holiness, as the martyrdom of the married Crispina beside the virgin Agnes shows.
  • Sermon 354.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Love is not jealous because it is not puffed up, for pride gives birth to envy; knowledge should be loved, but love put before it, so that it builds up instead of puffing up.
  • Sermon 354.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Continence leads to a higher place only with humility; celibates who despise their married parents are not better but worse, since pride is emptiness where the devil nests.
  • Sermon 354.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Virginity is better than marriage, but humility is better than pride; a humble married mother is better than a proud virgin daughter, who has no place in Christ's humble body.
  • Sermon 355.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine recounts how, seeking a monastic life, he was ordained presbyter and then bishop at Hippo, founded a monastery in a garden given by Valerius, and later a monastery of clergy in the bishop's house, where no one may own property.
  • Sermon 355.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The presbyter Januarius, despite professing the common life, kept money and made a will; grieved, Augustine refuses the inheritance for the Church and will arbitrate the dispute between his children.
  • Sermon 355.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine defends his refusal of inheritances that disinherit children: he gladly accepts offerings, and urges parents to count Christ as one more child, but will not profit from a father's anger against his son.
  • Sermon 355.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine refused Boniface's shipping business so that the Church would not have to torture shipwrecked sailors or keep a reserve fund, and he praises Bishop Aurelius of Carthage for returning a gift when the donor had children.
  • Sermon 355.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine orders his clergy to give up private property by Epiphany, but, to avoid hypocrisy, will no longer remove from office those who choose to leave the common life, leaving them to God's judgment.
  • Sermon 356.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine asks that gifts to the clergy go to the common stock, refuses costly garments unbecoming a poor man, and, since all have now accepted the common life, will strike from the clergy anyone found holding property.
  • Sermon 357.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Peace, easier to have than to praise, should be loved even towards its enemies, who are to be pitied like the blind; unlike earthly property, peace grows the more people share it.
  • Sermon 357.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Peace is had simply by loving it, unlike wealth or power, which are desired without being had or feared to be lost; like the multiplied loaves, peace grows as it is shared.
  • Sermon 357.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The faithful should support the cause of unity with the solemn fasts after Pentecost, almsgiving, and hospitality to the bishops arriving for the conference, storing their treasure in heaven.
  • Sermon 359.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Sirach commends concord of brothers, love of neighbours, and harmony of husband and wife; brothers quarrel because they love earth, but the just, like the apostles of Psalm 19, are heaven and go to heaven.
  • Sermon 359.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Brothers fall out because they love earthly property and covet each other's shares; the poor should hold to justice and take comfort in Christ, the poor brother who gave himself as our price and killed death.
  • Sermon 359.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ refused to divide an inheritance between brothers but gave something better, a warning against greed; so “give to everyone who asks” means giving something good even when refusing what is asked, as Joseph and Susanna did.
  • Sermon 361.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who say “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” do not really reckon with death; funerals briefly prompt reflection, but afterwards people return to greed and pleasure, even using death as an argument for indulgence.
  • Sermon 361.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians tempted by mockers to drunken festivity are like the disciples in the storm: Christ, who dwells in them by faith, is asleep, and they must wake him by remembering what they believe.
  • Sermon 361.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Postponing the second question, Augustine warns against the pagan festival days: the last day will come as in Noah's time, and the Church should long for Christ her bridegroom and repent like the Ninevites.
  • Sermon 362.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · With Christ as foundation in the heart, Christians must build gold rather than straw; Augustine wonders that people fear earthly fire yet despise the fire of judgment.
  • Sermon 362.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · There is a spiritual resurrection now through faith, turning from sin to good works, and a bodily one to come; the wicked will rise whole but only for unending pain.
  • Sermon 362.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The life to come is easier described by what it lacks: no marriage, growth, eating, business, or even works of mercy, since there will be no misery; it will be a perpetual sabbath of rest.
  • Sermon 365.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Conscience, the "reins" that rebuke us by night, teaches our weakness against every vice; the remedy is to fasten our loosened strength with the nails of Christ's cross.
  • Sermon 366.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God converts the soul not for its merits but for his name's sake; the "paths of righteousness" are the narrow way of mercy and truth, summed up in the two commandments of love.
  • Sermon 366.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The "shadow of death" is the way of sin and the vices of this life; with Christ shining in the heart as companion, the believer need fear no evil, unless he forsakes him through pride.
  • Sermon 367.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · On the rich man and Lazarus: both shared one nature and one death, yet the rich man's insatiable avarice, worse than that of beasts, led to Tartarus while Lazarus was carried to Abraham's bosom.
  • Sermon 367.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The rich man is refused mercy in torment because he refused mercy to Lazarus on earth; God repays with the same measure.
  • Sermon 367.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Rich and poor need each other: the poor pray, the rich give, and God repays; alms sent ahead through the poor prepare one's lodging in heaven.
  • Sermon 368.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · John 12:25 ("whoever loves his soul will lose it") seems to contradict Eph 5:29 and the soul's worth; Augustine sets out the puzzle.
  • Sermon 368.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Loving one's soul in sin is really hatred of it, and hating it in this world for the sake of eternal life is true love of it.
  • Sermon 368.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · People rush to save a bodily life but are sluggish about eternal life; one must pour out harmful loves like vinegar from a vessel so that the right love can enter.
  • Sermon 368.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Love begins with self-love, shared even with animals; things lower than ourselves, like gold, are to be used, not clung to, and we must rise to love our equals.
  • Sermon 368.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The order of charity is to love God, then oneself rightly, then one's neighbor; loving sin is hating oneself, and by justice, mercy, and love of enemies one climbs to perfect love of God.
  • Sermon 371.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christians, bought by Christ's incarnation and blood and made his brothers and heirs, should hold themselves in such regard as to be ashamed to sin, and so ascend to God who came down to them.
  • Sermon 376.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As the newly baptized leave the nest, Augustine warns them that the Church holds both wheat and chaff, and urges them to bear the fruit of the Spirit so that God may find them his joy and crown.
  • Sermon 376.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine warns the newly baptized against drunken or superstitious fellow Christians who recommend enchanters, healers, and astrologers, and urges forgiveness and almsgiving.
  • Sermon 382.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · On St Stephen's day: like Joshua helped by Moses' prayer, the preacher speaks helped by the people's prayers; Christ commands love of enemies here and promises the reward of sonship hereafter.
  • Sermon 382.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · To pray for an enemy's death is to make oneself judge and God the executioner; God, who spared us when we were his enemies, teaches us to pray for our enemies as Christ did on the cross.
  • Sermon 385.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A sermon on human love begins from the command to love one's neighbor as oneself, setting aside the shameful loves of adulterers and seducers to seek the lawful ones.
  • Sermon 385.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The steps of lawful love: marital and parental love, shared with animals, are still carnal; love of kin is more human; love widens to strangers and finally to enemies.
  • Sermon 385.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Friendships of complicity in crime are not friendship; friendship of habit is shared with animals; higher is friendship of reason based on faith and goodwill, and above it the love of God in others.
  • Sermon 385.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Friendship must be freely given, not for gain; and since one loves an old friend's unseen faithfulness rather than his body, one can learn with the same inner eyes to love the unseen God.
  • Sermon 385.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The devil's charge against Job, "Does Job worship God for nothing?", warns us to love God freely rather than for a reward, since God gives himself, a greater good than any gift.
  • Sermon 385.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · To love the creature and desert the Creator is spiritual adultery; God must be clung to freely; and since every lover wants the beloved to be safe, true love wants for spouse, children, and friends the true salvation.
  • Sermon 385.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Bodily health is to be used, not loved; it is a constant sickness relieved by remedies (food, drink, rest, movement) each of which becomes harmful if prolonged; true health is God's salvation, seen in the three young men and the Maccabee martyrs.
  • Sermon 385.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Perfect love wants for every person, spouse, child, stranger, and enemy alike, the eternal salvation one wants for oneself, and treats an enemy's malice as a fever to be cured; such love, built by Christ's passion, drives the devil out of the heart.
  • Sermon 385.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ has bound the devil and freed us; we must fill the emptied house of the soul with virtues, lest the unclean spirit return with seven worse.
  • Sermon 386.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Love must reach even enemies; in the Lord's Prayer Christ, our advocate and judge, has drafted our plea, which depends on forgiving those who ask our pardon, and we should pray even for those who do not ask.
  • Sermon 387.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Priests must rebuke the negligent; the one rebuked should not look for faults in the rebuker, for the word of God speaks even through a bad man and is the adversary with whom we must settle while still on the way of this life.
  • Sermon 387.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Rebuke must begin with oneself and come from love; one who rebukes with hatred is already a murderer in God's eyes, condemning the speck of anger in another while keeping the beam of hatred in himself.
  • Sermon 387.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Let us come to terms with the word of God while still in this life, loving friends and enemies, since love fulfills the law and covers many sins.
  • Sermon 388.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · In the judgment scene of Matthew 25 Christ names only almsgiving, given or withheld, not because other deeds are not judged, but to admonish us, since alms redeem sins.
  • Sermon 388.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Alms blot out past sins only for those who change their lives; daily light sins are forgiven through the Lord's Prayer, which even the apostles needed, but alms do not buy license for grave sins, which would perish together with the sinner.
  • Sermon 389.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The soul needs heavenly bread, Christ himself; to obtain it one must knock, and knocking is done with the hands: we ask by praying, seek by inquiring, and knock by giving alms.
  • Sermon 389.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Since almsgiving is counsel for the giver's own good, the giver must not be proud; the poor man could remind him that he gives perishable earth and receives heaven, so that the receiver does more for the giver than the giver for him.
  • Sermon 389.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Almsgiving benefits the giver: Christians who lost everything to invaders regretted not having heeded Christ's counsel to move their treasure to heaven, like the poor man robbed of what he had not given to the poor.
  • Sermon 390.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Alms, the companions of fasting, transfer goods to heaven, where Christ keeps them safe from thieves; the Lord, who made the building, gives the best advice on where to store one's treasure.
  • Sermon 390.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Alms are a transfer of funds to heaven and a loan at interest to God, who receives in the poor and repays with eternal life; almsgiving is the remedy for sin.
  • Sermon 391.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Old age is no freer from temptation than infancy: bad old men are given to gluttony and drunkenness, and avarice burns hottest in those who will soon leave everything.
  • Sermon 391.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Youth, between childhood and old age, faces the fiercest temptations; it craves flattery and hates correction, though the bitter rebuke of truth is its medicine.
  • Sermon 391.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Wisdom 2 shows how the luxury of the ungodly, who despair of eternal life, turns into cruelty against the righteous man, which the preacher applies to those who killed Christ.
  • Sermon 391.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Young men should turn their love from every sensual beauty to wisdom, adorning the inner man, as Daniel, the "man of desires," longed for wisdom and overcame lust, pride, and lions.
  • Sermon 391.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Young women too must flee youthful desires, following Susanna, Anna, and Mary, and must not use the church as a place to display their beauty, which withers like grass.
  • Sermon 392.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine tells the baptized who have committed adultery to do the church's penance publicly, as the emperor Theodosius did, rather than claim to confess to God in secret.
  • Sermon 392.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine commands wives not to tolerate their husbands' sexual immorality but to bring it before the church, while yielding to them in property and all else, since in the marriage bed Paul made them equal.
  • Sermon 392.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine rebukes the double standard by which husbands will not bear adulterous wives but expect wives to bear adulterous husbands, calls husbands to lead in chastity, and bars known adulterers from communion.
  • Sermon 393.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Penitents must truly change their lives and be reconciled while in health; the baptized who sin grievously and are reconciled only on their deathbed are not refused penance, but the preacher can give them no assurance of salvation.
  • Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 15Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Augustine explains evil as voluntary sin and its just punishment, made possible by the free choice God gave the soul.
  • Commentary on Galatians 5.2John Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Faith working through love, not circumcision, counts in Christ; a little leaven corrupts the whole; Paul's persecution proves he does not preach circumcision; Chrysostom condemns self-mutilation and teaches that desire is given for marriage and children, not adultery.
  • Commentary on Galatians 5.4John Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Freedom from the law is not license but a call to rise above it through mutual service in love; walking by the Spirit overcomes the desires of the flesh, which Chrysostom explains as the evil will, not the body, against the Manichaeans.
  • Commentary on Galatians 5.6John Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · One led by the Spirit needs no law; the works of the flesh come from a corrupt will, not from the body; the fruit of the Spirit, rooted in love, is beyond the reach of law.
  • Commentary on Galatians 6.1John Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Sinners are to be restored gently, each bearing the others' burdens and testing his own work rather than boasting against his neighbor.
  • Commentary on Galatians 6.2John Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Disciples should support their teachers; what one sows one reaps, so let us do good to all while there is time; Paul writes in his own hand, boasts only in the cross by which the world is crucified to him, and bears Christ's marks as his defense.
  • Homily on 1 Cor, 19.4John Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom reads 1 Cor 7:21–23 as telling slaves to remain slaves, since true slavery is to sin, and illustrates with Joseph, who stayed free in slavery while his free mistress and brothers were slaves of vice.
  • Homily on 1 Cor, 19.6John Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains 1 Cor 7:28–40: marrying is no sin for an unvowed virgin, though widows who break a vow of widowhood by remarrying are condemned; Paul grants a second marriage “in the Lord”, and holiness is required in every state.
  • Homily 2.5 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Paul was gentle like a nurse and would have given his life for the Thessalonians; Chrysostom praises genuine Christian friendship, sweeter than light or life, and rewarded by God.
  • Homily 3.4 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Christians are appointed to affliction; the whole of life is warfare against the devil, the passions, wealth, glory and poverty, and believers must train in peace for battle.
  • Homily 3.5 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · The present life has crowns: bearing the death of a child, refusing magical cures, and giving thanks after loss or theft, as Job did, earn a martyr’s or an almsgiver’s reward.
  • Homily 3.6 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Theft becomes a true loss only when we turn to diviners and lose our souls; like sailors lightening a ship, we should answer loss with almsgiving and thanksgiving, and keep stores for the needy rather than gold.
  • Homily 4.3 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · The Thessalonians’ faith is Paul’s life and joy, yet he prays to supply what their faith lacks in teaching; he prays that their love may grow toward all and their hearts be kept blameless in holiness.
  • Homily 4.4 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Love keeps the heart blameless and consumes every sin, even sexual immorality; the saints from Abel to Abraham pleased God by love, and Paul, unbroken by all dangers, was broken by the tears of those he loved.
  • Homily 4.5 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Joseph, unmoved by his mistress, wept over the brothers who had wronged him; Chrysostom urges his hearers to forgive their enemies at once, before the sun goes down.
  • Homily 5.1 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Paul urges the Thessalonians to go beyond the commandments in virtue, and above all to keep their sanctification by abstaining from all sexual immorality, possessing their bodies in holiness and honour.
  • Homily 5.2 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Every union outside one’s own marriage is sin that God avenges, and a married man’s union with an unmarried woman is adultery; Chrysostom urges fathers to marry their sons early and chaste, and defends his frank speech as a physician’s.
  • Homily 5.4 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Fornication with prostitutes is filthy and inexcusable for the young; the theatre feeds lust, and self-control is easy for those who will it and avoid what harms.
  • Homily 6.1 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Paul praises the Thessalonians’ God-taught brotherly love by not writing about it, and urges them to work with their own hands so as to give rather than receive and to live becomingly before outsiders.
  • Homily 9.3 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Those who live in the dark sins of night will be overtaken by the day; the faithful, sons of light, must keep awake and sober and arm themselves with faith, love and hope, since God, who gave his Son to death, destined them for salvation. Wickedness is death and sleep; it begins in carelessness, and the narrow road between precipices demands constant watchfulness.
  • Homily 9.5 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · The road to life is narrow, and luxury makes it narrower; Chrysostom laments those who laugh while heading for judgment and urges them to pity themselves by showing mercy to the poor.
  • Homily 10.2 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Rulers must correct the disorderly gently; believers must repay evil with good, rejoice, pray and give thanks always; Chrysostom attacks the love of money and the excuse that one hoards for one’s children, citing Jacob and Abraham.
  • Homily 10.4 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · God gave children so that fathers might teach them and love bind mankind; houses built by greed are memorials of greed, the greedy man is worse than a thief and must repay manifold, and all, rich and poor, must stop robbing.
  • Homily 11.3 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · A story shows the power of an adjuration by Christ; Chrysostom rebukes those who ignore beggars adjuring them by the Lord but reward flattery and lewd songs, and teaches that the poor at church doors teach thanksgiving and humility, since God seats them at his gates and admits them to his table with kings.
  • Homily 11.5 on 1 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Like the rich man who despised Lazarus, those ashamed of the poor are ashamed of Christ; Christ commands feasts for the poor, which bring true glory and a heavenly reward.
  • Homily 1.3 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · In the moral part of Homily 1 Chrysostom urges belief without curious inquiry and argues at length against astrological fate (the “nativity”), defending providence despite the prosperity of the wicked.
  • Homily 2.2 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains that the righteous live above the law, calls the gospel “glorious,” and in the moral part contrasts the passing glory of fine clothes and perfumes with the glory and spiritual fragrance of virtue.
  • Homily 3.3 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom argues that faith must be joined with love for Christ, and shows that Christians love their friends more than Christ, whom they neglect in the hungry and the imprisoned.
  • Homily 3.4 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom charges his hearers with treating Christ as an enemy by their sins and by envying those who serve the church, and urges them to love their enemies.
  • Homily 4.2 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains that Paul was pardoned as an example to all sinners, defends the Son’s equal incorruptibility and lordship against the heretics, and in the moral part urges glorifying God in body and soul, especially by rejecting cosmetics and vanity about beauty.
  • Homily 7.1 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom distinguishes three kinds of war (with barbarians, with one another, and within oneself) and explains that Paul’s “peaceful life in all godliness” means the inner peace of a godly life in doctrine and conduct.
  • Homily 7.3 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom shows that Christ’s self-giving for his enemies should move Christians to love him in the poor, and attacks the love of money and the wearing of gold jewelry as self-imposed chains.
  • Homily 8.1 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom reconciles Christ’s command to pray in secret with Paul’s “pray in every place,” explains “holy hands without anger or doubting,” and rebukes women who come to pray adorned with gold and finery.
  • Homily 8.2 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom warns that immodest attire earns women a reputation for adultery, and exposes how consecrated virgins use plain clothes, careful grooming, and studied gestures to attract attention more than gold would.
  • Homily 8.3 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom urges consecrated virgins, as brides of Christ, to give up all studied adornment for the beauty of the soul, warning that their vanity makes worldly women despise virginity.
  • Homily 10.3 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom urges Christians to win pagans by their lives, laments that worldliness keeps them away, and argues that sharing punishment with others brings no consolation in hell.
  • Homily 11.2 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom urges his hearers to entrust their wealth to God through almsgiving, since possessions are only on loan, and mocks the vanity of those who parade through the city with horses, silk, and attendants.
  • Homily 12.2 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains “being nourished on the words of the faith,” distinguishes urging virginity from forbidding marriage, explains the purpose of the Jewish food laws, and argues that wealth is not truly a good, since great riches are seldom gathered without injustice.
  • Homily 12.4 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · The end of Homily 12 argues that wealth is rooted in injustice and that God made the necessities of life common to all; the section then contains Homily 13, on teaching with authority, reading the Scriptures, correcting the old and young, honoring true widows, and the living death of the self-indulgent.
  • Homily 14.1 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains that neglecting one's own family is a denial of faith, and begins on Paul's qualifications for enrolled widows: sixty years, wife of one husband, known for good works.
  • Homily 14.2 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains that a widow's not remarrying is worthless without good works, since Paul did not condemn second marriage but wished her free for God, and praises personal hospitality and almsgiving.
  • Homily 14.3 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom urges giving alms with one's own hand rather than through church officials, and praises visiting the monasteries, “houses of mourning”, where monks rise before dawn to sing.
  • Homily 14.4 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom describes the monks' day of night prayer, psalms, Scripture reading, work, fasting, and simple meals, free of the cares of the world.
  • Homily 14.5 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom describes how monks meet sickness and death, urges respect for hidden saints in the city churches, and teaches secrecy in almsgiving from Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac.
  • Homily 15.1 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains why Paul refuses to enroll younger widows and wishes them to remarry: remarriage is not forbidden and is better than broken vows and idle gossip.
  • Homily 15.2 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains the “double honour” due to presbyters who preside well and teach, the rules for accusing and rebuking presbyters, and then urges fear of Gehenna, contempt for passing things, and imitation of God's generosity.
  • Homily 16.2 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains why Paul instructs slaves rather than masters, and in the moral part shames his hearers by contrasting the patient service of their household slaves with their own careless service of God, adding that slavery is not from nature.
  • Homily 17.1 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom teaches that a teacher needs both authority and gentleness, that pride and endless disputes spring from ignorance and greed, that Timothy should avoid such men, and that godliness with contentment is the true gain.
  • Homily 17.2 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains Paul’s warning to those who desire to be rich, calls Timothy as a “man of God” to flee greed and fight the good fight, and in the moral part denounces the love of money as the root of all evils and the value set on gold, pearls, and silk as mere prejudice.
  • Homily 18.1 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains Paul’s final charge before God and Christ, who confessed before Pilate, the doxology to the immortal and invisible King, which he applies also to the Son, and the command that the rich hope in God and be rich in good works.
  • Homily 18.2 on 1 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains “knowledge falsely so called” as reasoning without faith (perhaps aimed at the Gnostics), and in the final moral contrasts the stable goods of virtue with the cruel commands of the love of money, a tyranny worse than any barbarian’s.
  • Homily 4.1 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom reconciles Paul’s ‘sparing’ them with the Spirit’s guidance, explains how Paul grieved and was gladdened by their grief, expounds his plea to forgive and restore the repentant offender lest Satan outwit them through excessive sorrow, and lists the true remedies of repentance beyond mere outward austerity.
  • Homily 5.5 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Unlike the three youths and Joseph, who uttered no curses against their oppressors, Christians who pray for harm to their enemies speak absurd and devilish words; they should pray for those who wrong them, since Christ’s sacrifice was offered for enemies.
  • Homily 6.4 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Having been given life by the Spirit, Christians must keep the soul alive by its proper works; a soul given to greed, cruelty, or foul speech is dead and foul-smelling, like the rich man’s in the story of Lazarus, while living souls speak like Paul, Peter, Job, Jacob, and Joseph.
  • Homily 7.6 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Lust is not compelled by beauty or by demons alone but grows from our own carelessness, curious looking, familiarity, and idleness, as shown by those who admire beauty without desire.
  • Homily 7.7 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Lust is cured by avoiding the sight and company that feed it, by filling the soul with good occupations, by the fear of God, and by considering what bodily beauty really is, and turning instead to the lasting beauty of the soul.
  • Homily 10.4 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · In Gehenna no one can bring comfort, and not even righteous relatives can intercede, so no one should trust in righteous ancestors; the thought of judgment should be used as a remedy against each passion, kindling love for the things to come.
  • Homily 12.4 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · The apostles, seemingly dying, sorrowful, and poor, were in fact preserved, joyful, and rich in all things, as only the faithful can see; Christians should likewise rejoice in suffering, fasting, and almsgiving, and lament not their poverty but their smallness of soul.
  • Homily 12.5 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · The poor should not lament, since Paul bore far greater cares; the poor enjoy heaven, sun, air, and the fruits of the rich man’s labor as much as or more than the rich, and their plain diet gives health, while luxury breeds corruption and disease.
  • Homily 13.2 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Paul asks for the love owed to a father; he warns the Corinthians against being yoked with unbelievers, since they are God’s temple, and calls them to holiness of body and spirit; Chrysostom attacks vainglory in almsgiving and argues from Scripture that the poor are nearer to salvation than the rich.
  • Homily 16.4 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom calls almsgiving a grace greater than raising the dead, warns against giving grudgingly or seeking repayment in this life, and urges his hearers to live as sojourners on earth so as to be citizens of heaven.
  • Homily 17.2 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains Paul's 'equality' between the Corinthians' money and the Jerusalem saints' spiritual riches and the lesson of the manna, then rebukes the fear of needing others, since all people depend on one another and the poor are the most useful of all.
  • Homily 17.3 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom argues that wealth multiplies dependence while poverty frees from it, that God made people need one another to bind them in friendship, and that the rich who hoard or profiteer while Christ goes hungry have no defense; he closes with the golden rule.
  • Homily 19.3 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains Paul's prayer for 'sufficiency' and the psalm 'he has scattered, he has given to the poor', rebukes those who lavish money on mimes and prostitutes but fear poverty when the poor ask, and defines sufficiency as what one needs to live in health.
  • Homily 19.4 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom urges his hearers to seek only what they need, and then to rise to the generosity of the widow of the gospel and above all of the widow of Zarephath, who gave her last food to Elijah and surpassed even Abraham in hospitality; righteousness and love of money cannot dwell together.
  • Homily 20.2 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains Paul's thanksgiving for God's 'indescribable gift', warns against drunkenness and gluttony, and calls the merciful man a priest and the poor believer an altar, more awesome than the church's altar because it is itself the body of Christ.
  • Homily 23.5 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains that Paul refused support at Corinth to deprive the false apostles of their one boast (2 Cor 11:12), then reminds the rich of the funeral and judgment that end all pomp, and comforts the poor: wrongs borne patiently are counted against our debt of sin, as the Babylonian captivity and David's patience with Shimei show.
  • Homily 23.6 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom warns that the robber harms himself more than his victim, argues that love of money is less natural and less excusable than sexual desire (Paul permits marriage and even a second marriage, but never greed), and points to the foolish virgins, shut out of the bridal chamber for avarice despite their virginity.
  • Homily 24.4 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom denounces envy as the devil's offspring, shown in Cain and in Saul's jealousy of David, and argues that human glory is a slavery to many masters, so that one should flee from envy of the praised to the glory of the age to come.
  • Homily 27.3 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom urges his hearers to imitate Paul's love, condemns those who fail to love even those who love them, and denounces envy as a madness worse than a serpent in the bowels, which has invaded even the church and set its members against one another.
  • Homily 27.4 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom compares the church to a plant that envious members pull up instead of watering and to a dead body whose members do not act, and urges his hearers to rejoice in others' praise and so become one body held together by its Head.
  • Homily 28.2 on 2 CorinthiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains Paul's fear of being 'humbled' by having to punish unrepentant sinners in Corinth and his mourning over their uncleanness and sexual immorality (2 Cor 12:20–21), then shows how vice cannot bear the presence of virtue: Ahab before Elijah, and above all Herod and Herodias before John the Baptist, whose severed head still cries out in every church.
  • Homily 1.1 on 2 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Homily 1 (the argument) explains why Paul wrote again: deceivers claimed the day of the Lord had come and forged letters, so Paul reveals the sign of the Antichrist; Chrysostom then warns against pride, the beginning of sin. Homily 2 begins on 2 Thess 1:1–6: God’s favour, illustrated by Joseph, and the Thessalonians’ growing faith and undivided love under persecution, evidence of God’s just judgment.
  • Homily 1.4 on 2 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Bearing hard words trains us to bear hard deeds; the soul takes the shape of its conversation, so children and households should be taught about judgment, and believers who prepare carefully for human courts should prepare for Christ’s judgment seat.
  • Homily 3.2 on 2 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Believers are glorified when God is glorified in them; Paul warns against forged letters and teaches that the day of the Lord will not come before the apostasy and the man of sin, the Antichrist; Chrysostom explains the need for repetition by the parable of the seed and calls wealth a thorn, rebuking the rich who come to church for display.
  • Homily 3.4 on 2 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Those who come to church for display gain nothing; the Scriptures read are letters from God, not from the preacher, and are clear in Greek to all, so excuses for not knowing them are pretexts.
  • Homily 5.1 on 2 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · God, who is faithful, will guard the Thessalonians if they also do their part; Paul prays that the Lord direct their hearts to God’s love and Christ’s steadfastness, and in Christ’s name commands them to keep away from idle, disorderly brothers, following his own example of working with his hands.
  • Homily 5.2 on 2 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Paul now commands sternly that the idle work and eat their own bread, yet tells the church not to let them starve but to admonish them as brothers; Chrysostom rebukes those who insult beggars, laments that church discipline has lapsed through cold love, and teaches that each Christian should teach his household by his life.
  • Homily 5.5 on 2 ThessaloniansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Slaves’ virtue can reform households; every Christian should share the preacher’s ministry by teaching his own household, and husbands, as heads, should repay their wives’ many services by leading them in spiritual things.
  • Homily 3.2 on 2 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom shows that one can share in the crowns of saints living and departed, refutes Marcionite use of “the Lord … from the Lord,” describes the fearful judgment as an act of God's love meant to rouse us, and warns that we who blame greedy officials are equally guilty, since God judges the will and not the size of the deed.
  • Homily 5.2 on 2 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains that our denial cannot harm the unchanging God, warns against fighting about words and novel doctrine such as the claim of Hymenaeus and Philetus that the resurrection is past, interprets God's “seal” as departure from unrighteousness, and shows that injustice torments the conscience of those who commit it.
  • Homily 5.4 on 2 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Closing Homily 5, Chrysostom describes how the unjust are tormented by fear, the contempt of others and, above all, by the approach of death and judgment, and encourages his hearers that repeated preaching bears fruit in the end, like the blows that finally fell a tree.
  • Homily 6.1 on 2 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · On 2 Tim 2:20–23, Chrysostom explains that the “great house” is the world, where God makes use even of the wicked, while in the church all should be gold; that being gold or clay depends on choice, not nature; and that “youthful desires” include every disordered passion.
  • Homily 6.2 on 2 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · On 2 Tim 2:23–26, Chrysostom forbids contentious questionings, urges teachers to correct opponents with gentleness and endless patience, teaches that a sinful life holds one in the devil's snare even with right faith, and insists that almsgiving, not fasting or virginity, makes us like God, while alms from robbery are an insult to him.
  • Homily 6.4 on 2 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Concluding Homily 6, Chrysostom teaches that hands are cleansed by righteousness, not water, and that offerings and prayers must be clean of greed; he urges the habit of almsgiving, by which God sells eternal life for small things, and denies that stolen goods ever become the robber's own.
  • Homily 7.1 on 2 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · On 2 Tim 3:1–7, Chrysostom says that the evil of the last times lies in people, not the times, traces the vices Paul lists back to disregard of one's neighbour and self-love, shows from Cain, Esau and others that despising one's brother leads to despising God, and describes the lover of money as incurably ungrateful.
  • Homily 7.2 on 2 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom portrays the lover of money as one who would wish the whole world destroyed to have its gold, a sufferer from a boulimia of the soul, and shames his hearers, who do not love God as much as such men love gold nor risk enmity for the oppressed.
  • Homily 7.3 on 2 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom shames Christians who love God less than misers love gold, praises love as the root of all goods that dissolves every sin, and holds up the friendship of Jonathan and David, who kept faith with Jonathan's descendants after his death.
  • Homily 7.4 on 2 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Concluding Homily 7, Chrysostom urges widows to stay faithful to their dead husbands—not forbidding second marriage, which Paul permits, but praising true widowhood of prayer and almsgiving—and shows from Job that a house rooted in almsgiving is protected by God.
  • Homily 8.1 on 2 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · On 2 Tim 3:1–7, Chrysostom shows that falsehood has always stood beside the truth, from the serpent to the antichrist, explains the vices Paul lists, and argues that a “form of godliness” without power is right faith without works, a dead image.
  • Homily 8.4 on 2 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom warns against prying into God's unsearchable ways, sets out “rules” (virtue alone is good, poverty and sickness indifferent, the righteous afflicted to be crowned, not all sinners punished here) by which the Scripture-taught Christian is never scandalized, and explains that soothsayers' predictions come true only because those who believe them have put themselves in the devil's power.
  • Homily 8.5 on 2 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Concluding Homily 8, Chrysostom mocks soothsayers and magicians, who could not even foresee the plundering of their own temples, warns Christians that consulting them is slavery and idolatry, and contrasts their petty predictions with the sure promises of resurrection and eternal life revealed by Christ.
  • Homily 10.4 on 2 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom teaches that God's grace is gained, as a trusted servant gains his master's favour, by caring for God's affairs rather than one's own, and urges his hearers to be “greedy” and “violent” for the kingdom of heaven, which, unlike earthly goods, grows the more it is seized.
  • Homily 10.5 on 2 TimothyJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Concluding the homilies on 2 Timothy, Chrysostom urges his hearers to seize the kingdom of heaven by violence, with the wakefulness of soldiers and the speed of robbers who flee with their prize, keeping far from the devil until they are safe.
  • Homily 1.3 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom contrasts friendships of ordinary life and of nature with spiritual love, which nothing can dissolve, and urges his hearers to invite the poor and maimed to their tables.
  • Homily 1.4 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom pictures a table of the poor and a table of the powerful and argues that the poor man's table, where Christ reclines, gives more freedom, honour, and pleasure.
  • Homily 1.5 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom argues that the poor man's table spares the host anxiety, earns God's repayment, and ends in hymns and thanksgiving, while the rich banquet with its music and harlots ends in drunkenness and shame.
  • Homily 1.6 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom ends Homily 1 by contrasting the end of the two tables, here and at Christ's judgment, and urges his hearers to spend everything on almsgiving rather than divide between luxury and charity.
  • Homily 7.2 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom expounds Col 2:20–3:4: human ordinances only seem wise and dishonour the body God honoured; believers, dead and risen with Christ, should seek the things above, and their old man was buried in baptism as the Egyptians in the Red Sea.
  • Homily 7.3 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom compares baptism to fire that melts wax and refines gold, then shows that office, luxury, and the honour that wealth brings are dust, and that to be honoured for one's money is a disgrace.
  • Homily 7.4 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom argues that wealth disfigures the soul like dropsy and fills it with monstrous desires, recalls a Persian king's golden plane tree, and rebukes Christian women who make even chamber pots of silver while Christ starves.
  • Homily 7.5 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom ends Homily 7 by threatening to bar from the church those who use silver vessels and gold ornaments, refusing to tolerate luxury for fear people will leave for other sects, and urging his hearers to give to the many poor around the church.
  • Homily 8.1 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Opening Homily 8, Chrysostom defends his previous rebuke, expounds Col 3:5–10, explains that Paul's call to put to death what is “on the earth” concerns sins committed after baptism, not the body God made, and that the “old man” is the evil will.
  • Homily 8.2 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom expounds Col 3:9–15: the new man is renewed in Christ's image without distinctions of race or rank; believers are to forgive as Christ forgave, bind all virtues with love, and let God's peace umpire their thoughts; and he explains why Paul names sexual immorality first.
  • Homily 8.4 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains that the vices of Col 3:5 all point to sexual immorality, which must be put to death like dead flesh, and comments again on Col 3:6–15: the sons of disobedience, putting away anger and abuse, the one royal form of Christ, and bearing with one another.
  • Homily 10.1 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Opening Homily 10, Chrysostom expounds the household rules of Col 3:18–4:1: wives are to be subject and husbands to love without bitterness, so that each makes the other's part easy; children are to obey, fathers not to provoke, and slaves to serve their masters.
  • Homily 10.2 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom expounds Col 3:22–4:2: slaves are to serve sincerely, fearing God who sees, and will be rewarded by him; masters must give what is just and equal; and all are to persevere in prayer with thanksgiving for every kind of benefit, even Gehenna and affliction.
  • Homily 10.4 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom argues that the apostles' lack of learning and Paul's chains made the gospel spread the more, contrasts Socrates' fleeing disciples, and urges women to desire Paul's chains rather than gold necklaces.
  • Homily 10.5 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom ends Homily 10 by urging women to put on Christ instead of gold, to adorn themselves with almsgiving and chastity rather than finery, and to set their daughters an example of modesty.
  • Homily 11.1 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Opening Homily 11, Chrysostom expounds Col 4:5–10: Christians must give outsiders no needless offence, fighting only for the gospel, speaking graciously and fittingly; and he comments on Tychicus and Onesimus as Paul's trusted messengers.
  • Homily 11.2 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom praises Aristarchus, Mark, and Justus (Col 4:10–11), then returns to Col 4:5–6: Christians should avoid needless hostility with pagans, speak with grace seasoned with salt, and suit their words to each hearer.
  • Homily 11.3 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom contrasts Paul's courtesy at Athens with his rebuke of Elymas, comments on Onesimus and the Jewish fellow workers (Col 4:9–11), and urges his hearers to share in others' sufferings and successes instead of envying them.
  • Homily 11.4 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom ends Homily 11 by arguing that one who rejoices in a brother's success shares in it and earns double crowns, while the envious man fights against God and the church, and punishes only himself.
  • Homily 12.2 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom explains Paul's praise of Epaphras and his charge to Archippus (Col 4:12–17), then turns “Remember my bonds” into an exhortation against luxury, vanity, and anger, and praises Paul's tears as more beautiful than any face and as watering the church.
  • Homily 12.4 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom urges tears only for sin, then attacks the hiring of harlots, dancers, and effeminate performers for weddings, and explains marriage as a mystery and type of Christ and the church, in which husband and wife become one flesh, joined above all in their child.
  • Homily 12.7 on ColossiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom ends the homilies on Colossians by describing a Christian wedding: choose a godly husband of equal or lower means, pray and entrust the choice to God, invite decent guests and the poor instead of performers, and adorn the bride with modesty instead of gold.
  • Homily 20.6 on EphesiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom tells wives not to reproach their husbands with poverty and husbands never to strike their wives, and urges a simple wedding without lewd songs and gentle instruction of the young bride.
  • Homily 20.7 on EphesiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom gives a model speech for a husband to his young bride, urges common prayer, marriage to a poorer rather than a richer wife, and the sharing of all property; the section ends with the opening text of the next homily (Eph 6:1–3).
  • Argument 0 to the PhilemonJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · In the argument to the homilies on Philemon, Chrysostom tells the story of Onesimus, defends the inclusion of so short a letter in Scripture, and draws lessons from it: care for every soul, not despairing of slaves, and not drawing slaves away from their masters.
  • Homily 1.1 on PhilemonJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Opening Homily 1 on Philemon, Chrysostom shows how Paul's greeting (Phlm 1–3) prepares Philemon to forgive: Paul writes as Christ's prisoner, enlists Timothy, Apphia, Archippus, and the household church, and reminds Philemon of the grace by which he himself was forgiven.
  • Homily 1.2 on PhilemonJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom ends Homily 1 by showing that sins against God are far greater than sins against men, since we fear and honour men more than God, and urges forgiveness, almsgiving, humility, and confession as easy ways to have our own sins forgiven.
  • Homily 2.1 on PhilemonJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · This section contains Homily 2 (Phlm 4–16: Paul's tactful praise of Philemon, his plea for Onesimus as his child and heart, God's use of the flight, and a sermon on true humility) and the exposition of Homily 3 (Phlm 17–25: Paul's offer to repay, his confidence in Philemon, and the closing greetings).
  • Argument 2 to the PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom outlines the rest of the letter and the Philippians' virtues, then urges his hearers to imitate their generosity by continual almsgiving, which frees the soul from the love of money and opens heaven.
  • Homily 1.2 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · The Philippians shared Paul's labours by serving him, and Chrysostom urges that those who cannot live the ascetic life can share its rewards by serving the saints who do.
  • Homily 1.3 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · God completes the good work he began, yet only in those who draw his grace by their will; Paul's bonds confirmed the gospel; and Chrysostom urges his hearers to share Paul's reward by supporting those who suffer for Christ and giving gladly.
  • Homily 1.5 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Alms should go to those in real need rather than to well-off church leaders, and should be given with simplicity, as the widow fed Elijah, without prying into whether the recipient deserves it.
  • Homily 2.3 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Those who preached Christ to harm Paul changed nothing in the gospel and only earned punishment, as the devil does with the heretics' fasting and virginity; Christ's commands are light, and envy comes from attachment to present things.
  • Homily 2.4 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · The rich are to be pitied rather than envied, since wealth robs them of the sleep God gave as a rest and ends, as with the rich man in the parable, in torment.
  • Homily 2.5 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · The rich man was condemned not for wealth but for lack of mercy; true wealth and poverty lie in the will, so the poor should not fear poverty, which is often safer than riches.
  • Homily 4.4 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom rebukes his hearers' softness, explains that God planted shame and natural pity in us as helps to virtue, and shows that all, even the apostles, live by God's mercy.
  • Homily 4.5 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · All, apostles included, depend on God's mercy, which created and sustains the world; therefore we must show mercy and forgive debts and wrongs, as the parable of the unforgiving servant warns.
  • Homily 5.1 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Paul appeals to the Philippians by spiritual rather than fleshly claims to complete his joy by being of one mind, and teaches that humility, counting others better than oneself, is the cure for vainglory and envy.
  • Homily 5.2 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Mutual humility forms a double wall that no quarrel can breach; pride is childish, and Joseph, Daniel, and the apostles show how the truly gifted ascribe everything to God.
  • Homily 5.3 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom distinguishes, with scriptural examples, true courage and boldness from rashness and insolence, and true humility from flattery and servility, and urges that knowing this is useless without doing it.
  • Homily 6.4 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom closes his argument against the heretics, warns that God abandons to the devil those who bring his name into blasphemy, as with the vineyard of Isa 5 and with Judas, and condemns the love of money that drove Judas to betray Christ.
  • Homily 6.6 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · God and mammon give opposite commands, yet mammon's cruel orders are obeyed; Chrysostom explains that he speaks of Gehenna to drive his hearers toward the kingdom, and argues from God's justice that judgment and resurrection must come.
  • Homily 7.5 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Faith must be matched by life; Christ's obedience shows that humility leads to exaltation, as with Satan and Paul, Absalom and David; glory comes by fleeing it, and arrogance, worse than folly, has no ground in strength or beauty.
  • Homily 7.6 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Wealth, houses, skill, speed, and keen senses are shared or surpassed by animals and the wicked; only godliness and virtue set human beings above the beasts and make them like angels.
  • Homily 8.1 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Paul praises the Philippians' obedience and urges them to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, mindful that God is always present; God works both the willing and the doing, not to remove their effort but to relieve their anxiety.
  • Homily 8.2 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · God's working does not abolish free will, since doing good breeds the will to do more; Paul warns against murmuring and doubting, and Chrysostom sets before his hearers Job, who endured loss, disease, and reproach without murmuring.
  • Homily 9.4 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · People pay civil taxes readily but grudge support for the clergy, though the Jews gave far more; Chrysostom rebukes those who slander clergy for having bare necessities and insists that the command to be content with food and clothing applies to all Christians.
  • Homily 9.5 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Scripture's warnings against luxury and riches apply to all, not only to clergy; slandering priests harms the slanderer whether the charge is true or false; and Chrysostom begins to show from Peter and Paul that apostles did own sandals, cloaks, and lodgings.
  • Homily 9.6 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Christ's command to the apostles to take nothing was temporary, as Luke 22:35–36 shows; God left his teachers in need so that the faithful might be sanctified by supporting them, and Christians should look at their own sins and others' virtues.
  • Homily 10.3 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Paul gave up all his advantages to gain Christ, while we will not give up even money; Chrysostom shows that costly clothes, gold ornaments, and lavish houses bring no real gain but only loss.
  • Homily 10.4 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Costly things are pure loss, and wealth can neither prevent death nor old age; it is the will, not riches or poverty, that wins heaven, though virtue comes more easily in poverty.
  • Homily 10.5 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · We should use every gift of God, our bodily members, money, crafts, houses, land, and sea, for his service and for the poor, and not prize jewels and finery, whose value lies only in opinion.
  • Homily 12.1 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Remembering past achievements breeds sloth and pride; Paul, though he had done so much, forgot what lay behind and strained forward like a runner toward the prize, and so must we.
  • Homily 12.3 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · The apostles taught by example; if one's teacher lives badly, Christ himself is the teacher, and Scripture offers models of virtue in every state, wealth or poverty, marriage or virginity, kingship or captivity, since virtue depends on the will, not circumstances.
  • Homily 12.4 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Virtue, like the apostles, can thrive in every circumstance, so no one should excuse himself by retreating from responsibility; the soul grounded in hope of the resurrection stands like a rock, unmoved by gain or loss.
  • Homily 13.1 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Christians who live in ease and luxury are enemies of the cross; Chrysostom praises the power of the cross, by which baptism and ordination are accomplished, and laments those whose god is their belly, fearing that the charge fits his own hearers.
  • Homily 14.2 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · God's peace surpasses understanding and guards believers in Christ; Paul bids them think on whatever is true, pure, and lovely, following his example, and Chrysostom shows that vices such as sexual immorality, adultery, and greed act as enemies, while virtue protects like a loving mother.
  • Homily 14.3 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Virtue keeps us safe while vice endangers; Paul's call to think on what is praiseworthy aims at virtue, not reputation; and Chrysostom urges peace with all, since fights arise from worldly desires and those who harm others harm themselves.
  • Homily 15.1 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Paul rejoices in the Philippians' renewed gift for their sake, not his own, since giving benefits the giver; Chrysostom explains why Paul accepted gifts from Philippi but not Corinth, and that contentment in want and in plenty is a learned virtue.
  • Homily 15.2 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Paul was the same in want and in plenty and owed his strength to Christ, yet he praises the Philippians for sharing his affliction and for being the first church to support him; giving is a partnership in which the kingdom is bought not with money but with the will, and God accepts such gifts as a fragrant sacrifice.
  • Homily 15.5 on PhilippiansJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Affliction binds believers together and is praised throughout Scripture; even emperors live in fear and bloodshed, as recent imperial history shows; so Christians should grieve over sin, as Paul did over others, and walk the narrow road of affliction to eternal life.
  • Homily 1.6 on TitusJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom warns against the passion for glory, urging his hearers to look to God's verdict rather than human praise and to welcome dishonour as a protection.
  • Homily 1.7 on TitusJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom urges his hearers to reject human glory as empty, like a stage mask, and to seek only the praise of God.
  • Homily 3.3 on TitusJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Concluding Homily 3, Chrysostom teaches that foods are not unclean by nature, that the Mosaic food laws curbed luxury and the purity laws were types of the soul's cleanness, and that true uncleanness is sin, especially greed and injustice, which is what makes sexual immorality and adultery unclean.
  • Homily 4.1 on TitusJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · On Titus 2:2–8, Chrysostom explains the failings of old age and the virtues Paul requires of older men and women, the limits on women's teaching, the love of wives for their husbands as the source of household peace and of the gospel's good name, and the special temptation of young men.
  • Homily 4.3 on TitusJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · On Titus 2:8–10, Chrysostom condemns those who separate wives from husbands or slaves from masters on the pretext of continence, and argues that well-behaved Christian slaves, a class neglected and despised by their masters, show the power of the gospel to unbelievers.
  • Homily 4.4 on TitusJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom urges household slaves to serve their masters as serving God, and shows from Joseph, who won the trust of his Egyptian master and of his jailer though he was of another belief, that a virtuous slave is honoured even by harsh and unbelieving masters.
  • Homily 4.5 on TitusJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom ends Homily 4 with Joseph's kindness to his fellow prisoners and an appeal to slaves and free to win even the wicked by virtue; Homily 5 (Titus 2:11–3:7) explains the grace that trains us to deny worldly desires, argues that greed is worse than sexual sin, affirms that Christ is “our great God,” and describes pagan corruption before Christ, from which God saved us by the washing of regeneration.
  • Homily 6.1 on TitusJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · On Titus 3:8–15, Chrysostom explains that Paul turns the doctrine of God's love into an exhortation to good works, warns against futile quarrels with incorrigible heretics, comments on the closing instructions, and argues that almsgiving benefits the giver more than the receiver and quenches sin more than virginity or fasting.
  • Homily 6.3 on TitusJohn Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom praises almsgiving as the mother of love, shown in the first church at Jerusalem, argues that those without inherited wealth are freer and better placed for virtue than the rich, and warns that wealth and greed are burdens that cannot pass through the narrow road.
  • Section 2John Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom praises the widow's power of intercession with God and distinguishes poor widows supported by the church, who are helped without conditions, from the enrolled order of widows to which Paul's age limit applies.
  • Section 5John Chrysostom · ca. 392-397 · Chrysostom insists that the church does not forbid second marriage, which Paul permits, but advises against it for the peace of the household, describing stepmothers' jealousy, and teaches that widowhood without good works is worthless.
  • Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393 · Augustine begins by insisting that obscure matters in Genesis be treated by inquiry, not assertion, within the bounds of the catholic faith, which he then summarizes: creation from nothing by the Trinity, evil as sin or its punishment, and redemption through Christ.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine argues that the Sermon on the Mount contains the perfect pattern of the Christian life, explains the mountain as the greater precepts of righteousness, and reads the poor in spirit as the humble who fear God.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains the beatitudes of the meek, the mourners, the hungry, the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers, describing inner peace as reason ruling the passions under God’s truth.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine counts eight beatitudes and reads the first seven as ascending steps of the soul, from humility to wisdom, with the eighth returning to the first.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine matches the seven gifts of the Spirit in Isaiah, counted upward from fear to wisdom, with the beatitudes and their rewards, and finds the eighth beatitude signified by the eighth day and Pentecost.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains that good works are to be shown not for human praise but so that God may be glorified, and introduces Christ’s saying that he came to fulfil the Law.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains the greater righteousness that forbids anger without cause, interprets Racha as an interjection, and sets out the three grades of sin and of liability: judgment, council, and the gehenna of fire.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine interprets leaving the gift at the altar spiritually: the altar is faith in the inner temple, and reconciliation is made first in the heart before God.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains adultery of the heart as full consent to lust, sets out the three steps of sin (suggestion, delight, consent) after the pattern of the fall, and widens adultery and sexual immorality figuratively to every evil desire.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine reads the right eye and right hand that cause stumbling as a beloved counsellor and helper in divine things who would lead one into heresy, to be cut off.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains the prohibition of oaths: swearing is not good but sometimes necessary because of others’ weakness, as Paul’s oaths show; the oaths by heaven, earth, Jerusalem, and one’s head are all owed to God.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains that the law of retaliation set a measure on revenge, which Christ perfects by commanding readiness to suffer more, and interprets the cheek, the tunic and garment, and the forced mile as dispositions of the heart, citing the conduct of Paul and of Christ himself.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine distinguishes injuries that cannot be restored from those that can, allows punishment that corrects out of love (citing Elijah, Peter, Paul, and even the Acts of Thomas against the heretics), and explains giving and lending.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains love of enemies as the summit of mercy, treats “hate your enemy” as an allowance for the weak, and argues that the imprecations of the prophets, of Christ, and of Paul are predictions, not wishes.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains the “sin unto death” of 1 John 5:16 as a Christian’s envious attack on the brotherhood after receiving grace, connects it with the sin against the Holy Spirit and with Judas’s despair, and reads the martyrs’ cry for vengeance as a prayer for the overthrow of sin’s kingdom.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains that believers become sons of God by adoption and imitate the Father, who gives his own sun and rain to good and evil alike, and he closes Book 1 with the beatitude of the merciful.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Opening Book 2, Augustine treats the cleansing of the heart: good deeds may be seen by men but must not be done for human praise, as Paul’s pleasing men for God’s sake shows.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains the warning against hypocritical almsgiving, rejects readings of the “left hand” as unbelievers, enemies, or a wife, and interprets it as the desire for human praise mingling with the intention to obey God.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains treasure in heaven and the single eye as the pure intention behind our acts: what counts is the mind with which a deed is done, since its outcome is uncertain.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains that no one can serve God and mammon, identifies mammon’s master with the devil, and warns against despising God through presumption on his mercy.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains the warning against anxiety for food and clothing, takes “soul” as this present life, and reads the birds and lilies as arguments from lesser to greater, not allegories.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine distinguishes the good to be sought, the kingdom of God, from the necessities to be used for its sake, and illustrates this with Paul’s refusal to preach the Gospel for a living.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains that providing for necessities is not forbidden, as the examples of Christ’s purse and Paul’s collections and manual work show, provided one does not serve God for the sake of these things.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine interprets “Do not judge” as forbidding rash judgment of doubtful motives or despair of anyone’s amendment, while manifest sins may be judged, and explains that rash judgment harms chiefly the one who judges.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine reads the speck and the beam as anger and hatred, warns against rebuking others out of hatred or pretence, and explains Paul’s becoming all things to all as love, not pretence.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains “Do not give what is holy to dogs” as permission to conceal truths from those who would assail (dogs) or despise (swine) them, without lying, and discusses when and how to answer questioners, after Christ’s example.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains the Golden Rule, noting that “good things” is a Latin addition absent from the Greek, relates it to love of neighbour, and concludes the treatment of the single, pure heart.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains the narrow gate: Christ’s yoke is light, but few are willing to take it up.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine warns against false prophets and heretics, refutes the reading of the good and bad trees as two natures, identifies the fruits by which a tree is known with Paul’s works of the flesh and fruit of the Spirit, and notes that fasting, prayer, and alms can be counterfeited.
  • The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine warns against being deceived by the mere name of Christ or by miracles, reconciles “Lord, Lord” with 1 Cor 12:3, and closes with the parable of the two builders and the sevenfold pattern of the sermon.
  • Letter 1.79Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Like the scribes who mistook studying the law for keeping it, clergy who think serving at the altar enough are warned that the Gospel's righteousness judges even intentions.
  • Letter 1.86Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · True nobility is virtue, not birth; a second letter urges Alexandrian nuns to chastity by the examples of Susanna, Jephthah's daughter, Judith and Thecla, and to keep their lamps lit for the Bridegroom.
  • Letter 1.231Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Gentleness brings honor and boldness danger; choose the better part.
  • Letter 1.261Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Wickedness is profitless; Eubulus ("Well-counseled") should live up to his name and flee it.
  • Letter 1.295Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Those who keep nature's limits honor it; those who break the law incur its fear.
  • Letter 1.350Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Natural knowledge of good leaves no excuse for luxury; two further letters, in a polemic against certain Cappadocians, argue that the great Cappadocian fathers prove the vices of the others are chosen, not natural.
  • Letter 1.458Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · The Gospel does not contradict the law but goes to the root, forbidding the desire that leads to the deed.
  • Letter 3.81Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Isidore explains to Zosimus that there are good "passions" such as mercy and pity, citing Demosthenes, Josephus and Philo, and urges him to forsake the shameful ones.
  • Letter 3.116Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Risks are honourable only when run for a good cause; Maron's are run for vice.
  • Letter 3.129Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Remembrance of God heals grief (Ps 77:3); (another letter) Christ is beautiful in Godhead and virtue yet without form in his passion; (another letter) "Do not be very righteous" (Eccl 7:16) teaches the mean of virtue and mercy beyond strict justice.
  • Letter 3.151Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · The free soul is marked by the virtues, the servile soul by passions.
  • Letter 3.169Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Without virtue the greatest advantages are slavish; virtue alone is royal and immortal.
  • Letter 3.244Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Being prevented from doing wrong is itself a benefit deserving gratitude.
  • Letter 3.246Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · True peace is joined with justice; Christ rejected only the peace that colludes with evil.
  • Letter 3.251Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Virtue alone truly dignifies, yet most prefer outward goods through short-sightedness or unbelief.
  • Letter 3.264Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · True greatness of mind combines loftiness and humility, as in Abraham, and must not be confused with arrogance or servility.
  • Letter 3.268Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Piety is to the soul's beauty what the eyes are to the body's.
  • Letter 3.284Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Rom 12:18 limits peace: one must not keep peace at the cost of piety or justice, as Paul allowed even a believer's marriage to dissolve (1 Cor 7:15).
  • Letter 3.319Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Eusebius punishes before proof; (3.320) "Do not be very righteous" (Eccl 7:16) teaches mercy beyond justice and the mean of virtue; (3.321) each virtue is a mean; (3.322) seek virtue, not wealth; (3.323) Isidore turns to prayer for Zosimus.
  • Letter 3.328Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Gratitude to benefactors must not extend to helping them do wrong.
  • Letter 3.381Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Isidore defines greatness of mind, humility, vainglory, arrogance and magnanimity.
  • Letter 3.384Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Isidore urges an official to add the other virtues to his gentleness and courage.
  • Letter 3.390Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Isidore would rather suffer for good than be honoured for wrong; (another letter) the stars were given to the nations to lead them to the Creator, not to be worshipped (Deut 4:19); (another letter) a good name is better than wealth.
  • Letter 4.36Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Peace with evildoers is no virtue; Paul's "if possible" admits that peace with all is sometimes impossible.
  • Letter 4.37Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Christians must do their part to keep peace even with the hostile, so long as piety is not harmed.
  • Letter 4.38Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Acting from reason rather than anger, as Proverbs bids, leads to good ends.
  • Letter 4.39Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Since words and deeds cannot be recalled, one should deliberate first, as Proverbs advises, to avoid regret.
  • Letter 4.53Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Two letters on the Golden Rule: it states the natural law, which the written law and the prophets tried to restore before Christ brought the heavenly way of life; each person carries this rule within.
  • Letter 4.68Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Scripture distinguishes commands, which must be kept, from permissions granted by way of concession, as with the apostles' tolerance of circumcision and Paul's leave to dine with unbelievers.
  • Letter 4.84Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · An unjust verdict is worse than an injustice, because it removes the victim's last hope of redress.
  • Letter 4.92Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Isidore warns Peter against quarrelling over trifles while neglecting what matters most.
  • Letter 4.114Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Five letters: people differ in their virtues and vices as their faces differ; theft is lesser than adultery as marriage is lesser than virginity, within the same kind; Lazarus and the rich man were repaid here for their few faults and good deeds; the law excluded lepers to restrain untimely intercourse; almsgiving is judged by intention and means.
  • Letter 4.123Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · The lawyer measured neighbourliness by rank or virtue; Christ, through the Samaritan, defines the neighbour by shared nature and need, and calls us to go to his help.
  • Letter 4.129 (to Strategius)Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Ten explanations of 1 Cor 6:18; the tenth: married partners are one body, so adultery alone is a sin against the spouse, which is why Christ allowed a wife to be put away for fornication only.
  • Letter 4.173Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · The righteous man praises and rebukes with sound judgment, unlike flatterers and slanderers, who sink to the level of beasts.
  • Letter 4.204Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Since Adam's fall weighed down the body and Christ lightened it through baptism and the Spirit, the gospel sets higher and obligatory standards than the law, with heaven as reward instead of long life in the land.
  • Letter 4.210Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Virtue lies in the mean between vices, the "royal road" from which Scripture forbids turning aside.
  • Letter 4.213Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Israel's breaking of the commandments toward neighbours, which all know to be wrong, shows that their breaking of the commandments toward God was also wilful.
  • Letter 4.214Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Sirach warns against seeking to be a judge because justice is hard to find and easily betrayed through passion or bribery.
  • Letter 4.220Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Paul's "if possible" admits that peace cannot be kept with the wicked where virtue is at stake; the Christian must only give no just cause for enmity.
  • Letter 5.7Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Equity should be more humane than strict justice; a second letter says that one caught in sin must recognize it quickly, since not knowing it is incurable.
  • Letter 5.28Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Isidore consoles Didymus on his brother's death, attacks the buyers of church office, warns of the devil's hidden snares, argues from Scripture that the Son is not a creature, sums up ethics in the Golden Rule, and condemns those who worship creation; a second letter rebukes three clerics for luxury and lechery.
  • Letter 5.40Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Isidore advises the prefect Taurus to share his office with honest friends; a second letter says one who does not believe in the kingdom cannot love it; a third counsels testing an accusation before demanding punishment.
  • Letter 5.75Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Isidore rebukes an ungrateful deacon, warning that those who forget favours will find no help when they need it again.
  • Letter 5.143Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Isidore warns against friendships built on common hatred, which can strengthen a later enemy.
  • Letter 5.188Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Each virtue is a mean flanked by two vices, as piety lies between impiety and superstition and courage between rashness and cowardice.
  • Letter 5.209Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Isidore refuses to condemn a man unheard; a second letter rebukes the presbyter Zosimus for embezzling alms meant for the poor, warning that he faces a worse fate than those who merely refuse to give.
  • Letter 5.232Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Not retaliating is divine, moderate retaliation human, but excessive retaliation makes one as guilty as the original aggressor.
  • Letter 5.251Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · One should be humble with the gentle and firm with the arrogant, since different souls need different remedies.
  • Letter 5.285Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · It is safer to avoid conflict than to seek allies, who may later draw one into unjust quarrels.
  • Letter 5.333Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Benefactors should be thanked for their goodwill even when unable to help, since deeds are judged by intention.
  • Letter 5.337Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · The lover of glory who earns it by virtue is far better than the vainglorious who claim unearned praise, though the perfect man despises glory altogether.
  • Letter 5.338Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Magnanimity does good for its own sake; love of honour does the same deeds only for praise.
  • Letter 5.354Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Intention counts as the deed when power is lacking; a second letter says that those whose virtue goes unsung here will receive their due glory hereafter.
  • Letter 5.377Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · True justice and temperance are shown when one has the power to do otherwise; a second letter contrasts Bishop Hermogenes, whose virtue matched his office, with Eusebius, who has the office without the virtue.
  • Letter 5.385Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Courage is reasoned; strength without reason is rashness.
  • Letter 5.386Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Aggressors in war are wicked; moderate self-defence is lawful though not heroic virtue; immoderate retaliation makes the defender an aggressor.
  • Letter 5.394Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · The wisest and bravest man reads hidden things well and steadies others in danger by word and example.
  • Letter 5.411Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Isidore distinguishes the lover of glory, who seeks praise for real deeds, from the vainglorious, who claims glory while empty of good works.
  • Letter 5.484Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · It is safer to avoid conflict than to depend on allies who may later draw one into injustice.
  • Letter 5.502Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Different people are swayed by flattery or fear, so correction must be suited to each.
  • Letter 5.518Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Virtues shine when free of their neighbouring vices: courage without rashness, gravity without gloom, temperance with cheerfulness.
  • Letter 5.522Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · The lover of glory is the lowest of men, its despiser the loftiest; a second letter says those who praise virtue without practising it are better than those who deny it is virtue.
  • Letter 5.542Isidore of Pelusium · ca. 393-ca. 435 · Gratitude must not be repaid by helping a benefactor in injustice, nor should benefactors demand such repayment.
  • Against Jovinianus 1.41Jerome · 393 · Jerome turns to pagan history and legend for examples of honored virginity and of virgins who died to preserve their chastity.
  • Against Jovinianus 1.49Jerome · 393 · Jerome quotes Seneca's lost On Marriage on excessive love and on chastity as woman's chief virtue, and ends with pagan honor for the once-married.
  • Against Jovinianus 2.6Jerome · 393 · Jerome answers the argument from the uses of animals: many creatures serve medicine or the needs of laborers, but the Christian seeking perfection may abstain from meat and wine.
  • Against Jovinianus 2.7Jerome · 393 · Jerome argues that diets vary by nation and custom, not by a law of nature, and that Christians, reborn to God, should subdue the flesh.
  • Against Jovinianus 2.8Jerome · 393 · Jerome describes how the five senses serve as gates for vices to enter the soul.
  • Against Jovinianus 2.9Jerome · 393 · Jerome cites philosophers who withdrew from luxury to pursue wisdom, and concludes that no one can live in pleasures without being held by them.
  • Against Jovinianus 2.10Jerome · 393 · Jerome argues that reason must govern the senses and especially eating, and that simple food is healthier than rich food.
  • Against Jovinianus 2.11Jerome · 393 · Jerome cites physicians and philosophers (Hippocrates, Galen, Diogenes, Epicurus) for the health and freedom of a simple diet.
  • Against Jovinianus 2.14Jerome · 393 · Jerome cites Jewish, Persian, Indian, Greek, and Cynic examples of abstinence, especially Antisthenes and Diogenes.
  • Against Jovinianus 2.21Jerome · 393 · Jerome accuses Jovinian of turning Stoic in teaching equal merits, and turns the argument against Jovinian's own change from ascetic to luxurious life.
  • Poem 4, lines 1–19 (IIII. ORATIO)Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · A prayer to God for a peaceful, honest, chaste and contented life, with a happy household, ending in the hope of eternal life.
  • Poem 6, lines 224–254Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · John goes into the wilderness, wearing camel's hair and living on honey and wild plants; his life recalls that of the first humans before pleasure and greed brought every evil.
  • Poem 9, lines 32–71Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · The paraphrase of Psalm 137 concludes, and Paulinus interprets Babylon's little ones dashed against the rock as sins to be crushed early on Christ, the rock.
  • Poem 10, lines 65–96Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · Paulinus explains that his renunciation of wealth is a deposit with Christ, who repays with interest, and insists that, as a Christian, he does not lack piety toward Ausonius, to whom he owes his education and career.
  • Poem 16, lines 256–299Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · Felix refused to reclaim his confiscated estates despite the urging of the widow Archelais, rented three acres, worked them himself, shared everything with the poor, and died full of days.
  • Poem 20, lines 190–222Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · The man orders the whole pig to be cooked for the poor; as soon as they have eaten and prayed for him, his feet are freed and he leaps up healed.
  • Poem 20, lines 286–320Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · The healed man warns the rich who hoard wealth from the poor; Paulinus begins a second story, of a pig vowed to Felix by Apulian farmers.
  • Poem 21, lines 234–265Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · As his ancestor freed Rome from the kings, Pinianus has freed himself from sin, frees his slaves, and pays the debts of imprisoned debtors.
  • Poem 21, lines 361–394Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · Paulinus recalls how, as a young man from Gaul and as governor of Campania, he first came to love Christ at Felix's shrine, cut his first beard there, built a road and a hostel for the poor, above which he now lives.
  • Poem 21, lines 426–457Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · Paulinus sold his property to buy the cross, exchanging earthly wealth for heavenly, which Christ repays with interest; through Felix he has gained Christ himself as his possession.
  • Poem 21, lines 491–520Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · Paulinus praises the poverty of Christ, which strips of earthly wealth to enrich with heavenly; money given away for Christ is gain, but money squandered on vice is as deadly as avarice.
  • Poem 21, lines 521–552Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · Felix wants his household poor like himself, for the way of the rich leads by the broad road to hell, while Christ's narrow way admits only those unburdened by wealth.
  • Poem 24, lines 541–568Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · Paulinus wishes the boy to be like Samson in killing the lion through prayer, but not in his union with the foreign woman, who stands for the law of the flesh.
  • Poem 24, lines 569–599Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · Like Samson in his death, the boy should die to the flesh; like Samuel he should remain consecrated all his life, slaying the sins of the flesh as Samuel slew the Amalekite king.
  • Poem 24, lines 600–632Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · The boy should humble pride as David overcame Saul, and, like Samson breaking his bonds and slaying a thousand with a jawbone, should subdue the body by continence and fasting.
  • Poem 24, lines 731–762Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · The boy should choose mourning and self-discipline; as Joseph was raised from prison to rule, the one who masters his own body will guide others to freedom from the world.
  • Poem 25, lines 32–64Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · Paulinus forbids pagan wedding customs and bids the bride reject gold, gems, silk and cosmetics for the inner adornment of virtue.
  • Poem 25, lines 65–96Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · Paulinus warns, with Isaiah's oracle against the finery of Zion's women, that adornment brings punishment, and urges both bride and groom to care for the soul's beauty.
  • Poem 25, lines 97–128Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · God's word and good works are the Christian's ornaments; Paulinus contrasts the modest Rebecca with the adorned dancing girl whose dance won the Baptist's head.
  • Poem 27, lines 542–571Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · Paulinus explains that he had the churches painted because the country pilgrims, newly converted from paganism, spend the vigil drinking at the tombs; he excuses their simplicity but rejects the custom.
  • Poem 28, lines 218–250Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · The buildings, at once old and new, figure the Christian's renewal now and the transformation of the risen body; believers should put off the old life and flee even contemplated sin.
  • Poem 28, lines 282–325Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · Vices are the rubble and thorns of the heart, rooted in greed; when that root is cut, Christ can build in the soul, and believers must leave the old life for the new.
  • Poem 31, lines 441–474Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · Paulinus prefers the tears of penitence now to reap eternal joy, choosing to be like the prodigal son restored and like Lazarus at the rich man's gate rather than the rich man in the flames.
  • Poem 31, lines 475–506Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · Not the myths of the underworld but the gospel's story of the rich man and Lazarus teaches the reversal after death; the rich who despise the poor are inwardly filthier than the beggar's sores.
  • Poem 31, lines 507–538Paulinus of Nola · ca. 393–431 · The greedy rich are lepers in soul; their surplus belongs to the poor; Christ became poor and chose the lowly, and the parents should give themselves to God while time remains.
  • Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine reconciles the command to honor parents with Christ's “let the dead bury their dead”: parents are honored in their place but set aside for the love of God, as Deuteronomy 33:9 also teaches.
  • Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine explains “eye for eye” as a first step that limited revenge, which the gospel completes with full forgiveness, already foretold in the Psalms and Lamentations.
  • Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine answers the claim that Deuteronomy's permission to eat meat contradicts the New Testament: the law permits moderate eating, Paul's “good not to eat meat” concerns not offending the weak, and Manichaean abstention from meat as unclean is what 1 Tim 4:3 condemns.
  • Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine answers the charge that the conquest commands contradict “love your enemies”: punishment can be given without hatred, as Paul, Peter, and even the Manichaeans' apocryphal Acts show, and David's sparing of Saul fulfilled Christ's command.
  • Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine answers the claim that God's promise of riches to his friends contradicts the beatitudes on poverty, showing that the gospel also promises the earth to the meek and the Old Testament also ranks wisdom far above wealth.
  • Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine answers the claim that the earthly blessings of Leviticus 26 contradict Christ's sending out of the apostles without money: these were concessions, not commands, and temporal gifts taught a fleshly people to love God and prefigured eternal gifts.
  • Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine reads the ant of Proverbs 6 spiritually, as gathering God's word in peaceful times against tribulation, and shows that “do not think about tomorrow” forbids anxiety, not provision.
  • Letters 1.1Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus thanks Sulpicius for his letter and praises him for giving away his property to the poor, in whom Christ is served.
  • Letters 1.6Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Seeking to justify oneself to unbelievers means seeking the world's favor; the critics really oppose Christ's work, as the judgment scene shows.
  • Letters 1.9Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus exhorts Sulpicius as a soldier of Christ to persevere, avoid false teachers and worldly critics, and trust God to complete the work of perfection begun in them.
  • Letters 8.3Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · In a poem Paulinus warns Licentius against ambition and public office at Rome and urges him to take Christ’s easy yoke under Augustine’s guidance.
  • Letters 9.3Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus interprets the warning not to flee in winter or on a sabbath as a warning against spiritual idleness and barrenness of good works.
  • Letters 11.9Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus explains that God gives temporal wealth as a fleece to be shorn, so that giving it up for God turns it into eternal reward.
  • Letters 11.12Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus asks for Sulpicius’s prayers and chides him for hesitating to visit Nola for fear of the poverty he professes to admire.
  • Letters 11.13Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus tells Sulpicius that a Christian lives by faith, not bread, and that fear of hunger is no reason to avoid a poor friend, as his devotion to Martin shows.
  • Letters 11.14Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus urges Sulpicius to come to Nola, saying that he left Ebromagus for paradise, not for a garden, and that those whose possession is God will not lack bread.
  • Letters 12.4Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus explains that Christ undid pride by humility, and that the Christian must keep the king’s highway between sin and proud presumption, unlike the philosophers.
  • Letters 12.7Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus teaches that the Christian dies to the world and humbles himself to God alone, distinguishing a holy pride toward the world from a wicked, flattering humility.
  • Letters 12.8Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus reconciles Psalm 131’s humility of heart with its exalting of the soul: humble before God, the soul is lifted to heavenly things, as Paul also teaches.
  • Letters 13.3Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus shares Pammachius’s grief for his wife Paulina and praises him for honoring her death with almsgiving rather than empty pomp.
  • Letters 13.11Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus pictures Pammachius’s funeral banquet for the poor of Rome in St Peter’s basilica as a renewal of Christ’s feeding of the five thousand.
  • Letters 13.12Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus says Christ worked in Pammachius’s feeding of the poor and that he will in turn sit at Christ’s banquet with the patriarchs.
  • Letters 13.14Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus says Pammachius’s offerings and alms in Paulina’s memory were a sacrifice to God that refreshed both his own spirit and his wife’s soul.
  • Letters 13.15Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus contrasts Pammachius’s generosity with the senators who spend their wealth on beast fights and gladiators for the crowd’s applause.
  • Letters 13.16Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus contrasts Pammachius, who gives shows for the poor in the church, with givers of games, and with the rich man of the parable tormented for neglecting Lazarus.
  • Letters 13.17Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus warns rich men who spend on luxury and despise the poor that they will share the fate of the rich man whose tongue burned in hell.
  • Letters 13.18Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus says that Pammachius, who welcomes the poor to his table, is both poor in spirit and rich in God.
  • Letters 13.19Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus observes that Scripture leaves the greedy rich men of the Gospels unnamed, as unworthy of remembrance, while God gives salvation to the rich who use their wealth for the poor.
  • Letters 13.20Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus shows from Abraham, Job, Joseph of Arimathea and the first Jerusalem church that God approves the rich who share their wealth, since the poor are our brothers by common origin.
  • Letters 13.21Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus urges hospitality by the examples of Abraham, who received Christ with the angels, of Lot, saved for preferring his guests even to his daughters, and of Job.
  • Letters 13.22Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus says Pammachius is master of his wealth because Christ possesses him, and that he serves Christ in the poor.
  • Letters 16.7Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus urges Iovius to shun the sweetness of pagan letters and worldly pleasures, which he compares to the Lotus-eaters and the Sirens of Homer.
  • Letters 16.8Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus urges Iovius to strip off the burden of possessions, as some philosophers threw away their money, and to cling to the cross as a plank in the world’s shipwreck.
  • Letters 23.34Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus explains that Christ is anointed and fed by works of mercy, and condemns Judas, who objected to the ointment from greed and valued Christ cheaply.
  • Letters 23.35Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus urges voluntary poverty, so that the Christian may become precious ointment poured on Christ’s body and break the cords of sin.
  • Letters 24.1Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus reproaches Sulpicius Severus for praising him too highly and blaming himself for not selling one small estate, which in fact he holds for the church.
  • Letters 24.2Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · God distributes different gifts among the members of Christ’s body; Sulpicius shares both in the perfection of the patriarchs who possessed without being possessed and in the gospel perfection of those who sell.
  • Letters 24.3Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus argues that Sulpicius, holding his house for strangers and the poor as a tenant of the Lord, is as perfect in what he keeps as in what he sold.
  • Letters 24.4Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus judges Sulpicius’s detachment while still owning property to be a stronger faith than the outright sale by those who distrusted their own weakness.
  • Letters 24.5Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Selling all is only the beginning of perfection; the harder command is ‘come, follow me,’ so Paulinus asks for concern rather than congratulation.
  • Letters 24.6Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · What is truly ours to give God is heart, soul, and body offered freely, so that we may recover paradise.
  • Letters 24.7Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Renouncing possessions is the entrance to the race, not its end, as an athlete or swimmer strips only to begin.
  • Letters 24.8Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Jacob’s sending his goods ahead and wrestling alone with God until blessed figures the Christian who lets go of hindrances and struggles to hold Christ.
  • Letters 24.9Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · The Christian must keep chaste and follow Christ, who came down to restore the divine likeness lost in Adam, and must above all guard his heart.
  • Letters 24.10Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus describes the inner war of the two laws and the need for God’s grace, by which alone the branches remain fruitful in the vine.
  • Letters 24.11Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Christ’s fire and pruning hook clear the soul for a new crop, and his call to ‘be still’ means freedom from worldly affairs in order to be occupied with God.
  • Letters 24.12Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Newness of life means exchanging old pursuits for new and changing masters, from sin to righteousness.
  • Letters 24.13Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · The Christian’s struggle is against spiritual powers that use the world’s allurements, the devil’s snares, and the vices within.
  • Letters 24.14Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Weak in himself, the Christian is armed from Christ’s armory, with Paul as armor bearer providing the armor of God described in Ephesians.
  • Letters 24.15Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paul teaches the Christian to run so that all may win together, since in Christ’s one body there is no loser.
  • Letters 24.16Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Within us the spirit is our friend and the flesh our enemy, whose flattering kisses are like Judas’s; yet Christ returned love for that hatred.
  • Letters 24.17Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · In Christ one conquers by yielding, giving up the cloak, loving enemies, and selling for the poor, as Christ conquered by being judged and dying.
  • Letters 24.20Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Selling goods only prepares the price of the pearl and clears the ground for building; once cleared, the heart reveals its hidden sins.
  • Letters 24.21Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Christ’s call to perfection is a counsel to free will; to follow him is to walk as he walked, fulfilling the law by a faith that roots out sin from the heart.
  • Letters 24.22Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus asks Sulpicius not to praise him as perfect but to fear and pray for him, since he is only beginning the road.
  • Letters 25.1Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus writes, through his friend Victor, to the soldier Crispinianus, urging him to leave Caesar’s service for Christ’s.
  • Letters 25.2Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Nothing, neither family nor homeland nor honors nor riches, may be preferred to God, as Scripture’s warnings against the rich show.
  • Letters 25.3Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus urges Crispinianus to abandon soldiering, which makes a man either a victim or a shedder of blood, since one cannot serve both Christ and Caesar.
  • Letters 25.4Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus urges Crispinianus to serve Christ, the eternal commander, and to flee the love of gold that Scripture condemns.
  • Letters 25.5Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus answers the excuse of youth and future marriage: conversion must not be delayed, and the only good violence is seizing the kingdom of heaven.
  • Letters 25.8Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus invites Crispinianus to become Christ’s companion and have God as his protector, in place of military promotion.
  • Letters 26.3Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · The hermit’s bodily need gives the deacon the occasion of merit, as Paul’s teaching on mutual supply shows.
  • Letters 29.2Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · The camel of the gospel recalls the humble tax collector, who passed through the needle’s eye of humility, while the boasting Pharisee could not.
  • Letters 29.3Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · The cross is the needle that mends the soul; the cloaks, like the dung for the barren fig tree or Job’s dunghill, foster the humility that God exalts.
  • Letters 29.4Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Even keeping the commandments earns no credit; one must confess oneself unprofitable and, like the Ninevites, forestall God’s judgment by repentance.
  • Letters 30.2Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus declines to send his portrait: he still bears the image of the earthly Adam, torn between flesh and spirit, and is ashamed to paint either what he is or what he is not.
  • Letters 30.3Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Knowing good and evil, Paulinus confesses that he chose evil freely and so lost the eyes of innocence.
  • Letters 32.18Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Earthly buildings raised in faith become heavenly dwellings, as the centurion who built a synagogue was rewarded.
  • Letters 32.19Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Giving to the poor is not generosity but the shrewdest trade, lending to Christ at an interest the law forbids among men.
  • Letters 32.20Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Christ, the Judge, accepts the ‘bribe’ of mercy; he is found and touched in every poor person.
  • Letters 32.21Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Alms are a spiritual commerce: the rich provide for the poor now, and the poor will receive the rich into the eternal dwellings.
  • Letters 34.1Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · In a sermon on the church’s alms table, Paulinus warns that, like an empty manger, a neglected table for the poor brings loss of soul.
  • Letters 34.2Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · The church’s alms table is God’s bank: giving to the poor is lending to the Lord, as Scripture and the parable of the talents teach.
  • Letters 34.3Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus contrasts the good and the wicked servants of the parable and holds up the widow who gave her two mites as the model of heavenly greed.
  • Letters 34.4Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · All we have is God’s gift, and we ourselves were bought by Christ’s blood; giving to the poor returns his gifts so that he may reward us.
  • Letters 34.5Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · God, who needs nothing, opens his treasuries and becomes debtor of his own gifts so as to repay his givers abundantly.
  • Letters 34.6Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · God made some poor to test the rich; the poor at the door are Christ’s guests, and the rich man and Lazarus show that the reckoning will be reversed.
  • Letters 34.7Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · While there is time, the Christian must not come empty to church, lest the prayers of the poor turn into complaints before God, the father of orphans.
  • Letters 34.8Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Love of oneself alone is iniquity; care for the poor is a holy avarice, the root of good things, yielding a hundredfold.
  • Letters 34.10Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · The poor whom one feeds and clothes become a multitude praying for their benefactor, a safeguard in time of need.
  • Letters 39.6Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus prays that Christ, the gardener, guard the garden of his soul from the four passions, figured by Joel’s four pests.
  • Letters 39.7Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus interprets Joel’s four pests as stages of a sinful thought, from a passing temptation to an ingrained vice.
  • Letters 40.7Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · The penitent who withdraws to fight sin is the pelican that kills serpents; when victorious, he becomes the owl that sees in the world’s darkness.
  • Letters 40.11Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Selling one’s goods is only the start; the harder task is to sell one’s inner self and follow Christ, lest pride in poverty undo the gain.
  • Letters 41.2Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · The five wise and five foolish virgins are the five senses of each person, kept chaste and fruitful or slack and barren; the foolish virgin is the wisdom of the flesh.
  • Letters 43.6Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus asks Desiderius to pray that he be given time to repent and bear fruit at every season, like the fig tree spared another year.
  • Letters 49.15Paulinus of Nola · ca. 394–413 · Paulinus asks Macarius to help Secundinianus recover the ship’s cargo, stolen when it beached by the steward of the senator Postumianus, while asking leniency for the thief.
  • Historia monachorum, chapter 1Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · John of Lycopolis: his prophecies to Theodosius and others, healings, and a long discourse to Rufinus’s party on boasting, purity of heart, and solitude, with stories of monks who fell or repented.
  • Historia monachorum, chapter 13Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Pithyrion, disciple of Antony and of Ammon, who taught that to cast out a vice’s demon one must first conquer that vice in oneself.
  • Historia monachorum, chapter 16Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Paphnutius asks God whom he resembles and is shown a musician who had been a robber, a village headman of upright life, and a merchant; each follows him into the desert, and Paphnutius dies teaching that God has hidden saints in every walk of life.
  • Historia monachorum, chapter 18Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Serapion of Arsinoë and his ten thousand monks, whose harvest wages feed the poor of Egypt and Alexandria; the monks of Memphis and Babylon, and the so-called granaries of Joseph.
  • Historia monachorum, chapter 20Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · Dioscorus, a presbyter who examined his monks before communion and taught when nocturnal emissions do or do not involve sin.
  • On Continence 3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Consent in the heart is already an inner 'word', which precedes every outward sin, so continence must guard the heart's lips.
  • On Continence 4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Christ's sayings on inner cleanness show that sins are committed in the heart by consent, even when the body is prevented from acting.
  • On Continence 5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Bodily chastity is kept safe when continence guards the heart against consent, though in this life the struggle between flesh and spirit continues.
  • On Continence 6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Continence fights evil desire now; the good will be perfected only when concupiscence itself ends, as Paul's words in Romans 7 show.
  • On Continence 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · The law alone reveals and even strengthens concupiscence; grace gives the delight by which continence overcomes it.
  • On Continence 8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Paul's call not to let sin reign means refusing to obey concupiscence, which continence does under grace.
  • On Continence 9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · The works of the flesh in Galatians 5 are the enemies to be put to death, and continence, the last fruit of the Spirit, is the chief weapon.
  • On Continence 28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · True continence, a gift from above, governs all desires opposed to wisdom, those of the mind as well as those of the body.
  • On Continence 29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Paul's command to 'put to death your members on earth' means that continence must put to death the lingering movements of desire by refusing consent and turning thought to things above.
  • On Continence 30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Paul's warning of God's wrath shows that faith without works does not save; the 'members' to be put to death are the vices dwelling in the members.
  • On Continence 31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Even the faithful must keep 'putting away' vices by continual continence, for whoever ceases is taken captive again; salvation belongs to those who persevere.
  • On Lying 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Augustine introduces the difficult question of lying, including whether it is ever right to tell a merciful lie, and asks the reader to judge the whole.
  • On Lying 3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · A lie is saying one thing while holding another in the mind, with a double heart; saying something false that one believes true is error, not lying.
  • On Lying 4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Using the case of warning a man about robbers on a road, Augustine tests definitions of lying and concludes that there is no lie when one states what one holds true and wishes to persuade only of that.
  • On Lying 5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Those who allow useful lies cite Sarah, Jacob and the Hebrew midwives, and ask whether one should not lie to save a fugitive's life or to spare a sick man.
  • On Lying 6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Those who forbid all lying cite the commandment against false witness, Wisdom 1:11, Psalm 5:6, Christ's 'Yes, yes; No, no', and Paul's command to put away lying.
  • On Lying 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Lies in the Old Testament are answered as figurative (and so not lies) or, like the midwives', approved only as progress relative to worse conduct.
  • On Lying 8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · The New Testament offers no example of lying to imitate: Peter's pretense at Antioch was rebuked, while Paul's circumcising Timothy and keeping Jewish rites came from freedom, not pretense.
  • On Lying 9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Since Scripture says God destroys all who lie and the lying mouth kills the soul, the case of lying to save someone's life fails: no one should lose eternal life for another's bodily life, any more than commit theft or adultery to save it.
  • On Lying 10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Lying to escape sexual violation is not justified, since chastity belongs to the mind and is not lost by violence suffered without consent, while a lie corrupts the mind itself.
  • On Lying 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Lying even to lead someone to the truth destroys the credibility of Christian teaching, which rests on faith; so the good must never lie.
  • On Lying 12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Others argue that if a Christian may burn incense to idols to avoid being sexually violated, he may surely lie to avoid it.
  • On Lying 13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Suffering what others do to us because we refuse to sin is not consent to their crime, as a martyr is not a murderer if persecutors kill his father because he will not deny Christ.
  • On Lying 14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · One should avoid one's own sin rather than another's, even a graver one: it is worse to commit theft than to be murdered, and worse to burn incense than to suffer violation.
  • On Lying 15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Augustine sets out the argument that bodily defilement such as sexual violation may be avoided even by sin, so that a lie told to avoid it would not be sin.
  • On Lying 16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Even to prevent sexual violation one may not lie in a way that harms another's reputation, and it is doubtful whether this is just even if the other consents.
  • On Lying 17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · No lie may ever be told in the teaching of religion, even to make it easier to accept; one may conceal at times but never lie.
  • On Lying 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Lies that harm others unjustly are excluded, as are lies told for pleasure in lying or to please listeners, which harm the liars themselves.
  • On Lying 19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · The 'kindly' lie that harms no one and helps someone is the real question, but allowing it would also excuse theft from the rich and false witness.
  • On Lying 20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Even a lie that covers no sin, such as protecting someone's hidden money, remains a sin, since false witness is forbidden in its own right like theft.
  • On Lying 21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Paul's words about being 'false witnesses of God' show that false witness is not limited to court testimony; the question remains whether a harmless, helpful lie is blameworthy.
  • On Lying 22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Asked where a fugitive, guilty or innocent, is hiding, a Christian should neither lie nor betray, but keep silent or refuse to tell.
  • On Lying 23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Bishop Firmus of Thagaste refused under torture either to lie or to betray a fugitive, and won his pardon; Augustine judges that he understood Scripture better than the timid.
  • On Lying 24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · If asked whether a fugitive is in a certain place, one should say 'I know where he is, but I will never show you,' and bear the consequences bravely.
  • On Lying 25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Augustine lists eight kinds of lies, from lies in religious teaching to lies told to protect someone from bodily defilement, and turns to the last case.
  • On Lying 27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Christ and Paul, struck on the face, did not literally turn the other cheek, showing that the command concerns the readiness of the heart.
  • On Lying 28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Paul swore oaths in his letters, showing that Christ's 'do not swear at all' forbids loving or seeking oaths, not every oath.
  • On Lying 31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Some argue that the 'mouth that lies' in Wisdom 1:11 is the mouth of the heart, so that one who speaks truth in the heart might say otherwise aloud to avoid a greater evil.
  • On Lying 33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · The lie condemned in Wisdom 1:11 may properly be slander, spoken aloud or in the heart.
  • On Lying 34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Augustine sets out three readings of Sirach 7:13, 'Do not wish to lie any lie', one supporting the view that one must never lie and two allowing some lies.
  • On Lying 35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Three readings of Psalm 5:6 are given, the last referring it to those who defend their sins instead of confessing them.
  • On Lying 36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · False witness is lying to those entitled to the truth, such as a judge or a learner; lying to one who seeks what does not concern him is not false witness but is still a lie.
  • On Lying 37Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Readings of Proverbs 30 (LXX) on the son who keeps the word are weighed, as referring to all lies, to lies of the heart, or especially to lies in religious teaching.
  • On Lying 38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Scripture never makes any lie lovable; people misjudge which evil is graver because they love temporal life more than eternal life.
  • On Lying 39Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Temporal goods may be given up rather than sin, but things kept for holiness may be protected even by lesser sins that injure no one.
  • On Lying 40Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Bodily chastity, purity of the soul and truth of teaching are to be kept for holiness; violence suffered without consent is not unchastity, and the truth of teaching must be kept wholly free of lies.
  • On Lying 41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Though a harmless lie to protect bodily chastity might seem allowable, good faith belongs to the purity of the mind, which ranks above the body, so it should be preferred even to bodily chastity.
  • On Lying 42Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Augustine concludes that Scripture forbids every lie, and goes through all eight kinds of lies, holding that none is permitted, though the first is gravest and the eighth least grave.
  • On Lying 43Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Augustine rejects the claim that Paul lied in rebuking Peter in Galatians, since Paul swore he was not lying, and closes with 1 Corinthians 10:13.
  • On the Faith against the Manichaeans 4Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · The apostle names desire as the root of all evils.
  • On the Faith against the Manichaeans 8Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Since angels too are judged, sin must be voluntary, and each person is the author of his own evil through desire.
  • On the Faith against the Manichaeans 9Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Evil is not a nature but sin and its punishment; sin comes from the free will of the rational soul.
  • On the Faith against the Manichaeans 10Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Commands and judgment presuppose free will; evil is a turning away from God's commands.
  • On the Faith against the Manichaeans 44Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · A being evil by necessity of nature could not sin; only a rational soul with free will can sin and be justly condemned.
  • Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Natures are from God, their corruptibility from the nothing from which they were made; God orders corruption to punish sinners and train those returning to him.
  • On Christian Doctrine 1.3Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Things are divided into those to be enjoyed, those to be used, and ourselves, who enjoy and use.
  • On Christian Doctrine 1.4Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Enjoying is loving something for its own sake, using is referring it to what we love; like travelers going home, we must use this world and not enjoy it.
  • On Christian Doctrine 1.10Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · To enjoy God the soul must be cleansed, a journey made not by place but by good desire and conduct.
  • On Christian Doctrine 1.22Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Only God is to be enjoyed; we should love ourselves and our neighbors for God's sake, directing all love toward the love of God.
  • On Christian Doctrine 1.23Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Four things are to be loved, God, ourselves, our neighbor, and our body; no command is needed to love ourselves and our bodies, though self-love that seeks to dominate is really hatred.
  • On Christian Doctrine 1.24Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · No one truly hates his body; ascetic discipline rightly aims to subdue bad habits, not to destroy the body, as Paul's words on the flesh and spirit show.
  • On Christian Doctrine 1.25Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · People must be taught the right way to love themselves and their bodies, though one may love something more than bodily health.
  • On Christian Doctrine 1.26Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Since we naturally love ourselves and our bodies, the commandments concern love of God and neighbor, which together include all that is to be loved.
  • On Christian Doctrine 1.27Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Just living requires ordered love: God above all, others for God's sake, and our neighbor more than our own body.
  • On Christian Doctrine 1.28Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · All are to be loved equally, but since we cannot help everyone, we should help first those whom circumstances bind most closely to us.
  • On Christian Doctrine 1.29Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · As a theater fan wants everyone to love his favorite actor, we should want all to love God with us, and so we love even our enemies.
  • On Christian Doctrine 1.30Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · The parable of the Good Samaritan shows that every human being is our neighbor, and so are the angels, and in a sense Christ himself.
  • On Christian Doctrine 1.36Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Whoever does not draw love of God and neighbor from Scripture has not understood it; one who misreads the author but builds up love errs harmlessly, yet should be corrected.
  • On Christian Doctrine 2.7Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Augustine sets out seven steps toward wisdom: fear, piety, knowledge (the study of Scripture), fortitude, counsel, purity of heart, and wisdom.
  • On Christian Doctrine 3.10Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Whatever in Scripture cannot literally refer to good conduct or true faith is figurative; Scripture commands only love and condemns only desire, and readers must not judge it by their own customs.
  • On Christian Doctrine 3.12Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Seemingly shameful acts of holy persons in Scripture are figurative or must be judged by the customs of their time, such as the patriarchs' polygamy for the sake of offspring; what matters is not the thing used but the lust of the user.
  • On Christian Doctrine 3.13Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · What good men do in conformity with the customs of their time is to be referred to usefulness and beneficence, literally or, for the prophets, figuratively.
  • On Christian Doctrine 3.14Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Varying customs do not prove that there is no justice, for the Golden Rule holds for all nations.
  • On Christian Doctrine 3.18Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Practices blameless in Old Testament times, such as polygamy, may not be adopted now; what matters is love or lust in the user, and the patriarchs used marriage only for procreation.
  • On Christian Doctrine 3.19Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · The lustful cannot believe that the patriarchs used several wives temperately, just as the proud cannot believe that the saints are unmoved by praise.
  • On Christian Doctrine 3.21Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · David's grief for Absalom and his repentance over Bathsheba show the patriarchs' temperance with women, whereas Solomon was ruled by lust.
  • On Christian Doctrine 3.23Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · The recorded sins of great men warn the reader against pride and self-righteousness.
  • On Christian Doctrine 4.21Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Augustine illustrates the three styles from Cyprian and Ambrose: the subdued in Cyprian on the eucharistic cup and Ambrose on the Holy Spirit, the temperate in their praises of virginity, and the grand in their attacks on cosmetics.
  • On Christian Doctrine 4.24Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · The grand style is shown not by applause but by tears and changed lives, as when Augustine's preaching ended an annual blood feud at Caesarea in Mauretania.
  • On Christian Doctrine 4.27Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · The preacher's life gives his words more weight than eloquence; the wicked may teach truth from the chair of Moses, but a good life persuades far more.
  • Life of Saint Martin 4Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · Before a battle Martin asks Julian for his discharge as a soldier of Christ, offers to face the enemy unarmed, and the enemy surrenders.
  • Life of Saint Martin 25Sulpicius Severus · ca. 396–397 · Sulpicius describes his visit to Martin, who washed his feet and urged him to follow the example of Paulinus in renouncing wealth.
  • Confessions 1.29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine contrasts the care people take over correct pronunciation and grammar with their neglect of God's law against hating others.
  • Confessions 1.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine confesses the lies, thefts, and cheating of his boyhood and denies that such conduct is innocence, since the same vices grow into the ambitions of adults.
  • Confessions 2.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine recognizes that God spoke through his mother's warnings against fornication and adultery, which he scorned, even inventing sins to impress his companions.
  • Confessions 2.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine recounts how as a youth he and his companions stole pears they did not want, loving the theft itself and wickedness for its own sake.
  • Confessions 2.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine explains that created things have real beauty and goodness, but sin consists in preferring these lower goods to God.
  • Confessions 2.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine shows how each vice is a perverse imitation of some perfection found truly only in God.
  • Confessions 3.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine explains that God's justice is unchanging but prescribes different things for different times, so the patriarchs were righteous even though their conduct differs from later custom.
  • Confessions 3.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Using the analogy of poetic meter, Augustine explains that one unchanging justice assigns different duties to different times, and confesses that he blindly blamed the patriarchs.
  • Confessions 3.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine distinguishes sins against nature, such as those of Sodom, which are always wrong, from offenses against human custom, and teaches that God's commands must be obeyed even against custom.
  • Confessions 3.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine classifies sins of violence and traces all sin to the lusts of ruling, seeing, and feeling, which violate the Ten Commandments and harm the sinner rather than God.
  • Confessions 3.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine notes that some sins are those of people making progress, that some acts resemble sins but are not, and that an unusual command of God must be obeyed.
  • Confessions 4.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine confesses consulting astrologers, whose teaching that the stars cause sin removes human responsibility and blames the creator.
  • Confessions 6.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Alypius followed Augustine to Milan; as a legal assessor in Rome he had refused both the bribes and threats of a powerful senator and even the temptation to have books copied at public expense.
  • Confessions 6.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine delayed turning to God because he thought he could not live without a woman, not knowing that continence is God's gift to those who ask.
  • Confessions 7.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine began to see that the free choice of the will is the cause of sin, yet he still asked where an evil will could come from if God, who is wholly good, made him and the devil.
  • Confessions 7.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Wickedness is not a substance but a will that turns away from God toward lower things.
  • Confessions 8.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine longs to imitate Victorinus but is chained by habit: two wills, old and new, fight within him.
  • Confessions 8.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine experiences the war of flesh and spirit; he now knows the truth but still refuses to follow it.
  • Confessions 8.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Like a sleeper who will not get up, Augustine keeps saying "soon" while the law of sin holds him.
  • Confessions 8.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine recalls twelve years of delay since reading Cicero, and his prayer: "Give me chastity, but not yet."
  • Confessions 8.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · The mind commands itself to will and is not obeyed, because the will is divided and sick, not whole.
  • Confessions 8.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · His old pleasures whisper behind him, asking whether he can live without them.
  • Confessions 8.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Lady Continence appears with many chaste examples and urges Augustine to cast himself on God.
  • Confessions 9.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Monica was a peacemaker who repeated nothing between quarreling women except what would reconcile them.
  • Confessions 10.40Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · "Give what you command, and command what you will": continence is God's gift.
  • Confessions 10.41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Though he has renounced sexual relations, Augustine confesses that sexual images still trouble him in dreams.
  • Confessions 10.42Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine prays that God's grace will free him even from consent to lust in sleep.
  • Confessions 10.44Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · The pleasure of eating slips in behind the need for health and disguises itself as necessity.
  • Confessions 10.45Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine is free of drunkenness but not always of overeating; continence is God's gift, as Scripture shows.
  • Confessions 10.46Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · No food is unclean; what defiles is desire, as the examples of Scripture show.
  • Confessions 10.47Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Eating cannot be given up like sex, only moderated; Augustine relies on Christ's intercession.
  • Confessions 10.54Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Curiosity, the "lust of the eyes," is a desire to experience and know through the senses.
  • Confessions 10.55Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Curiosity drives people to gruesome sights, shows, useless research, magic, and demands for miracles.
  • Confessions 10.56Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine has renounced theaters, astrology, and necromancy, but the enemy still tempts him to seek signs.
  • Confessions 10.59Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · The third temptation, the desire to be loved and feared by men, is a snare of the devil; praise must be referred to God.
  • Confessions 10.60Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine cannot test his love of praise, since he cannot give it up without giving up a good life.
  • Confessions 10.61Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine is pleased by praise and wonders whether his pleasure is for his neighbor's good or his own.
  • Confessions 10.62Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine questions whether he truly seeks his neighbor's benefit, since insults to himself sting him more.
  • Confessions 10.63Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Love of praise tempts even those who condemn it, who then boast of their contempt for vainglory.
  • Confessions 10.64Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Self-satisfaction, even over God's gifts, is a further form of pride.
  • Confessions 13.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Souls set apart from the sea bear the fruit of works of mercy, small and great, like plants and trees.
  • Confessions 13.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · The works of mercy lead on to contemplation; the spiritual shine as lights in the firmament of Scripture.
  • Confessions 13.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Repentance and keeping the commandments make the dry land appear; the rich young man's thorns choked the word.
  • Confessions 13.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Ministers should now teach by example; the living soul tames the beasts of pride, lust, and curiosity.
  • Confessions 13.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · The living soul imitates the imitators of Christ; its beasts, cattle, and serpents become gentleness, moderation, and prudence.
  • Confessions 13.38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · The plants given as food are works of mercy owed to ministers of the word, as Onesiphorus and the Macedonians gave to Paul.
  • Confessions 13.41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · What matters is not the gift but the fruit, the good will of the giver, as with the widow who fed Elijah.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 5.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus claims that his renunciation of family, property, and pleasure shows that he accepts the gospel better than his catholic questioner.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 5.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that keeping Christ’s commands is the harder and truer part of accepting the gospel, compared with confessing his birth.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 5.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues from Christ’s sayings that the kingdom is promised to those who keep his commands, never to those who confess his birth.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 5.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that Manichaean renunciation is worthless without true faith and love, and that Faustus himself lived in luxury, as the failed community of Constantius at Rome showed.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 5.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says Mani’s precepts are themselves false, since the elect may not pluck plants but live off the hearers who do it for them.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 5.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine turns each beatitude Faustus claimed against him, showing how Manichaean doctrine contradicts poverty of spirit, meekness, peace, purity, mourning, and hunger for righteousness.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 5.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine points to catholic virgins, ascetics, and communities living in common, and insists that married and ordinary believers who serve the saints also belong to the kingdom.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 15.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine defends the stone tablets of the law as prophetic of the church's heart of flesh, of Christ the stone, and of Pentecost, and as containing the two commandments of love in ten precepts.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 15.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine goes through the Ten Commandments to show how Manichaean teaching, on Christ, the Sabbath, parents, marriage, food, theft and oaths, contradicts each of them.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine distinguishes the moral precepts of the law, which Christians keep through grace, from its promissory sacraments, which passed away because Christ fulfilled them.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine rejects Faustus’s division between pre-Mosaic precepts fulfilled by Christ and Mosaic ones abolished, holding that all were rightly given and fulfilled.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that the righteous before Moses must already have avoided anger and abuse, so Christ’s teaching on anger cannot have filled a gap in their law.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that the righteous before Moses did not commit adultery in their hearts, so Christ did not fill up a deficient law of theirs on adultery.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains Christ’s sayings on murder, adultery, and oaths as clarifying the law, noting that Paul swore in his letters but not in his speeches.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine reconciles “hate your enemy” with “love your enemies” by distinguishing the vice, which is hated, from the human nature, which is loved, and turns the precept against the Manichaean myth of the race of darkness.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that the law of retaliation set a limit to revenge and that Christ’s command not to retaliate keeps its purpose more safely, just as not swearing guards against perjury.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine concludes that Christ fulfilled the law not by adding words but by giving through the Spirit the love that fulfils it.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine shows that Christ’s precepts on anger, harsh words, lust, non-retaliation, and love of enemies are already found in the Old Testament books.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Christian love feasts are works of mercy feeding the poor, and that the Manichaean refusal to kill animals resembles pagan belief in transmigration, only worse.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine replies that Christians live differently from pagans because they believe, hope, and love differently, even when using the same things, and that the many bad catholics do not discredit catholic teaching.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine proposes first to define sin and then to ask why Scripture records deeds of the saints that are sins or seem to be.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine defines sin as anything done, said, or desired against the eternal law that preserves the natural order, in which body is subject to soul, and action to contemplation.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that sin is failing to restrain delight in what is unlawful, and places man between beasts that cannot sin and angels that will not.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says bodily pleasures are lawful only as far as needed to preserve the individual and the race; beyond that they are sins needing correction or, if defended, deserving condemnation.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.42Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says that the incest of Lot's daughters, though prophetic as narrated in Scripture, remains a crime in the lives of those who did it.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.43Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that Lot's daughters acted wrongly but from a desire to preserve the human race, believing all other men destroyed, not from lust.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.44Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine judges that Lot is to blame not for incest but for drunkenness, and considers what could have led a righteous man to become drunk.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.47Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that Jacob's four wives were no crime because polygamy then violated neither nature, custom, nor law, though it is a sin now that custom and law forbid it.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.52Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine interprets Leah as the laborious active life and Rachel as the contemplation of truth, explaining why Jacob had to take Leah first and serve seven more years for Rachel.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.61Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine judges that Judah sinned in going to a supposed harlot and Tamar in conceiving outside marriage, though with a better motive, and that Judah's “she is more righteous than I” only compares them.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.66Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine lists David's virtues alongside his sins: repentance, mercy to Saul, patience under Shimei's curses, love for his people, reverence for the Lord's anointed, and grief for Absalom.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.70Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine judges that Moses sinned in killing the Egyptian without lawful authority, but sees in the deed, like Paul's persecution and Peter's sword, a misdirected zeal that God cultivated into virtue.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.74Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine defends Moses' wars as obedience to God and argues that what is evil in war is the love of violence, revenge, and domination, not war waged under God's or lawful authority, citing John the Baptist, Christ, and the centurion.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.75Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that the ruler has authority to declare war and soldiers must obey, that even under a wicked king a soldier may be innocent, and that war commanded by God is certainly just.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.76Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that the patriarchs waged wars to show that earthly kingdoms are God's gift, while Christ and the martyrs suffered without resisting to show that the heavenly kingdom is to be sought, and notes the victories of Christian emperors.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.78Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that God's providence orders all things, that only iniquity, the disordering of love and use, is truly evil, and that the outcomes of peace and war profit or harm by God's hidden judgment and mercy.
  • Against Faustus the Manichaean 32.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that Christians avoid food sacrificed to idols so as not to share with demons, and that the apostolic ban on blood was a temporary measure uniting Jews and gentiles which the Church no longer keeps.
  • Canon 11Anonymous · 397 · Sons of clergy may neither stage nor watch public shows.
  • Canon 16Anonymous · 397 · Clergy may not take interest on loans.
  • Canon 6Anonymous · ca. 397–400 · Virgins dedicated to God are not to keep company with confessors or unrelated laymen, or visit readers' houses, except in respectable company.
  • Canon 11Anonymous · ca. 397–400 · A powerful man who robs a cleric or poor person and ignores the bishop's summons is excommunicated throughout the province until he makes restitution.
  • Canon 17Anonymous · ca. 397–400 · A married man with a concubine is excluded from communion, but an unmarried man faithful to one concubine is not.
  • Tractates 4Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · The Passover lamb 'from the lambs and the kids' signifies Christ's flesh taken from just and sinners alike; Gaudentius warns the newly baptized against idolatrous foods, magic, and drunken feasts for the dead.
  • Tractates 8Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · On the wedding at Cana: Christ's presence blesses marriage against the Manichees while virginity is the better part; Gaudentius warns the newly baptized against debauched banquets and reads the 'third day' as the age of grace, when Christ takes the Gentile church as bride after Israel's 'divorce'.
  • Tractates 11Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · On John 7:21 ('I have done one work'): healing the paralytic on the Sabbath fulfilled the Law, which permits work 'done for every soul' as circumcision does; 'judge a just judgment' forbids flattering the rich, admiring outward beauty, and judging Christ only as a man.
  • Tractates 13Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · A Christmas sermon on the incarnation and Mary's virginity in giving birth, followed by an exposition of Christ's gentle answer to Judas at Bethany, which leads into a long appeal for almsgiving against the luxury of rich landowners.
  • Tractates 15Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · For the feast of the Maccabean martyrs: why Christians honour Jews who died rather than eat pork; the food laws taught continence and obedience, as the tree of paradise did, and the apostolic decree kept only abstinence from idol meats, blood, and sexual immorality.
  • Tractates 18Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · A letter to Serminius on the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:1–13): its plain lesson is almsgiving with goods entrusted by God; allegorically the steward is the devil, who 'lowers the debts' by weakening faith (wheat) and good works (oil) through heresy and vainglory.
  • Homily 1.1 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · On Heb 1:1–4, Chrysostom shows the Son’s superiority to the prophets and angels, explains Paul’s alternation of lofty and lowly language about Christ, and urges purity of speech, fear of hell, and almsgiving.
  • Homily 2.3 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · On Heb 1:3–5, Chrysostom explains Christ’s upholding of creation, his session at the Father’s right hand, and his sonship, then warns against pride and praises the freedom of poverty over wealth.
  • Homily 3.5 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom explains that God distributes spiritual gifts by his own will for our good, and urges those without money or the gift of teaching to be faithful in the little they have.
  • Homily 3.6 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom teaches that love is a greater gift than miracles, open to all, and that true love for God’s sake extends to everyone, even enemies.
  • Homily 4.5 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom rebukes loud mourning and hired wailers at Christian funerals as a denial of the resurrection, and threatens to exclude from the church those who hire mourners.
  • Homily 4.6 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom forbids hired mourners at Christian funerals, threatens church discipline, and defends the church’s power to bind as given by Christ.
  • Homily 5.5 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom urges Christians to be like soldiers ready to shed their own blood for Christ but not to provoke conflict, and expounds the armor of God against the passions.
  • Homily 7.1 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · On Heb 4:11–14, Chrysostom teaches that faith must be joined by a right life, warns from Israel’s example, and explains the piercing word of God before whom all things lie bare.
  • Homily 7.3 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom urges Christians to run the race without slackening to the end, and rebukes old men who disgrace their gray hair by behaving like the young.
  • Homily 7.4 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom contrasts true and false old age, holds the young accountable for self-control, and insists that married people living in the world are bound to the same virtue as monks.
  • Homily 9.4 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom teaches that though there is no second baptism, repentance remains powerful, and describes its remedy: self-condemnation and confession, humility, prayer and tears, almsgiving, and forgiveness; he ends by showing the emptiness of worldly honors compared with the glory of the saints.
  • Homily 10.1 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · On Heb 6:7–12, Chrysostom urges fear of God’s word, explains the parable of the land that bears thorns, and shows how Paul tempers rebuke with praise and hope.
  • Homily 10.3 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · On Heb 6:11–12, Chrysostom shows how gently Paul urges perseverance in hope, and how patience in waiting for God’s promise is itself faith, while their service to the saints was done for God.
  • Homily 10.4 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom urges Christians to help every believer in need, not only monks, and indeed every man in distress, Greek or Jew, worthy or not, as the Good Samaritan did.
  • Homily 11.2 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · On Heb 6:17–20, Chrysostom explains the anchor of hope that enters within the veil, then describes the spiritual sacrifices of Christians, especially mercy to the poor, and rebukes those who despise beggars.
  • Homily 11.4 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom rebukes those who suspect beggars of fraud, urging Christians to give food and shelter to all without inquiry, after the example of God and of Abraham’s hospitality, keeping careful examination for those who claim clerical rank.
  • Homily 12.4 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom laments that Christians are not taught by frequent deaths and misfortunes, contrasts outward dirt with the inward defilement of sin, and urges repentance and works of mercy, by which God makes sins white as snow.
  • Homily 13.4 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom warns the baptized against falling away and catechumens against delaying baptism in order to sin, showing that even if saved by grace alone they would stand ashamed and lowest in the kingdom, and that God’s commands are not burdensome.
  • Homily 14.4 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom urges those who have grown old in sin to renew themselves by repentance, to forget their evils by remembering God, especially in prayer at night and dawn, and to keep vigil like contestants in the games before Christ, the judge.
  • Homily 15.2 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · On Heb 9:9–14, Chrysostom contrasts the Law’s fleshly purifications with Christ’s blood, which cleanses the conscience from dead works, then compares covetousness to harlotry and rebukes laughter and frivolity in church.
  • Homily 16.3 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom urges Christians to become heaven by drawing near to God, unmoved by afflictions like the sky in winter, as Paul did, and insists that virtue is easier than many arts and requires only a will that sets to work, with God working alongside.
  • Homily 17.5 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom explains the cry “The holy things for the holy” as a herald’s summons that makes each communicant his own accuser, calls for holiness and not mere freedom from sin, and urges Christians to train the eye of the soul on heavenly things.
  • Homily 18.2 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom urges his hearers to cast out fleshly thinking and to embrace voluntary poverty, which gives freedom and boldness before God and people, while wealth enslaves.
  • Homily 19.2 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom praises love as the easy road to every virtue, urges his hearers to love their neighbors as themselves and even their enemies after the example of Paul, Moses, and David, and calls for a long-suffering, large-souled spirit.
  • Homily 20.2 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom warns that sinning after sharing in the mysteries tramples on Christ, comforts those wronged with the thought of God's judgment, and urges contempt for wealth, with the example of Job, whose losses the devil used to tempt him to blasphemy.
  • Homily 20.4 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom shows from Job's wife that the devil works through those closest to us, teaches that God gives earthly goods only to those who prefer spiritual ones, and warns that wicked heirs who enjoy unearned wealth will be punished more heavily.
  • Homily 21.3 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom applies Heb 10:37 to the faint-hearted, proves from Christ's fulfilled prophecies that judgment will come, and warns against slander and gossip, urging his hearers to confess their own sins to God and judge themselves rather than others.
  • Homily 22.2 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom explains how Abel still speaks and how Enoch, taken up alive, pleased God by faith in a rewarder, then urges his hearers to seek God as one seeks lost gold or a lost son, to lift up their minds in prayer, and to overcome the devil's darts and anger by long-suffering.
  • Homily 23.2 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom explains that the patriarchs saw the promises from afar and sought the heavenly city, praises Sarah's faith, then breaks into a lament over his congregation's greed, slander and indifference to the good things God has prepared for those who love him.
  • Homily 24.1 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Expounding Heb 11:13–16, Chrysostom teaches that the whole of virtue is to live as strangers in this world, rebukes his hearers for living as citizens of earth in a kind of drunken sleep, and shows that even the wicked condemn their own vices by their shame.
  • Homily 24.2 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom shows how Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David lived as strangers on earth, detached from possessions and longing for the heavenly homeland, and explains why God calls himself their God as a mark of friendship.
  • Homily 24.3 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom urges his hearers to live as strangers so that God will not be ashamed of them, warns that even miracle-workers and clergy will be disowned without a pure life, and proposes training in one virtue after another, month by month, as farmers divide their work.
  • Homily 25.2 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom teaches that God gives earthly goods only to those who despise them, that by not avenging or insulting we rise above injury, and that greed is a filth worse than dung; with Paul (1 Cor 5:11) he forbids believers to dine with greedy or drunken fellow Christians.
  • Homily 25.4 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom laments that Christians dine with the greedy and drunken instead of shunning them, warns that slaves of sin will not remain in God's house, and condemns alms given from ill-gotten gains, which silence the church's rebuke.
  • Homily 26.2 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom teaches that burial in a foreign land is no loss, expounds the faith of Moses' parents and Moses' choice of the reproach of Christ over Egypt's treasures, urges his hearers to keep God always in mind, and holds up Daniel and the three youths as captives honored even by their captor, raising the question why Daniel accepted the king's worship.
  • Homily 27.5 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom urges humble, persevering prayer like the tax collector's, warns that small sins and resentment are still sins, and exposes the vainglory of calling oneself a sinner while resenting reproach from others, citing David's patience under Shimei's curses.
  • Homily 28.4 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom shows from Paul's sufferings that affliction does not overthrow those who cling to God, warns that present hardships are nothing beside eternal punishment or glory, and urges his hearers, especially wealthy women, to give their surplus as alms, to go about with few servants, and to dress modestly for the theater of heaven.
  • Homily 28.6 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom argues that a wife who needs nothing from her husband wins more respect than one decked in gold, condemns wearing jewelry to church where Paul's prohibition is read, and shows that plain dress brings true glory, spares the poor envy and blasphemy, and pleases a chaste husband better.
  • Homily 28.7 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom urges women to seek the inner beauty that God loves rather than outward adornment that attracts licentious men, and teaches that true virginity is purity of soul, open to married and unmarried alike, which with the oil of almsgiving admits believers to the heavenly bridal chamber.
  • Homily 29.2 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom shows that discipline marks true sons and that God, unlike earthly fathers, disciplines only for our good and holiness, proves from Noah, Abraham, Jacob and the prophets that the righteous shone through affliction, and warns that luxury destroyed many and weakens both body and soul.
  • Homily 29.4 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom argues that luxury and overeating ruin health, beauty and pleasure itself, that only moderate food truly nourishes, and that a pampered body becomes a breeding ground for lust, citing Paul's command to make no provision for the flesh.
  • Homily 30.1 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Expounding Heb 12:11–15, Chrysostom shows that discipline seems grievous but yields peaceful fruits, explains “holiness” as chastity in or out of marriage, and urges his hearers to build one another up by friendly, private, gentle correction, as those entrusted with talents must use them.
  • Homily 31.1 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Expounding Heb 12:14–17, Chrysostom teaches that peace and love mark Christians, that each must watch over others so that no one falls short of God's grace, that the root of bitterness must be cut off, and that Esau, profane and gluttonous, sold his birthright for a little pleasure.
  • Homily 31.2 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom explains that Esau found no place for repentance not because repentance is excluded, but because his tears, like Cain's grief, were not true repentance, and that Paul uses fear to secure those who stand while offering hope to those who have fallen.
  • Homily 31.3 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom contrasts Peter's true repentance with Judas's despair and Esau's angry tears, holds up David's lifelong sorrow, and urges his hearers to confess their sins to God one by one and remember them constantly, so that God may forget them and they may grow humble and gentle.
  • Homily 31.4 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom urges his hearers to remember and confess their sins now so that they are not exposed before all at the judgment, describes the public judgment and the fire from which no one can deliver, and insists that everyone, however poor, can and must give alms.
  • Homily 32.2 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Chrysostom explains the trumpet, fire and gloom at Sinai and shows the new covenant to be both greater and gentler, warns that this shaken world will pass, and urges his hearers to build their eternal homes through almsgiving, which he praises as a queen and a golden dove that intercedes before God's throne.
  • Homily 33.1 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Expounding Heb 12:28–13:9, Chrysostom urges thankful, reverent service, steadfast brotherly love and hospitality, honor for marriage with judgment on the sexually immoral and adulterers, freedom from the love of money, and imitation of the faith of their leaders.
  • Homily 33.2 on HebrewsJohn Chrysostom · ca. 398-404 · Expounding Heb 13:8–16, Chrysostom teaches that Christ is unchanging, that faith and not food laws strengthens the heart, that believers must go out with Christ outside the camp bearing his reproach and offer the sacrifice of praise, and that affliction and poverty, borne with thanksgiving, lead through the narrow way to heaven.
  • On Catechizing the Uninstructed 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–405 · After the narration the catechist should present the resurrection, the last judgment, and the heavenly city, and prepare the hearer for temptations, for scandal from bad Christians, and against placing his hope in any human being.
  • On Catechizing the Uninstructed 16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–405 · Augustine begins his model address to an uneducated city dweller seeking eternal rest, showing that riches, honours, taverns, shows, and pleasures cannot give the rest that is found only in God.
  • On Catechizing the Uninstructed 23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–405 · The narration continues with the ascension, Pentecost as the fulfilment of the giving of the law, the love that fulfils the two great commandments, the conversion of thousands of Jews, the first community of goods, Paul's mission, and the persecutions.
  • On Catechizing the Uninstructed 25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–405 · The model address ends with the resurrection of the body, eternal punishment and the eternal vision of the Trinity, and warnings against temptations from pagans, heretics, Jews, and especially bad Christians within the Church, urging the candidate to join the good and hope in God alone.
  • On the Trinity 8.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · All things we love are good, but beyond this or that good is good itself, which is God; the mind becomes good only by turning in love to this unchangeable good.
  • On the Trinity 8.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · We love the apostle as a just mind, and we know what justice is not from the senses but from an inner truth, the form of justice, which we must love and cleave to in order to become just.
  • On the Trinity 8.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The key to knowing God is true love; love of God and of neighbour imply each other, and God, who is love, is found not by seeking powers outside us but within, by humble love.
  • On the Trinity 8.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Whoever loves his brother knows love, and God is love; so in brotherly love God is known, and the two commandments cannot be separated.
  • On the Trinity 8.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · We love Paul because we see in the unchangeable truth the form of justice by which he lived; faith and hope in such lives make us love that form, God, more ardently and know him more clearly.
  • On the Trinity 9.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The inner word is conceived by desire when the creature is loved for itself, by love when it is referred to God; love joins the mind and its word as a third.
  • On the Trinity 9.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · In love of spiritual things the word is born as soon as it is conceived; in love of temporal things it is born only when its object is obtained, and that never satisfies.
  • On the Trinity 11.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Every particular will has its own end, but all should be referred to the final end of a happy life, and right wills linked together form a road of ascent.
  • On the Trinity 12.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Whatever we share with the beasts belongs to the outer man; our upright posture reminds us to raise the mind to spiritual things.
  • On the Trinity 12.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The soul's love of its own power makes it fall from the common whole to a private part, so that it becomes entangled in bodily things and their images.
  • On the Trinity 12.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Errors in temporal action made with a good will are human temptations, but setting one's final good in bodily things is a spiritual fornication into which the soul slides by degrees.
  • On the Trinity 12.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The fall in Gen 3 figures how sin arises in one mind: delight in thought is the woman eating alone, and the decision to act is her giving to the man, yet even sins of thought need forgiveness.
  • On the Trinity 12.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine distinguishes wisdom, the contemplation of eternal things, from knowledge, the rational management of temporal things, citing Job 28:28 and 1 Cor 12:8.
  • On the Trinity 13.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Some wills, such as wanting to buy cheap and sell dear, are commonly shared, but only the will to be happy is truly found in everyone.
  • On the Trinity 13.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · All want happiness, yet they disagree about what it is, which raises the puzzle of how all can love what not all know.
  • On the Trinity 13.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Following Cicero, Augustine rejects the idea that happiness is living as one wishes and concludes that only one who has all he wants and wants nothing wrongly is happy.
  • On the Trinity 13.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Men perversely prefer having what they want to wanting rightly, though a good will brings one nearer to happiness.
  • On the Trinity 13.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · In this life faith is needed, for only in the life to come will the good live as they will; the philosophers' boast of living as they will is pitiable, and happiness requires immortality.
  • On the Trinity 13.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · God chose to overcome the devil by justice rather than power, setting the order that justice comes first and power follows at the judgment.
  • On the Trinity 14.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · With Cicero's Hortensius Augustine asks whether the four virtues continue in the life to come, holding that justice and in some form the others remain, though their present works will pass.
  • On the Trinity 14.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Rightly loving itself, the mind loves God; though weak and erring it never loses memory, understanding, and love of itself, and when it clings to God it will be one spirit with him and unchangeable.
  • On the Trinity 14.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The mind does not remember its lost happiness in paradise, which it knows only by Scripture, but it does remember God, in whose light even the ungodly see the unchangeable rules of justice.
  • On the Trinity 15.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Love is the greatest gift of God, without which no other gift profits, and the love that is from God and is God is properly the Holy Spirit, rightly called the Gift of God.
  • On Baptism, against the Donatists 4.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Cyprian’s treatise on jealousy and envy shows how great an evil envy is; free of it himself, he kept communion with those who differed on baptism, as his council speech and the end of his letter to Jubaianus show.
  • On Baptism, against the Donatists 4.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Cyprian bore with plainly wicked, greedy fellow bishops as well as with good colleagues who differed, for the sake of unity, as Paul bore with the envious.
  • On Baptism, against the Donatists 4.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Paul lists heresy among many works of the flesh that exclude from God’s kingdom; a morally upright heretic is excluded, but so is a Catholic guilty of the other vices.
  • On Baptism, against the Donatists 4.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Each of the vices Paul lists, not only heresy, excludes from the kingdom; punishments differ in degree, but all excluded go to the left hand and the eternal fire.
  • On Baptism, against the Donatists 4.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Augustine will not judge whether a wicked Catholic is worse than a morally upright heretic; vices cluster, but the sacrament is God’s and is the same, and good, in both, as light is the same in good and bad eyes.
  • The Harmony of the Gospels 1.51Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · The supposed decline in Christian times is the loss of shameful luxuries such as theaters and games, which even Cicero and the philosophers condemned.
  • The Harmony of the Gospels 2.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Differences in wording, order, fullness, or memory among the evangelists are not lies; what matters is the truth of the things and meanings, which they share.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 2.127Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Petilian charges the Catholics with breaking the commandment against killing.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 2.129Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Petilian calls the Catholics spiritual adulterers.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 2.131Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Petilian accuses the Catholics of false witness before the emperors about church property.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 2.133Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Petilian accuses the Catholics of coveting and seizing Donatist property.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 2.134Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Property used for unity is rightly the church's, as Canaan became Israel's and Jerusalem the church's; the Donatists themselves seized the Maximianists' basilicas.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 2.137Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Petilian cites Matt 5:19 against the Catholics.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 2.141Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Petilian begins to apply the Beatitudes against the Catholics.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 2.143Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Petilian cites Matt 5:5.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 2.167Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Petilian cites Christ's command of mutual love.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 2.171Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Petilian cites 1 Cor 13:1–3.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 2.173Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Petilian cites 1 Cor 13:4–8 against Catholic persecution and seizure of property.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 2.225Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Petilian accuses Catholic laymen of joining the church to protect their wealth.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 2.227Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Petilian claims Donatist poverty and martyrdom.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 2.228Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Petilian misquotes Christ's promise; his boast of poverty sits ill with his colleague Crispinus of Calama, who bought an estate and rebaptized its tenants by force.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 3.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Slander is a 'weapon of the left hand' by which God's servants defeat the devil, through loving those who slander them.
  • Against the Letters of Petilian 3.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–403 · Augustine will use Petilian's slanders to grow in love of his enemy, praying for him as Christ prayed on the cross.
  • On the Work of Monks 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Augustine writes at the request of Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, on whether monks who refuse to work, contrary to 2 Thess 3:10, should be tolerated.
  • On the Work of Monks 2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · The monks who refuse manual work argue from Matt 6:25–34 that Paul's command in 2 Thess 3:10 refers only to spiritual work, such as reading, prayer, and encouraging others.
  • On the Work of Monks 4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · In 2 Thess 3:6–12 Paul, who had a right to be supported but worked night and day, commands those who walk in disorder to work quietly and eat their own bread.
  • On the Work of Monks 12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Paul's becoming all things to all, including his observances at Jerusalem and his refusal of support, was compassion for the weak, not pretense.
  • On the Work of Monks 13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Paul refused support from the Thessalonians and Corinthians and worked with his hands, as he also told the Ephesian presbyters, to cut off any pretext of greed and spare the weak.
  • On the Work of Monks 15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Paul worked day and night while carrying the care of all the churches, unlike these monks who, living at leisure, ask when he found time to work.
  • On the Work of Monks 16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Paul urged the faithful to support servants of God who are in need, and assured Timothy, too weak for manual work, that taking support from those he served was his right, not begging.
  • On the Work of Monks 17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Paul urged the gentile churches to support the poor saints at Jerusalem who had given up their property, and took a companion appointed by the churches so that no one could suspect him of keeping the collection.
  • On the Work of Monks 19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · As Paul urged the faithful to support servants of God, so monks should obey him by working with their hands for the common good, what they lack being supplied by the offerings of the faithful.
  • On the Work of Monks 21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Not all monks can teach, and those who can should do so in turn; Paul himself, as Acts shows, kept set times for preaching and worked at others.
  • On the Work of Monks 26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Idle monks become busybodies like the idle younger widows of 1 Tim 5:13 and corrupt vigorous novices by their talk, mocking those who work.
  • On the Work of Monks 28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Taken literally, the example of the birds would require monks to forage daily in the fields, as the law allowed passers-by to eat, and would leave them nothing in seasons without food.
  • On the Work of Monks 29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Recluses who shut themselves in for days of prayer must store food, which birds do not do; the monks' literal reading would condemn even these admirable ascetics.
  • On the Work of Monks 30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · If storing for tomorrow is not contrary to the gospel, neither is earning a living by manual work.
  • On the Work of Monks 31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · The monks rightly cite Christ's purse, the famine relief, and Paul's collection to justify storing for tomorrow, and so cannot use Matt 6 to justify idleness.
  • On the Work of Monks 34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Christ's command not to be anxious about food and clothing forbids preaching the gospel for the sake of a living, that is, serving mammon, not providing honestly for necessities.
  • On the Work of Monks 35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · The birds and lilies teach trust in God's providence, not refusal to work; just as the apostles fled persecution rather than tempt God, those who can work should not expect to be fed like birds.
  • On the Work of Monks 37Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Augustine insists that he lays no burden he would not bear, for he would rather work with his hands than spend his days judging disputes as bishops must, and he urges the monks to obey Paul.
  • On the Work of Monks 38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Augustine concludes his reply to Aurelius, warning lay supporters not to encourage idle monks by a misplaced generosity, while praising their support of true servants of God.
  • On the Work of Monks 39Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · Some monks wear long hair against Paul's command in 1 Cor 11, claiming the example of Samuel and Samson and a show of humility, though the veil of the old covenant has been removed in Christ.
  • Exodus, lines 764–788Cyprianus Gallus · early 5th cent. · The commandments continue: God’s mercy to the obedient, his name, the sabbath grounded in creation, honour to parents, and the prohibitions of adultery, murder, perjury, theft, false witness and coveting, followed by the law of the altar.
  • Exodus, lines 818–842Cyprianus Gallus · early 5th cent. · Laws on wilful murder, striking or cursing parents, kidnapping, injury in a quarrel, killing a slave, and a blow that causes a pregnant woman to miscarry an unformed child.
  • Exodus, lines 843–865Cyprianus Gallus · early 5th cent. · The law of retaliation (eye for eye), freedom for a slave maimed by his master, and the laws of the goring ox and the negligent owner.
  • Exodus, lines 938–962Cyprianus Gallus · early 5th cent. · Laws against usury and on returning a pledged cloak by sunset, against reviling the gods and rulers, on first fruits and the firstborn, on unclean meat, false witness and partiality, and on helping an enemy’s beast.
  • Leviticus, lines 127–149Cyprianus Gallus · early 5th cent. · The forbidden unions continue (stepmother, two sisters, a neighbour’s wife), with the bans on child sacrifice, homosexual intercourse and bestiality; then the laws of gleaning, honesty, wages, and care for the deaf.
  • Leviticus, lines 150–173Cyprianus Gallus · early 5th cent. · Laws of impartial judgment, against hatred and revenge, to love one’s neighbour as oneself, against mixing kinds, and on intercourse with a betrothed slave woman.
  • Leviticus, lines 174–199Cyprianus Gallus · early 5th cent. · The law of the betrothed slave woman continues; then laws on the first fruits of new trees, divination, cutting the hair and beard, tattoos, prostituting a daughter, respect for the aged, honest measures, mediums, and mourning rites.
  • Deuteronomy, lines 53–77Cyprianus Gallus · early 5th cent. · Moses sums up the law as gentle and just: do not do to others what you would not wish done to you; keep the sabbaths, the Passover and honour to parents; avoid foreign marriages and idols; exempt from war the man with a new house, vineyard or bride, and the fearful; spare the suppliant.
  • Homily 2, section 5Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · Evil comes from free will, not from nature or outside; the primeval darkness was a mere shadow cast by the newly made heaven, which shut out the light of the spiritual world.
  • Homily 4, section 1Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · As city crowds feast on theatre and races, Christians are called to the far greater spectacle of God's works in heaven, earth, air and water.
  • Homily 5, section 2Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · Plants without seed reproduce from the root, each 'according to its kind'; grass and flowers remind us, with Isaiah, how quickly human strength, wealth and power wither.
  • Homily 5, section 6Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · All trees appeared at once, the rose then without thorns; the vine and the olive teach the soul, grafted into the church, to grow upward in love and bear the fruit of good works and mercy.
  • Homily 5, section 7Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · Trees differ in roots, bark and fruit, can be improved by cultivation, and even need the help of wild trees, lessons of hope for sinners and of zeal for Christians who see virtue among outsiders.
  • Homily 6, section 5Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · Astrologers twist 'for signs' into a doctrine of fate, but their reckoning requires a precision in timing births that no one can achieve.
  • Homily 6, section 6Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · Astrologers derive character from the animals the signs are named after, which makes the heavens depend on beasts and is absurd; their arguments are spiders' webs.
  • Homily 6, section 7Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · Astrology destroys free will: it makes the stars or their maker the authors of evil, cannot explain hereditary kingship, and would make laws, judgment, labour and Christian hope meaningless.
  • Homily 6, section 10Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · The sun's light, flooding the earth at once, proves its size; the waxing and waning moon teaches the instability of human things and warns the soul against inconstancy.
  • Homily 7, section 3Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · Fish that devour one another picture the greedy rich; the crab's trick and the octopus's disguise warn against fraud and flattery; fish keeping to their own waters teach contentment.
  • Homily 7, section 4Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · Unlike greedy men who move boundaries, sea creatures keep to their places, and migrating fish obey God's law in travelling to the Black Sea to spawn, a rebuke to disobedient humans.
  • Homily 8, section 1Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · God's word gave the earth power to bring forth animals, not a soul of its own as the Manichaeans claim; land animals have a fuller life than fish, and the camel's grudge rebukes vindictive men.
  • Homily 8, section 4Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · Bees live as a commonwealth under a king chosen by nature, who has a sting but does not use it, a lesson in not repaying evil; their honeycomb surpasses geometry.
  • Homily 8, section 5Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · Cranes keeping watch, storks caring for their aged parents, the resourceful swallow and the halcyon whose brooding calms the sea teach vigilance, hospitality, filial piety, and trust in God.
  • Homily 8, section 6Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · The faithful turtledove commends widowhood over remarriage; the eagle's neglect rebukes parents who expose or disinherit children; vultures said to breed without mating make the virgin birth credible.
  • Homily 9, section 2Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · God's command still drives nature, keeping each kind through its offspring and even producing life from the earth; man, upright and heavenly, must not sink to the level of beasts.
  • Homily 9, section 3Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · Animals have characters and instinctive remedies and foresight, like the ant storing food, which shames humans into preparing for the age to come; the natural law teaches us good and evil without books.
  • Homily 9, section 4Eustathius Latinus · 5th cent. · Nature implants virtues and family love, as Paul's commands to parents and children confirm; lambs know their mothers and dogs reason like logicians and stay loyal, shaming those who keep company with blasphemers.
  • Opusculum 3.3Mark the Hermit · early to mid fifth century · Mark exposes contempt for inferiors, rivalry with equals, and envy of superiors.
  • Opusculum 3.4Mark the Hermit · early to mid fifth century · Forgiving others is alms anyone can give; refusing it makes us the unforgiving servant.
  • Opusculum 3.5Mark the Hermit · early to mid fifth century · Greed of any gift is wealth that rots; comprehensive commandments contain the particular ones, and condemnation comes from refusing repentance.
  • Opusculum 7.0Mark the Hermit · early to mid fifth century · An old ascetic answers a lawyer on not going to law, on prayer, on worldly wisdom, and on people-pleasing, then teaches his monks that afflictions come by God's just judgment.
  • Commentary on Daniel 4, scholion 25Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Daniel urges mercy because the king's cruelty to captives had angered God.
  • Verses to the Grace of the Lord 61–90Pomponius · 5th century(?) · Tityrus teaches that contempt of wealth and faith lead to the blessed abodes while the greedy are punished, and then begins to sing of the Father's work from the creation.
  • Hymn 2, lines 65–110Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Jacob, lamed in the thigh while wrestling the angel until dawn, teaches that the man who yields to God loses his rebellious lust; the day should be spent without sin under God’s watchful eye.
  • Hymn 7, lines 193–218Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Christians should follow Christ’s fasting so the spirit rules the appetite; fasting joined with almsgiving destroys sin, and he who gives in secret is repaid a hundredfold.
  • Poem, lines 241–270Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · The disorder of nature comes not from the Creator but from the license of things after the fall; human life sets the example of sin in war, lust and avarice, the root of all evils, and in women’s adornment with gold and jewels.
  • Poem, lines 271–300Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Women paint their faces and load themselves with jewels, and men, the head of the woman, also grow soft in silks, feathers and perfumes, so that luxury corrupts every sense.
  • Poem, lines 361–390Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · The fault lies in the crowd’s mind, not in things: oil, ropes and beasts are turned to deadly shows; no one lifts his mind to God, but all serve the devil, whose army besieges the soul.
  • Poem, lines 391–420Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · The devil’s army of vices, among them pride of learning, eloquence and idolatry, is pictured as the seven nations of Canaan arrayed for war against the human race.
  • Poem, lines 421–450Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · The devil enslaves weak and simple minds, the greedy and the ambitious magistrate alike; the soul’s captivity to sin is the true Babylonian exile that Jeremiah lamented.
  • Poem, lines 511–540Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Our struggle is with the evil powers of the air under Belial, as Paul says; the body is easily ruled by the mind, but the devil’s arrows are swifter than a Parthian’s, though the soul is able to guard against them.
  • Poem, lines 541–570Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · The soul is given keen powers to resist the devil, who can harm us only as far as we allow; our sins are our own offspring, like Absalom who rose against his father David.
  • Poem, lines 601–630Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · The soul likewise conceives from the devil’s poisoned kiss and gives birth to sins that destroy her, as Christ said, “your father the devil”; though betrothed to Christ the King, she prefers adultery with the devil.
  • Poem, lines 661–690Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Against the objection that God could force everyone to be good, the poet answers that God gave man lordship over the world and over himself, with free will, since goodness without the freedom to choose otherwise would be neither virtue nor merit.
  • Poem, lines 691–720Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · God made Adam free and urged him to choose life; Adam chose death, persuaded but not compelled by the serpent, and man now stands between God and the devil; the story of Lot begins.
  • Poem, lines 751–780Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Lot keeps on his way without looking back at the burning city, a figure of the world under judgment, while his wife turns back; Ruth and Orpah likewise, equally free, choose differently, one following Naomi, the other returning to her gods.
  • Poem, lines 781–810Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Ruth became an ancestress of Christ; the poet then illustrates free choice by twin brothers at a fork in the road, one taking the steep thorny path to heaven, the other the pleasant path to the swamp, and by doves, some caught by the fowler’s bait, others avoiding it.
  • Hymn 2, lines 193–224Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Lawrence argues that gold corrupts chastity, peace and law, while the true gold is light and humankind; bodily weakness humbles and strengthens the soul, and disease of the mind is worse than disease of the flesh.
  • Hymn 2, lines 225–256Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · The poor, though weak in body, are sound within; the rich are diseased inwardly: the proud man with dropsy, the miser with crippled hands, the lustful man with filth, the ambitious man with fever, the gossip with an itching heart.
  • Hymn 2, lines 257–288Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · The prefect, a worshiper of demons, is himself diseased; the poor he despises will rise whole and crowned in heaven, while the powerful will appear in the soul’s true state, ragged and foul, for nothing is more hideous than a sinner.
  • Hymn 10, lines 321–352Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · God created all things by his command through the Word; his temple is the human mind, where Faith guards the door and the sacrifices offered to Christ and the Father are modesty, innocence, peace, chastity, the fear of God, fasting, hope and generosity.
  • Hymn 10, lines 481–512Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Romanus compares torture to surgery, which cuts in order to heal, describes the corruption, lusts and luxuries of the flesh, and urges the executioner to cut away the tinder of sin so the mind may be free.
  • Poem, lines 31–60Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Faith kills the Worship of the Old Gods and crowns her martyrs; Chastity then fights Sodomite Lust, disarms her and runs her through, recalling Judith’s victory over Holofernes.
  • Poem, lines 61–90Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Chastity taunts Lust: if Judith under the Law could overcome it, much more now that the Virgin has borne Christ, God and man, the Word made flesh who remained what he was and raised human flesh to the divine; Lust is to be cast into hell.
  • Poem, lines 91–120Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Chastity washes her sword in the Jordan and consecrates it at the altar of the baptismal font; Anger attacks Patience, who stands calm and untouched amid the battle.
  • Poem, lines 121–150Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Anger’s weapons glance off the armor of Patience, who waits calmly; when Anger’s sword shatters on her helmet, Anger in frenzy kills herself with one of her own javelins.
  • Poem, lines 151–180Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Patience, whose law is to overcome by enduring, goes on with Job, who is told to rest and receive back double what he lost; Patience is the companion of every virtue; Pride rides out on a horse covered with a lion’s skin.
  • Poem, lines 211–240Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Pride boasts that she and the vices have ruled man from his birth and since Adam’s fall, and scorns the virtues as idle dreamers of a future good, unfit for war.
  • Poem, lines 241–270Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Pride, charging to trample Lowly Mind, falls with her horse into a pit dug by Fraud, one of the vices, and is crushed.
  • Poem, lines 271–300Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Lowly Mind, helped by Hope, beheads Pride; Hope mocks the fallen vice, citing Christ’s saying that the humble are exalted and the proud brought low, and David’s victory over Goliath.
  • Poem, lines 301–330Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Hope flies up to heaven; Luxury, drunk from an all-night banquet, rides into battle in a jeweled chariot, fighting with flowers and perfume, and the Virtues begin to lay down their arms in admiration.
  • Poem, lines 331–360Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · The Virtues begin to desert to Luxury, until Sobriety plants the standard of the Cross and rebukes them for exchanging the anointing and the tunic of baptism for garlands, perfumes and silks.
  • Poem, lines 391–420Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Sobriety cites Jonathan, whose repentance saved him, and turns the Cross against Luxury’s horses; the chariot overturns, and Sobriety kills Luxury with a stone that smashes her mouth.
  • Poem, lines 421–450Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Sobriety taunts the dying Luxury; Jest, Petulance, Love, Pomp, Charm, Discord and Pleasure flee, strewing their finery, which Sobriety’s soldiers refuse to touch; Avarice appears.
  • Poem, lines 451–480Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Avarice gathers up the spoils of Luxury, attended by Care, Fear, Perjury and other vices; her offspring, the Crimes, set brother against brother and son against father, and she strikes down multitudes.
  • Poem, lines 481–510Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Avarice blinds, deceives and burns her victims and is the most destructive of vices; she dares to attack even the priests, but Reason shields them, and Avarice complains that her power fails.
  • Poem, lines 511–540Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Avarice boasts that she has conquered every kind of person and fills hell, yet Christians despise money; she recalls her triumphs over Judas Iscariot and over Achan at Jericho.
  • Poem, lines 541–570Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Avarice ends her boast with Achan, of noble Judah yet destroyed, and resolves to deceive by fraud; she disguises herself as the virtue Thrift and cloaks her greed as care for one’s children, so that the Virtues waver.
  • Poem, lines 571–600Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Good Works, who has given all her wealth to the poor, leaps into the battle and strangles Avarice.
  • Poem, lines 601–630Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Good Works distributes the hoarded wealth to the poor and tells the Virtues that the greatest peace is to want no more than need requires, taking no thought for tomorrow, as Christ taught, since God feeds the birds.
  • Poem, lines 751–780Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · Concord tells the Virtues that peace in the commonwealth and in the soul rests on unity; as Christ the mediator unites God and man, so one Spirit must unite all we do; no gift, not even martyrdom, pleases God without peace.
  • Poem, lines 871–915Prudentius · ca. 400-405 · In the inner shrine, on a throne of a great pearl bought by Faith, sits Wisdom holding an ever-green sceptre like Aaron’s budding rod; the poet thanks Christ for teaching us the soul’s inner warfare between flesh and spirit, which lasts until Christ makes the soul a temple where Wisdom reigns.
  • Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 6–12Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Several questions: why the risen will be impassible though they feel joy or pain (their state is fixed and unchanging); why comparing rest and punishment changes nothing in the age to come; why God is not the author of evil (free choice, not knowledge, makes us good or bad); how biblical anthropomorphism differs from pagan myth; and why God, who contains all things, is greater than all and preserves no evil by nature.
  • Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 20–21Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Two questions: why Christ called the apostles fishers of men (men must die to their old life); and whether monks troubled by involuntary sexual dreams must abstain from communion (no: dreams are not in our power; only delight in them is culpable, and grief and tears suffice).
  • Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 46Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Nothing in creation is evil by nature; abstaining from or using the goods of life is praiseworthy when done rightly and blameworthy when not, and evil arises only from misuse by free choice.
  • Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 78–79Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · David, restored by repentance, remained after God's heart, so Christ could descend from Bathsheba, though the child of the adultery died; and Josiah's violent death punished his disobedience to the prophet's warning, while his idolatrous sons' captivity refutes pagan claims of the gods' revenge.
  • Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 98–99Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Two questions: fear of God is compatible with perfect love, since we fear to lose what we love until the contest is over; and the law's animal sacrifices honored God as the offering of the worshiper's own soul, unlike pagan human sacrifice, while Jephthah is praised for keeping his rash vow, which God allowed as a warning against open-ended vows.
  • Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 103Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Keeping the law was possible, as the blameless Zechariah and Elizabeth show, since its sum is to love God and neighbor; men sin from unwillingness, not inability, which is why not all fall into the same sins.
  • Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 125Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Paul's words to the high priest and about Alexander were not curses or revenge but prophecies of God's judgment, fitting an apostle who leaves vengeance to God.
  • On the Good of Marriage 4Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Marital faithfulness is a great good; its violation is adultery, and breaking an adulterous pact to return to one's spouse is not faithlessness.
  • On the Good of Marriage 5Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Augustine asks whether a faithful sexual union without intention of marriage or openness to children is a marriage, and distinguishes the faults of spouses from marriage itself.
  • On the Good of Marriage 6Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Augustine grades marital intercourse (blameless for procreation, venially faulty from desire) and argues that the marriage bond, as a kind of sacrament, survives separation.
  • On the Good of Marriage 8Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Marriage and continence are two goods, one better, not two evils; Augustine illustrates this with Martha and Mary, Susanna, Anna, and the Virgin Mary.
  • On the Good of Marriage 9Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Marriage is a good for the sake of something else; it was necessary for the patriarchs, but now continence is the better choice.
  • On the Good of Marriage 11Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Marriage itself is not a sin; what the apostle pardons is intercourse beyond the purpose of procreation, which marriage excuses.
  • On the Good of Marriage 12Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Augustine ranks sexual sins and says the honor of marriage lies in chaste procreation and faithful rendering of the marital debt.
  • On the Good of Marriage 14Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Some married people also think of the things of the Lord, as Peter's instructions to wives and husbands show, but such marriages are rare.
  • On the Good of Marriage 15Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Christians now free to choose continence should prefer it; the patriarchs married from duty, not lust, and would have embraced continence had it been offered.
  • On the Good of Marriage 16Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Even a concubinage entered for children alone does not surpass marriage; the goodness of an institution is distinct from the conduct of those using it.
  • On the Good of Marriage 18Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Augustine compares intercourse with eating: both involve natural pleasure, both have lawful and unlawful uses, and the patriarchs used marriage as the apostles used food.
  • On the Good of Marriage 25Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Continence is a virtue of the soul that may exist as a disposition without being exercised, as with Job's patience and Timothy's abstinence from wine.
  • On the Good of Marriage 28Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Celibate chastity is better than married chastity, but persons must be judged by the virtue they possess, even if circumstances do not call it into action.
  • On the Good of Marriage 29Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Obedience is a greater good than continence, so an obedient married woman is better than a disobedient virgin.
  • On the Good of Marriage 30Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Obedience is the mother of the virtues; virginity is a counsel, chastity a command, so a more obedient wife is to be preferred to a less obedient virgin.
  • On the Good of Marriage 31Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Abraham's obedience shows he would have given up marriage if commanded; Christian virgins should not think themselves better than the patriarchs.
  • On the Good of Marriage 35Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Augustine urges consecrated virgins to humility, reminding them that they will share the kingdom with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who married for Christ's sake.
  • Literal Commentary on Genesis 7.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The soul was not created with foreknowledge of its future sins; God is praised for making a creature with free choice that can live justly by faith and is justly punished for sin.
  • Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The tree of knowledge was a real and harmless tree, named for the knowledge of good and evil that disobedience to God's command would bring by experience of punishment.
  • Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The forbidden tree was not evil in itself; the prohibition showed the good of obedience and the evil of disobedience as such, since sin sought escape from God's dominion.
  • Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Adam learned good and evil by the experience of disobedience; evil is the loss of good, and Christ alone chose the good without experience of evil, the singular example of obedience.
  • Literal Commentary on Genesis 9.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Before sin, bodies were animal but not doomed to die, and the first couple could have begotten children by will without lust; through sin death and the law in the members entered, which marriage orders and continence restrains.
  • Literal Commentary on Genesis 10.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Carnal desire arises from soul and flesh together; the flesh “desires” as the soul desires through it, a result of the first sin, which the faithful under grace must keep from reigning.
  • Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Pride, a general avarice for one's own excellence, is the beginning of all sin; the two loves, holy and private, first divided the angels and now form the two cities of the just and the wicked.
  • Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Sexual images in dreams, and the bodily results that follow, are not sins, since the dreamer cannot distinguish image from body; yet a good disposition of soul can show itself even in sleep, as Solomon asked for wisdom in a dream.
  • On Holy Virginity 28Augustine of Hippo · 401 · All the faithful, including the married, can follow Christ in the Beatitudes, though only virgins follow him in virginity.
  • On Holy Virginity 31Augustine of Hippo · 401 · The greater the gift of virginity, the more humility is needed, since pride and envy make the devil what he is.
  • On Holy Virginity 32Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Augustine gathers Christ's teaching on humility: the Beatitudes, the centurion, the Canaanite woman, the Pharisee and tax collector, the child, and the washing of feet.
  • On Holy Virginity 33Augustine of Hippo · 401 · All Christians must be humble, but most of all those, like virgins, who possess a great good.
  • On Holy Virginity 34Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Augustine sets aside vowed women who regret their vow or live loosely, and addresses his warning about pride to those who keep their profession well.
  • On Holy Virginity 35Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Christ, to whom all things are given, teaches above all 'Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.'
  • On Holy Virginity 36Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Repentant sinners in the Gospels easily learn humility from Christ, remembering their sins and his mercy.
  • On Holy Virginity 37Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Virgins raised in the church from childhood must learn humility from Christ himself, since they fall far short of him.
  • On Holy Virginity 38Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Virgins should learn humility not from repentant sinners but from Christ, who humbled himself out of love, lest they become like the proud Pharisee.
  • On Holy Virginity 39Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Virgins need the chaste fear of God that goes with love, not servile fear, so that they may not grow proud.
  • On Holy Virginity 40Augustine of Hippo · 401 · The Spirit rests on the humble, and the dangers of this life should keep virgins humble.
  • On Holy Virginity 41Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Virgins should love God more, not less, since he kept them from sins and gave them the gift of continence by grace.
  • On Holy Virginity 42Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Virginity is God's gift, and Scripture's prayers for obedience and repentance show that even what God commands is done only by his grace.
  • On Holy Virginity 43Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Both continence and the wisdom to know it is God's gift come from God, so virgins should love much and fear pride.
  • On Holy Virginity 44Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Knowing that her virginity is God's gift, a virgin must not despise others, and her humility must be real, not feigned.
  • On Holy Virginity 49Augustine of Hippo · 401 · The virgins of Revelation are praised for having no lie in their mouth, so they must confess, with John, that they are not without sin.
  • On Holy Virginity 50Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Confession is no license to sin; small sins that creep in are made grave by pride but cleansed by Christ through humility.
  • On Holy Virginity 51Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Even if some could live without sin, the greater they are the more they must humble themselves, following Christ the meek and humble teacher.
  • On Holy Virginity 52Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Humility is the dwelling of love, the guardian of virginity; humble married people follow the Lamb more easily than proud virgins.
  • On Holy Virginity 53Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Augustine urges virgins to follow the Lamb humbly, trusting God to keep his gifts, praying against temptation, and confessing their sins.
  • On Holy Virginity 54Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Virgins who add holy conduct to virginity show the angelic life on earth, but must still humble themselves the more.
  • Canon 74 (Bruns)Anonymous · 401–424 (collection of 419) · An interim administrator of a vacant see may not keep it and must provide a bishop within a year; the emperors are to be asked for defenders of the poor.
  • Canon 82 (Bruns)Anonymous · 401–424 (collection of 419) · The emperor is to be asked to allow the freeing of slaves in church.
  • Letter 2 to Victricius of Rouen, chapter 13Innocent I, bishop of Rome · 401–417 · Veiled virgins who marry or are seduced may not do penance while the man lives, just as a woman who marries another while her husband lives is an adulteress.
  • Letter 2 to Victricius of Rouen, chapter 14 and conclusionInnocent I, bishop of Rome · 401–417 · Virgins who had promised virginity but were not yet veiled must do penance for a time if they marry, as Paul condemns widows who abandon their pledge; the letter closes with an exhortation and its date (15 February 404).
  • Letter 6 to Exsuperius, chapter 2Innocent I, bishop of Rome · 401–417 · Innocent rules that those who lived incontinently after baptism and ask for penance at death are to receive both penance and final communion.
  • Letter 6 to Exsuperius, chapter 3Innocent I, bishop of Rome · 401–417 · Innocent declines to censure baptized magistrates who used torture or passed death sentences, since the sword is granted by God, leaving their deeds to God's judgment.
  • Letter 6 to Exsuperius, chapter 5Innocent I, bishop of Rome · 401–417 · Innocent rules that a baptized person who drafts a petition asking for a criminal's punishment is not guilty, since the courts decide the case.
  • Letter 15, chapter 1Innocent I, bishop of Rome · 401–417 · Innocent praises the noblewoman Juliana for preferring Christian devotion to noble rank and urges her to persevere.
  • Letter 29, chapter 3Innocent I, bishop of Rome · 401–417 · Innocent argues that those who owe their very existence to God cannot deny that they owe their daily goodness to his grace.
  • Apology against Rufinus 1.18Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome quotes Origen's lost Stromata 6, which follows Plato in allowing a useful lie as a medicine, to support his charge that Origenists tolerate lying.
  • Apology against Rufinus 1.31Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome replies that a dream cannot bind like a waking oath, retorts with the vows of baptism and monastic life, and warns Rufinus with the Psalms.
  • Apology against Rufinus 3.1Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome begins Book 3 by answering Rufinus's threatening letter, applying to him Scripture's words about fools and promising not to answer slander with slander.
  • Apology against Rufinus 3.2Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome protests at what he takes as Rufinus's threat of death, citing apostles who disagreed without enmity, and says he had wished to keep silent at Chromatius's request.
  • Apology against Rufinus 3.4Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome denies bribing Rufinus's secretary, accuses Rufinus's circle of stealing his own letter from Eusebius's room at Bethlehem, and hints that Rufinus's money corrupts others.
  • Apology against Rufinus 3.8Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome asks why his defence of himself should provoke Rufinus to threaten him with civil courts.
  • Apology against Rufinus 3.17Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome defends his hospitality to Paul, an Egyptian bishop deposed by Theophilus, appealing to the Samaritan and to Christ in the stranger.
  • Apology against Rufinus 3.26Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome mocks Rufinus's reply on his poor Latin and his warning that sins, not words, stink.
  • Apology against Rufinus 3.32Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome contrasts his own dream, which humbled him, with Rufinus's boast of Macarius's dream, whose "ship" brought only shipwreck of the faith.
  • Apology against Rufinus 3.39Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome answers Rufinus's demand for the books of Pythagoras: he had spoken of Pythagorean doctrines, known through Cicero and others, and he cites the Golden Verses and Pythagorean maxims.
  • Apology against Rufinus 3.41Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome summarizes the threats at the end of Rufinus's letter, which offered peace only if Jerome stopped writing against heretics.
  • Apology against Rufinus 3.43Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome refuses to keep silent about heretics, and answers Rufinus with a long chain of sayings from Proverbs and with Ps 58.
  • Apology against Jerome 2.3Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus declares that anyone who teaches that perjury is ever permitted is outside the faith of Christ and the catholic church.
  • Apology against Jerome 2.4Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus undertakes to show from Jerome's own writings that Jerome himself has committed perjury.
  • Apology against Jerome 2.5Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus recalls Jerome's letter to Eustochium on virginity, which pagans copied eagerly because it ridiculed virgins, widows, monks, and clergy.
  • Apology against Jerome 2.6Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus quotes Jerome's account of his dream, in which he was beaten before Christ's tribunal as a "Ciceronian" and swore never again to own or read secular books.
  • Apology against Jerome 2.7Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus charges Jerome with breaking his oath, since his writings are full of quotations from Cicero, Horace, Virgil, and Greek philosophers.
  • Apology against Jerome 2.8Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus gives witnesses that Jerome had Cicero's dialogues copied on the Mount of Olives and taught the classical poets to boys at Bethlehem.
  • Apology against Jerome 2.11Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus urges Jerome to repent of calling God's bride's mother his mother-in-law, a blasphemy graver than any error about creatures.
  • Book 1, lines 331–360Prudentius · ca. 402-403 · Unlike the sun, which is a servant bound to its course, man was given freedom to choose his way; yet senators kiss the statues of the sun’s horses, and Rome even worships the underworld goddess Proserpina in her threefold form.
  • Book 1, lines 361–390Prudentius · ca. 402-403 · The threefold goddess, Moon, Diana and Proserpina, is a demon of Tartarus; gladiatorial games are human sacrifices to Dis and Charon, a shameful thing for a royal people to offer for the safety of the state.
  • Book 2, lines 121–150Prudentius · ca. 402-403 · God speaks: those who would reach heaven must set aside earthly cares, for everything perishable is nothing; he made the world’s goods to be used with restraint and set this life as a contest to test the soul, which must overcome pleasure and greed.
  • Book 2, lines 151–180Prudentius · ca. 402-403 · Since God promises eternal goods, no wise man prefers brief pleasures; what separates man from beast is hope beyond sight, and if there were no life after death, nothing would restrain a man from adultery, fraud and murder, since human law can be evaded.
  • Book 2, lines 241–270Prudentius · ca. 402-403 · God asks for a temple not of marble but of the mind, built on faith, piety and chastity; he made man upright to look to heaven, but man turned to earth, and God’s own Spirit descended to restore him; the poet asks Symmachus whether he prefers custom to these precepts.
  • Book 2, lines 451–480Prudentius · ca. 402-403 · If fate governs everything, laws and punishments are unjust, since no one would be guilty; but each person chooses freely and is guilty by his own will; God is above the stars, and Christ makes any fate powerless.
  • Book 2, lines 1051–1080Prudentius · ca. 402-403 · Christian virgins have the rewards of modesty, veiling, frugality and lifelong chastity, a hundredfold harvest in heaven; the Vestals, by contrast, are taken as children before they can choose, keep their bodies but not their minds untouched, and marry when old after their term of service.
  • Book 2, lines 1081–1110Prudentius · ca. 402-403 · The Vestal is paraded through the city with uncovered face and sits in the amphitheatre, delighting in the gladiators’ deaths and turning her thumb to order the fallen to be killed; is this the merit for which she is said to guard Rome?
  • Book 2, lines 1111–1130Prudentius · ca. 402-403 · The poet ends by asking Honorius to complete his father Theodosius’s work, who forbade the sacrifice of bulls, by abolishing the gladiatorial games, so that Rome may be devoted to God and follow her emperor in piety as in war.
  • Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 40Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · Forgiveness of sins rests on God's promise, and it is reasonable, since guilt lies in the will, which God can change from evil to good.
  • Against Felix the Manichaean 2.3Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Augustine answers that the scriptures speak of sinners, not of two natures: God made every nature, and rational creatures sin by free choice, as even Mani admits.
  • Against Felix the Manichaean 2.4Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Augustine reads Christ's “make the tree good or bad” as a statement of free choice, not of two natures, within God's ordered creation.
  • Against Felix the Manichaean 2.5Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Augustine quotes Mani's Treasure, where those who “were unwilling” to keep the law are blamed, as proof that Mani himself admitted free choice.
  • Against Felix the Manichaean 2.6Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Augustine quotes the apocryphal Acts ascribed to Leucius, accepted by the Manichees, to show that man became worse by his own will through the devil's seduction.
  • Against Felix the Manichaean 2.12Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Felix insists that no one should be forced to become a Christian; Augustine agrees that he is not forced and urges him to weigh the arguments freely.
  • Dialogues 1.5Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · The old host turns out to be a presbyter of a humble brushwood church; his people neither buy nor sell, and he refuses gold for the church.
  • Dialogues 1.8Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Postumianus goes to Bethlehem and praises Jerome’s learning; Gallus complains of Jerome’s satire on monks but admits it portrays real vices.
  • Dialogues 1.9Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Gallus notes Jerome’s attack on virgins’ familiarities with clergy; Postumianus defends Jerome’s orthodoxy, leaves his household with him, and goes to the Upper Thebaid.
  • Dialogues 1.10Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · In the monasteries of the Thebaid the monks live under strict obedience; two boys carry a captured asp back in triumph and the abbot punishes them for boasting.
  • Dialogues 1.12Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Two old monks were never seen eating or angry; Gallus applies this to an irascible acquaintance and to a deserting freedman; Postumianus promises more stories.
  • Dialogues 1.17Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Postumianus visits Antony’s monasteries, the place of Paul the first hermit, the Red Sea, and Sinai, where a naked hermit avoided men to be visited by angels; along the Nile thousands of monks live under obedience.
  • Dialogues 1.18Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · A newcomer who promised to obey even if ordered into fire walked into a burning oven at the abbot’s command and was unharmed.
  • Dialogues 1.19Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · A novice ordered to water a dry stick carried water from the Nile for three years until it blossomed; Postumianus saw the tree.
  • Dialogues 1.20Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · A famous exorcist, tempted by vanity, prayed to be possessed by a demon for five months and was thereby cured of pride.
  • Dialogues 1.21Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Postumianus contrasts this humility with clerics in the West who grow proud of small honors and live in luxury; Gallus asks for the lesson on false righteousness.
  • Dialogues 1.22Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · A former tribune turned hermit, persuaded by the devil to return to save his family, was possessed until he returned to the desert; Postumianus now asks Sulpicius to speak of Martin.
  • Dialogues 1.25Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Martin matched each desert saint’s miracles and also resisted vanity, refusing even to host the prefect Vincentius at his monastery.
  • Dialogues 2.1Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Martin secretly gives his own tunic to a poor man whom the archdeacon neglected, then celebrates in a cheap garment the archdeacon angrily buys.
  • Dialogues 2.7Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Gallus answers that the circumstances excused the queen’s service, which happened once only; any who cite it must keep to every condition.
  • Dialogues 2.8Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Postumianus doubts that Gallic clergy will heed Martin’s example; Sulpicius complains of the hostility his rebukes earned him; Gallus tells how straw from Martin’s bed healed a possessed man at Claudiomagus.
  • Dialogues 2.10Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Martin’s sayings: a shorn sheep fulfills the gospel; a swineherd recalls the old Adam; a meadow partly grazed, partly rooted, partly untouched pictures marriage, fornication, and virginity.
  • Dialogues 2.11Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · A soldier turned monk wants his wife, now a nun, to live with him; Martin answers that no woman stands in the battle line, and that a woman’s victory is not to be seen.
  • Dialogues 3.16Sulpicius Severus · ca. 404–406 · Postumianus applies the example to an unnamed neighboring bishop, quarrelsome for three years, who should imitate Martin’s patience.
  • Letter to the Catholics on the Sect of the Donatists (On the Unity of the Church) 53Augustine of Hippo · ca. 405 · Not all 'persecution' is wrong: lawful authorities who restrain people from evil with moderate penalties are correctors, while those who coerce without authority or beyond measure are to blame.
  • Letter to the Catholics on the Sect of the Donatists (On the Unity of the Church) 54Augustine of Hippo · ca. 405 · The Circumcellions' violence is wrong, but the Donatists themselves used the laws and courts to expel the Maximianists; those who resist lawful authority bring their sufferings on themselves.
  • Against Cresconius 3.55Augustine of Hippo · ca. 405–406 · Augustine says good Catholics disapprove of any violence, revenge, or seizure of private property against Donatists, though they tolerate such wrongdoers within the church.
  • Against Cresconius 3.56Augustine of Hippo · ca. 405–406 · Augustine argues from Nebuchadnezzar's two decrees that kings serve God by legislating for truth, including in religion.
  • Against Cresconius 3.57Augustine of Hippo · ca. 405–406 · Augustine answers the appeal to free choice: free will does not exempt evil from just restraint, which must be exercised with measure and love.
  • Letter 23Firmus of Caesarea · early fifth century · Firmus asks a churchman to make debtors under him repay a lender.
  • Letter 41Firmus of Caesarea · early fifth century · Firmus asks a bishop to punish and excommunicate a woman who abandoned her ascetic vow and robbed another woman.
  • 1 Corinthians 2:14Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · The “natural” man lives like an animal and finds Christ's birth, passion and commands foolish.
  • 1 Corinthians 3:18Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · The gospel's command not to retaliate looks foolish to the world.
  • 1 Corinthians 3:19Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Self-vengeance forfeits both God's vengeance and the reward of patience.
  • 1 Corinthians 4:20Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Teaching without works of righteousness profits nothing.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:1Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Lawsuits before pagan courts break the Lord's command.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:6Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Suing a brother before pagans is a double sin.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:7Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Peace should be kept even at the cost of property.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:8Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Instead of bearing wrongs, they inflict them on brothers.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:9Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Lemma of 1 Cor 6:9.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:10Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Faith alone does not save one who persists in sin.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:12Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Gluttony, though lawful in itself, leads to sexual immorality.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:13Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · The body belongs to the Lord, who stays with those who stay with him.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:14Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Union with a prostitute cuts a man off from Christ's body; his guilt equals hers.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:16Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Union with a prostitute makes one flesh, as marriage does.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:18Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Sexual immorality is graver because two perish together.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:19Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Immorality injures the body, the Spirit's temple.
  • 1 Corinthians 7:21Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · God looks at the will, not one's social condition; the slave should rather make use of slavery.
  • 1 Corinthians 7:22Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Slave and free are equal before God.
  • 1 Corinthians 7:24Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Bought by Christ's blood, Christians should act for God, not to please men.
  • 1 Corinthians 9:24Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · All believers run, but only those who live righteously win the prize.
  • 1 Corinthians 10:1Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Baptism and the sacraments profit only those who keep the commands.
  • 1 Corinthians 10:8Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Sexual immorality too brought death on Israel.
  • 1 Corinthians 10:24Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Christians should seek what builds up others, not merely what is lawful.
  • 1 Corinthians 10:31Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Every act should glorify God.
  • 1 Corinthians 12:3Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Only one who confesses Christ in word and deed calls him Lord in the Spirit.
  • 1 Corinthians 12:13Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Baptism makes one body; those who share heavenly things should share earthly goods.
  • 1 Corinthians 12:31Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Love, which lies in our power, is better than signs, which do not.
  • 1 Corinthians 13:1Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Tongues without love are hollow noise; love is our own and bears all fruit.
  • 1 Corinthians 13:2Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Prophecy, knowledge and even mountain-moving faith are nothing without the works of love.
  • 1 Corinthians 13:3Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Renouncing possessions is a great good, binding still and not only in persecution; martyrdom without love is possible and worthless.
  • 1 Corinthians 13:4Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Love is patient, kind, free of envy and pride.
  • 1 Corinthians 13:5Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Love seeks others' good and does not even think evil.
  • 1 Corinthians 13:6Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Love grieves at wrong and rejoices in good.
  • 1 Corinthians 13:7Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Love bears with and hopes for the offender.
  • 1 Corinthians 15:49Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · After baptism we must bear Christ's image, as before we bore Adam's.
  • 1 Corinthians 16:14Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Paul's closing commands: vigilance, firmness, constancy, and love in all.
  • 1 Thessalonians 3:12Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Believers should love all people, even of other sects, for their nature's sake.
  • 1 Thessalonians 4:3Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Sanctification means abstaining from incontinence, especially before receiving Christ's body.
  • 1 Thessalonians 4:4Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Each must keep his body chaste and not serve lust like the Gentiles.
  • 1 Thessalonians 4:6Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · A spouse must not break a vow of continence made by mutual consent, for God avenges it.
  • 1 Thessalonians 5:15Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · No one may repay evil, since returning injury is itself doing evil; do good to all.
  • 1 Timothy 1:5Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · The goal of the commandment is love of God and neighbour from a pure heart, with a faith shown in deeds.
  • 1 Timothy 2:9Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Christian women should adorn themselves with modesty, not costly display that could clothe the poor.
  • 1 Timothy 5:6Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Luxury beyond nature's needs is the death of the self-indulgent widow, like rich widows of Pelagius's day.
  • 1 Timothy 5:8Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Neglecting one's own family is worse than unbelief, since even unbelievers care for theirs by nature.
  • 1 Timothy 6:2Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Slaves of believing masters should serve them all the more willingly.
  • 1 Timothy 6:7Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · We take nothing from this world, so we should seek riches that last into heaven.
  • 1 Timothy 6:8Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Food and clothing suffice; anything more is wealth.
  • 1 Timothy 6:9Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · The desire to be rich is avarice, a snare leading to ruin, as with Ahab.
  • 1 Timothy 6:10Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Greed, the root of evil, must be uprooted; it draws people from faith into anxiety.
  • 1 Timothy 6:17Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · The rich must not be proud or trust uncertain wealth, but hope in God, who gives to be shared.
  • 1 Timothy 6:18Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · The rich should be rich in good works and generous.
  • 1 Timothy 6:19Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Giving all to the poor is the foundation of perfection; Timothy must guard the faith he received.
  • 2 Corinthians 8:15Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · The manna teaches that surplus breeds corruption and that goods should be shared in common.
  • 2 Corinthians 9:10Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Possessions are fruits of righteousness when used justly, of iniquity when hoarded.
  • 2 Thessalonians 3:10Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Those who will not work should not eat; this both punishes and corrects idleness.
  • 2 Thessalonians 3:13Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Paul forbids giving only to the idle, not the practice of charity.
  • Colossians 3:5Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Believers must kill the vices of their members; desire is not evil in itself, but greed is idolatry.
  • Colossians 3:12Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Believers must put on mercy and virtues as God's chosen.
  • Colossians 4:1Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Masters must be as fathers to their slaves, as they hope for a kind Master in heaven.
  • Ephesians 4:2Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Humility, meekness, patience, and loving forbearance preserve the Spirit's unity.
  • Ephesians 4:6Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · One body, faith, and baptism mean one standard of holiness for all believers, whatever their worldly station.
  • Ephesians 4:28Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · The former thief must work honestly and give to the needy, avoiding evil trades.
  • Ephesians 5:3Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Sexual immorality and greed, the roots of sin, must not even be named among the saints.
  • Ephesians 5:5Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Against those who say faith alone suffices, Paul excludes the immoral from God's kingdom.
  • Ephesians 5:6Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Faith and baptism do not save those who go on sinning; God's past judgments warn of future wrath.
  • Ephesians 5:18Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · The crucified must avoid drunkenness and be filled with the Spirit.
  • Ephesians 6:5Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Slavery comes from captivity, not nature; Christ did not abolish it, and believing slaves are to serve well so as to win their masters.
  • Ephesians 6:9Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Masters must treat slaves well and forgive them, since both share one Lord and inheritance.
  • Galatians 5:14Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Love has four degrees: God, self, neighbor, and enemy; love of God comes first.
  • Galatians 6:10Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Show mercy to all in need, especially to fellow believers.
  • Philippians 2:3Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Counting others as superiors makes patience under injury easy.
  • Philippians 4:8Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Human nature knows how to love the good, and believers must dwell on every virtue.
  • Philippians 4:9Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Believers must not only think on virtues but practise them, and then God will be with them.
  • Romans 12:17Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Not repaying evil seems folly to the world but wins approval before God and men.
  • Romans 12:20Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Kindness to an enemy aims at his conversion, never at his harm.
  • Romans 13:10Pelagius · ca. 405–410 · Failing to feed the starving when one can is killing; love fulfils the law.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 3.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The same commandments are given to Christians as to Israel, the Sabbath to be kept spiritually by abstaining from sin, but the old promises were earthly because a carnal people, quick to turn to idols, could grasp only visible things.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 7.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The devil can do nothing unless God permits, and sufferings are a Father's training for an eternal inheritance; Christians who resort to charms and fortune-tellers give the devil a share in what Christ bought.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 7.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Better to lay the Gospel on an aching head than to run to amulets, and better still to let it heal the heart; health and sickness are in God's hands, and like Paul with his thorn we should trust the physician's knife.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 10.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Every Christian should be consumed with zeal for God's house, working within his own sphere to correct wrongdoing and win others for Christ.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 12.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Augustine urges watchfulness and daily confession even of small sins, which if neglected sink the soul like water seeping into a ship.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 17.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Love of God comes first in command but love of neighbor first in practice, since by loving the neighbor we cleanse the eye to see God; “take up your bed” signifies love of neighbor.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 17.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The bed signifies the neighbor: once carried when sick, the healed man must now carry his neighbor, fulfilling the law of Christ, and walk on toward God.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 18.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · How the Word sees cannot be explained; understanding follows a way of life, and only those who live according to the spirit and grow in holy desire can approach the vision.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 18.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Like a patient with healing eyes dazzled by the light, the soul glimpses the Word and falls back; it must accept the stinging salve of righteous living, or, loving darkness, be cast into outer darkness.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 19.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ seeks not his own will, as son of man, but the Father's; doing God's command willingly is not doing one's own will.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 25.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The work of God is to believe in Christ, faith working through love; the crowd, preferring Moses' manna, asked for a greater sign.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 25.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ casts out none who come because he came to do the Father's will, not his own; the soul went out from God through pride and returns through humility.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 25.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Pride is the root cause of all sin; the Son of God came humble, doing the Father's will, to cure it and to make humble those who come to him.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 25.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Psalms 36 and 73 show that God's inner fountain is for the humble and upright of heart; pride drove the wicked out, while humility keeps the hearer standing within.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 25.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ, teacher of humility, incorporates those who come to him as his members; only pride casts out.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 25.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · None of the humble whom the Father gave to Christ will be lost; they rise now by faith and will be raised in the flesh on the last day.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 28.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The upright in heart blame themselves and praise God; like their head, Christ's members say to the world's lovers that their time has not yet come.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 30.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · One avoids judging by persons by loving equally: in a dispute between father and son, honor goes to the father but the judgment to the truth.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 32.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The inner man's belly is the conscience; it becomes a fountain flowing to others through benevolence toward one's neighbor.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 33.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ, the only one without sin, did not condemn the woman but condemned her sin, telling her to sin no more.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 33.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Those who love the Lord's gentleness must fear his truth and justice, and not presume on long life while delaying repentance.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 33.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Men are endangered both by presumptuous hope and by despair; God offers forgiveness to the despairing and makes the day of death uncertain for the presumptuous.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 34.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · We must do what Christ commanded, follow him, before claiming his promise; many have done what the rich young man refused, with the Lord loosing their fetters.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 35.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Following Christ the light of the world means avoiding the darkness of morals, discerned by the inner eyes.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 40.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · We must stretch out our desire for the glory to come, loving God more than money and using the world like an inn on a journey, trusting him who called us.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 41.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ's “Amen, amen,” left untranslated from the Hebrew, is a solemn assurance, like an oath, that whoever commits sin is sin's slave.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 41.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The slave of sin does not remain in God's house, but the Son, head and body, does; freed by him, we become slaves of love and justice rather than of sin.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 41.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Church officers must be without crime, not without sin; freedom from crime begins freedom, but in this life weakness remains, and we are free only in the part in which we delight in God's law.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 41.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Paul was free where he delighted in God's law and captive where weakness remained; he looked to the Son for full freedom, being one man serving God's law with the mind and sin's law with the flesh.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 41.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Sin must not be allowed to reign in our members, though desire remains; we cannot yet fulfill “You shall not covet,” but we can refuse to follow our desires.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 43.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ, though all-powerful, patiently bore being told he had a demon; we must imitate his patience to come to his power.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 43.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Servile fear dreads punishment; chaste fear dreads losing justice, as a lover of money fears loss, or as a chaste wife fears her husband's departure, and it endures forever.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 45.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Those who live outwardly good lives without Christ, the door, do not truly live well, for they do not reach eternal life.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 46.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The hireling flees in spirit when, for fear of losing human friendship, he fails to rebuke a grave sinner; fear is the flight of the mind.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 47.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The soul does not die naturally, but it dies when it loses God, its life, as the body dies when it loses the soul.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ's raisings are signs of the raising of souls; people labor greatly to put off bodily death but will not avoid sin to gain eternal life.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The three dead whom Christ raised figure three deaths of the soul: sin in thought, sin in deed, and sin hardened by habit, from which even Lazarus' sister was raised.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ, the resurrection and the life, can raise now as well as at the last day, including those buried in habits of sin.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ’s groaning signifies the groaning of faith in a sinner who accuses himself; waking faith is like waking Christ asleep in the storm-tossed boat.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 50.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Mary's anointing figures faith and righteousness, and wiping with her hair figures giving one's superfluities to the poor, Christ's feet.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 50.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Judas was already a thief before the betrayal; his presence among the twelve teaches the Church to bear with the wicked without dividing Christ's body, for the one bread gives life to the good and judgment to the unworthy.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 51.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Hating one's soul in this world means choosing death rather than sin under persecution, never taking one's own life.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 51.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Serving Christ means following him: seeking his interests, doing good works for his sake, and even laying down one's life for the brothers.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 55.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The foot-washing figures the incarnation and passion: Christ emptied himself, washed us with his blood, and taught humility by example.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 58.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ's example calls Christians to wash one another's feet, in the heart and preferably also literally, as many did in hospitality.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 58.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Washing one another's feet means confessing sins to one another, praying for one another and forgiving one another, as Christ intercedes for and forgives us.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 60.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Against the Stoics, Augustine affirms that Christians rightly feel fear, sorrow, desire and joy for just causes.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 62.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Lord's money-box shows that the church may keep funds, provided God is not served for money.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 64.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The disciples could not yet follow Christ to the deathless life; the new commandment of love is the way by which they would follow him later.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 65.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The commandment of love is new because Christ's love, unlike natural or sinful love, renews us and makes us die to the world.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 65.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Love of God and love of neighbor contain each other, for to love one's neighbor rightly is to love God in him.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 65.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Love, not other gifts that outsiders may share, is the mark of Christ's disciples and the delight of his bride the church.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 75.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Love for Christ is shown by keeping his commandments; his love now brings faith, and then will bring the vision that rewards faith.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 77.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Worldly peace serves the enjoyment of the world and lacks true concord; Christ's peace joins hearts together and lifts them up.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 82.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Keeping the commandments shows, but does not produce, our abiding in Christ's love; his love comes first and enables us to keep them.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 83.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The repeated commandment of love is called new, to draw us from our oldness, and his own, so that we do not despise it.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 83.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Love contains faith, hope, and the love of God, so that in keeping the commandment of love we keep all; it is love for the sake of having God.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 87.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Love is the fruit Christ appoints us to bear; it heads and contains all the other fruits of the Spirit.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 87.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The world loves its vice and hates its God-given nature; we are to hate its vice and love its nature, loving our enemies but not the world.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 90.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Since we cannot see into others' hearts, we must judge rightly about virtues and vices themselves and withhold firm verdicts on persons; errors about persons are pardonable.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 100.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Glory is false when praisers err about the thing, the person, or both; even true glory benefits those who give it, not the one praised.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 113.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Struck by an officer, Jesus answers truly and gently, showing that the command to turn the other cheek concerns the readiness of the heart.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 116.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Jesus tells Pilate that his power is given from above and that the one who handed him over out of envy has the greater sin, though Pilate too sins.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 119.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · By providing for his mother from the cross, Christ teaches children to care for their parents.
  • Tractates on the Gospel of John 122.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The large fish are those who do what they teach; those who teach but do not do will not enter the kingdom at the end.
  • Against Vigilantius 9Jerome · 406 · Jerome defends frequent vigils at the martyrs' shrines: abuses by a few do not condemn the practice, any more than at the Easter vigil.
  • Against Vigilantius 13Jerome · 406 · Jerome defends sending alms to the poor saints of Jerusalem, as Paul did.
  • Against Vigilantius 14Jerome · 406 · Jerome argues that alms should go especially to the holy poor and that selling all, as Christ counseled, is the higher way.
  • Against Vigilantius 15Jerome · 406 · Jerome answers the objection that monastic withdrawal leaves the churches unserved: the monk's office is to mourn, and virtue is rare.
  • Against Vigilantius 16Jerome · 406 · Jerome defends flight to the desert as a means of avoiding temptation.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 1.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · The commandment by which we know God is love, and its perfection is to love even our enemies so that they may become brothers, as Christ prayed for those who crucified him.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 1.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · The commandment of love is old because it was heard from the beginning, and new because it belongs to the new man, now that the darkness has passed.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 1.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Whoever claims to be in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness; love, like a mother, remains anxious even over a new convert.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 2.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Knowledge without love does not save; love of the world must be rooted out of the heart so that love of God can be planted there.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 2.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Love of the world excludes the love of the Father; the newly baptized and all believers must have the root of love, not only the outward form of the sacraments.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 2.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Created things are good, but to love them in place of their Creator is like a bride who loves the ring more than the bridegroom who gave it.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 2.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · 'The world' also means the lovers of the world; bodily goods are to be used with measure for the Creator's sake, not loved for their own enjoyment or gained by injustice.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 2.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · The desire of the eyes is curiosity, which may even seek miracles; what matters is that our names are written in heaven. The ambition of the world is pride.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 2.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Christ was tempted by the devil in the same three ways and answered each from Scripture; we too must resist them and love God, for each person becomes like what he loves.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 3.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Since all confess Christ with the tongue, the antichrists are those who deny him by their deeds, as Scripture shows.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 3.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Many inside the Church are also antichrists by their sinful deeds, which God did not make; all creation praises God, but sin does not.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 4.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Christians are called and are children of God; the world, that is, the lovers of the world, does not know them, as it did not know Christ who rebuked its sins.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 5.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Augustine proposes that 'does not sin' refers to one particular sin, the breaking of Christ's commandment of love, which binds all other sins, while love looses them.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 5.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · The sin that one born of God cannot commit is to act against the new commandment of love; love covers the many other sins.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 5.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Perfect love is readiness to die for one's brother, as Christ, Stephen, and Paul showed; such love is born, nourished, strengthened, and perfected.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 5.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Love alone distinguishes the children of God from the children of the devil; it is the pearl of great price and the fulfilment of the law, exercised in loving the brother we see.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 5.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Cain's envy, which led him to kill Abel, shows that envy is the opposite of love; God accepted Abel's sacrifice because it was offered with love.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 5.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Love of the brothers is the sign that we have passed from death to life, though that life is still hidden like a tree in winter; whoever hates his brother is a murderer.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 5.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Love begins with giving one's goods to a needy brother and is perfected in laying down one's life; a Christian must show the name by deeds.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 6.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Love begins with giving from one's abundance to a brother in need and, nourished by God's word and hope, grows to readiness to die for the brothers.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 6.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Giving to the poor and even dying can be done without love, as by schismatics seeking glory; the true test is the witness of one's own conscience before God.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 6.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · We must do good before God, who sees the heart, and not for men's praise; there is no hiding from God, so we should flee to him by confession.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 6.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · If our heart truly testifies that we love sincerely, we have confidence before God and receive what we ask, because we keep his commandment of love.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 6.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · God's commandment is to believe in Christ and love one another; the love in us is the sign that God's Spirit abides in us.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 7.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · This world is like Israel's desert, and love is the spring God has placed there; it is the theme of the whole Epistle and the condition of forgiveness.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 7.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · The antichrists speak the language of the world, urging revenge against Christ's command to forgive; Christ, who had power, did not threaten but forgave.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 7.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Those who are of God listen to the apostle's call to love one another, for love is of God, and God is love; nothing more need be sought.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 7.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Since Scripture says that God is love, to sin against love of the brother is to sin against God.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 7.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · God loved us first by sending his Son; the Father, the Son, and Judas all 'delivered up' Christ, but love distinguishes the deed of the Father and Son from Judas's betrayal.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 7.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Outwardly similar deeds differ by their root: a father's blows from love are good, a slave-dealer's caresses evil; hence the rule, 'Love, and do what you will.'
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 7.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · God's love was first, sending his Son to offer himself as the pure sacrifice for our sins; so we ought to love one another.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 7.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · God, being love, is to be 'seen' not with bodily images but by having love, whose feet, hands, eyes, and ears are works of mercy; this treasure costs nothing.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 7.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Love is not laxity but corrects and disciplines without bitterness, like the gall-less dove; the Donatist schismatics hate both love and the dove, and their baptism, bearing Christ's mark, is recognised, not repeated, in the Catholic Church.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 8.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Love cannot always be spoken of but can always be kept; Christ dwelling within commands the invisible virtues, which move the visible members to good works.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 8.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Good works should be seen so that God, not the doer, is praised, as the churches glorified God for Paul's conversion; Paul, once proud Saul, became 'small'.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 8.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Works of love are done each at its proper time, but love itself within must never cease.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 8.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Augustine asks why John commends only brotherly love while the Lord commands love of enemies, love spreading like fire from the nearest to the furthest.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 8.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · True love is goodwill that wishes the other's good, not to consume him; better that no one needed mercy, for love of an equal is purer than condescending kindness.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 8.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · A Christian should not seek to be above other men but wish them his equals, as Paul did; to want superiority over men is the greed of pride.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 8.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Pride can do all the outward works of love, even martyrdom, so the test is the root within; good works should be seen so that God is praised and others imitate them.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 8.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · To love one's enemy is to wish him to become a brother, as a craftsman loves the timber for what he will make of it; so love of enemies is brotherly love, as Christ showed in praying for his killers.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 8.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Love your enemy as a doctor loves a delirious patient, hating the disease but loving the man; the enemy is even God's instrument for healing you.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 8.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · God is love: whoever abides in love abides in God, who contains us and needs nothing from us, as the true Lord who sought us and adopted us as brothers of his only Son.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 9.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Love is perfected when we have confidence on the day of judgment; fear is its beginning, and as love grows, fear of Christ's coming turns into desire for it.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 9.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · We are 'as he is' by likeness, not equality: as God loves his enemies by sending sun and rain on all, we love ours by praying for them with tears.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 9.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Fear is the beginning that prepares the way for love, as a bristle draws in the thread or a surgeon's knife precedes healing; perfect love then casts out fear.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 9.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · The 'chaste fear' that endures for ever is fear of losing God, which differs from the servile fear of punishment that love casts out; the two Scriptures, inspired by one Spirit, agree.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 9.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Two wives both 'fear' their husband, one lest he come and catch her in adultery, the other lest he leave her; so servile fear differs from chaste fear.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 9.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Those who fear God only as an adulterous wife fears her husband should be displeased with themselves; God, unlike a husband, sees everything, so we must acknowledge our sins for him to forgive.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 9.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · God first loved us when we were foul, to make us beautiful by loving him; Christ is both 'fair beyond the sons of men' in his divinity and 'without form' in his humanity, as Paul's Philippians hymn shows.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 9.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Whoever loves his brother loves love itself, and so loves God, who is love; the eye cleansed by love will see God, our whole good, whom we should love for himself.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 9.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · No one can love God and hate his brother, any more than one can love the emperor and hate his laws; we must hold the unity of the Church and love, with the Spirit as pledge.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 10.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · The children of God are the members of the one Son, so love of God, of Christ, and of his members in the Church cannot be separated; love fuses them into one like gold in fire.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 10.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Avarice demands hard labour for uncertain gain, but God, who asks only to be loved, is always found by those who love him; love is the end and consummation of all our works.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 10.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Christ, who is love, is the 'end' of all things in the sense of perfection, not consumption; money, health, honour, and praise are to be passed by on the way to cleaving to God.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 10.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · All things short of God are stopping-places on the way; the end is seeing God, and the 'broad commandment' is love, which no one can take away and which delights more than worldly pleasures.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 10.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · All the law hangs on love of God and neighbour; love may rebuke and even punish while hatred flatters, so we must look to the root; we love even enemies so that they may become brothers.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 10.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Love of Christ must extend to his body spread through the whole world, not be confined to Africa; to honour the head while trampling the members hurts the whole Christ, as the tongue cries out when the foot is stepped on.
  • Homilies on the First Epistle of John 10.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Christ's last words before his ascension commended his body, the Church spread over the whole earth; if heirs keep the last words of a dying father, how much more should Christians keep the last words of the ascending Christ.
  • Dialogue 19Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 408 · The bishop answers charges that John was proud and insulting, lists John's exiled and persecuted supporters, reflects on the last times and on vice and virtue, and Theodore closes with a reproach to John's persecutors and a blessing on John, to which the bishop adds a final denunciation of those who sold the priesthood.
  • On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.3Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Although we do not sin unless we will it, God foresaw that we would not use our full strength of will, and so gave works of mercy as remedies for sins after baptism.
  • On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.22Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · The command “Be perfect” shows that sinlessness is possible, not that anyone achieves it; Scripture calls people perfect in some respect or for their great progress, not as wholly sinless.
  • On the Christian Life 1Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · "Christ" means "anointed"; all the baptized share his anointing, and only those who imitate Christ truly bear the name Christian.
  • On the Christian Life 3Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · God's patience is no ground for security: the wicked, especially unjust judges who plundered widows and orphans, are often punished even in this life.
  • On the Christian Life 4Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · Each sinner is judged when the measure of his sins is full, as with Sodom and the Amorites; God loves the righteous, not the wicked.
  • On the Christian Life 6Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · As every name comes from a deed, only one who imitates Christ in holiness, kindness and love of enemies is truly a Christian.
  • On the Christian Life 7Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · From Cain and Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Lot, Scripture shows that God is pleased by righteousness and offended by wickedness.
  • On the Christian Life 8Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · God let Israel suffer as strangers in Egypt to teach them mercy toward strangers, orphans and widows; the whole law hangs on love of God and neighbour.
  • On the Christian Life 9Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · To love God is to keep his commands and live so holily that his name is glorified, not blasphemed, among the gentiles.
  • On the Christian Life 10Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · To love one's neighbour is not only to avoid evil but to do good; those who neglect works of mercy are condemned, and innocence is what commends us to God.
  • On the Christian Life 11Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · The oppressor who approaches church with hands stained by injustice prays in vain; only pure hands and an innocent conscience are heard.
  • On the Christian Life 12Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · Alms given from plunder do not justify; God approves only alms from just labour.
  • On the Christian Life 13Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · Against those who hold that faith alone saves without works of righteousness, the author argues from both Testaments that God condemns sin, and that Paul's "works of the law" are ceremonial works, not righteousness.
  • On the Christian Life 14Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · A true Christian imitates Christ in works of mercy, hospitality and detachment from the world.
  • On the Christian Life 15Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · The author applies his teaching to the widow he addresses: of three kinds of widows, she should be the true widow of 1 Tim 5, devoted to prayer and works of mercy.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 1Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Augustine answers Marcellinus's objection that it is absurd to call sinlessness possible when no one but Christ has achieved it.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 2Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Even if sinlessness is a human work, it is also God's gift and work, as Paul says in Phil 2:13.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 3Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Augustine considers it a harmless error to think someone might live without sin, provided one does not claim it for oneself.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 4Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Augustine states the view of his opponents: God's help consists only in creating free will and giving commands that remove ignorance.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 5Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Augustine's position: beyond free will and teaching, the Holy Spirit gives delight in and love of God, without which the will cannot do good.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 6Augustine of Hippo · 412 · “The letter kills” refers not only to figurative texts taken literally but chiefly to the law's command “You shall not covet,” which without the Spirit only increases desire.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 11Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Augustine meditates on Psalm 36: righteousness is drawn from God as fountain and light, and pride, which claims God's work for oneself, drives one into darkness.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 13Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Paul's rebuke of the Jew who boasts in the law shows that true circumcision is of the heart, given by the Spirit, and praise comes from God, not from works done out of fear.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 19Augustine of Hippo · 412 · The pagans who knew God through creation but did not glorify him or give thanks fell through pride into idolatry, as Rom 1:18–23 shows.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 22Augustine of Hippo · 412 · The law of works commands, “Do what I command”; the law of faith prays, “Give what you command”; justification is by faith and free grace, not by the merits of deeds.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 23Augustine of Hippo · 412 · The law that cannot justify includes the Decalogue, which Christians keep except for the literal Sabbath, since it contains “You shall not covet.”
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 26Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Without the Spirit, the letter only brings guilt; with faith working through love, one delights in God's law, though the struggle continues until the old nature is wholly renewed.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 29Augustine of Hippo · 412 · At Sinai the law was written on stone and frightened sinners; at Pentecost the Spirit wrote charity on hearts, which fulfills the whole law.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 48Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Even if the gentiles of Rom 2 are unbelievers with remnants of God's image, the new covenant's distinctiveness stands; their good works cannot save them, though punishment will differ in degree.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 52Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Grace does not abolish free will but establishes it, by healing the will so that it freely loves righteousness; Augustine traces the chain from law to faith, grace, health, freedom, love, and obedience.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 53Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Before asking whether faith is in our power, Augustine defines power as the ability to act joined to the will: what one does if one wills and does not do if one does not will.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 55Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Not all believing is good; the faith Paul commends is belief in God.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 56Augustine of Hippo · 412 · The faith Paul commends is not servile belief that fears punishment but the faith of sons that asks God for righteousness and continence, obtains the Spirit, and works through love.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 57Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Augustine asks whether the will to believe is God's gift or comes from natural free choice, noting the difficulty on either side.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 62Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Augustine recalls Marcellinus's question and his own earlier statement, and gathers examples of things possible to God that have never happened.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 63Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Righteous living is also God's work in us, as faith that moves mountains is; perfect righteousness would be possible with sufficient knowledge and delight, which depend on God's judgment and healing.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 64Augustine of Hippo · 412 · The command to love God with all one's heart will be fulfilled only in the vision of God; in this life, the one who progresses most is the one who knows how far he is from perfection.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 65Augustine of Hippo · 412 · Even the lesser righteousness of this life requires consenting to no unlawful desire, yet Scripture shows that no one lives without sin, so all must pray for forgiveness and grace.
  • On the Spirit and the Letter 66Augustine of Hippo · 412 · No one in this life is without sin unless helped by the Spirit of grace; God could make someone perfect here, and why he does not lies hidden in his unsearchable judgments.
  • Commentary on Isaiah 1, Discourse 1, part 13Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · Cyril recalls the plots against Christ, then explains that “learn to do good” (Isa 1:17–18) points from the law to the gospel, which does not abolish the law but leads beyond it from forbidding sin to positive virtue.
  • Commentary on Isaiah 1, Discourse 1, part 14Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · Cyril explains “seek judgment” as right judgment, both against the bribery of Jerusalem’s leaders and within the mind choosing between good and evil, and reads Isa 1:18 as the promise of full forgiveness through faith.
  • Commentary on Isaiah 1, Discourse 1, part 15Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · On Isa 1:19–20 Cyril argues that God has given each person the power to choose good or evil, so that evil is not natural and fate does not rule, and on Isa 1:21 he begins to lament the fall of the faithful city.
  • Commentary on Isaiah 1, Discourse 2, part 7Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · On Isa 2:7 Cyril condemns Israel’s love of money and arrogance, the silver, gold and horses that the law forbade the king to multiply, laying the blame chiefly on its rulers.
  • Commentary on Isaiah 1, Discourse 3, part 17Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · On Isa 5:8–10 Cyril condemns the insatiable greed of the rich who add house to house and field to field, warns that God hears the defrauded, and says such houses will stand empty and such fields barren.
  • Commentary on Isaiah 1, Discourse 3, part 18Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · Cyril says God made the greedy rich labour in vain, urges believers to cultivate righteousness in the soul, and on Isa 5:11–12 condemns the drunken revelry of the rich, which ends in eternal fire.
  • Commentary on Isaiah 1, Discourse 3, part 21Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · Cyril urges refusing luxury in view of judgment, and reads Isa 5:17 of the neighbouring nations, once plundered by Israel, gleaning what the Romans left, and spiritually of evil powers grazing on careless hearts.
  • Commentary on Isaiah 2, Tome 3, part 5Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · Souls that leave God's fear are given up to their passions, so Christians should remain in it; in Isa 16:1–2 Moab, which mocked Jerusalem as a deserted rock when the Assyrians struck, will itself go captive, a lesson against rejoicing at others' falls; Isa 16:3–4 is hard to construe.
  • Commentary on Isaiah 2, Tome 3, part 14Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · God disciplines like a father (Heb 12) and wills all to be saved; when Samaria ignored the prophets, he used the sufferings of war like a bridle to turn the survivors from their idols to the Holy One of Israel (Isa 17:7–8), and we should turn before the blow falls.
  • Commentary on Isaiah 1, Discourse 4, part 12Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · Cyril reads the springs, shelter, and levelled mountains of Isa 49:10–12 as the living water of Christ, the teaching of prophets and apostles, and the easy path of virtue opened to believers gathered from every quarter of the earth.
  • Commentary on Isaiah 5, Tome 3, part 21Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · The true fast is to release the oppressed, cancel unjust debts and contracts, and do works of love by feeding the hungry, sheltering the poor, clothing the naked, and caring for one's kin; avoiding evil is not enough, and the law forbade evil while Christ's commands perfect the good.
  • Commentary on Isaiah 5, Tome 4, part 2Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · Cyril reads the “bond” of Isa 58:9 as scheming against others and the “stretching out of the hand” as bribe-taking or retaliation, both of which God commands his people to put away.
  • Commentary on Isaiah 5, Tome 4, part 6Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · As Paul turns circumcision and the Sabbath into spiritual realities, Cyril reads Isa 58:13 as resting from one's own will and pleasures, submitting gently to God's laws and guarding the tongue against anger.
  • Commentary on Isaiah 5, Tome 4, part 7Cyril of Alexandria · before ca. 428 (probably 420s) · Those who keep the spiritual Sabbath guard their tongue against anger and trust in the Lord, and inherit not Canaan, already given under Joshua, but the land promised to the meek; the lemma Isa 59:1–4 follows, with a look back to Isa 58:1.
  • Commentary on Luke 6:24Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · The woes on the rich warn against luxury as the beatitudes invite to poverty; yet the rich are not excluded from mercy, for they can make friends by almsgiving, as the rich man could have pitied Lazarus.
  • Commentary on Luke 6:27Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Love of enemies was necessary for the apostles, who would face countless persecutors, and is modelled by Christ’s prayer on the cross, Stephen and Paul; the weak can achieve it because Christ dwells in them through the Spirit.
  • Commentary on Luke 6:29Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · The law was a tutor teaching equal retribution and abstention from wrong; Christ, the end of the law, gives the more perfect righteousness of bearing wrongs, offering the other cheek, despising possessions, and giving to all who ask.
  • Commentary on Luke 6:31Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Christ makes our own desire for kindness the measure of how we treat others, a law God writes on believing hearts; mercy forms in us the likeness of God.
  • Commentary on Luke 6:37Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Judging others springs from arrogance and condemns the judge, who usually shares the faults he condemns; we should pity and pray for the weak and examine our own sins, as the Psalmist did.
  • Commentary on Luke 6:38Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Almsgiving is rewarded by God with overflowing measure; the measure we use corresponds to the generosity of our sowing, and God accepts each according to what he has, as the law accepted offerings according to means.
  • Commentary on Luke 6:46Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Lordship belongs to Christ alone as God, so to call him Lord without obeying him deserves punishment; obedience to his word brings freedom and sonship, and the obedient man is a house founded on rock that withstands temptation, the hearer only a house on sand.
  • Commentary on Luke 9:46Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Probably only one disciple fell into the vainglory of asking who was greatest, and Luke tactfully does not name him; Christ uprooted the passion at once by setting a child before them as the image of a guileless life free of ambition.
  • Commentary on Luke 9:48Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Since the reward for receiving the least is the same, rivalry for first place is pointless, and the humble are great; the would-be follower was turned away because he had not renounced worldly distractions, and the foxes and birds also signify the demons.
  • Commentary on Luke 10:28Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · The lawyer’s trap failed, and he fell into pride, thinking no one his neighbour; the commandments of love, extended by Christ to all mankind and to laying down one’s life, turn a Jew into a Christian, and he who loves no neighbour cannot love God.
  • Commentary on Luke 10:30Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Christ defines the neighbour by shared human nature, not race or virtue; the humble Samaritan, not the proud priest and Levite, fulfilled the law of love.
  • Commentary on Luke 12:15Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Greed is a diabolical pit, called idolatry, and God punishes those who defraud the poor; nor does wealth lengthen life; Satan turns the rich from almsgiving to hoarding and forgetfulness of death, as the parable of the rich fool depicts.
  • Commentary on Luke 12:16Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · The rich fool, though his whole country was fruitful, spoke like a poor man in his anxiety, hoarded for his belly instead of sharing as God’s steward, and promised himself long life, only to die that night.
  • Commentary on Luke 12:20Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · The rich fool’s goods pass to others; life does not consist in possessions, and only the one rich toward God, in good works, has treasure in heaven.
  • Commentary on Luke 12:33Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Selling possessions and giving alms is hard for the rich but profitable, exchanging temporary goods for an inviolable treasure in heaven.
  • Commentary on Luke 14:7Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Seeing guests seize the first places, Christ teaches humility: one who yields his place will be honoured by the host and by God, imitating Christ, who is gentle and lowly in heart.
  • Commentary on Luke 14:11Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Humility and pride are judged by God; hosts should invite the poor and maimed, who cannot repay, not to avoid honouring their own, but so that God may repay them in the life to come.
  • Commentary on Luke 14:26Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · “Hating” one’s family does not abolish natural affection, which Christ and Paul honour, but means using nature for salvation and choosing whatever agrees with following Christ; as Paul shows, life itself is to be kept or given up for Christ.
  • Commentary on Luke 14:28Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Like a builder counting the cost or a king weighing a war, believers must store up zeal before undertaking the Christian life, fighting the spiritual powers and passions in God’s strength; salt is the apostles’ teaching, without which the soul is insipid.
  • Commentary on Luke 16:1 (part 2)Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Not every detail of a parable needs interpreting; the unjust steward teaches that the rich, entrusted with wealth as stewards of the poor, will lose it at death, and should use at least part of it to win friends among the poor who will receive them in the eternal dwellings.
  • Commentary on Luke 16:10Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Faithfulness in the “very little,” earthly wealth that is not truly ours and belongs to the poor, is the condition for receiving “the true” and “our own,” the divine gifts that restore God’s image in the soul.
  • Commentary on Luke 16:13 (1)Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · A servant of two opposed masters cannot please both; so no one can serve God and mammon.
  • Commentary on Luke 16:13 (2)Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · The money-loving Pharisees, like fierce diseases that resist medicine, scoffed at Christ’s counsel, so he sharply exposes them as hypocrites who seek the glory of the righteous without being so.
  • Commentary on Luke 16:19Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · The rich man and Lazarus is a parable, not an account of judgement already given, since judgement follows the resurrection at Christ’s return; it warns the rich, unable to give up everything, at least to help the poor, lest they share the nameless rich man’s fate, while Lazarus is carried to Abraham’s bosom.
  • Commentary on Luke 17:1 (part 2)Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Stumbling blocks are of two kinds: heresies, which attack God’s glory and lead the world astray, and the everyday offences between brothers that arise from human weakness, not from God; here Christ means the latter, warning the offender while commanding patience with him.
  • Commentary on Luke 17:4Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · We must forgive the brother who repents as often as he sins, as physicians treat the sick every time they fall ill, remembering our own weakness and bearing one another’s burdens.
  • Commentary on Luke 17:33Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · One saves his life by losing it: by crucifying the flesh and its passions, as Paul teaches, and by martyrdom; those who live for pleasure, or deny the faith to escape death, lose their souls.
  • Commentary on Luke 18:20Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Christ disappoints the ruler’s hope of catching him rejecting Moses by pointing him to the commandments, which forbid adultery, murder and theft and command honour of parents; the ruler, an old wineskin, could not hold the new wine; the rich who will not give up everything may still win friends with their wealth.
  • Commentary on Luke 19:8Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Zacchaeus the money-lover at once becomes a lover of the poor, giving half his goods and repaying fourfold as the law and David’s judgement require.
  • Commentary on Luke 21:1Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · The rich gave much from their abundance, but the poor widow, living on alms, gave her two coins, her very livelihood, lending to God from her poverty, and so surpassed them all.
  • Commentary on Luke 22:24Cyril of Alexandria · ca. 412-444 · Christ rebukes the disciples’ dispute over rank, a love of glory unlike the rulers of the nations; the Lord of glory served and washed their feet as our example; he speaks humanly before the cross when he promises them a kingdom and a place at his table, meaning not food but the first honours in his presence.
  • Book 1, chapter 6 (first part)Hesychius of Jerusalem · ca. 412-450 · On the guilt offering for fraud and false oaths (Lev 6:1–7), Hesychius teaches that perjury, like sacrilege, wrongs God himself, that restitution with a fifth means consecrating the tongue to God, and that Christ is both the priest and the one who suffers injustice with us; Book 1 closes with a doxology.
  • Book 2, chapter 7Hesychius of Jerusalem · ca. 412-450 · On Lev 7, Hesychius treats the guilt offering as repentance for sins against God, which needs part of Christ's sacrifice; the priest's portions as patience, theology and good works completed by grace; the ban on eating peace offerings on the third day as a rebuke of those who expect an earthly thousand-year kingdom after the resurrection; and the bans on fat and blood as the offering of desire to God and the refusal to harm one's neighbour.
  • Book 3, chapter 11Hesychius of Jerusalem · ca. 412-450 · On the clean and unclean animals of Lev 11, Hesychius argues that nature is not unclean, since God made all things good, but that the animals figure kinds of people: those who chew the cud and divide the hoof meditate on the law, practise it and distinguish letter from spirit; fish with fins and scales are converted gentiles; the forbidden birds are false contemplatives; the creeping things are the earthly-minded; and the carcasses are sinful actions, from which one is cleansed by repentance.
  • Book 4, chapter 13 (printed XII in Migne)Hesychius of Jerusalem · ca. 412-450 · On Leviticus 13 Hesychius reads leprosy as sin and transgression, the man partly leprous as the Jewish people and the man wholly covered as the Gentile freed from the letter of the law, and the leprosy of head, beard, and garments as errors in doctrine and pride or vainglory spoiling the virtues.
  • Book 5, chapter 17Hesychius of Jerusalem · ca. 412-450 · On Leviticus 17 Hesychius argues that confining sacrifice to the tabernacle showed the law's rites to be temporary, ending with the temple's destruction, and reads the prohibition of blood as a ban on murder, hatred and harming one's neighbour, with Christ's blood as the true expiation.
  • Book 5, chapter 18Hesychius of Jerusalem · ca. 412-450 · On Leviticus 18 Hesychius explains the forbidden degrees of marriage as guarding the order of generations, and reads them spiritually as forbidding the exposure of a brother's sins; he condemns adultery, Molech worship, sex between males and bestiality, and warns against mixing church and synagogue rites or pagan philosophy and doctrine.
  • Book 6, chapter 19Hesychius of Jerusalem · ca. 412-450 · On Leviticus 19 Hesychius expounds the holiness code: holiness, honour of parents and the spiritual Sabbath, care for the poor and hired workers, honest judgment and weights, love of neighbour as the fullness of the law, and warnings against augury, sorcery, mixing church and synagogue, and burdening Gentile converts.
  • Book 6, chapter 20Hesychius of Jerusalem · ca. 412-450 · On Leviticus 20 Hesychius explains the penalties for Molech worship, sorcery, cursing parents, adultery, incest and other sexual sins, and reads them spiritually as warnings against corrupting disciples, spiritual adultery against Christ's bride the church, exposing others' sins, and pagan wisdom.
  • City of God 1.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that temporal goods and evils fall on good and bad alike, but the same suffering purifies the good and destroys the wicked.
  • City of God 1.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine gives reasons why good Christians suffered with the wicked: their own lesser sins, their failure to rebuke sinners out of attachment to temporal things, and the testing of their love for God.
  • City of God 1.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that Christians who lost property, were tortured, or starved in the sack lost nothing essential, and that those who had stored their treasure in heaven were not harmed.
  • City of God 1.16Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine begins to answer pagan taunts about women, including consecrated virgins, raped during the sack, holding that chastity is a virtue of the will which another's violence cannot take away.
  • City of God 1.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine holds that suicide is homicide, forbidden even to avoid rape, and illustrates this with the despairing suicide of Judas.
  • City of God 1.18Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that chastity, as a virtue of the mind, is not lost when the body is violated against the will, so a raped woman has nothing to punish in herself by suicide.
  • City of God 1.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine uses the story of Lucretia to show that a woman raped against her will is not guilty, and that Lucretia's suicide came from shame rather than love of chastity, unlike Christian women who chose to live.
  • City of God 1.20Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that the commandment “You shall not kill” forbids suicide, since it applies to human beings and makes no exception for oneself.
  • City of God 1.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine names the exceptions to the prohibition of killing, namely killing commanded by God or by just public authority, and concludes that any other killing, including of oneself, is homicide.
  • City of God 1.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that suicide shows weakness rather than greatness of soul, citing the man who killed himself after reading Plato, and notes that Christ told his disciples to flee persecution, not to kill themselves.
  • City of God 1.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that Cato's suicide at Utica came from weakness or envy of Caesar's glory, since Cato told his own son to hope for Caesar's mercy.
  • City of God 1.24Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine prefers Regulus, who endured captivity rather than kill himself, to Cato, and argues that Christians should all the more refrain from suicide when subjected to enemies.
  • City of God 1.25Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine rejects suicide as a way to avoid possible consent to sin, since a certain homicide is worse than an uncertain adultery that could be repented of.
  • City of God 1.26Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine declines to judge holy women honored as martyrs who drowned themselves to escape violation, allowing that God may have commanded them, but concludes that no one may kill himself for any ordinary reason.
  • City of God 1.27Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine reduces to absurdity the argument that suicide is right to avoid sin, since it would require urging the newly baptized to kill themselves.
  • City of God 1.28Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine consoles Christian women who were raped, suggesting that God permitted it to humble hidden pride or to correct the error that chastity belongs to the body rather than the will.
  • City of God 2.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine challenges pagans to show any place where their gods taught moral precepts, as churches do wherever Christianity spreads.
  • City of God 2.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that philosophy is human discovery, not divine precept, and that pagans imitate the immoral deeds of their gods, as in Terence's young man who cites Jupiter's example.
  • City of God 2.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine contrasts the silence of the gods on morals with the Christian Scriptures' constant teaching against avarice and luxury, and says Christians must bear even a corrupt state while aiming at the heavenly commonwealth.
  • City of God 2.20Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine satirizes the kind of state his opponents want, one devoted to wealth, pleasure, and license so long as it is safe, and compares it to the house of Sardanapalus.
  • City of God 2.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine summarizes Cicero's argument in the Republic that without justice there is no true state, and Cicero's own admission that Rome had lost its state through vice before Christ, concluding that true justice exists only in the city of God.
  • City of God 4.3Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine compares a vast empire won by war to a rich man tormented by anxieties, and argues that the reign of the good benefits their subjects while the wicked ruler is himself a slave to his vices.
  • City of God 4.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that kingdoms without justice are simply large robber bands, illustrating with the pirate's reply to Alexander the Great.
  • City of God 4.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that good men prefer peaceful neighbors to conquest, that Rome's just wars were made possible by others' iniquity, and that victory is the gift of the true King of kings, not of Jupiter.
  • City of God 4.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that if Virtue and Felicity were goddesses, all the other petty deities would be superfluous, and that both are in truth gifts of God.
  • City of God 5.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that God gave the Western empire to Romans whose love of praise, itself a vice, restrained worse vices.
  • City of God 5.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine distinguishes love of glory from lust for domination, teaches that even tyrants rule by God's permission, and holds that true virtue requires true piety.
  • City of God 5.20Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that virtues made to serve human glory are as degraded as the Epicurean picture of virtues serving Pleasure.
  • City of God 5.24Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine defines the true happiness of Christian emperors as just, humble, and merciful rule directed to God and eternal life, not earthly success.
  • City of God 7.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine ridicules the naming of Jupiter as 'Money' and contrasts money with true riches, which are virtue and wisdom.
  • City of God 8.3Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine describes how Socrates turned philosophy to ethics, and how his followers, such as Aristippus and Antisthenes, disagreed about the supreme good.
  • City of God 8.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine sets the Platonists above other moralists because they placed happiness not in body or mind but in the enjoyment of God, the supreme good.
  • City of God 8.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that demons, being subject to passions from which the true religion frees us, cannot rightly be worshipped, since religion means imitating what one worships.
  • City of God 9.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that Stoics and Platonists differ in words rather than substance about the passions, citing Aulus Gellius' story of the Stoic who turned pale in a storm at sea.
  • City of God 9.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine teaches that Christian discipline asks not whether one feels anger, sadness, or fear but why, praises mercy as a virtue against the Stoics, and explains that God's 'anger' describes his punishment, not a passion.
  • City of God 11.16Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Creatures are ranked by nature above one another, but human valuation follows use, and in rational beings the will decides: good men rank above evil angels.
  • City of God 11.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Vice is contrary to nature and proves the goodness of the nature it harms; God uses even the devil's evil will for the good of the saints.
  • City of God 11.25Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The philosophers' division into physics, logic, and ethics mirrors our dependence on God for being, wisdom, and happiness; Augustine distinguishes enjoying from using.
  • City of God 11.28Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · We also love the love by which we love; all things seek their place as by a love, and man, as God's image, should return like the prodigal son to God, in whom being, knowing, and loving will be perfected.
  • City of God 12.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The will sins not by turning to evil things but by turning evilly, out of order, to lesser goods: avarice, lust, boasting, and pride lie in the soul's perverse love, not in their objects.
  • City of God 14.2Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · In Scripture “flesh” often means the whole man, so living according to the flesh includes vices of the mind, such as idolatry, enmity, and heresy, as well as bodily pleasures; Stoics as well as Epicureans live according to the flesh.
  • City of God 14.3Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The corruptible body burdens the soul, but it is the punishment of sin, not its cause; the devil, who has no flesh, commits “works of the flesh” like pride and envy, so living according to the flesh means living according to oneself.
  • City of God 14.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · To live according to the flesh is to live according to man rather than God, which is a lie, since man was made to live by God's will; Paul's “carnal,” “animal,” and “men” all mean this.
  • City of God 14.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The emotions are acts of the will, good or bad according to the will; one who lives according to God hates the fault but loves the person.
  • City of God 14.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Scripture uses amor and dilectio alike for good and bad love, as Christ's questions to Peter show; love is the root of desire, joy, fear, and sadness, which are good or bad as the love is.
  • City of God 14.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine examines the Stoic doctrine of three good feelings in the sage and no sadness, showing that Scripture and classical authors use will, gladness, and even sadness in both good and bad senses, as with godly sorrow.
  • City of God 14.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Citizens of God's city rightly fear, desire, grieve, and rejoice out of charity, as Paul and Christ himself did; Stoic apatheia belongs not to this life but, as freedom from fear and grief, to the life to come, where love and joy remain.
  • City of God 14.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The first sin, though about food, was grave because it violated obedience, the mother of virtues, in a command that was supremely easy to keep before desire resisted the will.
  • City of God 14.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The evil deed was preceded by an evil will, whose beginning was pride, a self-pleasing turning from God; humility lifts up and pride casts down, and love of God and love of self distinguish the two cities.
  • City of God 14.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The just penalty of disobedience was disobedience: man, given over to himself, cannot command his own mind and flesh; pains and pleasures of the flesh belong to the soul, and “lust” (libido) is the general name for every craving, though used chiefly of sexual desire.
  • City of God 14.16Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Lust, in its narrow sense of sexual arousal, overwhelms the mind and does not obey the will, so that a wise married person would prefer to beget children without it if he could.
  • City of God 14.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The philosophers rightly saw anger and lust as vicious parts of the soul needing reason's rule, but this disorder is the sickness of sin; lust alone moves the genitals apart from the will, which is why its acts are hidden.
  • City of God 14.27Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God, foreknowing the fall, allowed the devil to tempt man, compelling no one, to show the power of pride and of grace; two loves, of self and of God, have made the two cities.
  • City of God 15.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The earthly city seeks earthly peace through war; its goods are real gifts of God, but loving them above heavenly goods brings misery.
  • City of God 15.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The citizens of God's city, still weak from sin, are healed by mutual correction and forgiveness, but only as the Holy Spirit works within.
  • City of God 15.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine interprets God's warning to Cain (Gen 4:6–7, in its Old Latin form), arguing that Cain's sin was envy and that man must rule over sin as the mind rules the flesh.
  • City of God 15.16Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that brother–sister marriage was necessary at first but became wicked, since spreading kinship ties widely strengthens social love; he approves the prohibition of cousin marriage.
  • City of God 15.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The sons of God (Seth's line) fell by loving the beautiful daughters of men, a disorder of love; Augustine defines virtue as 'the order of love'.
  • City of God 16.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Abraham, calling Sarah his sister, did not lie, and trusted God to protect her chastity, which God did by afflicting Pharaoh.
  • City of God 16.25Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Abraham took Hagar only for offspring at Sarah's request, not from lust, and showed his fidelity to Sarah by returning Hagar to her authority.
  • City of God 16.30Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Sodom's destruction by fire prefigures the final judgment, and Lot's wife warns against looking back; at Gerar God again protected Sarah.
  • City of God 16.36Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Isaac received the promise for Abraham's sake; though monogamous, he was not greater than Abraham, and virtues must be weighed as a whole.
  • City of God 18.41Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine contrasts the endless disagreements of the philosophers, all tolerated by the earthly city, “Babylon,” with the concord of the canonical Scriptures, through which God himself taught Israel.
  • City of God 19.1Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine sets out Varro's scheme by which philosophical views of the supreme good could be multiplied to 288 possible sects, and explains Varro's removal of the distinctions that do not concern the end of good.
  • City of God 19.2Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains how Varro strips away the distinctions of social life, certainty, Cynic dress, and kind of life, and reduces the question of the supreme good to three possible views about virtue and the primary goods of nature.
  • City of God 19.3Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine reports Varro's argument, following Antiochus of Ascalon, that man is soul and body together, so that the supreme good consists of virtue and the goods of both, in a social life that mixes leisure and action.
  • City of God 19.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine answers that eternal life is the supreme good and eternal death the supreme evil, and argues that the miseries of this life, the constant war of virtue against vice, and even the Stoic defence of suicide show that happiness here can only be held in hope.
  • City of God 19.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine agrees that the wise man's life should be social, since the city of God is itself a society, but shows how households and cities are full of betrayals, quarrels, and dangers.
  • City of God 19.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine shows the misery of human judgment, in which judges, unable to see consciences, torture and condemn the innocent, and says the wise judge must serve but should lament this necessity before God.
  • City of God 19.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine describes how differences of language divide the human race and how the peace of empire was bought with terrible wars, and says that even the wise man who wages just wars must grieve over their necessity.
  • City of God 19.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine says that the faithful love of friends is the chief comfort of human society, yet it brings constant fear for their safety and virtue, and grief at their death, which is nevertheless consoled because they have escaped the evils of this life.
  • City of God 19.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine says that the saints' struggle with temptation makes them long for the final peace, in which body and soul will be perfected and virtue will no longer fight, and that true virtue refers everything to that end.
  • City of God 19.12Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that all beings desire peace: warriors, robbers, and even the monster Cacus seek it in their own way, pride perversely imitates God's peace, and even a corpse is governed by the peace of natural order.
  • City of God 19.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine defines the peace of body, soul, household, city, and the heavenly city, and of all things as “the tranquillity of order,” showing that even the wretched and the devil remain within God's order, and that temporal peace, rightly used, leads to eternal peace.
  • City of God 19.14Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that the earthly city uses temporal things for earthly peace and the heavenly for eternal peace, and that love of God and neighbour produces an ordered household in which those who command actually serve.
  • City of God 19.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine teaches that God made man to rule over beasts, not over other men, that slavery entered as a penalty of sin, and that slaves should serve faithfully until all human rule ends and God is all in all.
  • City of God 19.16Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine says that righteous fathers cared equally for children and slaves in regard to God, that household discipline serves the good of the one corrected, and that domestic peace is ordered to the peace of the city.
  • City of God 19.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that the heavenly city, while a pilgrim on earth, shares the use of temporal goods and obeys the laws of the earthly city for the sake of peace, but must dissent from it in religion, since it worships the one God alone.
  • City of God 19.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine says that the Christian city is indifferent to dress and manner of life so long as they do not conflict with God's law, and that leisure should serve the search for truth and action the good of others, as the office of bishop is a work, not an honour.
  • City of God 19.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that by Scipio's definition in Cicero's Republic, a commonwealth requires true justice, and since justice gives each his due and the Romans withheld worship from the true God, Rome was never a true commonwealth.
  • City of God 19.25Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that virtues not referred to God, even those valued for their own sake, are really proud vices, since what makes man live happily is above man.
  • City of God 21.27Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Almsgiving and the Lord's Prayer forgive daily sins of those who are changing their lives, but cannot buy impunity for continued crimes; there is a hidden class of lesser sins pardoned through the intercession of holy friends, but deliverance keeps one from eternal fire, never releases one from it.
  • City of God 22.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Besides the common evils, the righteous must fight constantly against their own vices by God's grace, and still pray for forgiveness, until in the kingdom there will be neither battles nor debts.
  • On Faith and Works 3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · The mixture of good and bad in the church does not abolish discipline: Moses, Phinehas, and Paul all punished or excluded notorious sinners, though in love.
  • On Faith and Works 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Sound teaching balances both: tolerate the wicked when discipline would harm peace, but exercise discipline when peace allows.
  • On Faith and Works 15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Preaching “Christ crucified” includes the crucifixion of the old self and its desires, so it cannot permit professed adultery.
  • On Faith and Works 16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · The two great commandments cannot be split between candidates and the baptized, since love of God and love of neighbor imply each other.
  • On Faith and Works 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · No one would baptize an idolater who refused to give up idolatry; for the same reason the sexually immoral who refuse to amend must not be baptized, since both are excluded from God's kingdom.
  • On Faith and Works 20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Christ told the rich man to keep the commandments to enter life; faith and conduct are inseparable, so Scripture sometimes names one for both.
  • On Faith and Works 21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Paul's teaching that we are justified by faith without works of the law was misread as licence; true saving faith works through love, and the other apostles wrote against faith without works.
  • On Faith and Works 22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · 2 Peter warns that some twisted Paul's hard sayings to neglect good living, and urges holy conduct in view of the new heavens and earth.
  • On Faith and Works 23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · James compares faith without works to the demons' belief and calls it dead.
  • On Faith and Works 27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Augustine's own interpretation: the foundation is faith working through love; gold and silver are wholehearted devotion to God, while wood and hay are carnal attachments to lawful goods, lost with painful “fire”; grave sin destroys the foundation itself.
  • On Faith and Works 34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Even those who treat only unchastity, idolatry, and murder as deadly must count adultery among them.
  • On Faith and Works 38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Israel's sin was not only unbelief but also the killing of Christ, a sin against good life; true faith avoids both.
  • On Faith and Works 39Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · The violent who seize the kingdom are those who by faith obtain the Spirit of love, fulfilling the law from love, not the wicked who merely believe.
  • On Faith and Works 40Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Knowing God, which is eternal life, means keeping his commandments; God's commandment is to believe in Christ and love one another.
  • On Faith and Works 41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Faith profits by bringing help to live well and pardon for those who turn from sin; Wisdom 15:2 and 1 John 2:1–2 give no security to those who persist.
  • On Faith and Works 45Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · 2 Peter 2 says that those who know Christ and return to corruption are worse off than if they had never known him, refuting any milder fate for baptized sinners.
  • On Faith and Works 46Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · The “holy commandment” of 2 Peter is chaste living; Peter's dry springs, Jude's waterless clouds, and James's dead faith all describe believers who do not live accordingly.
  • On Faith and Works 48Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Life must accord with baptism; there are grave sins requiring excommunication, lesser ones healed by rebuke, and daily sins forgiven through the Lord's Prayer.
  • On Faith and Works 49Augustine of Hippo · ca. 413 · Conclusion: the wicked are tolerated without abandoning discipline; candidates must be taught how to live as well as what to believe; eternal life is not promised to dead faith, and those who openly intend to remain in adultery refuse Christ's gift.
  • On the Good of Widowhood 27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 414 · Those living in continence must guard their reputation as well as their conscience, for others' sake, and bear unjust suspicion with joy.
  • Commentary on Jeremiah 1.69Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Swearing by the living Lord here means confessing him against idols; a true oath needs truth, judgment and righteousness.
  • Commentary on Jeremiah 2.6Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Those grown rich by preying on others neglect justice for the orphan and the poor and will be punished.
  • Commentary on Jeremiah 2.23Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Costly offerings are worthless from those who disobey God's law, as are alms given from the spoils of injustice.
  • Commentary on Jeremiah 2.32Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Confidence in the temple, or in splendid churches, is vain without justice and true faith; likewise bodily virginity without purity of mind.
  • Commentary on Jeremiah 4.35Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Jeremiah tells the king in person to do justice, protect the stranger, orphan, and widow, and shed no innocent blood, or the palace will be desolate; the warning applies to bishops, presbyters, and deacons (Jer 22:1–5).
  • Commentary on Jeremiah 5.67Jerome · ca. 414-419 · The false prophets Ahab and Zedekiah, adulterers burned by the king of Babylon, are identified by the Hebrews with the elders of the Susanna story, whose stoning conflicts with this account; Jerome applies the warning to adulterous false teachers in the church (Jer 29:21–23).
  • Chapter 2Anonymous · ca. 414-450 · True humility, inwardly peaceful, is distinguished from the abjectness of sloth or forced poverty, just as holy fear is distinguished from servile fear.
  • Chapter 3Anonymous · ca. 414-450 · Humility first appears in common life, where people honour one another regardless of rank and wealth, and rises to willingly suffering wrong in imitation of Christ.
  • Chapter 4Anonymous · ca. 414-450 · Those who know their redemption renounce the world's wisdom, wealth, and honours, not from weakness but because they aspire to the Creator himself.
  • Chapter 5Anonymous · ca. 414-450 · Humility is open to the rich as well as the voluntary poor, as the wealthy patriarchs, Melchizedek, and Job show, and rich Christians who use their goods as stewards for the poor share in it.
  • On Patience 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · God is called patient because he waits for sinners to be corrected, though his impassible nature suffers nothing; Augustine turns to human patience.
  • On Patience 2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · True patience bears evils with an even mind so as not to abandon the good, and so escapes worse evils and gains eternal glory.
  • On Patience 3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · People endure great hardships most patiently for riches, honours, and amusements, and are even praised for it.
  • On Patience 4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · Criminals such as Catiline and robbers also endure much, but that is hardness, not patience, which serves wisdom and a good conscience.
  • On Patience 5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · Patience is judged by the cause of the suffering: only those who suffer rightly have true patience.
  • On Patience 9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · Job, attacked secretly by the devil through loss of goods and children, bodily torment, his wife, and his friends, kept patience throughout.
  • On Patience 10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · Against those who kill themselves and claim the glory of martyrs, Augustine argues from Job that suicide destroys patience and is worse than parricide, even under persecution.
  • On Patience 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · Scripture teaches patience under trial and discipline, by which we return to the paradise we lost through appetite for pleasure.
  • On Patience 14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · The wicked endure much from desire for the world, which comes from their own will; the righteous endure from the love of God, which the Holy Spirit pours into their hearts.
  • On Man's Perfection in Righteousness 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · All commandments sum up in love of God and neighbor, forbidding covetousness and commanding love; continence and love are God's gifts, and the law drives us to grace.
  • On Man's Perfection in Righteousness 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · Our righteousness on pilgrimage is the course of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer toward perfect righteousness; because we still fall short, we rightly pray “forgive us our debts.”
  • On Man's Perfection in Righteousness 28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · Job's clear conscience means that his faith rejects the sin that still dwells in him; he does good in resisting it, but cannot accomplish perfect good until desire is gone, and he confesses his sins.
  • Apologetic Book 18.4Orosius · ca. 415–416 · Every virtue borders a vice.
  • Apologetic Book 31.4Orosius · ca. 415–416 · The great commandments.
  • Apologetic Book 31.5Orosius · ca. 415–416 · Does Pelagius keep the first commandment perfectly?
  • Apologetic Book 31.6Orosius · ca. 415–416 · Does he never flatter the great?
  • Apologetic Book 31.7Orosius · ca. 415–416 · Does he love all Christians as himself?
  • Seven Books of History against the Pagans 1.5.8Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Wealth bred luxury and homosexual vice in Sodom.
  • Seven Books of History against the Pagans 1.21.5Orosius · ca. 417–418 · They sent men home to beget children with all the women.
  • On the Proceedings of Pelagius 12Augustine of Hippo · 417 · Pelagius explained that a Christian should strive not to think evil; Augustine distinguishes evil that merely comes to mind from evil thought with consent.
  • Letter 2, chapter 5Zosimus, bishop of Rome · 417–418 · Citing Daniel’s rescue of Susanna and Solomon’s judgment, Zosimus argues that a judge must examine carefully and be slow to believe evil.
  • Letter 3, chapter 4Zosimus, bishop of Rome · 417–418 · Zosimus urges the African bishops to love peace and to beware of false witnesses, who even accused Christ.
  • Letter 3, chapter 5Zosimus, bishop of Rome · 417–418 · Citing Psalm 119, John 7, Exodus 23, Sirach, Proverbs and Festus in Acts 25, Zosimus insists that no one should be condemned in absence on hearsay.
  • Letter 3, chapter 6Zosimus, bishop of Rome · 417–418 · Zosimus points to the caution of Roman civil procedure, which protects the innocent by delay and evidence from afar.
  • Letter 3, chapter 7Zosimus, bishop of Rome · 417–418 · Zosimus reproaches Heros and Lazarus for accusing by letter instead of appearing, and reminds all of Christ’s judgment seat.
  • On Adulterous Marriages 1.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Many good acts are done not from command but from free charity, as Christ paid the tax and Paul gave up his rights; some lawful things are not expedient.
  • On Adulterous Marriages 1.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Augustine distinguishes what is lawful but not expedient (such as leaving an unbelieving spouse) from what is good and better (such as marriage and virginity).
  • On Adulterous Marriages 1.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Augustine argues that doing what is lawful but not expedient is not properly a sin, though it should not be done.
  • On Adulterous Marriages 1.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Lawful but inexpedient acts are those permitted before God but avoided so as not to hinder others' salvation; the Lord forbids only what is unlawful.
  • On Adulterous Marriages 1.29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Winning a soul for Christ does not justify committing adultery by remarriage, since one may not do evil that good may come.
  • On Adulterous Marriages 1.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Neither remarriage after divorce nor breaking a vow of continence may be excused by the hope of converting a prospective spouse.
  • On Adulterous Marriages 2.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Augustine reports that some removed the story of the woman taken in adultery from their manuscripts, fearing it licensed sin, and rebukes husbands who condemn adulterous wives while committing adultery themselves.
  • On Adulterous Marriages 2.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Augustine rejects the double standard that punishes adulterous wives but excuses husbands, citing even a pagan emperor's rescript, and calls adulterous men to repentance.
  • On Adulterous Marriages 2.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Paul allowed marriage as a remedy for incontinence, not for the sake of children; so neither motive can excuse adultery, and one who must avoid adultery must keep continence.
  • On Adulterous Marriages 2.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Answering the fear that forbidding remarriage would lead husbands to have adulterous wives put to death, Augustine urges mercy grounded in awareness of one's own sin.
  • On Adulterous Marriages 2.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Christians should spare adulterous wives out of forgiveness, not because remarriage is allowed; a Christian may neither kill an adulterous wife nor remarry while she lives.
  • On Adulterous Marriages 2.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Augustine argues that the risk of husbands resorting to murder cannot be a reason to deny that remarriage is adultery, since the same argument would overturn the Lord's teaching altogether.
  • On Adulterous Marriages 2.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Men who claim weakness as an excuse for adultery are refuted by the chastity they demand of women, such as the Syrian wives of long-absent merchants.
  • Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Dulcitius never called Gaudentius innocent; the laws persecute vices, not people, and one who would kill himself and others cannot claim innocence.
  • Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Augustine turns Exod 23:7 against Gaudentius: no one who kills himself dies innocent, since the intention to do so already makes him guilty.
  • Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Gaudentius argues from free will that God needs no human defense; Augustine answers that by this logic all crimes would go unpunished, and cites Rom 13, Moses, and Nebuchadnezzar’s decree.
  • Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · John 16:2 refers to Jewish persecutors or to heretics killing Catholics; the Donatists who kill themselves fit its next verse, knowing neither the Father (“You shall not kill”) nor the Son (“Flee”).
  • Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · The martyrs under the altar ask vengeance on those who shed their blood; the Donatists who kill themselves by water, fire, and the precipice imitate the devil and will be avenged on themselves.
  • Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Gaudentius praises Donatists who killed themselves, citing Razis in 2 Maccabees; Augustine answers that they suffer from their own deeds and describes the circumcellions’ habit of seeking death.
  • Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Gaudentius’s use of “the spirit is willing” to justify suicide fails; God gives a way out and patience, and Cyprian forbade offering oneself.
  • Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Job longed for death but would not kill himself, because it is never just; what a just man “cannot” do means what justice forbids.
  • Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Razis should have suffered patiently like the seven Maccabean brothers; and since he could not flee and was strong, not weak, he is no model for the Donatists.
  • Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · The books of Maccabees are not held by the Jews like the Law, Prophets, and Psalms, but are received by the church with profit if read soberly; not every deed of praised men is to be imitated.
  • Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.39Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Not everything done by praised figures is to be imitated (David, Solomon, Peter, Noah, Judah); Samson’s death came from the Spirit’s prompting, like Abraham’s sacrifice at God’s command.
  • Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.40Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Cyprian said discipline forbids offering oneself; Christ commands flight and the tribune permits it, so the Donatists have no excuse for suicide.
  • Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.46Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Wis 5:1–9 promises vindication to the just, not to all who suffer; Donatists who kill themselves, including pregnant nuns, imitate Judas rather than the martyrs.
  • Against Gaudentius, Bishop of the Donatists 1.49Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · In killing themselves by whatever means, the Donatists imitate Judas, prompted by the same devil who drove the boy into fire and water and the swine into the sea.
  • On Marriage and Concupiscence 1.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Intercourse for pleasure within marriage is a venial fault, but those who prevent conception, expose children, or procure abortion are not truly married.
  • On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Paul's 'natural use' refers to the use of the members made for begetting, not to praise of marriage; unnatural acts are worse even than unlawful natural ones.
  • Questions on Exodus 71 (on Exod 21:10-11)Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Augustine discusses how to divide the Ten Commandments, the difference between adultery and coveting a neighbour's wife, and whether the commandment against adultery also forbids all sexual immorality, citing Matt 5:32.
  • The Institutes 0.7John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Cassian will describe the monks' institutions and the eight principal vices, not their miracles, which only astonish without instructing.
  • The Institutes 1.11John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The girdle signifies readiness for work and the mortification of sexual desire.
  • The Institutes 4.5John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The new monk is stripped of his own clothes before the brothers and clothed by the abbot, learning to own nothing and trust in God.
  • The Institutes 4.8John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The elder's first task is to teach the novice to renounce his own will, without which no vice can be overcome.
  • The Institutes 4.13John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Egyptian monks own nothing but their basic clothing and mat, and may not even say "my" of anything.
  • The Institutes 4.14John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Though their work earns much, each monk takes only two small loaves, does no private work, and regards himself as a servant, not an owner.
  • The Institutes 4.15John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Cassian contrasts the Egyptians with Gallic monks who keep keys, seals, and hoards, and promises examples from the elders' lives.
  • The Institutes 4.39John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Pinufius traces the path from the fear of the Lord through renunciation to humility, gives ten signs of humility, and says humility leads to love that casts out fear.
  • The Institutes 4.43John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Pinufius sums up the ladder: fear of the Lord, compunction, renunciation, humility, mortification of will, expulsion of vices, virtues, purity of heart, perfect love.
  • The Institutes 5.1John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Cassian begins his treatment of the eight principal vices, starting with gluttony.
  • The Institutes 5.4John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Following Antony, the monk should gather each virtue like a bee from those who excel in it, since Christ is now found in parts among his saints.
  • The Institutes 5.6John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Overeating even plain food breeds lust, as the sin of Sodom shows; how much more meat and wine taken freely.
  • The Institutes 5.10John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Fasting alone is insufficient; humility, poverty, and victory over anger, dejection, vainglory, pride, and wandering thoughts must accompany it.
  • The Institutes 5.11John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Lust cannot be conquered unless gluttony and the other vices are too, since the virtues form one whole and a city falls through any gate.
  • The Institutes 5.16John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Only those who have conquered gluttony may face the spiritual powers; Paul's words "no temptation but what is human" are a rebuke, not a wish.
  • The Institutes 5.22John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Fasting aims at purity of heart; it is worse to devour one's brothers by detraction, anger, and envy than to eat permitted food.
  • The Institutes 5.30John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Machetes fell into the three practices he had once condemned in others, and so taught that one must never judge a brother.
  • The Institutes 5.37John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The hermit Archebius pretended to be leaving so as to give his cell to Cassian, and did the same again for other brothers, building himself new cells.
  • The Institutes 5.38John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Archebius, who had not seen his mother in fifty years, tripled his work for a year to pay off his dead father's debt and free her from creditors.
  • The Institutes 5.39John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · An elder commissioned a useless Latin copy of Paul's letters from the Italian monk Symeon so that he could support him without shaming him.
  • The Institutes 6.1John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The second struggle, against sexual immorality, is the longest and needs fasting together with contrition, prayer, Scripture, work, and humility.
  • The Institutes 6.2John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Sexual sin comes from the heart, so the heart must be cleansed, not only the body disciplined by fasting.
  • The Institutes 6.3John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Unlike anger, which is cured by living among others, sexual temptation is best cured by solitude, away from its occasions.
  • The Institutes 6.4John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Cassian distinguishes the continent man, who resists desire, from the truly chaste, who no longer feels it; many are continent in community, but chastity is rarely attained there.
  • The Institutes 6.5John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The spirit of sexual immorality can be overcome only with God's help, and the soul is attacked until it learns this.
  • The Institutes 6.6John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Chastity is above all God's gift; it makes men like the angels and gives them heavenly citizenship while still in the flesh.
  • The Institutes 6.7John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Athletes abstain from food, idleness, and even marital relations, and guard against nocturnal emissions, to keep their strength for the contest.
  • The Institutes 6.8John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · If athletes guard their purity so carefully, how much more must monks who daily receive the flesh of the Lamb, as Leviticus requires.
  • The Institutes 6.9John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Monks must keep purity even in their secret thoughts, where God watches as the judge of the contest.
  • The Institutes 6.10John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The test of purity is that no alluring image arises in sleep, or that it stirs no desire; such stirrings are not full sin but show imperfection.
  • The Institutes 6.11John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Nocturnal illusions reveal the careless thoughts of the day, as an illness reveals earlier unhealthy eating.
  • The Institutes 6.12John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Christ's saying about looking with desire places the fault in the heart, not the eyes, which is why Scripture says to guard the heart.
  • The Institutes 6.13John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Thoughts of women, even of relatives, must be expelled at once, crushing evil thoughts at their beginning like the serpent's head or Babylon's infants.
  • The Institutes 6.15John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Paul in 1 Thess 4 identifies sanctification with abstaining from sexual immorality and keeping the body in holiness, where the Holy Spirit dwells.
  • The Institutes 6.16John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Hebrews 12 likewise says that without holiness, understood as chastity, no one will see God.
  • The Institutes 6.17John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Because chastity is so great a reward, it is fiercely attacked and must be defended by prayer as well as continence.
  • The Institutes 6.18John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Chastity is possible without knowledge, but spiritual knowledge is impossible without chastity; Paul excelled in both.
  • The Institutes 6.19John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Basil's saying "I do not know a woman, and I am not a virgin" shows that chastity lies in the heart, not only in abstinence.
  • The Institutes 6.20John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Perfect chastity means that nocturnal emissions occur without pleasure or awareness and only rarely, about every two months or less often.
  • The Institutes 6.21John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · This state is kept by remembering that God sees and will judge every thought.
  • The Institutes 6.22John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The goal is that the body's natural discharge involves no pleasure; dreams of images show that chastity is not yet perfect.
  • The Institutes 6.23John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Moderate and even fasting, humility, freedom from anger, and night vigils protect against nocturnal illusions.
  • The Institutes 7.1John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Love of money, the third vice, is not natural but arises from a lukewarm renunciation.
  • The Institutes 7.2John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Love of money is easy to avoid at first, but once admitted becomes the root of all evils.
  • The Institutes 7.3John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Sexual desire, anger, and sadness are natural and have good uses given by the Creator, though they can be misused.
  • The Institutes 7.4John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The Creator is not to blame when natural impulses are misused, any more than the maker of iron is to blame for a murder.
  • The Institutes 7.5John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Envy and love of money have no natural root, so they are easy to avoid but very hard to cure once they take hold.
  • The Institutes 7.6John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Love of money, being the root of all evils, is hard to cure and must not be taken lightly.
  • The Institutes 7.7John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Love of money begins with plausible fears about sickness and old age, leads to secret trade, and ends as idolatry, loving the emperor's image on coins instead of God's image.
  • The Institutes 7.11John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Some avaricious monks even take women to guard their money, and fall into ruin as 1 Timothy 6 warns.
  • The Institutes 7.14John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Love of money takes three forms, illustrated by Gehazi, Judas, and Ananias and Sapphira.
  • The Institutes 7.15John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Those who fear to give up their wealth should not begin monastic life at all, as Deuteronomy and the parable of the king going to war teach.
  • The Institutes 7.16John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Some monks misuse "it is more blessed to give" to keep their wealth, against Christ's command to sell everything.
  • The Institutes 7.18John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Monks must renounce the world truly and live by their own work, not by money kept back.
  • The Institutes 7.19John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Basil told a senator who kept part of his wealth that he had ceased to be a senator without becoming a monk.
  • The Institutes 7.20John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Being defeated by so weak an enemy as love of money is especially shameful.
  • The Institutes 7.21John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The victory over avarice is to keep not even a single coin, and to root out the very desire to possess.
  • The Institutes 7.22John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Even the poor can be guilty of avarice in desire, just as one can commit adultery in the heart.
  • The Institutes 7.23John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Judas's betrayal of Christ for thirty pieces of silver grew from his habit of stealing from the common purse.
  • The Institutes 7.24John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Having the common purse did not satisfy Judas but inflamed his greed until he sold Christ himself.
  • The Institutes 7.25John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Peter's judgment on Ananias and Sapphira for keeping back part of their property parallels Judas's fate; both sins grew from love of money.
  • The Institutes 7.26John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Such monks are spiritual lepers like Gehazi.
  • The Institutes 7.27John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The monk who has left all must not look back; even the poor have something to renounce, namely the desire to possess.
  • The Institutes 7.28John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Perfect victory over avarice means allowing not even the smallest spark of desire for money.
  • The Institutes 7.29John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · This virtue is kept by staying in the monastery, content with food and clothing.
  • The Institutes 7.30John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Remembering Ananias, Gehazi, and Judas, and the coming day of the Lord, monks must keep, acquire, and take back nothing.
  • The Institutes 7.31John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Staying in the monastery requires patience grounded in humility.
  • The Institutes 8.1John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Anger, the fourth vice, blinds the mind and destroys wisdom, justice, dignity, counsel, and peace, as the Scriptures show.
  • The Institutes 8.2John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Some excuse anger against erring brothers by citing God's anger in Scripture, thereby attributing a passion to God.
  • The Institutes 8.5John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Paul commands that all anger be removed; one who corrects a brother in anger is like a man with a beam in his eye.
  • The Institutes 8.6John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Anger blinds, whatever its cause, just as a plate of gold blinds as much as one of lead.
  • The Institutes 8.7John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Anger has one right use: against our own impure thoughts, before God who sees all.
  • The Institutes 8.8John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Right anger is anger against anger itself, as David showed in pouring out the water from Bethlehem and sparing Shimei.
  • The Institutes 8.9John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · "Be angry and do not sin" means to be angry with our own vices; Christ, the sun of justice, must not set on an angry heart.
  • The Institutes 8.10John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Christ the sun of justice sets for the angry; or the mind itself, the soul's sun, is darkened by anger, which the elders forbid even for a moment.
  • The Institutes 8.11John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Some nurse their anger for days, refusing to speak kindly, and think it no sin because they take no revenge.
  • The Institutes 8.12John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Anger held silently in the heart is still anger and excludes the Holy Spirit as much as anger expressed.
  • The Institutes 8.13John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Christ forbids offering prayer while a brother has something against us, so anger held even briefly makes prayer impossible.
  • The Institutes 8.14John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Christ requires us to seek reconciliation even when a brother holds something against us unjustly, since God wills the salvation of all.
  • The Institutes 8.15John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Even the Old Testament law forbids hatred and remembering injuries in the heart.
  • The Institutes 8.16John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Monks who blame their brothers for their anger and seek solitude to escape provocation will never gain patience.
  • The Institutes 8.17John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Freedom from anger depends on our own long-suffering, not on others' good behaviour.
  • The Institutes 8.18John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Only those already purified in community should seek the desert; there, uncured vices hide and grow wilder.
  • The Institutes 8.19John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · In solitude Cassian found himself angry at a pen, a knife, and a flint; anger must be cured, not merely deprived of people to vent on.
  • The Institutes 8.20John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Anger must be rooted out of the heart, for God judges intentions: the angry man is liable to judgment and the hater is a murderer.
  • The Institutes 8.21John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Cassian holds that "without cause" in Matt 5:22 is a later addition meant to excuse anger; the text forbids anger altogether.
  • The Institutes 8.22John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The cure for anger: never to allow it for any cause, remembering that it darkens the mind, drives out the Spirit, bars prayer, and brings eternal punishment.
  • The Institutes 9.1John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Dejection, the fifth vice, cuts the soul off from contemplation, prayer, reading, and peace with others, and drives it to despair.
  • The Institutes 9.2John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Dejection harms the heart as a moth harms a garment and a worm wood.
  • The Institutes 9.3John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · A soul eaten by dejection is useless for the priestly garment of the Spirit or the spiritual temple, which needs incorruptible wood.
  • The Institutes 9.4John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Dejection may follow anger or disappointed desire, or come without cause from the enemy, making us unfriendly even to those dear to us.
  • The Institutes 9.5John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Our agitations come not from others but from seeds of vice already in ourselves.
  • The Institutes 9.6John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · No one is made to sin by another unless the material of sin is already in his heart.
  • The Institutes 9.7John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · God commands reconciliation rather than flight, since leaving others only changes, not removes, the causes of dejection.
  • The Institutes 9.8John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · When our own vices are corrected, nothing outside can make us stumble, and we can live at peace even with beasts.
  • The Institutes 9.9John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · A worse dejection leads not to repentance but to despair, as with Cain and Judas.
  • The Institutes 9.10John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Sadness is useful only when it comes from penitence, desire for perfection, or longing for heaven.
  • The Institutes 9.11John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Godly sadness is gentle and bears the fruits of the Spirit; worldly dejection is harsh, bitter, and destroys prayer and every spiritual fruit.
  • The Institutes 9.12John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Every other kind of sadness must be driven out like the other vices.
  • The Institutes 9.13John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Dejection is overcome by meditating on the promised blessedness, so that neither misfortune nor prosperity moves us.
  • The Institutes 10.1John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The sixth vice, acedia or weariness of heart, attacks hermits especially at noon; some call it the noonday demon.
  • The Institutes 10.3John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Acedia drives the monk to sleep or to leave his cell, until he forgets contemplation and becomes a deserter entangled in worldly affairs.
  • The Institutes 10.4John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Psalm 119:28, "my soul has slumbered from weariness," describes acedia.
  • The Institutes 10.5John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The monk must resist acedia on both fronts, neither yielding to sleep nor leaving the monastery.
  • The Institutes 10.6John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Acedia either leaves a monk idle in his cell or makes him a wanderer, thinking only of food, until he is entangled in worldly affairs.
  • The Institutes 10.7John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Cassian expounds 1 Thess 4:9–12 and 2 Thess 3:6–7: Paul gently, then sternly, rebukes idleness as the source of restlessness, meddling, dishonour, and greed.
  • The Institutes 10.8John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Paul, though entitled to live by the gospel, worked night and day for his bread; how much more should monks, who preach nothing, work.
  • The Institutes 10.9John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Silvanus and Timothy worked as Paul did, putting to shame idle monks who burden others.
  • The Institutes 10.10John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Paul gave up his right to support in order to be an example of work.
  • The Institutes 10.11John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Paul also taught plainly: whoever will not work shall not eat.
  • The Institutes 10.12John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Paul's command "let him not eat" is an apostolic sentence meant to force the idle to work through fear of hunger.
  • The Institutes 10.13John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Paul names the disease of the idle: restlessness, rooted in not working and branching into meddling.
  • The Institutes 10.14John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Paul's single remedy for all these ills is to work quietly and eat one's own bread.
  • The Institutes 10.15John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Paul tells the diligent not to grow weary of doing good even to the idle, and to keep showing them kindness.
  • The Institutes 10.16John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Paul orders separation from the disobedient, but as a brother to be corrected, not as an enemy.
  • The Institutes 10.17John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Paul commanded manual work in Ephesians and practised it at Corinth as a tentmaker with Aquila and Priscilla.
  • The Institutes 10.18John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · At Miletus Paul told the Ephesian presbyters he had worked for himself and his companions, to teach them to support the weak by their own labour.
  • The Institutes 10.19John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · "More blessed to give" means giving from one's own labour; the idle, by Paul's sentence, are unworthy even of bread.
  • The Institutes 10.20John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · An idle monk drove away zealous newcomers by persuading them to leave with him and then staying behind himself.
  • The Institutes 10.21John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Solomon condemns idleness as the source of poverty, rags, thorns, and desires; the idle misuse sayings about spiritual food to excuse themselves.
  • The Institutes 10.22John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Egyptian monks never allow idleness, and from their labour they feed guests, famine-stricken Libya, and prisoners.
  • The Institutes 10.23John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Gallic monasteries stay small because they do not live by their own work; a working monk faces one demon, an idle one countless.
  • The Institutes 10.24John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Abba Paul of Porphyrio worked daily at weaving palm leaves he could not sell and burned the year's work, solely to keep his heart pure and conquer acedia.
  • The Institutes 10.25John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Abba Moses told the young Cassian that fleeing acedia by visiting someone only strengthens it; it must be overcome by staying and resisting.
  • The Institutes 11.1John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The seventh vice, vainglory, is so varied and subtle that it is hard even to detect.
  • The Institutes 11.2John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Vainglory attacks spiritual as well as fleshly life and, when repelled, returns disguised as virtue.
  • The Institutes 11.3John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Vainglory attacks through every aspect of the monk's life, like a hidden rock that wrecks ships sailing in fair weather.
  • The Institutes 11.4John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The monk must keep to the royal road between right and left, for vainglory turns even humility, plainness, silence, and hidden prayer into occasions of pride.
  • The Institutes 11.5John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Vainglory is like an onion: remove one layer and another appears.
  • The Institutes 11.6John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Vainglory pursues even the hermit, using his own virtues as snares on the very road of perfection.
  • The Institutes 11.7John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Unlike other vices, vainglory grows stronger when defeated, attacking its conquerors through pride in their victory.
  • The Institutes 11.8John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Vainglory follows the monk into the desert and grows with age and virtue.
  • The Institutes 11.9John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Other vices fight openly; vainglory hides among the virtues.
  • The Institutes 11.10John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Hezekiah, after great miracles including the sun's return, was cast down by pride and restored only by humility.
  • The Institutes 11.11John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Uzziah likewise fell through pride after his victories; prosperity is more dangerous than adversity.
  • The Institutes 11.12John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Paul, Christ, and David all condemn seeking human glory.
  • The Institutes 11.13John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Vainglory flatters beginners about their singing, looks, family, or the careers they supposedly gave up.
  • The Institutes 11.14John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Vainglory stirs up a desire for ordination and daydreams of holy ministry and many conversions.
  • The Institutes 11.15John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Such daydreams so absorb the soul that it neglects present duties and the brothers.
  • The Institutes 11.16John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · An elder at Scete overheard a monk alone in his cell preaching an imaginary sermon and dismissing imaginary catechumens.
  • The Institutes 11.19John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Vainglory is overcome by never acting for human praise, avoiding singular practices, and remembering that works done for glory are lost and punished.
  • The Institutes 12.1John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Pride, the eighth and last vice, is first in origin and attacks above all the perfect.
  • The Institutes 12.2John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Pride has two kinds: spiritual pride against God, which tempts the perfect, and carnal pride against men, which tempts beginners.
  • The Institutes 12.3John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Other vices destroy one virtue each; pride destroys them all, like a tyrant who seizes the citadel and razes the city.
  • The Institutes 12.4John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Lucifer fell by pride, believing his glory came from his own nature and free will rather than God's grace.
  • The Institutes 12.5John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Through the devil, pride passed to Adam, who lost God's gift by seeking divinity through his own will.
  • The Institutes 12.6John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Pride is the beginning of all sin and attacks the strongest; even David, though humble, prayed for God's help against it.
  • The Institutes 12.7John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · God himself resists the proud, because pride, unlike other vices, is directed against God.
  • The Institutes 12.8John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · God heals pride by humility: Cassian contrasts the proud boasts of the devil and his agents with Christ's humble words.
  • The Institutes 12.9John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Pride is escaped by attributing every advance in virtue to God's grace, as Scripture repeatedly teaches.
  • The Institutes 12.10John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · No human effort can reach perfection without God's mercy, since every good gift comes from above.
  • The Institutes 12.11John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The penitent thief, David's forgiveness, and our calling show that salvation and perfection are God's gift, not earned by our labour.
  • The Institutes 12.13John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The fathers teach that no one is cleansed from the vices unless he knows that his own effort cannot suffice and that purity is God's gift.
  • The Institutes 12.14John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Perfection requires both human effort and God's grace; grace is given to those who labour, and God awaits even the first occasion of good will.
  • The Institutes 12.15John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The truly holy fathers grew more aware of their sins as they grew purer, and hoped for salvation by God's mercy, not their works.
  • The Institutes 12.16John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Even our efforts toward perfection depend on God's help, so we must not let pride empty them.
  • The Institutes 12.19John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Humility before God, confessing our dependence on grace, is the simple faith of the fathers, learned by experience, not by philosophy.
  • The Institutes 12.20John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · A monk tormented by homosexual desire was told by an elder that God had allowed it because of a hidden blasphemy, which the monk then confessed.
  • The Institutes 12.21John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Joash, after allowing himself to be worshipped, was handed over by God to shameful treatment by the Syrians, showing that pride is punished by shameful passions.
  • The Institutes 12.22John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The proud soul is handed over to fleshly passions so that, humiliated, it may recognize its uncleanness and return to fervour.
  • The Institutes 12.23John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Perfection comes only through true humility towards the brothers and towards God, depending on his help at every moment.
  • The Institutes 12.24John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Spiritual pride attacks only the nearly perfect; Cassian now turns to the carnal pride that endangers beginners.
  • The Institutes 12.25John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Carnal pride keeps a monk from humility and poverty, making him fear illness and prefer to live on his own means.
  • The Institutes 12.26John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Such monks keep, retake, or acquire money, and build their whole life on a ruinous foundation.
  • The Institutes 12.27John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The carnally proud monk cannot bear spiritual teaching, fidgets during conferences, takes everything as aimed at himself, and is either insolently merry or sullenly silent.
  • The Institutes 12.28John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · A young Gallic monk asked whether he had humbled himself only to be subject for ever; his abbot could only sigh and think of Christ, obedient unto death.
  • The Institutes 12.29John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Cassian lists the outward signs of carnal pride: loud or bitter speech, mocking laughter, impatience, lack of love, disobedience, and trusting one's own judgment over the elders'.
  • The Institutes 12.30John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The proud monk blames his brothers, seeks solitude or founds his own monastery, and becomes a worse teacher than he was a disciple.
  • The Institutes 12.31John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · The foundation of perfection is the fear of God and humility, which requires poverty; only on the humble does God's Spirit rest.
  • The Institutes 12.32John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · True humility towards the brothers requires renunciation of all possessions and unfeigned obedience, as one dead to the world and a fool for Christ.
  • The Institutes 12.33John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Humility makes us bear injuries patiently, remembering Christ's sufferings and our approaching death, and confess that every virtue and even this understanding is God's gift.
  • Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 1.2.9Julian of Eclanum · ca. 420-440 · Julian reads God’s renewed betrothal of Israel and the restored harmony of creation as the return from exile and, more fully, the Church, Christ’s bride, in which the first believers held all things in common.
  • Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 1.6.2Julian of Eclanum · ca. 420-440 · God struck Israel with prophetic threats in vain; now his judgment will shine out to show that he desired mercy and the knowledge of God rather than sacrifices.
  • Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 2.1.5Julian of Eclanum · ca. 420-440 · Joel first summons the drunkards, who will feel the famine most, to weep; Julian treats their wailing as the bestial cry of those who never heeded reason or warning.
  • Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 2.2.3Julian of Eclanum · ca. 420-440 · Julian explains the locusts’ likeness to an army as an elaborate comparison, then offers a moral reading in which the four insects stand for the passions of hope, joy, fear, and grief, and applies Joel’s lament to Christians and clergy of his own day who neglect virtue.
  • Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 3.2.3Julian of Eclanum · ca. 420-440 · Israel is condemned for selling the righteous and the poor, perverting justice, father and son going in to the same girl, and feasting at its altars on garments taken in pledge and wine bought with the price of the innocent.
  • Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 3.4.1Julian of Eclanum · ca. 420-440 · The ‘fat cows of Samaria,’ the rich who crush the poor to fund their feasts, will be carried off like meat on spits and dragged through breaches in the walls into captivity.
  • Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 3.5.6Julian of Eclanum · ca. 420-440 · Israel hated those who rebuked injustice in the gates and plundered the poor, as Ahab seized Naboth’s vineyard; so it will build fine houses and plant vineyards it will never enjoy.
  • Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 3.5.7Julian of Eclanum · ca. 420-440 · Israel’s judges took bribes and crushed the poor; Julian explains ‘enemies of the just’ either as haters of justice or as ‘regular’ enemies of God.
  • Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 3.6.1Julian of Eclanum · ca. 420-440 · Julian denounces the wealthy leaders of Zion and Samaria, whose pride is the fruit of ungodliness and who keep up their luxury even as the nation collapses, for ‘the mighty will be mightily tormented.’
  • Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 3.6.3Julian of Eclanum · ca. 420-440 · The rich feast on ivory couches with choice meat, wine, and music, claiming David’s instruments, yet, unlike David who wept for his people’s future, they feel nothing at Joseph’s ruin and even profit from it.
  • Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos 3.8.2Julian of Eclanum · ca. 420-440 · Amos condemns merchants who resent the sabbath’s interruption of their cheating, rig their measures, and exploit famine to buy the poor; those who denied mercy will receive none.
  • Lausiac History, Prologue and letter to LaususPalladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · Palladius dedicates the book to Lausus, explains its purpose and plain style, and urges moderation, reasoned use of food and wine, and the company of holy men and women.
  • Lausiac History 6Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · A miserly Alexandrian virgin is tricked by the presbyter Macarius into giving five hundred coins to his hospital, whose sick he shows her as the ‘jewels’ she bought.
  • Lausiac History 47Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · Chronius, James the Lame, and Paphnutius Kephalas explain to Palladius and Evagrius why monks fall: God abandons the proud to humble them, or allows trials to reveal hidden virtue.
  • Lausiac History 66Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · The noble couple Verus and Bosporia of Ancyra give their revenues to the poor, feed the hungry in famine, and live simply in the country.
  • Lausiac History 67Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · Magna of Ancyra, married by force but untouched, lives in devout continence after her husband's death and secretly supports hospices, the poor, and travelling bishops.
  • Lausiac History 68Palladius of Helenopolis · ca. 419-420 · An unnamed merciful monk of Ancyra cares for prisoners, the sick, and the poor, acts as midwife to a beggar's wife, and sells books given him to help the needy.
  • Against Lying 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Augustine answers Consentius, praising his zeal against hidden heretics but refusing to hunt them down by lies, since Scripture forbids doing evil that good may come and condemns all who speak a lie.
  • Against Lying 2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · The Priscillianists make lying a doctrine, twisting Ps 15:2 and Eph 4:25 to permit lies to outsiders, and catholics must not share this evil.
  • Against Lying 3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · If lying to outsiders were permitted, the martyrs should have denied Christ; Jehu, who feigned Baal worship to kill Baal's servants, is no model, and the martyrs confessed with their mouths.
  • Against Lying 4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Lies differ in harm: believing a heretic who poses as a catholic harms no one's faith, but believing a catholic who poses as a heretic can make or confirm a heretic, so the catholic's lie is the more dangerous.
  • Against Lying 5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Augustine imagines a catholic spy praising Priscillian and Dictinius's book the Libra to trap a Priscillianist, showing that such lies confirm the heretic and teach him that lying is blameless.
  • Against Lying 6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Lying to catch Priscillianists would make their chief error, that one may lie to hide the truth, a doctrine shared with catholics, corrupting both sides.
  • Against Lying 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · A catholic who lies to catch heretics can never be trusted by those he converts, and such lying makes every brother suspect to every brother.
  • Against Lying 8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · A catholic who, to trap a Priscillianist, says that the soul is part of God blasphemes knowingly, which is worse than the heretic's ignorant blasphemy.
  • Against Lying 9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Priscillianists who pose as catholics at least say true things about God, while catholics posing as Priscillianists say only false things and blaspheme without the excuse of ignorance.
  • Against Lying 10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · To pose as a Priscillianist is to deny Christ before men, which Christ warns he will repay by denying such a person before the Father.
  • Against Lying 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Hidden heretics can be found without lies, as the Priscillianists were before, chiefly through converts, and Consentius should write truthful refutations that will serve as holy nets.
  • Against Lying 12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Christ sent his sheep among wolves without telling them to wear wolves' skins, and taught that false prophets are known by their fruits, not by our lies.
  • Against Lying 13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Believing in the heart while denying with the mouth is not enough, as the lapsed in persecution and Peter's bitter tears after his denial show.
  • Against Lying 14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Ps 15:2 means that truth must be believed in the heart as well as spoken, not that lies are allowed on the tongue, as the next verse forbids deceit with the tongue.
  • Against Lying 15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Eph 4:25 does not permit lying to non-Christians, who are to be treated as neighbors; truths may sometimes be withheld from them, but falsehoods may not be told.
  • Against Lying 16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Paul tolerated those who preached the truth from impure motives, but never approved preaching falsehood from a good motive.
  • Against Lying 17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · If blasphemous lies were just when meant to expose heretics, adultery with the same aim would be chaste; since it is not, lying with the tongue for that purpose is not allowed either, for the mind directs every member.
  • Against Lying 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Acts that are not sins in themselves take their goodness from their cause, but acts that are sins, such as theft, adultery, and blasphemous lies, may never be done for a good end.
  • Against Lying 19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Sins differ in gravity according to motive and kind, but the question is not which is lighter but what is sin, and no sin may be committed.
  • Against Lying 20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Lot's offer of his daughters to the Sodomites shows how compensating sins can seem righteous, but if lesser sins could be committed to prevent greater ones, every limit on sin would be removed.
  • Against Lying 21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Lot's offer, made in fear, and David's rash oath against Nabal, made in anger, are recorded in Scripture but are not examples to imitate.
  • Against Lying 22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Augustine examines a possible defence of Lot and leaves it undecided, but concludes that the deeds of holy men are not all to be imitated and that such lapses are faults to be corrected gently.
  • Against Lying 23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Concealing the truth by silence is not lying, as Christ's words in John 16:12 and Abraham's calling Sarah his sister show.
  • Against Lying 24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Jacob's deception of Isaac was not a lie but a prophetic figure, just as metaphors, antiphrasis, and parables are not lies, since what they signify is true.
  • Against Lying 25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Augustine urges Consentius to refute the Priscillianist doctrine that one may lie, even deny Christ, to conceal one's religion, by a threefold argument about the scriptural examples of lying.
  • Against Lying 26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · The supposed scriptural examples of lying come from the prophetic books, where deeds are figures; no apostle is shown lying, for Peter's pretense at Antioch was rebuked and Paul's becoming all things to all was compassion, not deceit.
  • Against Lying 29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Where people in the Old Testament lied without meaning to prophesy, they did lie, and Scripture records their deeds, good and evil, not always for imitation.
  • Against Lying 30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · If Tamar's lie is taken as a model, Judah's sexual immorality would have to be too, and allowing compensating sins would open the way to every crime.
  • Against Lying 31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Since a sin is by definition contrary to justice and every lie is contrary to truth, no lie can be just, and scriptural examples of lying are either not lies or not to be imitated.
  • Against Lying 32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · God rewarded the Hebrew midwives and Rahab for their mercy, not for their lies, and pardoned the lies on account of the mercy; but one may not sin deliberately in order to do good.
  • Against Lying 33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · The midwives and Rahab received temporal rewards for their mercy, their lies being borne with in their ignorance, but the citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, children of the truth, may not lie.
  • Against Lying 34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · The midwives could have refused and died for the truth, and Rahab could have been protected by God without lying, as Lot's guests were at Sodom; Rahab's hospitality and faith are to be imitated, but not her lie.
  • Against Lying 35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Every example of lying in Dictinius's Libra is to be treated by the rule that it is either not a lie or not to be imitated, and lies that creep in call for pardon, not justification.
  • Against Lying 36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Augustine admits he is moved by the case of a gravely ill man who asks whether his dead son is alive, but holds that truth is not a murderer, any more than chastity or the aroma of Christ.
  • Against Lying 37Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Allowing even a kindly lie leads step by step to perjury, which some even try to regulate; at least in matters of religion no lie is permissible, and teaching that one may lie cannot be true.
  • Against Lying 38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · No one would commit sexual immorality to help people in danger, yet lying is equally against truth, and truth cannot teach anyone to lie.
  • Against Lying 39Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Even if some lies are pardoned as weakness, no cause can justify perjury or blasphemy, the latter being worse since it says false things about God himself.
  • Against Lying 40Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Not even to bring someone to baptism may one deceive his guards by a lie, just as one may not use sexual immorality for that end; the child of God keeps from lying as from sin, which will be wholly overcome at the resurrection.
  • Against Lying 41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420 · Lies must be avoided or repented of, never taught; perjury and blasphemy are never permitted, not even to bring someone to baptism, and Consentius should refute the Libra and never seek heretics by lies.
  • Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine explains that the ritual laws of the Old Testament were signs now fulfilled, but its moral precepts, above all the Ten Commandments apart from the literal Sabbath, bind Christians.
  • Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine answers the charge that he calls the saints only relatively good, explaining that right faith, not moral achievement alone, distinguishes the righteous, and illustrating this with two contrasting men.
  • Commonitorium 1.151–180Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · God asks nothing for all his gifts but love; the second commandment, to love one's neighbour as oneself, binds all, as even animals care for their own kind.
  • Commonitorium 1.181–210Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · If animals protect one another by nature, men should help one another by God's command; the golden rule, in its negative and positive forms, sums this up, beginning with hospitality to travellers.
  • Commonitorium 1.211–240Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · The golden rule is applied to clothing the naked and feeding the hungry, to false accusation, theft, violence, broken faith, slander, lending, pride and adultery, which leads to the law of equal punishment.
  • Commonitorium 1.241–270Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · The law of retaliation was just, though Christ's grace teaches patience and leaves vengeance to God; the reader should live for the life to come and believe that the same bodies will rise, gathered from wherever they lie.
  • Commonitorium 1.301–330Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · Hell's fire, like burning mountains and ever-flowing springs, punishes forever without consuming; the reader should therefore trample on the world, and above all avoid looking at beautiful faces, since no one handles fire unburned.
  • Commonitorium 1.331–360Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · Looking leads to desire; woman was the first occasion of sin through the serpent's guile, beauty ruined Troy and nearly Rome, and Scripture shows its harm in Shechem and David.
  • Commonitorium 1.361–390Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · Further examples of the harm of beauty: David, Tamar and her brothers, Solomon, Haman and Esther, Holofernes and Judith, Samson, and the Levite's concubine; the apostle lays down strict rules even for marriage.
  • Commonitorium 1.391–420Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · The married and the celibate stand differently before God; against temptation the cross, prayer and tears are the weapons; the poet speaks from experience, and Scripture says that all flesh is grass.
  • Commonitorium 1.421–450Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · Age and disease destroy beauty, but the guilt of sin remains; men should avoid looking at women and being too close to any, and women should take the same warnings to themselves.
  • Commonitorium 1.451–480Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · Envy, through which the devil fell and brought death on all, caused Joseph's slavery, Cain's murder, Saul's pursuit of David, the grumbling of the vineyard labourers, and the crucifixion of Christ.
  • Commonitorium 1.481–510Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · Avarice, the root of all evil everywhere, turns God's harmless gifts to wrong use: trade sends men to shipwreck, iron is made into weapons, and fire is used to burn houses and bodies.
  • Commonitorium 1.511–540Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · Avarice drives men to murder, torture, family hatred and fraud, as with Ananias and Sapphira; it forges wills, bribes the way to adultery, and makes men add land to land though a small tomb awaits them.
  • Commonitorium 1.541–570Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · Lavish houses, vessels and clothes add nothing to rest or need; wealth stays in the world, so it should be given away while one is alive and sent ahead to heaven.
  • Commonitorium 1.571–600Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · Treasure laid up in heaven is safe; Christ says that what is done to the needy is done to him, and even a cup of cold water or a prayer counts; the Lord also taught all to be joined by the love of peace.
  • Commonitorium 1.601–618Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · Peace holds the warring elements of the world together and binds a people under its ruler; the poet, calling himself the worst of sinners, urges the reader to love peace and let no grudge outlast the day.
  • Commonitorium 2.1–30Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · Book 2 opens: whoever follows these admonitions will tread on the serpent and meet Christ the judge; the chief task is to despise human praise, seek approval from Christ alone, and return no evil for evil, as Christ, Stephen and James prayed for their killers.
  • Commonitorium 2.31–60Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · Do not judge others while blind to one's own faults; do not lie, for the lying mouth kills the soul; restrain gluttony, which made our first parents mortal, and above all drunkenness.
  • Commonitorium 2.61–90Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · A picture of drunkenness and its shame, the waste that could feed the poor, and the reply to the reader who finds these demands hard: heaven is not reached without great labour.
  • Commonitorium 2.91–120Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · If men endure so much hardship, waiting at doors and paying bribes, for brief worldly honours that soon pass to others, they should endure labour for the heavenly prize.
  • Commonitorium 2.121–150Orientius of Auch · ca. 420-450 · Worldly honour ends and is forgotten; labour for Christ bears lasting fruit, for God promises rewards no eye has seen, greater even than the fragrant gifts he gives sinners on earth.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Error is thinking one knows what one does not; some errors, like Augustine's wrong turn that escaped a Donatist ambush, do no harm, yet error belongs to this wretched life, and the liar harms himself most.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Every lie is a sin, but lies differ greatly by intent and subject; lying about worldly matters is less evil than being deceived about matters essential to worshipping God.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Every lie is a sin, since speech exists to convey thought, and good results no more justify a lie than they justify theft or adultery; those who lie only to save life deserve pardon, not praise.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 67Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Against those who hold that baptized catholics who die unrepentant in grave sin will be saved through a temporary fire, Augustine argues from Paul and James that faith without works does not save.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 70Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Alms cannot buy permission to keep committing grave sins; life must be changed, and alms propitiate God only for past sins.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 72Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Alms include every work of mercy: feeding, clothing, visiting, counseling, forgiving offenders, and even corrective discipline given in mercy.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 73Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · The greatest alms is forgiving from the heart and loving one's enemies; the petition of the Lord's Prayer is at least fulfilled by those who forgive whoever asks forgiveness.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 74Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Whoever refuses to forgive a repentant offender cannot expect God's forgiveness, as Christ, the Truth, declared.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 75Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · “Give alms and all things are clean” does not cover the unrepentant or unbelievers, for only faith in Christ cleanses.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 76Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · True almsgiving begins with mercy to one's own soul through rebirth and the love of God, which the Pharisees neglected while tithing herbs.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 77Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Alms cannot buy impunity for those who love their sins, for whoever loves iniquity hates his own soul; and even alms come from God's prior mercy.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 78Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · God alone judges which sins are light or grave; Paul's concessions to the weak, on marital intercourse for pleasure and lawsuits between Christians, show these are pardonable sins, for which we pray daily.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 79Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Some sins that seem trivial, like calling a brother “fool” or observing lucky and unlucky days, are shown by Scripture to be grave.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 80Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Sins become thought trivial when customary, so that many now go without church discipline, as Augustine lamented in his commentary on Galatians.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 117Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Love, greater than faith and hope, determines whether a person is good; faith working through love asks for what it lacks, for the law commands but only the Spirit's gift of love helps.
  • Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 121Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Every commandment and counsel aims at love of God and of neighbor for God's sake; love grows as desire diminishes, and will be perfect when there is no more struggle.
  • Prologue 15Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · The twelfth discourse compares the lives of philosophers and apostles.
  • Discourse 3.50Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Pagans punish vices yet worship the passions that cause them.
  • Discourse 3.51Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · If passions are gods, virtue becomes impiety.
  • Discourse 3.53Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Antisthenes despised Aphrodite and called love a disease.
  • Discourse 3.101Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Demons fell by their own choice through pride; God guards humans but permits the struggle.
  • Discourse 3.106Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · The devil works through pleasure as bait, but the wise avoid his snares.
  • Discourse 3.107Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · It is more fitting to hold that evil comes from choice, not from God.
  • Discourse 5.4Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · God made rational nature free and does not compel it.
  • Discourse 5.5Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · The prophets appeal to free will with promises.
  • Discourse 5.7Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Theodoret urges his readers not to delay their salvation, quoting Hesiod.
  • Discourse 5.28Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Some say the mind is free; others enslave it to fate and the stars.
  • Discourse 5.29Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato's Laws teaches that the soul is free and can master itself.
  • Discourse 5.30Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato's image of the passions as cords and reason as the golden cord.
  • Discourse 5.31Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato shows that sin is not by nature, fate, or stars, but by free choice.
  • Discourse 5.32Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato's Laws says each person's character depends on his own will.
  • Discourse 5.33Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Free choice determines the soul's character and its final place.
  • Discourse 5.34Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato's Republic says God, being good, causes no evil.
  • Discourse 5.35Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato's Republic says God causes only good, rejecting Homer's two jars.
  • Discourse 5.36Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato makes it law that God is not the cause of evil.
  • Discourse 5.37Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato banishes those who make God the author of evil.
  • Discourse 5.38Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Moral evil comes from us, not from God.
  • Discourse 5.67Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · The apostles persuaded all nations of the soul's immortality and freedom.
  • Discourse 5.69Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Even simple Christians know more of the soul and of virtue than Plato and Aristotle.
  • Discourse 5.77Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Desire leads us to God and also sustains life and lawful procreation.
  • Discourse 5.78Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Anger restrains desire, and together they make virtue.
  • Discourse 5.79Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Reason must hold the reins of desire and anger.
  • Discourse 5.80Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Punishment by God and by human law proves that sin is freely chosen.
  • Discourse 6.8Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Oenomaus attacks Democritus, Chrysippus, and the oracle for destroying free will.
  • Discourse 6.34Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato's Laws ranks divine goods (virtues) above human goods.
  • Discourse 6.35Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato says the so-called goods are good only for the just.
  • Discourse 6.36Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Theodoret praises Plato's distinction between true and so-called goods.
  • Discourse 6.37Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · External goods help the virtuous and harm the wicked; virtues help all who have them.
  • Discourse 6.38Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · The rich and powerful are not happy if they misuse their goods.
  • Discourse 6.39Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Neither the prosperity of the wicked nor the poverty of the good disproves providence.
  • Discourse 6.41Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · The just man turns misfortune into training in virtue.
  • Discourse 6.49Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · God assigned wealth and poverty so that people would serve one another's needs.
  • Discourse 6.56Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Denying providence and asserting fate serve as excuses for vice.
  • Discourse 6.57Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato teaches that virtue is free, God blameless, and the good man cared for.
  • Discourse 6.58Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Atticus says denying providence encourages wickedness.
  • Discourse 6.65Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plotinus says vice comes from the soul's own turning and justice follows.
  • Discourse 6.69Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plotinus says God helps those who strive, not those who only pray.
  • Discourse 7.4Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · To dull conscience, the devil devised a remedy.
  • Discourse 9.43Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Such nakedness breeds shamelessness and lust.
  • Discourse 9.51Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato's Republic orders that children conceived after the set age not be raised.
  • Discourse 9.52Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Theodoret condemns Plato's law as enjoining abortion and exposure.
  • Discourse 9.53Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato's Phaedrus promises bliss to lovers.
  • Discourse 9.54Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Theodoret says Plato praised what even the most dissolute did not praise.
  • Discourse 9.55Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato's penalties for murder are lenient.
  • Discourse 9.57Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Christ condemns even the lustful look.
  • Discourse 9.64Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Christ punishes even anger and insult.
  • Discourse 9.65Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Christ commands love of enemies.
  • Discourse 9.66Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Christ forbids oaths, commends poverty, and promises persecution.
  • Discourse 11.10Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · We cannot imitate God's nature, power or wisdom, but can imitate his goodness and kindness, as Christ taught.
  • Discourse 11.41Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Theodoret ridicules the Phaedrus myth for its invented reckoning of years and for giving lovers of boys the same reward as true philosophers.
  • Discourse 11.49Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Christ in the Beatitudes calls blessed not the rich but the poor in spirit, the meek and the persecuted, and promises them the kingdom.
  • Discourse 11.50Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Theodoret quotes the Beatitudes.
  • Discourse 11.51Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · The Beatitudes show that Christ directs us not to wealth or health but to the toils of virtue and its unspeakable rewards.
  • Discourse 12.5Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Knowledge of truth and faith are the root, eye and warp of the soul, to which good action must be joined.
  • Discourse 12.6Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · As craftsmen learn in order to practise, lovers of piety must not only learn theology but also live by the laws of practical virtue.
  • Discourse 12.7Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · One who lives by God's laws becomes a living image of the Lawgiver, as Paul and Christ bid us imitate God.
  • Discourse 12.8Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · We imitate God by loving what he loves and hating what he hates, as his laws teach.
  • Discourse 12.11Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · We cannot imitate God's creative power or nature, but we can imitate his loves and hatreds.
  • Discourse 12.14Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Christ requires doing God's will and keeping his commandments, not words alone.
  • Discourse 12.15Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · The parables of the talents, the virgins and the wedding garment show that God requires works as well as the gift received.
  • Discourse 12.19Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato in the Laws agrees that one must become like God to be dear to him, and that the temperate man is like God.
  • Discourse 12.23Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato wisely limits likeness to God to what is possible for humans and joins justice and holiness to wisdom.
  • Discourse 12.27Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato's ideal fits the Christian monks, who live on mountains and in deserts in contemplation, free of family and property, shaping their souls by God's laws.
  • Discourse 12.32Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Christian ascetics, unlike the Cynics, pursue virtue for its own sake, hiding it from all but God.
  • Discourse 12.40Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato's Gorgias praises the rare man who lives justly though he has power to do wrong.
  • Discourse 12.41Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Plato's Gorgias concludes that doing wrong is worse than suffering it and that one must be, not seem, good.
  • Discourse 12.42Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · In the Crito Socrates teaches that one must never return wrong or harm for harm.
  • Discourse 12.43Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Socrates' and Plato's moral teaching accords with nature, for God placed knowledge of good and evil in human nature, and so many Greeks and barbarians hated injustice.
  • Discourse 12.54Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Paul likewise bids Christians put off the works of darkness and make no provision for the flesh.
  • Discourse 12.55Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · The body should be cared for only so that it serves the soul, in which Plato agrees with Christian teaching.
  • Discourse 12.56Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Desire begins with sight and grows by hope, memory and habit, as virtue grows from its first shoot; Socrates warned against needless eating and drinking and the kisses of the beautiful.
  • Discourse 12.78Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Christ taught a love that lays down life for friends and loves enemies, while Hippodamus based friendship on benefits.
  • Discourse 12.79Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Friendship does not come from benefits; rather benefits come from friendship.
  • Discourse 12.89Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · The law pardons involuntary acts such as a flying axe-head, and among voluntary acts distinguishes killing in sudden anger from premeditated murder.
  • Discourse 12.90Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 437 · Some fall into lust suddenly and unwillingly, others make a life of seeking it.
  • Sermon 7Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Chrysologus warns against hypocrisy, which turns fasting into vanity, urges hidden fasting joined to almsgiving, and calls his hearers to store treasure in heaven by giving to the poor.
  • Sermon 8Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · At the start of Lent Chrysologus compares the fast to a sea voyage and insists that fasting without almsgiving and mercy is barren, since mercy pleads for sinners at God's judgment.
  • Sermon 9Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On Matt 6:1–4, Chrysologus explains that Christ forbids not public good works but righteousness done for display, and urges secret almsgiving as a loan to God in the poor.
  • Sermon 14Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On Psalm 41, Chrysologus teaches that to ‘understand the poor’ is to see Christ hungering in them, so that almsgiving becomes the giver's advocate on the day of judgment.
  • Sermon 23Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On Luke 12:32–33, Chrysologus praises the ‘little flock’ that conquered the nations by suffering like the Lamb, defends the Son's equality with the Father against those who misuse his humility, and urges almsgiving as transferring wealth to heaven.
  • Sermon 25Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On Luke 12:32–33, Chrysologus assures the ‘little flock’ of the promised kingdom and urges almsgiving as purses that never wear out, with God as a debtor who repays a hundredfold.
  • Sermon 26Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On the steward of Luke 12:41–48, Chrysologus warns clergy above all against pride and drunkenness, then applies stewardship to kings, generals, soldiers, judges, householders, slaves, the rich, and the poor.
  • Sermon 28Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Chrysologus explains why Christ chose poor fishermen as apostles yet also called the rich tax collector Matthew: not for his money but to heal the wound of avarice, so that Matthew became poor on earth and rich in heaven.
  • Sermon 29Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On Matthew's call (Mark 2:14), Chrysologus describes gold as a weight that bends the soul, illustrates its destructive power from Joseph's brothers, the golden calf, and Judas, and explains Christ's eating with sinners as the physician's visit to the sick.
  • Sermon 32Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On the healing of the withered hand (Mark 3:1–7), Chrysologus sees the man's hand as humanity's ancient sickness from Adam's reaching for the forbidden tree, healed by Christ's cross, and rebukes the Pharisees' sabbath scruples and his hearers' avarice.
  • Sermon 38Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On Matt 5:38–41, Chrysologus explains that turning the other cheek trains Christian beginners for greater sufferings, contrasts the law of retaliation with Christ's command, and compares the patient Christian to a physician bearing the blows of a delirious patient.
  • Sermon 41Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Chrysologus describes human frailty as a fever that drives to excess, prescribes fasting as the first medicine, and insists that fasting needs the ointment of mercy and almsgiving, by which God sells his kingdom for a crust of bread.
  • Sermon 42Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Chrysologus compares fasting without mercy to a field without seed and a palace without a king, surveys how God's mercy alone has sustained a sinful world, and urges hospitality and almsgiving so that Christ the judge becomes a debtor.
  • Sermon 43Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · In a famous plain-spoken sermon, Chrysologus teaches that prayer, fasting, and mercy are three in one, each giving life to the others, illustrates their power from Moses, Elijah, and John, rebukes neglect of morning prayer in church, and insists that fasting bears fruit only when watered by mercy.
  • Sermon 53Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · A short sermon on peace (Matt 5:9) praising peace and concord among brothers as God's will and the bishop's glory, and urging the congregation to shun hatred, quarrels, and slander.
  • Sermon 54Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1–10), Chrysologus contrasts him with the rich man of the previous Sunday, reads his climbing and descending the sycamore spiritually, defends Christ's going in to a sinner, insists that alms from fraud are worthless without restitution, and reports that Zacchaeus later became a bishop.
  • Sermon 66Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Chrysologus contrasts the rich man's inhumanity with Abraham's hospitality, explains the reversal of their fates, and shows from the plot to kill the raised Lazarus that unbelief, not lack of evidence, keeps people from believing.
  • Sermon 94Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Chrysologus answers the Pharisee's thought that a prophet would not let a sinner touch him, expounds the parable of the two debtors, and teaches that love blots out past sins but gives no licence for future ones.
  • Sermon 103Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · From the raising of the widow's son Chrysologus argues for the resurrection of all bodies, likening the trumpet of God's voice to the word that created the world and renews nature, and before Christmas urges generous offerings for the poor and captives.
  • Sermon 104Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Chrysologus condemns the rich fool who hoarded his harvest and urges the rich to store their goods with the poor; the passage also contains Sermon 105, on the bent woman healed on the sabbath, read as the church freed from the devil's burden by the laying on of hands.
  • Sermon 108Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Expounding Rom 12:1, Chrysologus explains why Paul appeals “by the mercy of God,” imagines Christ pleading from the cross, and describes the Christian as both priest and living victim who offers the virtues to God.
  • Sermon 114Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Expounding Rom 6:15–22, Chrysologus rejects the idea that being under grace licenses sin, compares the law to a doctor who waits on the patient's will, and describes Christian service to righteousness as the servitude that sets free.
  • Sermon 116Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Expounding Rom 7:7–25, Chrysologus explains that the law is holy but made sin known and so stirred it up, as gold occasions greed and wine drunkenness, until man cried out for deliverance and found it in Christ, who killed death.
  • Sermon 120Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On Rom 12:1–21, Chrysologus warns against conforming to the world, whose vices Paul lists in Rom 1, and describes the new man re-formed in Christ as a body whose members are the virtues, greater than heaven, sun and moon.
  • Sermon 121Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–22), Chrysologus contrasts their funerals, shows that Abraham, though rich, was saved because he used his wealth for guests and the poor, and describes how God set the sore-covered Lazarus at the rich man's gate to soften his iron heart.
  • Sermon 122Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Continuing Luke 16:23–24, Chrysologus explains that the rich man's plea to Abraham is too late, that his wish to have Lazarus sent comes from old envy, and that his burning tongue is punished for refusing a crumb and a drop to the poor.
  • Sermon 123Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Concluding Luke 16:25–31, Chrysologus explains Abraham's answer, describes the underworld before Christ broke its gates and freed the saints, and urges giving to the poor, since those who reject Moses and Christ will not believe even one risen from the dead.
  • Sermon 124Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Taking up the rich man and Lazarus once more, Chrysologus sets the two men side by side as contestants in an arena, explains that God placed each before the other so that the rich man might be cured by mercy, and urges his hearers to exchange earth for heaven.
  • Sermon 125Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Interpreting the unjust steward (Luke 16:1–8), Chrysologus reads the rich man as Christ and the steward as humankind summoned to account, and urges his hearers to use the time before death for repentance and mercy, as the steward used his last hours.
  • Sermon 127Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On the beheading of John the Baptist (Matt 14:3–11), Chrysologus praises John, denounces Herod and the dance of Herodias's daughter, and warns his hearers to celebrate their own feasts and birthdays with moderation and gifts to the poor.
  • Sermon 137Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Expounding Luke 3:2–14, Chrysologus explains why the word came “upon” John, contrasts John's baptism of repentance with Christ's regenerating baptism, applies the viper image to the synagogue, and presses John's commands to share clothing and food and to deal honestly as tax collectors and soldiers.
  • Sermon 139Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Expounding Luke 17:3–4 and Matt 18:21–22, Chrysologus warns against the prying eye that sees others' faults, urges rebuking a brother as judge but forgiving him as a brother, and explains the mystery of the number seven, from the sabbath to the jubilee, as pointing to the final remission.
  • Sermon 155Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Preaching on 1 January, Chrysologus condemns the New Year masquerades in which people dressed as the pagan gods and as animals, argues that such mockery exposes the gods' shame, and urges Christians to keep away and pull others back from what is sacrilege, not a joke.
  • Sermon 161Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Expounding the parable of the unprofitable servants (Luke 17:7–10), Chrysologus shows from a slave's toil how much more man owes God, and how the apostles were kept humble; the passage also contains Sermon 162, on the man who asked Christ to divide an inheritance (Luke 12:13–15), which warns against avarice and points to the shared inheritance with Christ.
  • Sermon 163Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Expounding Luke 12:22–31, Chrysologus urges trust in God as king, master and father who provides for his own, explains the examples of the ravens and the lilies, and teaches that those who seek God's kingdom will not lack food and clothing.
  • Sermon 170Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Expounding Mark 6:6–9, Chrysologus describes the many forms in which Christ comes in search of humanity (fire, pillar, eagle, hen, shepherd), interprets the twelve apostles as a chariot of the Trinity and their sending two by two as a figure of the call of Jews and gentiles, and urges trust in God's provision instead of riches.
  • Sermon 171Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Expounding Mark 7:1–23, Chrysologus explains that the disciples were not careless but the Pharisees sought ritual washings in place of the one baptism, and that true defilement comes from the vices within the heart, which only Christ can drive out.
  • Sermon 172Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · Expounding Luke 11:52 and 12:1, Chrysologus describes envy as a self-torturing vice that shut the lawyers out of the knowledge they withheld, traces its work from the devil and Cain to Herod and the killing of Christ, and contrasts the swelling leaven of hypocrisy with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
  • Sermon 174Peter Chrysologus · ca. 425-450 · On John the Baptist's beheading (Mark 6:21–28), Chrysologus describes Herod's birthday supper and the dance of Herodias's daughter as the serpent's work, shows that John's voice and life could not be killed, contrasts him with the patriarch Joseph, and warns men of the dangers of women.
  • Book 4, lines 1–26Sedulius · ca. 425-450 · Book 4 begins with Christ healing in Judea; the rich cannot enter the kingdom any more than a camel through a needle's eye, except by God, who teaches them to lay up treasure in heaven through works of mercy.
  • Book 4, lines 27–51Sedulius · ca. 425-450 · What is given to the poor is given to Christ and gained in heaven; Christ heals two blind men, then the blind and lame in the temple, and curses the barren fig tree, which withers.
  • Book 2, section 17Sedulius · ca. 425-450 · Sedulius expounds the Lord's Prayer petition by petition: God is our Father by grace as Christ's by nature, making us brothers; his name is hallowed in pure hearts; his kingdom is endless day; his will defeats the devil; our daily bread is food, God's word and Christ's body; we are forgiven as we forgive; God leads no one into temptation but abandons the disobedient; and we ask to be delivered from evil to the right-hand path of the saved.
  • Book 4, section 2Sedulius · ca. 425-450 · The rich cannot enter the kingdom any more than a camel the eye of a needle, except by God; wealth is not evil in itself but in its use, and what is given to the poor is given to Christ and stored in heaven.
  • On Grace and Free Will 17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 426 · A weak good will becomes strong through love, which God begins by working and completes by cooperating; Augustine gathers the scriptural commendations of love.
  • Retractations 1.26Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Augustine explains why he kept his book On Lying, though he had meant to suppress it after writing Against Lying.
  • Retractations 2.38Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Augustine describes On Faith and Works, written against the view that faith without good works suffices for eternal life.
  • Retractations 2.60Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Augustine explains that he wrote Against Lying to forbid Catholics from pretending to be Priscillianists in order to expose them.
  • The Conferences 1.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Those who renounce great wealth but then quarrel over a pen or a book show that renunciation without love, which is purity of heart, is fruitless.
  • The Conferences 1.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Fasting, vigils, reading, and poverty are only instruments of perfection; they serve purity of heart, which is love, and must never be kept at the cost of anger or contempt for a brother.
  • The Conferences 1.10John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Moses answers that the reward of good works remains, but the works themselves, which exist because of bodily need and human inequality, will cease, while love and contemplation continue for ever.
  • The Conferences 1.17John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Thoughts will come, but it lies with us to accept or reject them, and reading, psalmody, vigils, and fasting shape what kind of thoughts grow in the heart.
  • The Conferences 1.18John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The mind is like a mill that must always grind; whether it grinds good grain or darnel depends on what we put in through meditation or negligence.
  • The Conferences 2.13John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Not every old man is a sound elder: Moses tells how an elder crushed a young monk struggling with lust, until Abba Apollo prayed that the elder himself be assailed, teaching him compassion.
  • The Conferences 2.23John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Moderate daily eating keeps the body from nocturnal emissions except rarely, and keeps soul and body balanced between fasting and satiety.
  • The Conferences 3.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The first renunciation is worthless without the second and third; like Israel longing for Egypt, monks who renounce outwardly but keep their vices gain nothing, as 1 Cor 13 shows.
  • The Conferences 3.8John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Vices and virtues are the soul's true possessions, which go with it after death and determine its beauty or foulness.
  • The Conferences 3.9John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Scripture speaks of evil, good, and indifferent riches; indifferent riches, such as wealth, become good or evil according to their use.
  • The Conferences 4.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The war of flesh and spirit within us, common to all since the fall, is placed there by God for our good, so that we do not simply do whatever we will.
  • The Conferences 4.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · In Gal 5:17 “flesh” and “spirit” mean contrary desires within one person, each pulling to an extreme: the flesh to comfort and pleasure, the spirit to limitless austerity.
  • The Conferences 4.12John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Our lukewarm will wants virtue without pain; the opposing pulls of flesh and spirit check each other, forcing us into the laborious middle way of real virtue, as the confusion of tongues at Babel checked a harmful unity.
  • The Conferences 4.15John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The struggle of the flesh benefits us by rebuking slackness and, through involuntary nocturnal emissions after long purity, by humbling our pride and teaching that purity is God's gift.
  • The Conferences 4.21John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Monks who renounced great wealth but guard their mats, baskets, and books with the same covetousness have only exchanged, not cut off, their passion.
  • The Conferences 5.2John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Serapion names the eight principal vices: gluttony, sexual immorality, love of money, anger, sadness, acedia, vainglory, and pride.
  • The Conferences 5.3John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The vices are natural or unnatural, and they differ in whether they need bodily action and whether they are provoked from outside or from within.
  • The Conferences 5.4John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Gluttony and lust, rooted in the body, need bodily discipline and withdrawal as well as care of the soul; the spiritual vices are cured by the heart alone and are even exposed and healed by living among others.
  • The Conferences 5.8John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Love of money, being unnatural, is easily extinguished by true renunciation, unlike the natural vices such as gluttony, which assail even the best monks all their lives.
  • The Conferences 5.10John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The first six vices form a chain, each growing out of the one before, so they must be fought from the root, beginning with gluttony; vainglory and pride, by contrast, grow out of victories over the others.
  • The Conferences 5.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Serapion lists the kinds of each vice: three of gluttony, three of sexual immorality (intercourse, self-abuse, lustful thought), three of love of money, three of anger, two of sadness, two of acedia, and two of vainglory.
  • The Conferences 5.16John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The seven nations of Canaan figure the vices, which are more numerous and stronger than the virtues; all the lesser sins spring from the eight principal vices and die with them.
  • The Conferences 6.3John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Only virtue is truly good and only sin truly evil; riches, power, health, life, death, poverty, and injuries are indifferent, good or bad according to their use.
  • The Conferences 6.9John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The outcome does not excuse the intent, as with Judas; for those who love God all things, prosperity and adversity alike, become weapons of righteousness, and prosperity is the more dangerous.
  • The Conferences 8.23John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · God implanted the knowledge of the law in human nature from creation; the written law was given later as a help when it had been corrupted, and the patriarchs kept its commands before it was written.
  • The Conferences 8.24John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · God's original creation was perfect and the natural law sufficed; the written law came when it was corrupted, and the Gospel's higher demands could only follow the law, which answers heretics who accuse the God of the Old Testament of changing his mind.
  • The Conferences 9.2John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Isaac teaches that unceasing prayer is the monk’s goal and is bound up with all the virtues, which must be built like a tower on the foundation of humility and simplicity.
  • The Conferences 9.3John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Pure prayer requires first cutting away worldly cares, idle talk, anger, sadness, lust, and avarice, laying the foundation of humility, and preparing the mind beforehand, since whatever occupies it before prayer returns during prayer.
  • The Conferences 9.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The Lord names surfeiting, drunkenness, and worldly cares as what weighs down the heart; monks escape the literal forms but fall into spiritual forms of them, including acquiring more money, clothing, or cells than need requires.
  • The Conferences 9.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · An elder sees a demon driving a brother on in useless building work; freedom from worldly ambition is shown by refusing even small, respectable-seeming things, and the mind so purified turns everything into pure prayer.
  • The Conferences 9.22John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The petition for forgiveness lets us set the measure of God’s judgment on ourselves, so whoever will not forgive others asks for his own condemnation, and it is vain to skip these words when the prayer is said in church.
  • The Conferences 11.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Chaeremon teaches that people refrain from sin through fear of punishment, hope of reward, or love of goodness itself; the third belongs to God and to those who bear his image.
  • The Conferences 11.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Using the parable of the prodigal son, Chaeremon describes three stages, slave, hired servant, and son, and urges progress from fear through hope to the love that loves God for himself.
  • The Conferences 11.8John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · One who avoids sin for love of goodness itself is steadier than one who does so from fear or hope of reward, whose restraint lapses when fear is gone; the lover of purity keeps it the same in solitude as in company.
  • The Conferences 11.9John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Those who reach the love of sons imitate God’s goodness, showing mercy rather than anger to sinners and loving enemies; the saying that those born of God do not sin refers to capital sins, since even the saints commit small faults.
  • The Conferences 11.10John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The perfect pray for their persecutors as Christ did, while harsh judgment of others is a sign of unpurified vices and brings one into the same sins.
  • The Conferences 11.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus objects that Scripture praises the fear of God and shows David and Moses acting in view of reward, so how can fear and hope be imperfect?
  • The Conferences 11.12John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Chaeremon answers that Scripture calls people to different degrees of perfection; fear and hope are good and lead to blessedness, but love, which surpasses even the spiritual gifts and martyrdom, makes the perfect more perfect.
  • The Conferences 11.13John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Perfect love produces a higher fear, the loving reverence of a son or friend who dreads only to offend, which Scripture calls a treasure and which filled Christ, unlike the servile fear that love casts out.
  • The Conferences 11.14John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus asks whether perfect and lasting chastity, free from every stirring of lust, is possible in this life.
  • The Conferences 12.1John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Chaeremon takes up whether the fire of desire can be wholly extinguished, explaining that the “members” Paul tells us to put to death are not bodily limbs but the members of the body of sin.
  • The Conferences 12.2John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Chaeremon explains the five members named in Colossians 3:5: sexual immorality, uncleanness (including involuntary pollution, as in the law), lust, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry because it prefers money to God.
  • The Conferences 12.3John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Since Paul lists sexual sins alongside covetousness and other sins that can plainly be overcome, and forbids them even to be named, their total extinction must be possible.
  • The Conferences 12.4John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Ascetic labors are necessary but cannot by their own merit produce lasting chastity, which is God’s gift; the monk must desire it passionately, credit it to God’s protection, and guard it by humble prayer.
  • The Conferences 12.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The struggle against the flesh is useful, as the sluggishness of eunuchs shows; bodily desires are overcome only when spiritual delights replace them, and then the monk knows by experience that God keeps him at his right hand.
  • The Conferences 12.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Chastity grows with meekness and patience, which bring the “abundance of peace” promised to the meek; until it is secure, the monk will experience relapses, which teach him that his purity is God’s gift.
  • The Conferences 12.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Chaeremon distinguishes six degrees of chastity, from freedom from attack while awake to freedom from erotic dreams in sleep, beyond which lies the rare gift of Serenus; he notes differing views on the cause of nocturnal emissions.
  • The Conferences 12.8John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Only experience can show what is truly natural in the body; those who blame nature or God for pollutions caused by their own negligence are mistaken, and the truly pure are the same by night as by day.
  • The Conferences 12.9John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus asks whether freedom from bodily arousal is possible in sleep, since the mind is then off guard and a full bladder causes arousal even in children and eunuchs.
  • The Conferences 12.10John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Chaeremon distinguishes continence, which fights pleasure by effort, from chastity, which loves purity for itself and is secure even in sleep; eunuchs lack only generative power, not desire, and must also strive.
  • The Conferences 12.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · True chastity is lasting peace in which flesh and spirit agree, the passage from Jacob’s wrestling to Israel’s vision, where God dwells; involuntary arousal in sleep does no harm to the pure, and moderation even in drinking water helps, so that the flesh becomes like the burning bush that is not consumed.
  • The Conferences 12.12John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The wonderful works of God that the psalmist praises are the inner transformations he works in the saints, turning gluttons to abstinence, the lustful to chastity, the angry to gentleness, and persecutors to apostles, known only to those who experience them.
  • The Conferences 12.13John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Like the taste of honey, the joy of these gifts cannot be described but only known by experience; God’s wonderful work is a steadfast soul, like the old man in Alexandria who said Christ’s miracle was that he was not moved by insults.
  • The Conferences 12.14John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus, daunted by so high an ideal, asks for the method and time needed to attain it.
  • The Conferences 12.15John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Chaeremon prescribes withdrawal from idle talk and anger, two small loaves a day, limited water, and three or four hours’ sleep, with trust in God’s mercy rather than one’s own effort, and says that within six months one will know chastity is possible.
  • The Conferences 12.16John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The key victory is to hope for chastity from God and not oneself; Chaeremon sums up perfect chastity as freedom from lust awake and from deceiving dreams asleep, and sends them to rest.
  • The Conferences 13.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Chaeremon replies that the pagan philosophers had only a partial chastity, restraining outward acts but not inner desire, as sayings of Socrates and Diogenes show; true chastity, the circumcision of the spirit, is God’s gift.
  • The Conferences 14.2John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Practical knowledge must come first, since contemplation cannot be reached without it, and God’s Spirit does not dwell in one subject to sin.
  • The Conferences 14.3John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Practical knowledge means first understanding and curing the vices, then being formed by the virtues; uprooting vices takes twice the labor of planting virtues, as Jeremiah’s commission shows.
  • The Conferences 14.4John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Practical virtue takes many forms: solitude in the desert, governing monasteries, hospitality, care of the sick, intercession for the oppressed, teaching, and almsgiving.
  • The Conferences 14.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Each monk should persevere in the calling he has chosen while admiring others’ gifts, since the church is one body with differing members and gifts.
  • The Conferences 14.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Trying to imitate every admired virtue at once leads to failure; there are many ways to God, and each should follow his own steadily.
  • The Conferences 14.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Nesteros warns against imitating extraordinary examples, telling of a married peasant who drove out a demon Abba John could not, and who had kept his wife as a virgin for twelve years; John admired but forbade imitation.
  • The Conferences 14.9John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Nesteros tells Cassian (John) that spiritual knowledge requires purity of heart and practical discipline; he must keep silent, learn from the elders, act before teaching, and not mistake eloquence for spiritual knowledge.
  • The Conferences 14.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Scripture’s meaning deepens as one grows: the command against sexual immorality applies literally to the carnal, and spiritually to idolatry and pagan superstition, to Judaizing observance, to heresy, and finally to any wandering thought away from God.
  • The Conferences 14.16John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Nesteros replies that the impure have only skill in words, “knowledge falsely so called”; true knowledge follows the order of practical virtue, above all chastity, as the prophet, the psalmist, and Paul show, and may flourish even in the unlettered.
  • The Conferences 15.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Christ told his disciples to learn humility from him, not miracles; love and humility mark his disciples, and monks who advertise themselves as exorcists are vainglorious.
  • The Conferences 15.8John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Overcoming one’s own lust, anger, and sadness is a greater miracle than casting out demons or healing bodies, since the soul is worth more than the body.
  • The Conferences 15.10John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Paphnutius, burned while cooking, learns from an angel that fire will not spare him while carnal desire remains, and concludes that conquering inner lust is greater than conquering demons; Nesteros then sends them on to Abba Joseph.
  • The Conferences 16.3John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The only indissoluble friendship rests on likeness in virtue and a single will; friendships in which one partner is weak or lukewarm break, and true unity is of character, not of place.
  • The Conferences 16.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph gives six foundations of lasting friendship: contempt for possessions, cutting off one’s own will, preferring peace to everything, never being angry, healing a brother’s anger against oneself, and daily remembrance of death.
  • The Conferences 16.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Nothing should be preferred to love, and anything, however useful, should be given up to avoid anger.
  • The Conferences 16.8John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The enemy divides spiritual men through disputes about ideas, as he divides carnal men over property; contention breeds hatred.
  • The Conferences 16.9John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Giving up possessions is not enough to keep love; disputes over spiritual ideas must also be cut off by humility.
  • The Conferences 16.10John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph recalls how ideas that seemed brilliant proved false when examined with his companion, and how the elders’ rule, never to trust one’s own judgment above a brother’s, prevented quarrels.
  • The Conferences 16.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Since Satan disguises error as light, one must submit one’s ideas to a mature brother or elder and humbly count others’ judgment above one’s own.
  • The Conferences 16.12John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Even the learned can err and the simple see truly, so no one should think he needs no counsel; Paul himself went to Jerusalem to submit his gospel to the other apostles.
  • The Conferences 16.14John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph distinguishes agapē, the love owed to all, even enemies, from diathesis, special affection for a few; Jacob’s love for Joseph and Christ’s for John show that love can be ordered without hating anyone.
  • The Conferences 16.15John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Some monks, instead of making peace after a quarrel, withdraw to sing psalms, which only feeds their pride and the quarrel, contrary to Christ’s command to be reconciled first.
  • The Conferences 16.16John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Christ refuses our prayers until we have reconciled with a brother who has anything, even trivial, against us; to excuse ourselves from this command is to make ourselves judges of the law.
  • The Conferences 16.17John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Some monks excuse their anger against a brother as more justified than against a pagan, but Christ’s warning concerns precisely anger against a brother.
  • The Conferences 16.18John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Mocking silence and scornful gestures that inflame a brother’s anger are as guilty as open insults, since God judges intention; such false patience is like Judas’s treacherous kiss.
  • The Conferences 16.19John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Some monks fast for days out of anger, which is sacrilege, like sacrificing to demons rather than to God.
  • The Conferences 16.20John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Some provoke others to strike them and then turn the other cheek in anger, misusing Christ’s command, which aims to uproot anger.
  • The Conferences 16.22John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph explains that turning the other cheek means the inner man yielding in humility so as not to be moved within; patience must be inward and aim to calm the other, not win glory at his expense.
  • The Conferences 16.23John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The one who yields his will to his brother’s is the stronger; giving up some strictness for the sake of peace loses nothing of perfection, for the strong must bear the weak.
  • The Conferences 16.24John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The weak are quick to insult but cannot bear insult, so lasting love is possible only between those of equal virtue.
  • The Conferences 16.26John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · A weak partner may eventually break away despite a strong one’s patience; to keep friendship, one should keep inner calm, fall silent when disturbed, and remember past and future love even in anger.
  • The Conferences 16.27John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Anger must be restrained by discernment and dissolved in a heart made wide by patience; “giving place to wrath” means humbly yielding, not walking away, and anger that must be hidden should be hidden in order to die.
  • The Conferences 16.28John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Friendships founded on sworn compacts do not last, since they rest on obligation rather than virtue and the enemy works to break the oath; true concord exists only among the virtuous.
  • The Conferences 17.8John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph advises that when every choice brings loss, one should choose the lesser loss; a rash promise may be broken, as a single past fault, rather than accept continual spiritual harm, and correcting a bad promise is not inconstancy.
  • The Conferences 17.9John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Peter rightly broke his vow not to let Christ wash his feet, while Herod kept a rash oath and killed John the Baptist; the end must decide whether a decision should be kept.
  • The Conferences 17.10John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus wants to stay but fears Christ’s command to let one’s yes be yes, believing that nothing begun with a broken promise can end well.
  • The Conferences 17.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph teaches that intention, not outcome, determines the moral worth of an act.
  • The Conferences 17.12John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Judas was condemned though his act served salvation, while Jacob’s deceit of his father was blessed because of his intention; God judges the aim of the mind, and Joseph asks why they made their promise.
  • The Conferences 17.14John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Since they made their promise from desire for perfection, and that same desire is better served by staying, breaking it keeps the true goal, a pure heart, and is not a breach of their spiritual vow.
  • The Conferences 17.15John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus objects that such teaching would give the weak an excuse to lie, which Scripture sternly forbids.
  • The Conferences 17.16John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Abba Joseph argues that the Old Testament accounts of saints' “dispensations” must not be denied or allegorized away merely because some misuse them.
  • The Conferences 17.17John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph compares lying to hellebore, a poison that heals only in extreme need, and cites Rahab and Jacob as saints who lied for a good end.
  • The Conferences 17.18John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus objects that deceptions allowed in the Old Testament, like David's, are forbidden under the gospel, which rules out every lie.
  • The Conferences 17.19John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph answers that lies were condemned in the Old Testament too, but that deceptions for another's safety, like Hushai's and the woman who hid David's messengers, are right even under the gospel.
  • The Conferences 17.20John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph argues that Paul too practised useful pretence, becoming all things to all, and that truth told by Doeg brought ruin while Rahab's lie brought blessing.
  • The Conferences 17.21John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph raises everyday cases: whether a monk should conceal his fast from a visiting brother, and whether he should refuse a drink offered in love.
  • The Conferences 17.23John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph replies that the Egyptian elders held it better to yield to others and to conceal abstinence by a humble lie than to parade it by the truth.
  • The Conferences 17.24John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph cites Abba Piamun, who broke his abstinence rather than reveal it, and elders who told their own deeds as others', like Paul in 2 Corinthians 12.
  • The Conferences 17.25John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph gives many scriptural examples of saints who deceived for a good end and of decisions changed for a better reason, including God's own threats to Hezekiah, Nineveh and Saul.
  • The Conferences 17.26John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph teaches that even an oath made in passion should be set aside if a sounder judgment finds the other course more just.
  • The Conferences 17.28John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Joseph distinguishes the principal commandments, to be kept at the cost of death, from ascetic practices, which may be relaxed for a better reason.
  • The Conferences 18.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Piamun traces cenobitic life to the Jerusalem church of Acts, whose common life was kept by those who withdrew when the church as a whole grew lax.
  • The Conferences 18.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Piamun describes the Sarabaites, self-governed monks who work for their own profit, contrasts them with obedient cenobites, and says they are common outside Egypt.
  • The Conferences 18.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Piamun warns against feigned humility, illustrated by Abba Serapion’s exposure of a self-abasing young man who resented a mild rebuke, and says true humility shows in patience under insult.
  • The Conferences 18.13John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Piamun teaches that patience rests on humility, not on solitude, and is proven in trials, as the parable of the two houses shows.
  • The Conferences 18.14John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · An Alexandrian woman asks Athanasius for the most difficult widow to care for, and through her insults attains perfect patience.
  • The Conferences 18.15John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The young Paphnutius, falsely accused of theft by an envious monk, does penance in silence until the accuser, possessed by a demon, confesses and is healed only by Paphnutius’s prayers.
  • The Conferences 18.16John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Piamun concludes that peace must be found within, not in solitude or good company, warns that envy is the most incurable vice, and so fires Cassian and Germanus with desire for the solitary life.
  • The Conferences 19.1John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · At a crowded festival in Abba Paul’s coenobium, a young monk slapped by the abbot for slowness bears it without the least change of word or face.
  • The Conferences 19.12John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · John explains that solitude only represses the outward acts of unhealed vices, and gives signs by which a solitary can detect lingering impatience, anger, avarice, lust, and pride.
  • The Conferences 19.14John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · John prescribes that the solitary rehearse imagined insults to train patience, rebuke himself sharply when any disturbance is revealed, and hold that anger is never lawful.
  • The Conferences 19.15John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus asks whether lust too can be cured by deliberately imagining its provocations, which he thinks contrary to chastity.
  • The Conferences 19.16John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · John answers that lust, unlike anger, must be starved of every memory, and that only the fully mature may test their chastity by an imagined temptation, and ends the conference at the ninth hour.
  • The Conferences 20.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Pinufius defines repentance as never committing the sins again, and the sign of forgiveness as the disappearance of all affection for them, even their memory and image.
  • The Conferences 20.9John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Pinufius forbids deliberately recalling past sins, which defiles the mind and can rekindle pleasure; such memories must be fled at once and the mind raised to heavenly things.
  • The Conferences 20.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Satisfaction is complete only when the inner movements toward sin are removed, which requires cutting off each sin’s cause, such as familiarity with women, excess of wine, love of money, or pride.
  • The Conferences 20.12John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Pinufius limits the forgetting of sins to grave crimes; for daily small faults repentance never ends, and the perfect must also press on to positive virtue and love.
  • The Conferences 21.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Christians are called beyond tithes to the Gospel’s counsel of perfection, which Christ offers to free will rather than imposing as a law with curses, so that the great may be crowned and the lesser still spared.
  • The Conferences 21.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Each person chooses to live under grace or under law; merely keeping the law’s requirements, like tithing, leaves one short of the Gospel, which demands everything.
  • The Conferences 21.22John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theonas answers that conscience, weighing body and soul fairly, will prevent the festive relaxation from harming chastity, and warns against unjust weights: excessive rigor, stinting God, and demanding more of others or showing more to them than one practices.
  • The Conferences 21.33John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Under grace, love of God excludes sin; under the law, marriage, tithing, and retaliation leave room for lust, avarice, and anger, whereas grace uproots these by virginity, total renunciation, and love of enemies.
  • The Conferences 21.34John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · To be under grace is to fulfil Christ’s counsels; those who neither keep the law nor follow the Gospel but use grace as license are under a double dominion of sin.
  • The Conferences 22.3John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theonas gives three causes of nocturnal emissions: past overeating, a slothful mind still harboring passions, and the devil’s attempt to keep monks from communion, and warns that gluttony breeds the other vices.
  • The Conferences 22.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Theonas tells of a chaste brother whose emissions came only before communion; the elders judged it the devil’s work and bade him communicate, and the trouble ceased; he then urges moderation in food and the inner purity of the true virgin and eunuch for Christ.
  • The Conferences 23.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Ignorant of true sinlessness, we notice only crimes punished by secular law and feel no compunction for dejection, vainglory, distraction in prayer, impure thoughts and dreams, or grudging almsgiving.
  • The Conferences 23.10John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Because even the saints are daily drawn from God by earthly thoughts and good but earthly works, they truly confess themselves sinners and cry out with Paul for God’s grace.
  • The Conferences 23.14John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus proposes that Romans 7 describes converts who want to be chaste but are still dragged back by the force of old sinful habit.
  • The Conferences 24.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Abraham cites Antony, who told a monk living on his family’s support that he would share their lot in the next world, that their fortunes would drag his mind to earthly things, and that he was cheating himself of the reward of manual labor that Paul modeled.
  • The Conferences 24.12John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Antony adds that a healthy monk living on others’ gifts takes alms meant for the weak, since all food not earned by one’s own hands is charity (agape); so the monks chose barren desert where no one owns the land and nothing tempts them to farm.
  • The Conferences 24.15John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Abraham explains that all vices have one source but take different names according to which of the soul’s three parts, rational, irascible, or concupiscible, is corrupted, as one humor causes different diseases in different members.
  • The Conferences 24.16John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Their longing comes from vainglory in the rational part of the soul, which made them think themselves fit to teach others; the cure is humble recognition that they still need a teacher.
  • The Conferences 24.23John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Christ’s yoke is easy for one who has renounced all possessions and his own will, for then no loss, want, command, or persecution can trouble him.
  • In Praise of the Desert 35Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 427-428 · In the desert the inner law governs even thoughts: it is evil there not to have done good.
  • Instructions 1.8Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 428-434 · The coals of fire are either the compunction kindled by kindness, or the guilt the impenitent enemy heaps on himself.
  • Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 7Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · The young Honoratus resolves to flee worldly pleasures and take Christ as his treasure.
  • Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 8Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Honoratus is converted to the ascetic life, changing his dress and appearance; his father's opposition fails, for he loves God first.
  • Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 9Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Honoratus's elder brother Venantius joined him, and the two vied in asceticism and hospitality, so that their home became a school even for bishops.
  • Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 11Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · The brothers resolve to leave their country; their homeland and kin resist in tears, and they sell their property and give it to the poor.
  • Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 17Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Lérins grew into a great monastery drawing men from every nation; Honoratus transformed their characters by his exhortation, prayer, and discerning guidance.
  • Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 20Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Honoratus welcomed every visitor to the island with joy, and gave away freely whatever was entrusted to him, keeping only daily food and clothing.
  • Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 21Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · Once he gave away his last gold coin to a poor man, saying that someone would soon bring more, and within hours a gift arrived; he also distributed alms through many trusted agents.
  • Sermon on the Life of Honoratus 32Hilary of Arles · ca. 430 · On his deathbed Honoratus exhorted the officials of Arles not to fear death, to war against the vices of the body, and to despise riches.
  • Oration 6.2Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 430-446 · Virginity is an angelic garment that Christ himself put on; like Aaron's linen and purple, Christ's priesthood and kingship show the two orders of virginity and of chaste married life.
  • Oration 6.3Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 430-446 · Virginity is a honeycomb and a paradise; the church has two orders, the married who keep chastity and those dedicated to God who keep purity, figured by the fig and the vine, the fish and the honeycomb, and Isaiah's “butter and honey.”
  • Oration 6.4Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 430-446 · John the Baptist's food of locusts and wild honey stands for the height of a virgin life, hard to find in this world, and for the sweetness of the law that he lived by before he knew Christ.
  • Oration 6.5Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 430-446 · Virginity is God's choice gift, which crowned the saints of Scripture and made Mary the mother of the Lord; the sermon passes to the inner tent of the incarnation, where the burning bush figures the Virgin who bore the true light.
  • Oration 10.2Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 430-446 · Love of money, the root of all evils, led Judas, who had grudged the ointment's value and stolen from the common purse, to sell the priceless Lord for thirty pieces of silver, as Zechariah foretold.
  • Oration 10.4Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 430-446 · Before approaching the mysteries, the congregation is to put away greed, hypocrisy, anger, and grudges, and to exchange the greeting of peace, so that Christ may find them pure like John, Paul, and Peter.
  • Letter to Valerian, paragraph 8Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 432 · Wealth and honours hold men bound to the world; wealth, the root of evils, is gathered unjustly, invites violence, passes to uncertain heirs, and turns love away from oneself to outward things.
  • Letter to Valerian, paragraph 25Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 432 · Instead of the philosophers' maxims, Valerian should read Christian writers, and Eucherius gives a sample of their sayings on faith, love, lust, anger, enemies, almsgiving, marriage, providence, fate, judgment and vanity.
  • Psalm 124Prosper of Aquitaine · after 432, before 455 · Psalm 125 (124) is read of the steadfast as Mount Zion, and of obedience to wicked rulers in all things except turning from the worship of the true God.
  • Tome to the Armenians 2Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 435-437 · Virtue is sought and vice abhorred by the sound-minded, who guard against what is harmful.
  • Tome to the Armenians 4Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 435-437 · The Greek philosophers' four cardinal virtues stay earthbound and confine virtue to visible things.
  • Tome to the Armenians 5Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 435-437 · Christians, taught by Paul, define virtue as what raises us to God and orders earthly things.
  • Tome to the Armenians 9Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 435-437 · Moral virtue without faith, hope, and love does not win the crown; the faith must be kept pure within the bounds of the Gospels and apostles.
  • Epigram 1: Quæ sit vera innocentiaProsper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · True innocence harms neither oneself nor another, since whoever plots harm against another first wounds himself, even if he never carries it out.
  • Epigram 2: De hominibus diligendisProsper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · We must love people as God made them while hating their faults, since what God made is good and only what evil adds is to be rejected.
  • Epigram 7: De virtute charitatis,Prosper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · Love of God and neighbor belongs only to the saints, while other virtues can be found in the wicked too; without these two wings no one reaches heaven.
  • Epigram 21: De occultis non judicandis,Prosper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · We must not judge the hidden thoughts of others on suspicion, especially when their visible works are good, but leave secrets to God.
  • Epigram 24: P De scientia boniProsper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · Knowledge of God's law is true only when it is put into practice.
  • Epigram 25: De amore legisProsper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · A lover of God's law hates the wickedness of the wicked, not the people themselves.
  • Epigram 29: De observantia pacisProsper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · Christians should keep peace even with those who hate peace, hoping to correct them, without consenting to their wickedness; if they refuse, our own peace remains.
  • Epigram 34: De obsequiis debitisProsper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · Christians should submit to rulers and masters, rendering what the world's order rightly requires, as long as their faith is not violated, loving the good and enduring the bad.
  • Epigram 38: De lege charitatisProsper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · The law of Christ is love, and the Lord's Prayer shows that those who forgive others will be forgiven, since God judges us by our own measure.
  • Epigram 51: De puritate quam i non perdit invitusProsper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · A person violated against her will loses nothing of her chastity, which lies in the mind; conversely the mind can be guilty while the body is untouched.
  • Epigram 52: De fortitudine tolerantiæProsper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · It shows a greater soul to endure a hard life than to escape it, and to despise the crowd's judgment for the sake of a clear conscience.
  • Epigram 53: De humilitate justorumProsper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · The good man is free even as a slave, while the wicked man is a slave even as a king, serving as many masters as he has vices.
  • Epigram 59: De finibus bonorum et malorumProsper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · God approves innocence that comes from love of justice, not from fear of punishment; one's fears and loves show where one belongs.
  • Epigram 63: De vera beatitudineProsper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · Happiness lies in willing rightly, not in getting what one wants; a right will that fails is nearer blessedness than an evil will that succeeds.
  • Epigram 67: Quo odio odiendi sunt mali (Migne also numbers it LXV)Prosper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · Perfect hatred hates the vice and loves the person, never condemning the nature for the sin or loving the sin for the person's sake.
  • Epigram 68: De labore fingentium men­ daciaProsper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · Lying is laborious and troubled, while truthfulness brings peace.
  • Epigram 77: De modo habendi (Migne also numbers it LXXIV)Prosper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · Whatever exceeds our needs belongs to the poor; to hoard it is to rob them.
  • Epigram 78: De divitiis (Migne also numbers it LXXV)Prosper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · The wicked rich lack the true wealth, since death strips them of everything, while the virtues of the just can never be lost or stolen.
  • Epigram 79: De vera bonitate (Migne also numbers it LXXVI)Prosper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · Avoiding evil is not enough; the just must also do good, relieving the hungry, naked, and imprisoned and reconciling enemies.
  • Epigram 88: De adulationis vitioProsper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · Flattery binds sinners in their sins; a friend should speak freely to correct, as a true physician does.
  • Epigram 100: De cohibenda e ira (Migne also numbers it XCVII)Prosper of Aquitaine · ca. 435-450 · Since anger always seems just to the angry, it must be quickly given up before it hardens into hatred; we all need forgiveness and must give it.
  • To the Church 1.1Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Writing as “Timothy” to the whole catholic church, Salvian names greed carried even beyond death as the church’s worst plague.
  • To the Church 1.2Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Almost all the church’s members are greedy; the first believers’ readiness to exchange earthly goods for heavenly wealth has vanished.
  • To the Church 1.3Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · With the church’s growth in numbers and wealth, vices and indiscipline have grown in step.
  • To the Church 1.4Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The church has grown in numbers but shrunk in faith and devotion.
  • To the Church 1.5Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The church now reads of the apostolic community of goods but no longer lives it.
  • To the Church 1.6Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Most Christians trade their souls for buried wealth, burying their hope with their money.
  • To the Church 1.7Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The hoarder’s soul is weighed down to the earth, and in eternity each keeps what he chose here.
  • To the Church 1.8Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Laying up treasure on earth means serving earthly desire, wherever the money is kept.
  • To the Church 1.9Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Earthly and heavenly treasure are named for where the givers and hoarders will end up.
  • To the Church 1.10Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Since all wish to live forever, all should act accordingly, whatever their condition.
  • To the Church 1.11Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Salvian takes up the excuse that love for one’s children compels the pursuit of wealth.
  • To the Church 1.12Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · If affection bred greed, Scripture’s praise of pietas would be false.
  • To the Church 1.13Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Reductio: if affection bred covetousness, affection itself would be to blame and love would be harmful.
  • To the Church 1.14Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Children inherit their parents’ vices before their wealth.
  • To the Church 1.15Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Salvian does not forbid love of children; Christians are commanded to love even enemies.
  • To the Church 1.16Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Children are to be loved above all except God, and in the way God commands.
  • To the Church 1.17Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Scripture tells parents to hand on God’s commands and raise children in the Lord’s discipline.
  • To the Church 1.18Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · God does not command parents to amass gold, mansions, or vast estates for their children.
  • To the Church 1.19Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · God’s commands to parents are few but saving: to raise children in hope in God.
  • To the Church 1.20Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The wealth God wants for children is faith and holiness, since riches lead most to death.
  • To the Church 1.21Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Parents should give children the eternal treasure of discipline and turn their own fleeting goods into heavenly treasure by good works.
  • To the Church 1.22Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The best gift to a son is to make him God’s treasure.
  • To the Church 1.23Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Salvian proposes to show who gave wealth and why, to establish how it should be used.
  • To the Church 1.24Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · All wealth is God’s gift and should be spent in his service.
  • To the Church 1.25Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · An analogy: one who tries to steal the ownership of property lent to him for use is the most ungrateful of men.
  • To the Church 1.26Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · We hold wealth only as a loan for life from God and should not try to alienate it from him.
  • To the Church 1.27Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Scripture commands honoring God from one’s substance; God calls it ours so that the giver’s reward is greater.
  • To the Church 1.28Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · God both invites the devout to give and obliges the undevout to repay.
  • To the Church 1.29Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Paul teaches that God gives riches, and gives them for good works.
  • To the Church 1.30Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · God makes some rich so that by good works they may turn temporal wealth into heavenly wealth.
  • To the Church 1.31Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Misusing God-given wealth turns present goods into eternal ruin.
  • To the Church 1.32Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Now even refraining from increasing wealth is counted a virtue, though Scripture condemns merely keeping it.
  • To the Church 1.33Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Those who keep all their wealth until death, or leave it to unworthy heirs, stand condemned by James’s warning to the rich.
  • To the Church 1.34Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · James threatens the rich with eternal fire for greed alone, apart from any other sin.
  • To the Church 1.35Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Riches are not evil in themselves; the rich are condemned for misusing them.
  • To the Church 1.36Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Hoarding in the last days adds unbelief to covetousness.
  • To the Church 1.37Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Salvian’s teaching is no harsher than Scripture, which demands renouncing everything.
  • To the Church 1.38Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Salvian’s counsel is mild: if a man has not lived well, he should at least use his wealth well at the end.
  • To the Church 1.39Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Salvian is gentler than James: he wants riches turned into alms that quench sin.
  • To the Church 1.40Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Bequests at death do not suffice without prior renunciation of sin and conversion.
  • To the Church 1.41Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · One who stops sinning only at death has not truly renounced sin.
  • To the Church 1.42Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · God is not a corrupt judge who sells pardon for money.
  • To the Church 1.43Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Generosity helps those who repent of sins of weakness, not those who sin counting on buying pardon.
  • To the Church 1.44Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The repentant mourn because they recognize their guilt as their own.
  • To the Church 1.45Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Those who have fallen into grave sin should rise again at once by quick repentance.
  • To the Church 1.46Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Like wounds, sins must be treated at once before they fester.
  • To the Church 1.47Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Salvian hesitates to promise anything to those who delay repentance to the end, yet will not forbid a last attempt.
  • To the Church 1.48Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · A last attempt at repentance is better than despair, though great lamentation is owed.
  • To the Church 1.49Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · A man at death’s door has no time for the fasts and penances that would make satisfaction.
  • To the Church 1.50Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · A failing body cannot undergo the self-punishment of penance.
  • To the Church 1.51Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The only recourse left to the dying sinner is Daniel’s counsel to redeem sins by almsgiving.
  • To the Church 1.52Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Warned by the king’s fate, the dying sinner should give his substance with tears and sorrow.
  • To the Church 1.53Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Gifts please God by the giver’s disposition, and in giving man only returns what is God’s.
  • To the Church 1.54Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Gifts should be offered humbly, as partial payment and supplication, not as a purchase of pardon.
  • To the Church 1.55Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Whatever is given must be given with faith, prayer, and gratitude for the will to give.
  • To the Church 1.56Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Since no one knows the price of his sins, he should give all he can.
  • To the Church 1.57Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Even apart from the gospel’s higher demands, Daniel’s counsel supports Salvian.
  • To the Church 1.58Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Daniel in effect told the king to give everything he could give.
  • To the Church 1.59Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Each must pay the price of his own sins as Daniel taught.
  • To the Church 1.60Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Salvian urges a full reckoning of one’s sins, including those listed by Paul.
  • To the Church 1.61Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Underestimating one’s sins only increases the debt, especially for one who acts at the point of death.
  • To the Church 1.62Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Daniel’s “perhaps” offers hope, not a guarantee of pardon.
  • To the Church 1.63Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Since even Daniel did not promise pardon, the late penitent must give lavishly and presume nothing.
  • To the Church 2.1Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Book 2 takes up the objection that the holy, having no crimes to redeem, need not give away their wealth.
  • To the Church 2.2Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Even the holy are God’s debtors, so their giving is payment, not gift.
  • To the Church 2.3Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Every person owes God for birth, sustenance, and gifts beyond what was needed or asked.
  • To the Church 2.6Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · No one can repay what God suffered for man, even if that debt is common to all.
  • To the Church 2.7Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · A shared debt does not lessen each person’s own obligation.
  • To the Church 2.8Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Christ died wholly for each person, so each owes the whole debt.
  • To the Church 2.9Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Taking comfort in others’ greater sins is unworthy of the holy.
  • To the Church 2.11Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Though the holy differ greatly from sinners, none can be secure of salvation.
  • To the Church 2.12Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Salvian addresses those professed religious who keep their riches.
  • To the Church 2.13Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Salvian honors those who have embraced poverty as imitators and members of Christ.
  • To the Church 2.14Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The objection: are widows, virgins, continent spouses, monks, and clerics who keep their wealth really in danger?
  • To the Church 2.15Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Appeals to rich saints of the Old Testament no longer apply.
  • To the Church 2.16Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Before the law, possessing wealth was not forbidden.
  • To the Church 2.17Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Under the law, too, wealth justly held was permitted.
  • To the Church 2.18Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Anna, Nathanael, and Tobit exemplify the generous holiness of those under the law.
  • To the Church 2.19Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Obedience under the law was then perfection, but Christians cannot now retreat to the law’s standard.
  • To the Church 2.20Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The gospel demands more than the law: abstinence, fasting, patience, love, purity of the eyes, and continence.
  • To the Church 2.21Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Paul restricts even lawful things, including marriage and possessions, because the world is passing.
  • To the Church 2.22Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Those who bequeath wealth to others disinherit themselves of eternal goods.
  • To the Church 2.24Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Since Christ gave himself, Christians owe not only their wealth but themselves.
  • To the Church 2.25Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Paul’s true widow, who rejects luxury, should not be rich.
  • To the Church 2.26Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · A true widow must cling to God and prayer, not merely avoid luxury.
  • To the Church 2.27Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Only the soul that clings to God now will be upheld by him hereafter.
  • To the Church 2.28Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Continent married couples, having given themselves to God, should give him their goods as well.
  • To the Church 2.29Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Continent couples should take their wealth with them to God rather than leave it to the world.
  • To the Church 2.30Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The parable of the ten virgins shows that virginity without works of mercy does not save.
  • To the Church 2.31Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Giving a little does not suffice; the foolish virgins’ lamps went out for lack of the oil of good works.
  • To the Church 2.32Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The foolish virgins thought they had enough oil; a virgin today must not repeat their mistake.
  • To the Church 2.33Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The foolish virgins presumed their lamps would burn, and even had some light at first.
  • To the Church 2.34Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · A little light that soon goes out is as nothing.
  • To the Church 2.35Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Eternal light requires an abundance of oil, not presumption.
  • To the Church 2.36Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Since no one knows how much giving salvation requires, all should give as much as they can.
  • To the Church 2.37Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Clergy must surpass others in devotion as they do in rank.
  • To the Church 2.38Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Even under the old law the Levites and priests were forbidden to own land.
  • To the Church 2.39Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Christ counseled perfection to the rich young man but commanded poverty to his ministers.
  • To the Church 2.40Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Christ forbade his apostles even a bag, a second tunic, and shoes.
  • To the Church 2.41Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Clergy, successors of the apostles, should not leave rich heirs.
  • To the Church 2.42Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The religious owe more, not less, since they know God’s will.
  • To the Church 2.43Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Religious profession is a vow that increases one’s debt to God.
  • To the Church 2.44Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The irreligious are also debtors, guilty of refusing to know God.
  • To the Church 2.45Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Salvian sets aside the argument from profession and argues from self-interest.
  • To the Church 2.46Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Everyone acts for his own advantage, even the wicked.
  • To the Church 2.49Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The religious embraced religion to obtain these heavenly goods.
  • To the Church 2.50Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Since nothing we own can buy heaven, we should at least give everything.
  • To the Church 2.51Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Scripture praises giving and threatens the greedy with eternal fire.
  • To the Church 2.52Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The condemned of Matt 25 are punished for greed and lack of mercy alone.
  • To the Church 2.53Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Not to avoid the punishment of greed is not to believe Christ, and so not to be a Christian.
  • To the Church 2.54Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Even if the holy have nothing to redeem, they should give to buy the kingdom, unless they doubt Christ can repay.
  • To the Church 2.55Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Giving without faith in Christ’s repayment is useless.
  • To the Church 2.56Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Not giving shows that God is not truly believed.
  • To the Church 2.57Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Refusal to give proves unbelief.
  • To the Church 2.58Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · People trust human promises but not God’s.
  • To the Church 2.59Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · All human life runs on trust, yet God alone is distrusted.
  • To the Church 2.60Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Objection: some keep wealth from necessity of sex, age, or illness, not unbelief.
  • To the Church 2.61Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Only necessities may be kept; Paul warns that desire for riches leads to destruction.
  • To the Church 2.62Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The weak may keep only what suffices; the rest belongs to religious duty.
  • To the Church 2.63Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · A consecrated virgin or widow does not need great wealth to persevere.
  • To the Church 2.64Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · A large household disturbs rather than protects a holy woman’s quiet.
  • To the Church 2.65Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Riches hinder religion and deceive by the name of goods.
  • To the Church 2.66Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Salvian concedes that the weak may keep wealth during life if they give it to God at death.
  • To the Church 2.67Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Those who fear poverty now should fear eternal poverty more.
  • To the Church 2.68Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Those who love wealth should seek eternal riches.
  • To the Church 2.69Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · It is madness for the rich not even at death to give for their own salvation.
  • To the Church 2.70Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Leaving wealth to others at death is throwing away the last plank of salvation.
  • To the Church 2.71Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Such people are crueler to themselves than any enemy.
  • To the Church 2.72Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Self-disinheritance is a persecution worse than any enemy’s.
  • To the Church 2.73Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Enemies can harm only the body, but the self-disinherited harm their own souls forever.
  • To the Church 3.1Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Book 3 addresses both worldly Christians and the professed religious.
  • To the Church 3.2Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · All Scripture testifies that mercy and generosity are the Christian’s chief good.
  • To the Church 3.3Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The parable of the talents shows that wealth is lent by God to be returned with interest.
  • To the Church 3.4Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The bankers of the parable are the poor; giving to them is lending to God.
  • To the Church 3.5Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The rich should give during life, or at least at death.
  • To the Church 3.6Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Love of children cannot excuse failure to give; each is judged for himself.
  • To the Church 3.7Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Parents plead that natural affection overcame their duty to God.
  • To the Church 3.8Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Whoever loves anything more than God has no secure excuse.
  • To the Church 3.9Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Some childless people adopt heirs rather than provide for their souls.
  • To the Church 3.10Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The childless who adopt heirs bind themselves needlessly to ruin.
  • To the Church 3.11Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · It is grievous that a dying man thinks only of his heir’s feasting, not of his own soul.
  • To the Church 3.12Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · It is monstrous to provide for everyone except oneself.
  • To the Church 3.13Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · At the judgment only a good conscience, repentance, and abundant alms will help.
  • To the Church 3.14Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The dying man plans his heirs’ comfort but ignores his own ruin.
  • To the Church 3.15Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · While judgment awaits, the dying man dwells on his heir’s feasting.
  • To the Church 3.16Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · An heir’s feasting will be no help in hell.
  • To the Church 3.17Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · No one should prefer his heirs to his own soul; heirs should rather wish their parents’ salvation.
  • To the Church 3.18Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · One should leave all for one’s soul, though some relatives may justly receive something.
  • To the Church 3.19Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Needy relatives and especially those devoted to God may rightly receive bequests.
  • To the Church 3.20Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Love of family offered to God becomes a sacrifice with eternal reward.
  • To the Church 3.21Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Parents often give least to the children they have dedicated to God.
  • To the Church 3.22Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Parents excuse leaving less to children in religion, reducing them to want.
  • To the Church 3.23Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The religious need their share so that they can give it away.
  • To the Church 3.24Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The religious should choose poverty freely, not have it imposed by parents.
  • To the Church 3.25Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Voluntary poverty has a reward, yet religion itself is what makes these parents unjust.
  • To the Church 3.26Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Parents disinherit religious children to keep anything from reaching God.
  • To the Church 3.27Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Favoring worldly children over religious ones discourages religion itself.
  • To the Church 3.28Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Objection: some parents give religious children equal shares, but only for life use.
  • To the Church 3.29Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Leaving religious children only the use of property is designed to keep it from God.
  • To the Church 3.30Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Life-use without ownership lets children live rich but die beggars, and keeps all from God.
  • To the Church 3.31Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Masters give freedmen full rights of ownership, more than such parents give their children.
  • To the Church 3.32Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Such fathers treat their children worse than masters treat freedmen.
  • To the Church 3.33Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Like masters who grant only Latin freedom, such parents deny their children the right to bequeath.
  • To the Church 3.34Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Religious children are treated as Latin freedmen and punished for seeking to be better.
  • To the Church 3.35Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Parents claim good intentions, but their acts reverse the right order of honor.
  • To the Church 3.36Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Parents reverse God’s order by preferring worldly children to holy ones.
  • To the Church 3.37Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The religious have heirs: their own souls.
  • To the Church 3.38Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Even the devil admits that a man values his soul above all.
  • To the Church 3.39Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Those who neglect their souls value themselves less than the devil does.
  • To the Church 3.40Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · God’s commands need no human examples, though Salvian will give some.
  • To the Church 3.41Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The apostolic church held all things in common.
  • To the Church 3.42Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The first church was very large: eight thousand joined in two days.
  • To the Church 3.43Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The first believers, with or without children, gave up their goods for God.
  • To the Church 3.44Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Parents may love their children, but second after their own souls.
  • To the Church 3.45Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Riches left to children cannot help parents after death.
  • To the Church 3.46Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The rich man of Luke 16 left wealth to his brothers but could not obtain a drop of water.
  • To the Church 3.47Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The rich man’s relatives, whom he remembered even in torment, could not help him.
  • To the Church 3.48Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The rich man begged relief through the very Lazarus he had despised.
  • To the Church 3.49Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The rich man now longed for the touch of the poor man he had despised.
  • To the Church 3.50Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Today’s rich share the name of the rich man and risk his fate.
  • To the Church 3.51Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · In torment, the rich man’s pain far outweighed any pleasure in his heirs’ wealth.
  • To the Church 3.52Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Given the choice, the rich man would have given all his wealth to escape torment.
  • To the Church 3.53Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · He would have paid anything for even an hour’s relief.
  • To the Church 3.56Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Parents should give children discipline and give their wealth for their own salvation.
  • To the Church 3.57Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Even religious people now leave their redemption-price to distant relatives.
  • To the Church 3.58Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The childless invent relatives to inherit rather than provide for their souls.
  • To the Church 3.59Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · People invent noble kinships at death to choose heirs, even widows and virgins of holy profession.
  • To the Church 3.60Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Testators buy noble pseudo-relatives with their inheritances to gain honor in death.
  • To the Church 3.62Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Not acting on God’s promises and threats proves unbelief.
  • To the Church 3.63Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Men spend heavily to prepare for human trials whose outcome they cannot buy.
  • To the Church 3.64Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Not preparing for God’s judgment shows lack of belief.
  • To the Church 3.65Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Testators keep their goods until death, showing they value them for themselves.
  • To the Church 3.66Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Testators give nothing until they are wholly gone.
  • To the Church 3.67Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The testator keeps his goods because he thinks them necessary to him while alive.
  • To the Church 3.68Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The testator assumes he will need nothing after death.
  • To the Church 3.69Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Paul teaches that what one sows in this life one reaps after death.
  • To the Church 3.70Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Christ promises reward even for a cup of cold water given in faith.
  • To the Church 3.71Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The cup of cold water shows that no work of faith perishes, not that the rich can buy much with little.
  • To the Church 3.72Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Christ is a sure guarantor who even makes himself a debtor to the poor.
  • To the Church 3.73Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The rich have specific promises: Christ’s word to the rich young man and his command about treasure in heaven.
  • To the Church 3.74Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Christ promises a hundredfold and eternal life to those who give for his sake.
  • To the Church 3.75Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The hundredfold reward is eternal, which makes it worth even more.
  • To the Church 3.76Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · What is given to God will be enjoyed after death with increase.
  • To the Church 3.77Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · No one in his right mind prefers misery to blessedness.
  • To the Church 3.78Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The dying should give at least to escape eternal punishment.
  • To the Church 3.80Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Speech professes faith, but life and death reveal unbelief.
  • To the Church 3.81Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · At death, the only refuge is to offer one’s goods, yet the dying think of legatees.
  • To the Church 3.83Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Christ warns that gaining the world is worthless if the soul is lost.
  • To the Church 3.84Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The soul is worth more than anything, so nothing should be withheld for its sake.
  • To the Church 3.85Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Words without deeds are no proof of faith; Scripture urges good offerings.
  • To the Church 3.86Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · God himself begs the sinner to have mercy on his own soul.
  • To the Church 3.87Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Rich relatives crowd the sickbed, and the dying man gives them what his soul needs.
  • To the Church 3.88Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The relatives’ grief is feigned; they are waiting for the dying man’s death.
  • To the Church 3.89Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The dying man abandons his soul for relatives who want him dead.
  • To the Church 3.90Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Scripture commands giving to the poor, not to rich relatives.
  • To the Church 3.91Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Enriching the rich is calling bitter sweet, contrary to God’s will.
  • To the Church 3.92Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The dying should not fear the relatives around them.
  • To the Church 3.93Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The heirs love the patrimony, not the man, and resent that he still lives.
  • To the Church 3.94Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Flatterers are more dangerous than armed enemies, for their victims welcome them.
  • To the Church 3.95Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The dying man should resist his flatterers and provide for his own eternal life.
  • To the Church 4.1Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Book 4: Salvian’s teaching displeases worldly Christians but agrees with the holy, and so with God.
  • To the Church 4.2Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Some professed religious teach that at death kin should come before Christ.
  • To the Church 4.3Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · They claim duty to Christ binds the healthy but not the dying.
  • To the Church 4.4Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Such a view makes faith change with age and health.
  • To the Church 4.5Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Scripture demands perseverance to the end, when wisdom is praised.
  • To the Church 4.6Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Praise is secure only at the end, when merit can no longer be lost.
  • To the Church 4.7Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Christian wisdom is the fear and love of God, above all at death.
  • To the Church 4.8Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · If kin may come before Christ at death, they could equally do so at any time.
  • To the Church 4.9Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · God must always be put first, even at the end, since even the righteous perish if they fall away.
  • To the Church 4.10Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Putting anything before God is the greatest neglect of salvation.
  • To the Church 4.12Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Claiming no contempt for God is the excuse of every sinner.
  • To the Church 4.13Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Every sin wrongs God, and the excuse itself proves contempt.
  • To the Church 4.14Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Leaving goods to others shows that one does not honor or love God.
  • To the Church 4.15Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Choosing an heir over God is preferring him to God.
  • To the Church 4.16Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Because God gave everything first, he is all the more worthy of our gifts.
  • To the Church 4.17Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Gifts received create a debt of gratitude.
  • To the Church 4.18Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Since all is God’s, giving earns no credit, but withholding deserves punishment.
  • To the Church 4.19Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · God needs our gifts not in himself but in his poor, as Matt 25 shows.
  • To the Church 4.20Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Christ declares that he hungers and thirsts, and so is in need.
  • To the Church 4.21Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Christ shares the need of every poor person and so is the neediest of all.
  • To the Church 4.22Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Christ begs in all the poor.
  • To the Church 4.23Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Leaving wealth to the rich while Christ is in need contradicts belief in him.
  • To the Church 4.24Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Religious dress cannot hide unbelief shown by bequests to others.
  • To the Church 4.25Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Bequeathing to others proves one does not believe gifts to God will benefit oneself.
  • To the Church 4.26Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Anyone who believed giving to God would benefit him would give it for himself.
  • To the Church 4.27Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Those who value Christ least will be valued least by him.
  • To the Church 4.28Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Religious profession increases guilt, since judgment begins with God’s house.
  • To the Church 4.29Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Chastity, sobriety, and fasting do not save the greedy, who are condemned for lack of mercy.
  • To the Church 4.30Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Fasting to enrich an heir is worthless.
  • To the Church 4.31Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Ironically, the faster’s only proof at judgment is his heirs’ wealth.
  • To the Church 4.32Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The heirs live like the rich man of Luke 16.
  • To the Church 4.33Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The frugal testator’s savings fund his heirs’ drunkenness and immorality.
  • To the Church 4.34Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Poverty would have saved the testator; his wealth harms both him and his heirs.
  • To the Church 4.35Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Leave your wealth to the poor, and their relief will be your reward.
  • To the Church 4.36Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Leaving one’s wealth to the poor makes Christ the heir and the giver the beneficiary.
  • To the Church 4.37Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Ignoring Christ’s commands at the end shows one does not believe him.
  • To the Church 4.38Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · People trust even petty traders and liars with a bond, yet not Christ.
  • To the Church 4.39Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Christ’s bond and sureties are the surest, yet he is refused credit; as one chooses, so one will receive.
  • To the Church 4.40Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Every sinner thinks his own sin pardonable.
  • To the Church 4.41Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The saints judge even their small sins severely, and so are rewarded at the judgment.
  • To the Church 4.42Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Most monks begin their conversion by giving up all their property.
  • To the Church 4.43Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The saints send their goods ahead to their heavenly dwelling before following Christ.
  • To the Church 4.44Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · No one can expect God to repay what he never entrusted to him.
  • To the Church 4.45Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Those who do not entrust their wealth to God receive Scripture’s threats against the lukewarm rich.
  • To the Church 4.46Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Presumption about one’s salvation is itself dangerous.
  • To the Church 4.47Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · The way to the kingdom is hard, but nothing compares with future glory.
  • To the Church 4.48Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Nothing given for eternal blessedness is too much.
  • To the Church 4.49Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Every command of God offends someone; the wicked would rather hate the law than their vices.
  • To the Church 4.50Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 435-440 · Salvian must speak though it displease men; those who change their ways will come to love God’s law.
  • On 1 Cor 7:7.3Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Theodoret reads 1 Cor 7:3 as a law of equal chastity for husbands and wives, unlike human laws made by men for their own indulgence.
  • On 1 Cor 7:7.30Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Theodoret applies 1 Cor 7:29–31 to the use of wealth, citing Ezekiel's rams and Isaiah's levelling of ranks in the age to come.
  • On 1 Tim 5.10Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Theodoret explains that an enrolled widow must have brought up her children in piety, as Abraham did.
  • Psalm 1:1Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 1:1 blesses the one who avoids the ungodly, sinners and the pestilent; Theodoret explains the missing title, the word "blessed," that women are included, and the three steps of walking, standing, and sitting.
  • Psalm 1:2Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 1:2–3: the one who meditates on God's law is like a well-watered tree; the water is the teaching of the Spirit, and God prospers those whose will agrees with his law.
  • Psalm 2:11Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 2:11: we must rejoice in salvation while fearing God's justice, with compunction.
  • Psalm 2:12Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 2:12a: knowledge of God must be joined to practical virtue.
  • Psalm 4:5Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 4:3–4: God made David's innocence famous by the victory; the heavy-hearted who doubt providence should not sin in their anger but examine themselves at night with compunction.
  • Psalm 4:6Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 4:5–6a: the sacrifice God wants is righteousness joined with hope in him; virtue without faith bears no fruit.
  • Psalm 9:20–21Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 9:19–20: the lawgiver asked for is Christ, lawgiver of the nations, whose law teaches them to live as human beings.
  • Psalm 14:1Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 15:1 (Greek 14): who may dwell with God, put as a question to be answered.
  • Psalm 14:2Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 15:2a: the one who dwells with God must be blameless and practice all virtue.
  • Psalm 14:3Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 15:2b–3: truth in heart and tongue, no harm to the neighbor, and sympathy instead of mockery.
  • Psalm 14:4Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 15:4: despise the wicked however prosperous, honor the God-fearing, and keep oaths.
  • Psalm 14:5Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 15:5: no usury, no bribes; the reward is God's help and eternal life, and these commands bind Christians still more.
  • Psalm 16:3–4Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 17:3–4: David, tested by God, spared Saul at night and would not even revile him, keeping God's hard commands.
  • Psalm 23:4Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 24:4: the one who ascends must be pure in deed and thought, free of desire for perishable things, of deceit, and of false oaths.
  • Psalm 24:11Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 25:11–13: God gives each person who fears him laws fitted to his own way of life, whether monastic or in the world, and promises blessing.
  • Psalm 24:21Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 25:21: virtue shuns the wicked and keeps the upright as friends.
  • Psalm 33:14–15Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 34:13–14: guard the tongue, shun evil, do good, and above all pursue peace, which sums up love of neighbor.
  • Psalm 34:29Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 35:28: David's prayers against enemies belong to the law, not the Gospel, and are predictions, not curses; he himself spared Saul and mourned him, and is no warrant for cursing.
  • Psalm 36:1Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 37:1: taught by experience, David urges all not to envy the prosperity of the wicked.
  • Psalm 36:16Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 37:16: a little with righteousness is better than unjust wealth.
  • Psalm 36:25–26Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 37:25–26: God cares for the righteous and their descendants, and the righteous man's mercy is a loan to God.
  • Psalm 48:8–9Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 49:7–11: no one can buy salvation after death; the toiler for virtue lives, while the worldly wise and the rich perish, leave their wealth to others, and lose even the names on their lands.
  • Psalm 48:19Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 49:18: true praise lasts beyond death and belongs to one who uses wealth to do good, since kindness to others returns to the giver.
  • Psalm 49:18–20Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 50:18–20: the hypocrite who preaches the law joins thieves and adulterers and slanders his own brother.
  • Psalm 54:10Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 55:9–11: the lawless city foretold is the Jerusalem that rejected the Savior; both Gospel and law condemn usury along with deceit and injustice.
  • Psalm 61:10Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 62:9: human things are as fleeting as vapor and a tilting scale, yet people trust in them and love injustice.
  • Psalm 61:11Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 62:10: do not trust in injustice or set the heart on wealth that flows in like a river.
  • Psalm 71:12–13Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 72:12-13: Christ rescued poor human nature from the devil's tyranny and by his laws restrains the powerful.
  • Psalm 71:14Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 72:14-15: Christ will free people from greed; all nations will bring him gifts and, through him, pray to and praise the Father.
  • Psalm 74:5Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 75:4: God warns sinners against both sin and pride in it.
  • Psalm 77:69Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 78:69-72: the one temple suits the one God; God took David from following the ewes to shepherd Israel with innocence and understanding, a model for Christians.
  • Psalm 81:2Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 82:2: the judges favor the powerful and neglect the wronged poor.
  • Psalm 81:3Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 82:3: the judges must defend the orphan, the poor, and the needy.
  • Psalm 81:4Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 82:4: the judges must rescue the poor from the wicked.
  • Psalm 83:7Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 84:6: the valley of weeping, typically Bochim, is truly this present life, where even the saints mourn and await God's blessing.
  • Psalm 83:12Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 84:11-12: God loves mercy and truth and gives every good thing to the innocent; blessed is the one who hopes in him alone.
  • Psalm 91:13Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 92:12: the righteous, unlike the short-lived wicked, grow slowly but lastingly like the palm and the cedar.
  • Psalm 92:5Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 93:5: God's prophecies have proved true; holiness befits his house, the church, forever, and believers must keep themselves holy for him.
  • Psalm 93:1Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 94, title and verse 1: the psalm, foreseeing the injustice of Judah's rulers denounced by Isaiah, Habakkuk, and Jeremiah, calls on the God of vengeance to appear.
  • Psalm 93:5–6Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 94:5-7: the unjust rulers oppress widows, orphans, and strangers, thinking God does not see.
  • Psalm 93:20Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 94:20: God has no fellowship with unjust judges who decree against his law.
  • Psalm 96:9Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 97:9: all rejoice at knowing the true God, exalted over the false gods; faith must be joined by good works.
  • Psalm 96:10Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 97:10: those who love God must hate evil, and God will guard them.
  • Psalm 100:3Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 101:3: Josiah rejected not only lawless deeds but lawless thoughts, and turned from those who despised God's laws.
  • Psalm 105:3Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 106:3: those who know their sin call blessed the one who practices righteousness continually.
  • Psalm 110:10Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 111:10: fear of God is the first step, love the mark of the perfect; knowledge must be joined to action; the psalm is alphabetic in Hebrew.
  • Psalm 111:1Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 112:1: the one who fears God delights to fulfill his commandments.
  • Psalm 111:3Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 112:3: promises of wealth suit the imperfect; Christ teaches the perfect to renounce possessions, yet God still gives such gifts, as to Solomon.
  • Psalm 111:5Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 112:5–6: the good man imitates God by pity and lending, expecting repayment from God, and acts with judgment and firmness.
  • Psalm 111:8Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 112:8–9: the godly man fears no enemy and gives generously like a sower expecting harvest; his strength and honor will be raised.
  • Psalm 117:19Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 118:19: the gates of righteousness are the forms of virtue, through which God is rightly praised.
  • Psalm 117:20Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 118:20: the gate is virtue and the commandments, and Christ, who called himself the door.
  • Psalm 118:1Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 119:1: David gathered prayers from all the changes of his life into this psalm, which teaches virtue and doctrine and suits every condition; the blameless walk the royal road of the law through life.
  • Psalm 118:9Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 119:9–10: the divine word bridles and guides unstable youth; the lover of God seeks him with an undivided heart.
  • Psalm 118:11Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 119:11: virtue, like treasure, should be hidden from vainglory, and the divine words should not be thrown to the unworthy.
  • Psalm 118:27Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 119:27: divine understanding is needed so that virtue is practiced for its own sake, not for praise.
  • Psalm 118:47–48Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 119:47–49: the psalmist joins action to meditation, since God's kingdom is in deeds and doers of the law are justified; he asks God to remember his promises.
  • Psalm 118:83Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 119:83: as a wineskin stiffens in frost, the body is subdued by ascetic hardship, as Paul says; David, harmed by the ease of peace, humbled his body and renewed his obedience.
  • Psalm 118:101Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 119:101: one cannot walk the roads of vice and virtue at once.
  • Psalm 118:108Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 119:108: as some sacrifices were obligatory and others freewill, so the gospel requires temperance and justice, while virginity, continence in marriage, poverty, and monastic life are voluntary offerings beyond the law.
  • Psalm 118:120Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 119:120: the psalmist asks that fear of God nail down the rebellious body, as Paul speaks of putting members to death and being crucified with Christ.
  • Psalm 127:1Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 128:1: blessedness belongs not to Abraham's descendants as such but to all who fear God, as Peter said, and the sign of that fear is walking in his ways.
  • Psalm 130:1Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 131:1: the psalm teaches humility; pride harms even saints like Hezekiah, and the humble call God to witness that they did not reach beyond their measure.
  • Psalm 130:2Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 131:2: the psalmist calls on God to repay him if he was not as humble and submissive as a weaned child before its mother.
  • Psalm 138:21–22Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 139:21–22: the psalmist hates God's enemies as lawless yet pities and mourns them as fellow humans.
  • Psalm 140:4Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 141:4: David asks that his thoughts be guarded too, so he would not justify killing Saul by the old maxim 'hate your enemy,' but live by the gospel; he refuses fellowship with the prosperous wicked.
  • Psalm 141:4Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 142:3: as Saul laid ambushes on David's paths, the devil sets traps suited to each virtue, such as vainglory for the almsgiver and pride for the virgin.
  • Psalm 143:15Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 436-448 · Psalm 144:15: worldly people call the rich blessed, but the wise call blessed the people whose God is the Lord, as Christ's beatitudes teach.
  • Chapter 4Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · At the judgment the devil will claim as his own any baptized person who after renouncing him went back to the circus, theater, and amphitheater, so the candidates must keep their profession.
  • Sermon on the Barbarian Time 1Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · God’s wrath shown in the barbarian invasion calls for repentance, yet the city still throngs the shows; all are guilty, preachers and hearers alike, and should stop slandering one another.
  • Sermon on the Barbarian Time 2Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · God’s word calls all to repent and bear fruit before the axe falls; his delay is patience, as in the parable of the barren fig tree, for which Paul intercedes.
  • Sermon on the Barbarian Time 3Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · The good suffer with the wicked because none is perfectly good but God; their trials are a refining, while parents who love their children more than Christ and tolerate blasphemy and the shows share the blame.
  • Sermon on the Barbarian Time 4Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · The fathers of old put God before every human tie, from Phinehas and Moses to Daniel and the three youths, whereas the city now sacrifices souls by watching idolatrous night shows; let it fear eternal fire more than the barbarian sword and repent.
  • Sermon on the Barbarian Time 6Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · Job conquered temptation and blessed God when he lost everything; (chapter 7) in the parable of the prodigal son the younger son is the repentant robber on the cross and the elder son Peter, who denied and was restored, and all may enter paradise through Christ’s opened side.
  • On the Governance of God 3.10Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians ignore even Christ’s plainest commands, such as loving enemies.
  • On the Governance of God 3.11Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Even prayers for enemies are often mere words; Christians obey almost none of God’s commands.
  • On the Governance of God 3.12Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Hatred and even anger are counted as murder before God.
  • On the Governance of God 3.13Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christ condemns even insults; men use the insult that brings Gehenna rather than the lesser one.
  • On the Governance of God 3.14Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians do not keep even the lesser commands, let alone renouncing all and taking up the cross.
  • On the Governance of God 3.15Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Even those who leave the world do not truly renounce all or walk as Christ walked.
  • On the Governance of God 3.22Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christ forbids lawsuits and commands giving up one’s cloak too; who obeys?
  • On the Governance of God 3.23Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians, far from yielding, try to strip their adversaries.
  • On the Governance of God 3.24Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians return many blows for one, rather than turning the other cheek.
  • On the Governance of God 3.25Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians remember what others owe them under the Golden Rule but ignore what they owe others.
  • On the Governance of God 3.26Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Paul went beyond Christ’s rule, but Christians keep neither.
  • On the Governance of God 3.31Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians swear and curse freely despite Christ’s commands.
  • On the Governance of God 3.32Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Reviling alone excludes from the kingdom of God.
  • On the Governance of God 3.33Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Envy and slander are boundless among Christians.
  • On the Governance of God 3.34Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Slander harms only the slanderer, who will be rooted out.
  • On the Governance of God 3.35Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Clamor and malice, forbidden by Paul, persist among Christians.
  • On the Governance of God 3.36Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians complain about everything, even God’s answers to their prayers.
  • On the Governance of God 3.37Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christ forbids even lustful looking, since desire enters through the eyes.
  • On the Governance of God 3.38Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christian life should be as pure from unchastity as the eye from dust.
  • On the Governance of God 3.39Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christ’s command to cut off a hand or eye means giving up even needed attendants who lead to sin.
  • On the Governance of God 3.40Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Almost no one keeps even Christ’s least commands.
  • On the Governance of God 3.43Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians not only disobey but do the opposite of God’s commands.
  • On the Governance of God 3.44Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The church itself, apart from a few, is a sewer of vices.
  • On the Governance of God 3.45Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Nearly every Christian is guilty of many sins, the greater along with the lesser.
  • On the Governance of God 3.46Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians show less reverence to God’s house than to a magistrate’s.
  • On the Governance of God 3.47Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Sinners enter church to appease God and leave to provoke him.
  • On the Governance of God 3.48Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Many plot new sins even while praying for pardon for old ones.
  • On the Governance of God 3.49Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · After the liturgy, people go straight back to their sins.
  • On the Governance of God 3.50Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Vice is not limited to slaves; traders, curials, officials, and soldiers are corrupt too.
  • On the Governance of God 3.51Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The sins of the lower classes still offend God; objection: the nobles are innocent.
  • On the Governance of God 3.52Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · James rebukes the rich for oppressing the poor and blaspheming Christ’s name.
  • On the Governance of God 3.53Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Nobility and wealth now coincide, so James’s words apply to both.
  • On the Governance of God 3.54Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The rich condemn in others the crimes they themselves commit.
  • On the Governance of God 3.55Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Almost every rich man is guilty of both murder and debauchery.
  • On the Governance of God 3.56Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Ceasing to sin is not the same as never having sinned, and one man’s reform does not help the many.
  • On the Governance of God 3.57Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · One man’s conversion cannot save others.
  • On the Governance of God 3.60Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The Christian name without Christian life only increases guilt.
  • On the Governance of God 4.1Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Book 4: a Christian who does not do a Christian’s work is not a Christian; a name without deeds is nothing.
  • On the Governance of God 4.2Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The Christian name worn unworthily is like a gold ring in a pig’s snout.
  • On the Governance of God 4.6Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Not even faith, much less the name, profits without good works.
  • On the Governance of God 4.7Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Faith is proved only by works; even the demons believe.
  • On the Governance of God 4.8Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Faith without works is like the demons’ belief.
  • On the Governance of God 4.9Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Demons both believe and fear; so it is no wonder if faithless Christians are punished.
  • On the Governance of God 4.12Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · We condemn in others what we excuse in ourselves.
  • On the Governance of God 4.13Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Masters’ vices are more and greater than slaves’, with very few exceptions.
  • On the Governance of God 4.14Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Slaves who steal are often driven by hunger, and Scripture half excuses them.
  • On the Governance of God 4.15Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Slaves run away because of the cruelty of overseers and fellow slaves.
  • On the Governance of God 4.16Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Slaves’ lying and gluttony are driven by fear and want.
  • On the Governance of God 4.17Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Salvian turns to the rich and noble, few of whom are free from crime.
  • On the Governance of God 4.18Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The rich are runaways from God and gluttons far more than slaves.
  • On the Governance of God 4.19Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Paul’s rebuke of hypocritical judges fits the rich, who commit worse sins.
  • On the Governance of God 4.20Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The rich openly rob the poor, who are their prey.
  • On the Governance of God 4.21Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Office is bought by a few and paid for by ruining the provinces of Spain, Africa, and Gaul.
  • On the Governance of God 4.22Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Nobles commit worse crimes than slaves; freed slaves made nobles have done the same.
  • On the Governance of God 4.23Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Slaves rarely kill; the rich kill their slaves and call it their right.
  • On the Governance of God 4.24Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The rich violate marriage and treat their households as brothels.
  • On the Governance of God 4.25Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Keeping a few concubines seems almost chaste compared with the rich men’s other crimes.
  • On the Governance of God 4.26Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Married nobles take slave women as additional wives, dishonoring marriage.
  • On the Governance of God 4.27Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Nobles who are innocent should be angry not at Salvian but at the guilty who disgrace their class.
  • On the Governance of God 4.28Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Slaves do not keep harems of concubines as the rich do.
  • On the Governance of God 4.29Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Slaves are not innocent, but the rich are more to be condemned.
  • On the Governance of God 4.30Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The rich shift their taxes onto the poor while the dying empire strangles under taxation.
  • On the Governance of God 4.31Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Tax relief granted to cities benefited the rich and crushed the poor.
  • On the Governance of God 4.32Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · A noble who turns to God loses his standing; the world lies in evil.
  • On the Governance of God 4.33Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Converts lose honor; the world honors the bad and despises the good, so suffering increases.
  • On the Governance of God 4.52Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Instead of love and devotion, Christians return to God every kind of sin.
  • On the Governance of God 4.58Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Sins are graver in those of higher rank or holier profession, so Christians sin worse than barbarians.
  • On the Governance of God 4.59Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians, professing the Christian philosophy, are more shameful when they sin.
  • On the Governance of God 4.65Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · In vices the Romans equal the barbarians.
  • On the Governance of God 4.69Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Many Romans, especially traders and Syrians, treat perjury as profit.
  • On the Governance of God 4.71Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians use “By Christ” as a casual oath, constantly perjuring themselves.
  • On the Governance of God 4.72Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The name of Christ is used in vain more than anything.
  • On the Governance of God 4.73Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Some even swear by Christ to commit crimes.
  • On the Governance of God 4.74Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Salvian pleaded with a powerful man not to seize a poor man’s property.
  • On the Governance of God 4.75Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The powerful man claimed he had sworn by Christ to take the poor man’s property.
  • On the Governance of God 4.76Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Swearing by Christ to commit crimes makes God the author of sin.
  • On the Governance of God 4.80Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians cause God’s name to be blasphemed by their evil lives.
  • On the Governance of God 4.81Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Pagans do not bring reproach on Christ, but Christians do.
  • On the Governance of God 4.82Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Only Christians, not pagans, bring curses on the Christian law.
  • On the Governance of God 4.83Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Pagans judge the Christian teaching by the evil lives of Christians.
  • On the Governance of God 4.84Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Pagans conclude from Christians’ lives that Christ teaches evil.
  • On the Governance of God 4.86Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · False Christians caused the pagans’ slanders of Christianity.
  • On the Governance of God 4.89Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Causing others to blaspheme God is the gravest sin.
  • On the Governance of God 4.90Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Only Christians, who know and break God’s law, cause blasphemy.
  • On the Governance of God 4.91Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians are worse for professing goodness; Christ rejects the lukewarm.
  • On the Governance of God 4.92Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The lukewarm Christian is worse than the cold pagan and is spat out.
  • On the Governance of God 4.93Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Peter says it is worse to know the truth and turn back than never to have known it.
  • On the Governance of God 5.15Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Barbarians love one another; Romans persecute one another.
  • On the Governance of God 5.16Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Among Romans, even kin envy one another and rejoice in others’ misfortune.
  • On the Governance of God 5.17Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · A few officials turn public taxation into private plunder of the many.
  • On the Governance of God 5.18Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Every town’s curials are tyrants who devour widows, orphans, and the religious.
  • On the Governance of God 5.19Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Almost no one protects the oppressed, not even the bishops.
  • On the Governance of God 5.21Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Oppressed Romans, even of good family, flee to the barbarians for humane treatment.
  • On the Governance of God 5.22Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Romans prefer freedom under the barbarians to slavery under Rome; Roman citizenship is now shunned.
  • On the Governance of God 5.23Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Roman injustice has made many, even nobles, unwilling to be Romans.
  • On the Governance of God 5.24Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The Bacaudae were made rebels by Roman oppression.
  • On the Governance of God 5.25Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Corrupt judges and tax collectors created the Bacaudae.
  • On the Governance of God 5.26Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Oppression is still driving people toward rebellion.
  • On the Governance of God 5.27Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The poor are driven to want rebellion yet are too weak to achieve it.
  • On the Governance of God 5.28Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The poor flee taxes that fall on them while the rich escape.
  • On the Governance of God 5.29Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The poor pay like the rich but live like beggars; the rich even raise taxes the poor must pay.
  • On the Governance of God 5.30Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The rich decree new levies that only the poor pay.
  • On the Governance of God 5.31Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Those who decree new levies should at least share in paying them.
  • On the Governance of God 5.32Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The poor do not know why they pay; the truth comes out only when the rich quarrel.
  • On the Governance of God 5.33Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The rich object only when left out, not to injustice; the poor are tossed between them.
  • On the Governance of God 5.34Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · In tax relief, as in tax burden, the poor are treated unjustly.
  • On the Governance of God 5.35Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The rich take all the tax relief for themselves.
  • On the Governance of God 5.36Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Such injustice exists only among the Romans, not among the barbarians.
  • On the Governance of God 5.37Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Romans under Gothic rule pray never to return to Roman rule.
  • On the Governance of God 5.38Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Unable to emigrate, the poor surrender themselves to the protection of the rich.
  • On the Governance of God 5.39Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Patrons sell their protection for the property of the poor, impoverishing their children.
  • On the Governance of God 5.40Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Patrons sell protection at the price of everything.
  • On the Governance of God 5.41Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · In this “sale” the patron gains all and the poor lose all.
  • On the Governance of God 5.42Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The dispossessed poor still pay taxes on land they no longer own.
  • On the Governance of God 5.43Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The dispossessed pay taxes for the usurpers and are ruined; some seek refuge on great estates.
  • On the Governance of God 5.44Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The dispossessed become coloni on the estates of the rich and lose their freedom.
  • On the Governance of God 5.45Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Like Circe’s victims, free men taken onto estates are turned into slaves.
  • On the Governance of God 5.52Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Even clergy and professed religious often change only their dress, not their lives.
  • On the Governance of God 5.53Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Some “penitents” repent of their penance and buy offices and power.
  • On the Governance of God 5.54Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Some abstain from their wives but not from seizing others’ property.
  • On the Governance of God 5.55Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · God forbade sins, not marriage; abstaining from marriage while plundering is perverse.
  • On the Governance of God 5.56Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Salvian appeals to a powerful man at least to spare the kinsman who favored him above all.
  • On the Governance of God 5.57Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · No Goth harms those who love him; the man addressed does, despite God’s recent warning.
  • On the Governance of God 5.58Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The man’s neighbors suffer worse than victims of Charybdis and Scylla.
  • On the Governance of God 5.59Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The man drives out his neighbors; Salvian sets before him the example of a humble great man.
  • On the Governance of God 5.60Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Even a pagan teaches that one should be protected by love, not arms.
  • On the Governance of God 5.61Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The man must renounce and lose himself to be saved by Christ.
  • On the Governance of God 6.10Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The spectacles delight in men being torn by beasts, and the whole world is searched for animals.
  • On the Governance of God 6.11Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Those who love the spectacles share their guilt even when not attending.
  • On the Governance of God 6.12Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Pagan augury still attends the inauguration of the consuls.
  • On the Governance of God 6.13Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Public consent makes the consuls’ pagan rites the sin of all.
  • On the Governance of God 6.14Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The demons have spread so many traps of pleasure that hardly anyone escapes them all.
  • On the Governance of God 6.15Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Salvian turns to the circuses and theaters, too impure even to describe.
  • On the Governance of God 6.16Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The theater pollutes mind, eyes, and ears at once.
  • On the Governance of God 6.17Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Theater obscenities cannot even be described decently.
  • On the Governance of God 6.18Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Other sins stain only the doer; the theater stains even the spectator.
  • On the Governance of God 6.19Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Spectators of theater obscenities share the actors’ guilt.
  • On the Governance of God 6.20Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Can God regard Christians who spend their days at shameful spectacles?
  • On the Governance of God 6.21Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · If God turns his eyes from the theater, he turns them from those who are there.
  • On the Governance of God 6.22Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Pagans held games for their gods; Christians know their God hates them.
  • On the Governance of God 6.23Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians knowingly serve the devil at the games, like the giants assaulting heaven.
  • On the Governance of God 6.24Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Romans celebrate God’s gifts and victories with games that insult him.
  • On the Governance of God 6.25Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians repay God’s goodness with insult, like an ungrateful freedman.
  • On the Governance of God 6.26Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christ did not become incarnate and die so that Christians would honor him with obscene shows.
  • On the Governance of God 6.27Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christ became poor and died to make a pure people, yet Christians repay him with shameful lives.
  • On the Governance of God 6.28Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Where is the pure people Christ came to make?
  • On the Governance of God 6.29Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christ wept but is never said to have laughed; Christians follow him into the theaters.
  • On the Governance of God 6.30Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Joy and laughter are fine if innocent; why must they offend God?
  • On the Governance of God 6.31Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The baptismal renunciation names the spectacles as works of the devil.
  • On the Governance of God 6.32Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Returning to the spectacles after baptism is returning to the devil.
  • On the Governance of God 6.37Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · When games and church festivals coincide, the games draw the larger crowd.
  • On the Governance of God 6.38Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians leave church for the games, and God threatens destruction.
  • On the Governance of God 6.49Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The will to see the shows is itself guilt, and provincials attend them in Rome and Ravenna.
  • On the Governance of God 6.58Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The games are crimes committed in laughter.
  • On the Governance of God 6.59Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The games both destroy souls and offend God.
  • On the Governance of God 6.60Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Each kind of show is dedicated to a pagan god.
  • On the Governance of God 6.61Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Demons preside over the shows; attending them is sacrilege.
  • On the Governance of God 6.64Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Christians use God-given peace to sin more freely.
  • On the Governance of God 6.69Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · While the Vandals besieged Carthage, its Christians reveled at the games.
  • On the Governance of God 6.73Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Aged Christian notables indulged in gluttony and lust as their city faced ruin.
  • On the Governance of God 6.74Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The notables of the city feasted and drank; even repeated sackings did not stop them.
  • On the Governance of God 6.77Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · In another Gallic city the notables were still at table when the enemy entered.
  • On the Governance of God 6.78Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Old and young alike drank, danced, and committed adultery.
  • On the Governance of God 6.79Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Drunkenness and lust led the citizens to deny Christ; they had perished before their city fell.
  • On the Governance of God 6.85Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Surviving nobles of Trier asked the emperors for circus games.
  • On the Governance of God 6.86Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The request was irreligious, foolish, luxurious, and mad.
  • On the Governance of God 6.87Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Salvian addresses the people of Trier, more wretched for wanting games than for their ruin.
  • On the Governance of God 6.89Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Games amid the ruins provoked God; Trier deserved its fourth destruction.
  • On the Governance of God 6.95Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Instead, the Romans celebrate God’s deliverance by rushing to the games.
  • On the Governance of God 7.15Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The Aquitanian nobles lived like a brothel, worse than prostitutes who at least do not commit adultery.
  • On the Governance of God 7.16Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Aquitanian nobles broke faith with their wives and treated them as slave women.
  • On the Governance of God 7.17Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Wives kept the rank of mistress but not the integrity of marriage, since husbands took slave women.
  • On the Governance of God 7.18Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Rich Aquitanians used all their slave women like stallions in a herd.
  • On the Governance of God 7.19Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The masters’ corruption corrupted their whole households.
  • On the Governance of God 7.20Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Slave women were forced into unchastity by their masters.
  • On the Governance of God 7.21Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The exiled Aquitanian nobles are now even worse than before.
  • On the Governance of God 7.22Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Old, poor, and captive, they persist in impurity even among the barbarians.
  • On the Governance of God 7.23Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Even among unchaste barbarians a Christian should be chaste.
  • On the Governance of God 7.24Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The Goths punish fornication; only Romans among them are allowed it.
  • On the Governance of God 7.25Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The barbarians now purify by chastity the lands Romans polluted.
  • On the Governance of God 7.26Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Spain too was handed over for its vices, and to the chaste Vandals.
  • On the Governance of God 7.27Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · God gave Spain to the Vandals to show his hatred of lust and love of chastity.
  • On the Governance of God 7.65Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Africa burned with lust like Etna, as all the world knows.
  • On the Governance of God 7.66Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · An African who is chaste seems no longer an African.
  • On the Governance of God 7.70Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Carthage seethed with every vice, its people drunk with sin.
  • On the Governance of God 7.71Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The oppressed poor of Carthage prayed even for the enemy’s coming, and God granted it.
  • On the Governance of God 7.72Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Carthage was full of brothels, its streets like traps of lust.
  • On the Governance of God 7.73Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Lust lay in ambush for everyone in Carthage.
  • On the Governance of God 7.75Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Hardly a chaste man could be found among the Christians of Carthage.
  • On the Governance of God 7.76Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Paul’s description of same-sex relations among men applied to Carthage.
  • On the Governance of God 7.77Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Paul wrote this of the Romans, whom the Africans surpassed in impurity.
  • On the Governance of God 7.78Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Worse than the crime was that it was done openly and without shame.
  • On the Governance of God 7.79Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · In Christian Carthage men openly lived as women and the city approved.
  • On the Governance of God 7.80Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · These men even adopted women’s appearance and dress.
  • On the Governance of God 7.82Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The sin of a few defiles the whole church, as Christ’s image of the eye and Paul’s leaven show.
  • On the Governance of God 7.83Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The authorities’ tolerance made the crime that of the whole empire.
  • On the Governance of God 7.87Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · No Vandal became effeminate or joined in the Romans’ vice.
  • On the Governance of God 7.88Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Even Roman armies once tolerated such vice among camp boys.
  • On the Governance of God 7.89Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The Vandals rejected the vices of Carthage and shunned brothels and prostitutes.
  • On the Governance of God 7.90Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The Vandals not only avoided vice but removed it from others.
  • On the Governance of God 7.91Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Unlike Roman officials who commit what they punish, the Vandals truly removed vice.
  • On the Governance of God 7.92Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Former officials continue their robbery as private men, without end.
  • On the Governance of God 7.93Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Laws bind only the poor, while the powerful trample them.
  • On the Governance of God 7.94Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The Vandals removed effeminate men and prostitution from all Africa.
  • On the Governance of God 7.96Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The Vandals reformed prostitutes without killing them.
  • On the Governance of God 7.97Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The Vandals made prostitutes marry, fulfilling Paul’s command.
  • On the Governance of God 7.99Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The Vandals punished unchastity by law, unlike Roman laws that forbade adultery but allowed brothels.
  • On the Governance of God 7.100Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The Vandals confined sexual relations to marriage, following God’s law.
  • On the Governance of God 7.106Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Many Romans live by Socrates’ precepts; great cities excel in impurity.
  • On the Governance of God 7.107Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · The barbarians’ discipline has made even the Romans among them chaste.
  • On the Governance of God 7.108Salvian of Marseilles · ca. 439-451 · Only Roman vice, not barbarian strength, has defeated Rome.
  • Church History 4.23Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · Socrates digresses on the Egyptian monks: Amoun's chaste marriage, sayings of Pambo and others, the two Macarii, Evagrius's writings with excerpts from his Practical Life and Gnostic, and Ammonius who cut off his ear to avoid becoming a bishop.
  • Church History 4.28Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · Socrates explains the strict Novatian discipline on those who lapsed and its appeal in Phrygia and Paphlagonia, and tells how a Novatian synod at Pazus adopted the Jewish date for Easter.
  • Church History 5.18Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · At Rome Theodosius abolishes the bakeries where strangers were trapped into forced labour and the punishment of adulteresses by forced prostitution.
  • Church History 5.19Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · Nectarius abolishes the office of penitentiary presbyter at Constantinople after a woman's confession exposes a deacon's sin; Socrates doubts the wisdom of the change.
  • Church History 6.21Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · John dies in exile at Comana in 407; Socrates criticizes his teaching that repentance may be granted repeatedly, which Sisinnius the Novatian answered in writing.
  • Church History 7.15Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · The philosopher Hypatia, suspected of hindering reconciliation between Orestes and Cyril, is murdered by a mob led by the reader Peter; Socrates condemns the deed as alien to Christ.
  • Church History 7.21Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · Acacius of Amida melts down church plate to ransom and feed seven thousand Persian captives; the empress Eudocia, baptized by Atticus, writes poems on the victory.
  • Church History 7.22Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · Socrates praises Theodosius II's piety, fasting, learning, forbearance and refusal to execute, and his turning a stormy day at the hippodrome into common prayer.
  • Church History 7.25Socrates Scholasticus · ca. 439-443 · Atticus restores John Chrysostom's name to the commemorations, sends alms beyond his see with a letter to Calliopius, renames places, defends the Novatians, and dies in 425.
  • Church History 1.12Sozomen · ca. 439-450 · Sozomen describes the monastic philosophy, its virtues and its origins, which some trace to Elijah and John the Baptist, others to the community Philo describes by Lake Mareotis, and others to flight in persecution.
  • Church History 7.16Sozomen · ca. 439-450 · Nectarius abolishes the office of penitentiary presbyter after a scandal involving a noblewoman and a deacon; Sozomen describes public penance as still kept at Rome, and Theodosius’s law restricting the ministry of women to mothers over sixty.
  • Church History 7.25Sozomen · ca. 439-450 · Ambrose bars Theodosius from the church at Milan for the massacre at Thessalonica; the emperor does public penance and decrees a thirty-day delay for death sentences; Sozomen adds Ambrose’s placing of the emperor’s seat outside the sanctuary and his rescue of a man condemned by Gratian.
  • Church History 8.9Sozomen · ca. 439-450 · Chrysostom’s harsh archdeacon Serapion, his advice to the deaconess Olympias to give wisely, and his rebukes of wandering monks earn him enemies among clergy and monks, who also slander him for eating alone.
  • Church History 9.10Sozomen · ca. 439-450 · During the sack of Rome a Nicene Roman matron chooses death rather than be violated by an Arian Gothic soldier, who, admiring her chastity, takes her to St. Peter’s and pays for her keep until her husband can claim her.
  • Letter 159 to Nicetas of Aquileia, chapter 5Leo I, bishop of Rome (Leo the Great) · 440–461 · Leo rules that captives who ate sacrificial food under fear or hunger are to be restored after penance measured by compunction rather than time.
  • Letter 167 to Rusticus of Narbonne, inquiry 6 (with inquiries 7 and 8)Leo I, bishop of Rome (Leo the Great) · 440–461 · A man who leaves a slave concubine to marry a free wife has not married twice; penitents who recover must be urged to complete penance; those who die before reconciliation are left to God's judgment.
  • Canon 5Anonymous · 441 · Those who take refuge in a church are not to be handed over.
  • Canon 6Anonymous · 441 · Anyone who seizes clerics' slaves in retaliation for his own slaves who fled to a church is condemned.
  • Canon 7Anonymous · 441 · Those freed in church or commended to the church by will may not be reduced again to servitude.
  • Canon 28Anonymous · 441 · Men and women who abandon a vow of chastity are transgressors and must do penance.
  • Canon 3Anonymous · date disputed (between ca. 442 and 506) · Clerics from deacon upward may not keep women in their homes other than close relatives or a wife living in continence with them.
  • Canon 4Anonymous · date disputed (between ca. 442 and 506) · Clergy may not admit girls or women servants into their private rooms.
  • Canon 14Anonymous · date disputed (between ca. 442 and 506) · Clerics who lend at interest, farm others' property, or trade for gain are deposed and excommunicated.
  • Canon 20Anonymous · date disputed (between ca. 442 and 506) · Baptized charioteers and actors are excommunicated while they continue in their trade.
  • Canon 23Anonymous · date disputed (between ca. 442 and 506) · A bishop who tolerates pagan cults at trees, springs, or stones in his territory is guilty of sacrilege; the landowner who will not stop them is excommunicated.
  • Canon 30Anonymous · date disputed (between ca. 442 and 506) · Fugitives in a church are not handed over but persuaded to leave under a promise of pardon; masters who then punish them are excommunicated.
  • Canon 33Anonymous · date disputed (between ca. 442 and 506) · Those freed by will may not be reduced again to servitude (as Orange, canon 7).
  • Canon 34Anonymous · date disputed (between ca. 442 and 506) · A master may not revoke a manumission performed in church on grounds of ingratitude unless he proves it before the municipal authorities.
  • Canon 47Anonymous · date disputed (between ca. 442 and 506) · Whoever withholds bequests to the church is excluded from it, as at Vaison.
  • Canon 50Anonymous · date disputed (between ca. 442 and 506) · Those in open enmity with each other are excluded from church assemblies until reconciled.
  • Canon 51Anonymous · date disputed (between ca. 442 and 506) · Whoever takes in an exposed infant posts a notice; if unclaimed in ten days the finder keeps it, and later claimants are punished as murderers.
  • Canon 53Anonymous · date disputed (between ca. 442 and 506) · A slave who wounds or kills himself to bring odium on his master alone bears the guilt.
  • Canon 4Anonymous · 442 · Those who withhold bequests made by the dead to the church are excommunicated as defrauders of the poor.
  • Canon 9Anonymous · 442 · Whoever takes in an exposed infant is to proceed through the church, with a period of ten days from the exposure; the details are unreadable in the edition used.
  • Canon 10Anonymous · 442 · Anyone who afterwards reclaims or slanders a foundling taken in under this procedure is punished as a murderer.
  • Church History 5.17Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 449-450 · After Theodosius's anger leads to the massacre of seven thousand at Thessalonica (390), Ambrose bars him from the church; eight months later, at Christmas, Theodosius seeks reconciliation, accepts Ambrose's demand for a law delaying capital sentences thirty days, performs public penance, and learns to stay outside the sanctuary, later praising Ambrose as the only true bishop.
  • Church History 5.18Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 449-450 · The empress Flacilla (Placilla), Theodosius's wife, personally nurses the sick and maimed in the church hospitals and constantly reminds her husband to remember God's gifts; she dies before him.
  • Church History 5.19Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 449-450 · When Antioch riots over a new tax and drags the empress Placilla's statue through the streets (387), Theodosius threatens to destroy the city, but the delay required by Ambrose's law and the plea of the hermit Macedonius to the imperial commissioners, that God's living images are worth more than bronze ones, move him to clemency.
  • Part 1, chapter 14Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Circumcision, set in the part of the body where lust entered after the fall, figures the circumcision of the heart and the continence of the New Testament.
  • Part 1, chapter 27Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Joseph, resisting Potiphar’s wife and leaving his garment in her hands, figures Christ whose garments are the martyrs, dragged by idolatry and persecution but freed in their souls.
  • Part 1, chapter 36Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The ten plagues of Egypt are matched one by one with the ten commandments, each plague showing the spiritual harm of breaking the corresponding commandment.
  • Part 2, chapter 1Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The law given on Sinai and the covenant in sacrificial blood figure Christ’s new law written on hearts and sealed in his blood; the gospel commandments fulfil and temper the old without contradicting it.
  • Part 2, chapter 7Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The laws of clean and unclean foods, already expounded allegorically by earlier writers, are summed up in Christ’s command to give alms, which cleanses all things and is praised at length.
  • Part 2, chapter 16Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Joshua’s conquest and division of the land, the inheritance of Zelophehad’s daughters, and his farewell figure Christ’s conquest of vices, his gift of himself as inheritance, his farewell covenant, and the rulers of his Church.
  • Part 2, chapter 26Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · David, king over all Israel, who mourned Saul, figures Christ who loves his enemies; his adultery and murder, his penance, and the troubles of his house warn that prosperity is more dangerous than adversity.
  • Part 2, chapter 29Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The widow of Zarephath, who gave Elijah her last bread first and was never in want, shows the primacy of mercy; she figures the widow faithful to one marriage and the poor widow who gave her two mites.
  • Part 2, chapter 31Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · Elisha’s raising of the Shunammite’s son and his other signs (the bears, the blinded army, Naaman, Gehazi) figure Christ raising sinners, baptism, free grace, and heresy that sells grace; (chapter 32) Hezekiah’s boastful display warns against pride in good works.
  • Part 3, chapter 17Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The Psalms’ zeal for God’s house are fulfilled in Christ’s cleansing of the temple, which condemns lovers of money and betrayers, with a line of Virgil on the age of greed.
  • Part 3, chapter 37Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The Psalm’s call to kings to serve the Lord is fulfilled as rulers take up Christ’s yoke; justice, mercy, and prayer for rulers are commended, with a line of Virgil.
  • Part 4, chapter 19Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The Psalms, Christ’s parable of the sheep and goats, Paul, the Apocalypse, Isaiah, and the Sibyl describe the last judgment, where mercy to the poor decides; (chapter 20) a purifying fire will purge certain of the faithful and renew the elements, while the impious repent in vain.
  • Antony 9Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Antony teaches that life and death depend on how we treat our neighbor.
  • Antony 19Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Antony steps down from the Gospel’s command to weaker counsels for brothers who refuse each, and ends by saying they need prayer.
  • Alonius 4Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Alonius argues that a lie to save a fugitive from death is better than handing him over.
  • Theodore of Pherme 11Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Theodore explains that keeping God’s commandments, like visiting the sick, is the soul’s true work.
  • John the Dwarf (Colobos) 34Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · John lists the virtues to begin each day, ending with constant remembrance of death.
  • John the Dwarf (Colobos) 39Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · John calls the neighbor the foundation of the spiritual house, on whom all Christ’s commandments hang.
  • Isidore of Pelusium 3Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Some shrink from the road to virtue; others deny it exists; both must be taught.
  • Isidore of Pelusium 4Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Wickedness divides people from God and each other; virtue reunites them.
  • Moses 18Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Moses’ instructions: God helps, fasting humbles, weep in temptation, blame yourself, and above all do not judge your neighbor.
  • Poemen 34Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Poemen traces revenge from heart to look to tongue to deed, and urges stopping it at each stage.
  • Poemen 68Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · God’s law for Israel was to abstain from anger, jealousy, hatred, and slander.
  • Poemen 104Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Poemen rules that a loan received as alms belongs to the lender and should be given away in his name if he refuses it.
  • Poemen 116Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Bearing insults and wrongs without retaliating is laying down one’s life for one’s neighbor.
  • Poemen 177Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Only good overcomes evil.
  • Sisoes 34Anonymous · compiled ca. 450-500 (sayings 4th-5th century) · Sisoes forbids killing even an attacker, teaching to blame trials on one’s sins and credit good to God.
  • Life of Syncletica 13Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Prepared by earlier discipline, she built her spiritual house not by gathering but by emptying herself of wealth and passions, founding it on the rock.
  • Life of Syncletica 22Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Syncletica begins her teaching: salvation depends on keeping the two great commandments of love, on which all that profits the soul depends.
  • Life of Syncletica 24Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Virgins must keep chastity in every sense, guarding eyes, tongue and ears.
  • Life of Syncletica 25Anonymous · 5th–6th century · To guard the senses virgins must avoid going out to the marketplace, where sights and words defile like smoke through open windows.
  • Life of Syncletica 26Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Even in seclusion virgins must watch, for the devil moves from bodily temptation to the senses and then to the mind; consenting to impure imaginations is itself a kind of fornication.
  • Life of Syncletica 27Anonymous · 5th–6th century · The devil uses even spiritual friendships between virgins and monks to lead them into sin, disguising his snares as good.
  • Life of Syncletica 28Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Against the devil’s snares one must be wise as serpents to detect them and innocent as doves in conduct, always watchful.
  • Life of Syncletica 29Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Against impure thoughts she advises prayer and asceticism, and also picturing the desired body as decaying flesh and bone, and above all controlling the belly.
  • Life of Syncletica 30Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Asked whether poverty is a perfect good, she answers that it is very good for the strong, who are cleansed by it like strong cloth, but ruins the weak.
  • Life of Syncletica 31Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Poverty should be undertaken only after training in other ascetic labors; those who rush into it often regret it.
  • Life of Syncletica 32Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Gluttony and luxury must be overcome before money can be given up; Christ first asked the rich young man about keeping the law before telling him to sell his goods.
  • Life of Syncletica 33Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Poverty is good for the mature, who, rid of superfluities, look to the Lord for their food.
  • Life of Syncletica 34Anonymous · 5th–6th century · The poor, like beasts of burden content with food, work only for daily bread and trust God, who feeds the birds.
  • Life of Syncletica 35Anonymous · 5th–6th century · The devil cannot harm those who own nothing, since most temptations come through loss of property.
  • Life of Syncletica 36Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Love of money is the root of all evils and is never satisfied; it brings envy, which destroys its owner first, like the viper said to kill its mother at birth.
  • Life of Syncletica 37Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Merchants endure great dangers for worldly gain, while ascetics, gaining a little virtue, boast of it and lose it; good deeds should be kept secret.
  • Life of Syncletica 38Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Virtue should be hidden like treasure, while faults are confessed; praise melts the soul like wax before fire.
  • Life of Syncletica 39Anonymous · 5th–6th century · As praise weakens the soul, reproach and insult strengthen it, as the Beatitudes and Psalms show.
  • Life of Syncletica 40Anonymous · 5th–6th century · There is godly grief over sin and for others’ salvation, and a destructive grief from the devil, acedia, which must be driven away by prayer and psalmody.
  • Life of Syncletica 41Anonymous · 5th–6th century · No life is free of care: the head’s toil stands for the ascetic life, the heart’s grief for the restless worldly life.
  • Life of Syncletica 49Anonymous · 5th–6th century · After gluttony, lust and greed are overcome, the devil attacks with pride, making the ascetic forget her sins and dream of honors, as he himself fell by pride.
  • Life of Syncletica 50Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Against pride one should meditate on texts of human lowliness; a proud solitary should be put in a community, made to eat more, rebuked, set to serve, and shown the lives of greater saints.
  • Life of Syncletica 51Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Pride is preceded by disobedience and cured by obedience.
  • Life of Syncletica 52Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Discouraged souls should be encouraged and their sins made light of, since the devil makes beginners despair; Rahab, Paul, Matthew and the penitent thief show that none should despair.
  • Life of Syncletica 53Anonymous · 5th–6th century · To humble the proud ascetic, point to others whose fasting and hardship exceed hers, and to the demons, who neither eat, drink, marry nor sleep.
  • Life of Syncletica 54Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Despair and pride are opposite dangers: virtue is lost by arrogance as a fire is scattered by too much wind, or by negligence as it dies without wind; asceticism must be moderated to keep it humble.
  • Life of Syncletica 55Anonymous · 5th–6th century · The despairing must be encouraged like a weak plant watered by a farmer, while the overeager are pruned, as doctors treat different patients differently.
  • Life of Syncletica 56Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Humility, the one virtue the devil cannot counterfeit, binds all the others together; the three youths counted the humble among those who praise God.
  • Life of Syncletica 57Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Christ himself put on humility and told us to learn it from him; even after keeping every commandment we must call ourselves unprofitable servants.
  • Life of Syncletica 58Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Humility grows through insults and blows, which Christ himself endured.
  • Life of Syncletica 59Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Feigned humility is exposed when the slightest insult provokes venom.
  • Life of Syncletica 60Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Coming to God means struggle at first and then unspeakable joy, as lighting a fire means smoke and tears before the flame; some give up through impatience.
  • Life of Syncletica 61Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Love is the greatest good and anger a great evil; for every weapon of the devil the Lord provides a stronger virtue.
  • Life of Syncletica 62Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Anger should be directed against the demons, not against people, whom one should correct only after anger has passed.
  • Life of Syncletica 63Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Bearing grudges is worse than anger, for anger passes like smoke but a grudge hardens the soul beyond any beast; it disobeys Christ’s command to be reconciled.
  • Life of Syncletica 64Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Anger must not outlast the day; one should hate the devil who causes the wrong, not the person; Ps 52 threatens the grudge-bearer with destruction.
  • Life of Syncletica 65Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Grudges, envy and slander seem small but kill the soul unnoticed, while great sins are often healed by repentance.
  • Life of Syncletica 66Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Listening to slander stains prayer and colors one’s view of everyone, so one should refuse to hear it.
  • Life of Syncletica 67Anonymous · 5th–6th century · One must neither speak nor listen to slander, but be like the deaf and mute of the psalm.
  • Life of Syncletica 68Anonymous · 5th–6th century · One should not gloat over others’ misfortunes, since in this life the same things befall righteous and sinner.
  • Life of Syncletica 69Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Christ commands love of enemies; loving the lovable needs no effort, but overcoming evil requires divine teaching and toil.
  • Life of Syncletica 70Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Ps 18:26 does not mean one should avoid sinners for fear of corruption, but that one should draw the crooked to the right.
  • Life of Syncletica 71Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Of three kinds of people, the wicked worsen sinners, the middling avoid them for fear of contagion, and the perfect live among them to save them, like Christ eating with sinners, enduring insults out of love.
  • Life of Syncletica 72Anonymous · 5th–6th century · As vices follow from greed, the virtues follow from love, which cannot be attained without poverty, since love extends to all.
  • Life of Syncletica 73Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Almsgiving, commanded to those in the world, is a training in love, as circumcision foreshadowed circumcision of the heart; those who have nothing should not seek property in order to give alms.
  • Life of Syncletica 74Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Having given everything away, the ascetic should aim at love, like the apostles who left all and had no silver or gold.
  • Life of Syncletica 75Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Alms should be given with Abraham’s heart; God set two orders, the married, under laws, and the virgins, living like angels under grace.
  • Life of Syncletica 76Anonymous · 5th–6th century · The ascetic life is a dying to the world; mercy is shown in the soul, so that, as lust in the heart is sin, merciful intent without money counts as alms.
  • Life of Syncletica 79Anonymous · 5th–6th century · One should not teach without having practiced; words without deeds are like flaking paint, but teaching by example carves Christ’s image in the soul.
  • Life of Syncletica 80Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Having cut off their hair, ascetics must also remove the lice of slander, perjury and greed; in a clean life even small sins show, so the soul must be cleaned constantly by prayer and fasting.
  • Life of Syncletica 81Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Belief in astral fate (genesis) is a demonic snare; the virtuous ascribe good to God and choice to their own will, while the lazy blame fate to excuse themselves.
  • Life of Syncletica 82Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Fatalists blame their sins on the stars, which ends in despair and abolishes God’s judgment, since only voluntary sins are punishable.
  • Life of Syncletica 83Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Whether God is placed before, after or alongside fate, the fatalist view makes God the author of evil or sets two principles at war; Scripture calls such people fools.
  • Life of Syncletica 84Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Fatalists twist Scripture: Matthew’s “genesis” of Christ means birth, the star announced Christ, Isaiah’s “evils” are corrective hardships from God, and “ways” are life and death, not vices.
  • Life of Syncletica 85Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Fatalism destroys free will and lets the devil steer souls; he tempts even the zealous, especially former philosophers, to credit their virtue to the stars, and suits his poisons to each person’s nature.
  • Life of Syncletica 86Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Some were shipwrecked by speculating about God’s essence before mastering the practical life; worldly learning must be humbled, becoming like a child and a fool for God.
  • Life of Syncletica 87Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Avoid idle disputes; the astrologers’ predictions are conjectures like a sailor’s weather lore, or come from demons like the sayings of ventriloquists, so their art is vain.
  • Life of Syncletica 88Anonymous · 5th–6th century · The devil’s shifting suggestions, fate, chance, the mortality of the soul, betray their falsehood; a servant of God carefully observed the sequence and duration of his thoughts.
  • Life of Syncletica 89Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Like merchants weighing daily gains, ascetics should watch their progress, and when they fall not despair but seek the lost sheep, trusting the Lord who upholds.
  • Life of Syncletica 96Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Desire, pleasure and grief are the devil’s three chief weapons; desire must be stopped at its first stirring, for once it acts the others follow in a circle.
  • Life of Syncletica 108Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Those dedicated to God must always be watchful, for the devil waits for any lapse; even the virtuous have faults, as even the wicked have some good.
  • Life of Syncletica 109Anonymous · 5th–6th century · Small faults must not be neglected; God delivers from great dangers by grace but leaves small ones to our free effort, as a father lets a child take small steps.
  • Exodus Question 23Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · The Egyptians' gold and clothing were the wages owed to Israel for its forced labor, and the Egyptians shared Pharaoh's guilt.
  • Exodus Question 56Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Several animal laws, including the ban on boiling a kid in its mother's milk, teach kindness.
  • Numbers Question 8Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Exclusion of the ritually unclean teaches by analogy that murder, wickedness and adultery defile far more.
  • Numbers Question 29Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Sins of weakness have some excuse, but deliberate contempt of God's law has none.
  • Deuteronomy Question 3Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Loving God with the whole heart means giving him undivided love and loving others in due order under him.
  • Deuteronomy Question 11Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · The ban on eating blood was meant to cure Israel's readiness to kill.
  • Deuteronomy Question 16Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Justice must be pursued for its own sake, not for show.
  • Deuteronomy Question 21Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Sparing the mother bird teaches kindness and preserves the species.
  • Deuteronomy Question 22Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · The parapet law teaches us to use our reason and take precautions, while trusting God for the outcome.
  • 1 Kingdoms Question 36Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · God did not teach Samuel to lie: he really sacrificed, while keeping his main purpose hidden.
  • 1 Kingdoms Question 45Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Jonathan loved David as himself, as the law commands love of neighbor.
  • 1 Kingdoms Question 56Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · David spared Saul in the cave, cutting only his cloak, and appealed to him with gentle words, honoring the Lord's anointed.
  • 1 Kingdoms Question 57Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · David left judgment to God and humbled himself; Saul confessed David's righteousness, foretold his kingship and asked him to spare his descendants.
  • 1 Kingdoms Question 59Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · David rightly broke a rash oath of vengeance at Abigail's plea; Theodoret explains several words and names in the story.
  • 2 Kingdoms Question 7Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · David's comparison of Jonathan's love to the love of women expresses the depth of a pure friendship that unites souls, as marriage unites two in one flesh.
  • 2 Kingdoms Question 24Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · In a time of ease David fell into adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah; Nathan's parable led him to confess, and God forgave the death penalty but disciplined him.
  • 2 Kingdoms Question 28Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Jonadab's “shrewdness” served evil; Tamar's rape began the troubles of David's house, leading through Amnon's murder and the Tekoite woman's ruse to Absalom's revolt and David's flight, where Ittai's loyalty is an example.
  • 2 Kingdoms Question 29Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Remembering the ark's capture when it was misused, David sent it back and submitted to God's judgment for his adultery and murder, praying only that Ahithophel's counsel be frustrated.
  • 2 Kingdoms Question 30Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Hushai's deception is judged by its purpose: it served a pious king, as Herod's “truthful” keeping of an oath to kill John shows that truth can be culpable.
  • 2 Kingdoms Question 31Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · David was deceived by Ziba's plausible story but kept faith with Jonathan's son; he bore Shimei's curses as God's discipline, though the crimes of his sons were not God's doing.
  • 2 Kingdoms Question 42Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Israel was punished with famine for Saul's breach of the oath to the Gibeonites, teaching that sworn covenants must be kept; Theodoret applies the Canaanites' blessing to the Gentile church.
  • 3 Kingdoms Question 7Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Solomon, judged by the standard for kings, rightly executed Adonijah, whose request for David's concubine was a bid for the throne.
  • 4 Kingdoms Question 20Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · “Phelmouni” means “such a place”; Elisha blinded the Syrians who came to seize him, led them into Samaria, and had them fed and released so that their king would learn God's power.
  • 4 Kingdoms Question 34Theodoret of Cyrus · ca. 453 · Jehu's pretended devotion to Baal served to gather and destroy all Baal's priests; he removed Baal worship but kept the golden calves.
  • Canon 27Anonymous · 451 · Those who abduct women for marriage, or help to do so, are deposed or anathematized.