in purple and fine linen, to feast sumptuously every day, to spend all their life in pleasures, and yet presumptuously to promise themselves the death and the portion of Lazarus! They lead bad lives with wicked Balaam, and yet most senselessly wish their last end to be like the saints! ’ What can be greater madness? How can they presume to demand what they nave not earned? How can they wish to reap what they have not sown? What! do they who, in slumbering, sporting, and feasting, pass their days in pleasure, claim wages with my labourers, who have borne in my vineyard the burden and heat of the day? Do they serve the world and the flesh, and then claim their wages of me? Can anything be more extravagant? My Father has, indeed, entrusted to me a stewardship, but that is to give wages to the labourers only. For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that sows in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption; but he that sows in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting.
But thou, my son, regard my faithful labourers who have been eminent for true religious perfection. They served me in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, in labour and weariness, in watchings and fastings, in prayers and holy meditations, in many revilings and persecutions. How frequent were they, and fervent in holy exercises; they never relaxed their unsubdued spirit from prayer. How rigid was the abstinence with which they subdued their bodies! how* anxious the watchfulness with which they laboured to fortify themselves against every assault of concupiscence! Reflect upon this, my son, and you will see that what thou dost is little more than nothing. What is thy life in comparison of theirs, in whose company thou desirest to be crowned?
Man. Shame has covered my face, O Lord my God, because I am become so unlike my brethren, and a stranger to the sons of my mother the Church. How shall I appear in thy presence, alas, in the council or the just, who burn with so ardent a charity? With fear and trembling they worked out their salvation. One feared all his works, knowing that thou dost not spare the offender. Another chastised his body, and brought it into subjection, lest, when he preached to others, he should become himself a castaway. Another, though holy from his mother’s womb, withdrew into the desert, that there he might the more easily preserve his innocence. He clothed not
