himself in soft garments, but covered his loins with camels’ hair, and took nothing but wild honey and locusts for food. Others served God in fasting and prayer all the days of their life. All their will and pleasure was in the law of the Lord; to talk with God, or of God, was the chief occupation of their whole life. Oh, how great was the fervour of the saint 8! How great their zeal for God’s service! Oh, how wonderful, O Lord, hast thou been in thy saints!
Christ. My son, thou dost right to admire the wonderful works of my power, and to celebrate the glorious combats of the saints; but their glory is now thy shame. Thou seest that the saints were men with passions like thyself, mortal and frail. The strength of rocks was not their strength, neither was their flesh brass. But they were framed from the same clay, and encompassed with the same carnal infirmity as thou. They too felt a law in their members, fighting against the law of their mind. They were also sorely persecuted by the world. Nor was Satan more gentle, nay, he was even fiercer, to them than to thee. Yet, see ho w bravely they stood up in the fight! how they were animated by my love! They gave their body no rest, sleep fled from their eyes; with fear and trembling they worked out their salvation; they walked before me anxious only to please me. Thus they went from virtue to virtue, and their path, as a shining light, increased even to perfect day. Behold, these are they who are come out of great tribulation. These endured scoffs and. blows, besides chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were cut asunder, they were tempted, they were put to death by the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being in want, distressed, afflicted; and they esteemed worthy of all those sufferings the eternal glory which they laboured to gain by so many trials and hardships; and yet a longer than ordinary prayer, a short abstinence from food, or a light mortification, appears to thee too hard and troublesome to earn it with.
But ask now my apostle Paul, whether he regrets the toils that he underwent for me? That he chastised his body, and brought it into subjection; that he was often beaten with rods, and covered with so many wounds; that he encountered so many dangers by land and sea; that he laboured more than all the apostles; that he felt very troublesome the angel of Satan, the sting of the flesh, which I so ordered for his salvation? Even then he gloried in his infirmities, and soothed
