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

and refrain myself? I have been patient like a travailing woman.” 2883 God grant that I may
both receive the reward of silence, and gain some strength to confute my opponents, and
that thus, by confuting them, I may dry up the bitter torrent of falsehood that has gushed
out against me. So might I say, “My soul has passed over the torrent;” 2884 and, “If it had
not been the Lord who was on our side when men rose up against us,…then they had
swallowed us up quick, the water had drowned us.” 2885
2. Much time had I spent in vanity, and had wasted nearly all my youth in the vain labour
which I underwent in acquiring the wisdom made foolish by God. Then once upon a time,
like a man roused from deep sleep, I turned my eyes to the marvellous light of the truth of
the Gospel, and I perceived the uselessness of “the wisdom of the princes of this world, that
come to naught.” 2886 I wept many tears over my miserable life and I prayed that guidance
might be vouchsafed me to admit me to the doctrines of true religion. First of all was I
minded to make some mending of my ways, long perverted as they were by my intimacy
with wicked men. Then I read the Gospel, and I saw there that a great means of reaching
perfection was the selling of one’s goods, the sharing them with the poor, the giving up of
all care for this life, and the refusal to allow the soul to be turned by any sympathy to things
of earth. And I prayed that I might find some one of the brethren who had chosen this way
of life, that with him I might cross life’s short 2887 and troubled strait. And many did I find
in Alexandria, and many in the rest of Egypt, and others in Palestine, and in Cœle Syria,
and in Mesopotamia. I admired their continence in living, and their endurance in toil; I
was amazed at their persistency in prayer, and at their triumphing over sleep; subdued by
no natural necessity, ever keeping their souls’ purpose high and free, in hunger, in thirst, in
cold, in nakedness, 2888 they never yielded to the body; they were never willing to waste attention
on it; always, as though living in a flesh that was not theirs, they shewed in very deed
what it is to sojourn for a while in this life, 2889 and what to have one’s citizenship and home
in heaven. 2890 All this moved my admiration. I called these men’s lives blessed, in that they
did in deed shew that they “bear about in their body the dying of Jesus.” 2891 And I prayed
that I, too, as far as in me lay, might imitate them.
2883 Isa. xlii. 14, LXX.
2884 Ps. cxxiv. 5, LXX.
2885 Ps. cxxiv. 3, 4, LXX.
2886 1 Cor. ii. 6.
2887 Al. deep.
2888 2 Cor. xi. 27.
2889 cf. Heb. xi. 13.
2890 cf. Phil. iii. 20.
2891 2 Cor. iv. 10.
Against Eustathius of Sebasteia.
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