Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

the long hours of the night in pouring out confession to God, and made your beard wet
with channels of tears. Why particularize? Remember how many mouths of saints you saluted
with a kiss, how many bodies you embraced, how many held your hands as undefiled,
how many servants God, as though in worship, ran and clasped you by the knees.
2. And what is the end of all this? My ears are wounded by a charge of adultery, flying
swifter than an arrow, and piercing my heart with a sharper sting. What crafty wiliness of
wizard has driven you into so deadly a trap? What many-meshed devil’s nets have entangled
you and disabled all the powers of your virtue? What has become of the story of your labours?
Or must we disbelieve them? How can we avoid giving credit to what has long been
hid when we see what is plain? What shall we say of your having by tremendous oaths
bound souls which fled for refuge to God, when what is more than yea and nay is carefully
attributed to the devil? 2104 You have made yourself security for fatal perjury; and, by setting
the ascetic character at nought, you have cast blame even upon the Apostles and the very
Lord Himself. You have shamed the boast of purity. You have disgraced the promise of
chastity; we have been made a tragedy of captives, and our story is made a play of before
Jews and Greeks. You have made a split in the solitaries’ spirit, driving those of exacter
discipline into fear and cowardice, while they still wonder at the power of the devil, and seducing
the careless into imitation of your incontinence. So far as you have been able, you
have destroyed the boast of Christ, Who said, “Be of good cheer I have overcome the
world,” 2105 and its Prince. You have mixed for your country a bowl of ill repute. Verily
you have proved the truth of the proverb, “Like a hart stricken through the liver.” 2106
But what now? The tower of strength has not fallen, my brother. The remedies of correction
are not mocked; the city of refuge is not shut. Do not abide in the depths of evil.
Do not deliver yourself to the slayer of souls. The Lord knows how to set up them that are
dashed down. Do not try to flee afar off, but hasten to me. Resume once more the labours
of your youth, and by a fresh course of good deeds destroy the indulgence that creeps foully
along the ground. Look to the end, that has come so near to our life. See how now the sons
of Jews and Greeks are being driven to the worship of God, and do not altogether deny the
Saviour of the World. Never let that most awful sentence apply to you, “Depart from me,
I never knew you.” 2107
2104 cf. Matt. v. 37.
2105 John xvi. 33.
2106 cf. Prov. vii. 22, 23, LXX.
2107 Luke xiii. 27.
To a lapsed Monk.
448
149