The Lives of the Saints Volume 1 - St. Patrick's Basilica

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the nuptial blessing in the persons of the priests, and what many throw
away on musicians, would be a grateful sacrifice to God if bestowed on
the poor. Every one ought to be ambitious to set the example of so
wholesome and holy a custom, which others would imitate. What
incomparable advantages does a wife bring to a house, when she enters it
loaded with the blessings of heaven? This is a fortune far beyond all
the riches of the world. In the third discourse, he speaks of the
inviolable precept of mutual tender love which the husband and wife are
bound constantly to bear each other, and of forgetting one another's
faults, as {263} a man in engaging in this state seeks a companion for
life, the saint observes that nothing is busier than for him to make it
an affair of traffic, or a money job. A wife with a moderate fortune
usually brings more complaisance and submission, and blesses a house
with peace, union, and friendship. How many rich men, by marrying great
fortunes, in seeking to increase their estates, have forfeited the
repose of their minds for the rest of their lives. A virtuous wife gives
every succor and comfort to a family, by the virtuous education of her
children, by possessing the heart of her husband, and by furnishing
supplies for every necessity, and comfort in every distress. Virtue was
the only quality and circumstance which Abraham was solicitous about in
the choice which he made of a wife for his son. Among the letters of the
saint, which, with certain scattered homilies, fill up the latter part
of this volume, the seventeen addressed to St. Olympias, both by the
subjects and style, deserve rather the title of treatises than of
epistles.
The fourth tome contains sixty-seven homilies on Genesis, which were
preached at Antioch during Lent, some year later than 386. Photius takes
notice, that in these his style is less correct than in any of his other
writings, and as far beneath his comments on the Acts of the Apostles,
as those fall short of his most eloquent discourses on Isaiah, or on the
epistles of St. Paul. His parentheses are sometimes so long, that he
forgets to wind up his discourse and return to his subject: for speaking
not only with little or no preparation, but without much attention to a
regular method, for the instruction of the peoples, he suffered himself
often to be carried sway with the ardor with which some new important
thought inspired him. Yet the purity of his language, the liveliness of
his images and similes, the perspicuity of his expression, and the
copiousness of his invention, never fall: his thoughts and words flow
everywhere in a beautiful stream, like an impetuous river. He
interweaves excellent moral instructions against vain-glory, detraction,
rash judgment, avarice, and the cold words mine and thine; on prayer,
&c. His encomiums of Abraham and other patriarchs, are set off by
delicate strokes. In the first thirty-two he often explains the
conditions of the Lent fast. In the year 386, during Lent, at which time
the church read the book of Genesis, he explained the beginning thereof