On Patience

1I confess to the Lord God that I have been rash enough—if not shameless—to compose a treatise on patience, when I am utterly unfit to practice it myself, a man of no good quality. For when someone undertakes to demonstrate and commend a thing, he ought first to be found practicing it himself, and he should direct the steadfastness of his admonition by the authority of his own conduct, so that his words do not blush when his deeds fail them. And I wish that blushing might bring a remedy—that the shame of not practicing what I set out to teach others might become the teacher of practicing it. Except that the greatness of certain good things, like certain evils, is unbearable, so that only the grace of divine inspiration enables us to grasp and perform them. For what is supremely good is supremely in God's possession, and no one dispenses it except the one who possesses it, as he deems each person worthy.

So it will be a kind of consolation to discuss what I am not allowed to enjoy, after the manner of the sick, who, when they lack health, cannot keep silent about its blessings. So I, most wretched, always feverish with the heats of impatience, must sigh and call out and plead for the health of patience which I do not possess. And when I remember, and in contemplating my own weakness I set in order the good health of faith and the soundness of the Lord's discipline, I realize that it does not come easily to anyone unless patience attends it. Patience is so set over the affairs of God that no one can fulfill any command or accomplish any work pleasing to the Lord as a stranger to patience.

Even those who live in blindness honor its goodness with the title of the highest virtue. The philosophers, at least—those who are considered to possess some wisdom of the soul—assign so much to it that, although they quarrel among themselves with the various passions of their schools and rivalries of opinion, they nevertheless remember patience alone in common, and to this one virtue they have entrusted the peace of their studies. In it they conspire, in it they make their pact, in it they strive with one mind in their pursuit of virtue; they display every show of wisdom from patience. It is a great testimony to patience when it advances even the empty disciplines of the world to praise and glory. Or is it rather an insult, when a divine thing is rolled about in worldly arts? But let them see to it—soon they will be ashamed of their wisdom, when it is destroyed and disgraced along with the world.

2The authority for us to practice patience is not handed down by some human affectation, shaped from the stupor of a dog's calm. It is handed down by the divine arrangement of a living and heavenly discipline, which shows God himself as the first example of patience. He scatters the flower of this light equally over the just and the unjust. He allows the services of the seasons, the servitude of the elements, and the tributes of the whole creation to come to the worthy and the unworthy alike. He endures the most ungrateful pagans, who adore the mockeries of the arts and the works of his own hands, who persecute his name and his family, while luxury, greed, iniquity, and malice grow insolent day by day. By his own patience he detracts from himself. For many do not believe in the Lord for this very reason: they do not know him angry at the world for so long.

3And this is the appearance of divine patience, to be judged as it were from far off, perhaps from the heavens. But what of that patience which was grasped by hand, openly, among human beings on earth? God allows himself to be born in a mother's womb, and once born he endures growing up, and once grown he does not rush to be recognized. Moreover he allows himself to be insulted: he is baptized by his own servant, and he repels the tempter's attacks with words alone. When he who is God becomes a teacher, teaching a human being to escape death—trained in patience, of course, for the sake of salvation and the pardon of offenses—he does not strive or cry out, nor does anyone hear his voice in the streets; a bruised reed he does not break, and smoking flax he does not quench (Isaiah 42:2-3). For the prophet had not lied—indeed it was the testimony of God himself, placing his Spirit in his Son with all patience. He refused no one who wished to cling to him; he despised no one's table or roof. He did not spurn sinners or tax collectors; indeed, he himself ministered in washing the disciples' feet. He was not even angry at the city that had refused to receive him, though his disciples wanted heavenly fires brought down on so insolent a town. He healed the ungrateful and yielded to those who plotted against him. This is little, if he did not also keep his own betrayer with him and did not firmly mark him out. And when he is handed over, when he is led away like a sheep to the slaughter—for he does not open his mouth any more than a lamb under the power of its shearer (Isaiah 53:7)—he who could have had legions of angels at his side from heaven with a single word, if he had wished, did not approve even one disciple's sword as an avenger. The Lord's patience was wounded in Malchus. And so he cursed the works of the sword for the future, and by restoring to health the one he himself had not harmed, he made satisfaction through patience, the mother of mercy. I say nothing of his being nailed to the cross; for this he had come. But was there any need for insults as well as undergoing death? He wished to be filled with the pleasure of patience as he was about to depart. He is spat upon, beaten, mocked, clothed in foul garments, crowned with fouler ones. What marvelous faith of equanimity: he who had resolved to hide in human form imitated nothing of human impatience. From this above all, Pharisees, you should have recognized the Lord; no human being would have accomplished patience of this kind. Such great and numerous proofs—whose greatness is a refusal of faith among the pagans, but among us is reason and edification—prove clearly, not only by words in commanding but also by the Lord's sufferings in enduring, to those to whom it has been given to believe, that patience is God's nature, the effect and excellence of a certain innate property.

4So if we see every good and right-minded slave behaving according to his master's character—since the art of earning favor is obedience, and the discipline of obedience is compliant subjection—how much more should we be found conducting ourselves according to the Lord, as slaves of the living God, whose judgment on his own turns not on a shackle or a cap, but on an eternity either of punishment or of salvation? To avoid that severity or to be invited by that generosity requires as much diligence in obedience as the things themselves which the severity threatens or the generosity promises. And yet we exact obedience not only from human beings bound in slavery or indebted to obedience by any other right, but even from cattle, even from wild beasts, understanding that they have been provided and handed over to us by the Lord for our uses. Will the things God subjects to us, then, be better for us in the discipline of obedience? In short, the creatures that obey acknowledge their masters. Do we hesitate to listen to the one to whom alone we are subject, the Lord? How unjust it is, how ungrateful too, that what you obtain from others through another's kindness you should not repay to the very one through whom you obtain it, from your own self! No more need be said about rendering the obedience we owe to the Lord God. For the knowledge of God understands what is incumbent upon it. But so that we do not seem to have introduced obedience as something foreign, obedience itself is drawn from patience. Does anyone who is impatient obey, or anyone who is patient resist? What the Lord God, the demonstrator and acceptor of all good things, has surrounded himself with—who would draw back from its good? Who likewise could doubt that every good, because it belongs to God, is to be pursued with the whole mind by those who belong to God? Through these things, in a summary and as if in a compendium of prescription, both the commendation and the exhortation concerning patience have been established.

5But to hammer out a discussion of matters essential to faith is not idle, because it is not fruitless either. Talk that builds up is never shameful, if it is ever shameful at all. So when the subject is some good thing, the case demands that we also review its opposite. For you will throw more light on what should be pursued if you likewise set out what should be avoided. Let us consider, then, whether impatience, just as patience is in God, was likewise born and discovered in our adversary, so that from this it may appear how fundamentally it opposes faith. For what was conceived by the rival of God is certainly no friend to the things of God. The same discord exists between the things as between their authors. Moreover, since God is the best and the devil by contrast the worst, their very difference testifies that neither does the work of the other, so that we cannot think that anything good has been produced by the evil one any more than anything evil by the good one.

I detect the birth of impatience in the devil himself, already at that time when he impatiently bore the Lord God subjecting all the works he had made to his own image, that is, to man. For he would not have grieved if he had endured it, and he would not have envied man if he had not grieved. He deceived him because he had envied; he had envied because he had grieved; he had grieved because he had certainly not borne it patiently. Whether that angel of perdition was evil or impatient first, I do not care to ask, since it is plain that either impatience began from malice or malice from impatience, and that they then conspired together and grew up inseparable in the bosom of one father. But the very thing he had first experienced, through which he had entered into sin, he knew from his own trial what would help toward sinning, and he summoned it to drive man into crime. The woman, met by him at once, and I would not rashly say that through that very conversation she was breathed upon by his spirit, infected with impatience. So much so that she would never have sinned at all if she had preserved patience toward the divine prohibition. What of the fact that she alone did not endure being approached, but with Adam—not yet her husband, not yet owing her his ears—she was impatient even of silence, and made him a conduit of that which she had drawn from the evil one? So another man also perishes through the impatience of another, and he himself would soon perish through his own impatience, committed in both directions: toward God's warning and toward the devil's deception, not enduring to keep the former and refuse the latter. From here came the first origin of judgment, as of the offense; from here God began to be angry, where man was led to offend. From then on God's first patience, whence his first indignation; he who was then content with a curse alone held back from the impulse of punishment against the devil the tempter. Or what crime committed before this impatience is charged to man? He was innocent, a friend of God in close proximity, and a cultivator of paradise. But once he fell under impatience, he ceased to have a taste for God, ceased to be able to endure heavenly things. From then on man, given to the earth and cast out from God's eyes, began easily to be seized by impatience in everything that would offend God.

For immediately that impatience, conceived by the seed of the devil with the fertility of malice, gave birth to a son, wrath, and trained the offspring in her own arts. For what she herself had plunged Adam and Eve into—death—she also taught her son to begin with homicide. I would ascribe this to impatience in vain, if that Cain, the first murderer and first fratricide, bore his offerings being refused by the Lord calmly and not impatiently; if he was not angry with his brother; if, in short, he killed no one. But since he could not have killed unless angry, nor been angry unless impatient, it shows that what he did through anger must be referred to that from which anger was suggested. These were the cradles, so to speak, of impatience in its infancy. But how great its growth soon after! And no wonder. For if it sinned first, it follows that, because it was first, it is also the sole womb of every offense, pouring from its own fountain the varied streams of crimes. Homicide has indeed been mentioned. But since wrath was born from the beginning, whatever causes it afterward found for itself, it refers to impatience as to its own origin. For whether someone commits that crime out of enmity or for plunder, the first thing is that he becomes impatient either of hatred or of greed. Whatever compels him, without impatience no crime can be accomplished. Who has entered into adultery without impatience of lust? And if it is forced upon women by payment, that sale of chastity is certainly arranged by impatience of scorning gain. These are the principal offenses in the Lord's sight. For to put it briefly, every sin must be ascribed to impatience. Impatience is the evil of good. No one is unchaste without being impatient of chastity, nor dishonest without impatience of honesty, nor impious without impatience of piety, nor restless without impatience of quiet. For anyone to become evil, he cannot persevere in being good.

Such a hydra of offenses, then—why would it not offend the Lord, who disapproves of evils? Is it not also manifest that Israel itself always sinned against God through impatience, from the time when, forgetting the heavenly arm by which it had been drawn out from the afflictions of Egypt, it demanded gods from Aaron to lead it, and poured its contributions into an idol of its gold? For they impatiently received the necessary delays of Moses' meeting with the Lord. After the edible rain of manna, after the watery stream from the rock, they despaired of the Lord, not enduring a three-day thirst. For this too is charged against them by the Lord as impatience. And not to wander through every instance: they never sinned except through impatience, and through impatience they perished. How did they lay hands on the prophets, except through impatience of hearing? And on the Lord himself, through impatience even of seeing. But if they had entered into patience, they would have been set free.

6Patience itself is what both follows faith and goes before it. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6); but his faith was proved by patience when he was commanded to sacrifice his son—not, I would say, as a temptation of his faith, but as a typical attestation. For God, who had counted him as righteous, knew how heavy the command was, and that it was not pleasing to him to have it carried out; yet Abraham heard it patiently, and if God had willed it, he would have fulfilled it. Rightly then was he blessed, because he was also faithful; rightly faithful, because he was also patient. So faith, illuminated by patience, when it was being sown among the pagans through the seed of Abraham, which is Christ, and was bringing grace in over the law, set patience before itself as its helper for the enlarging and fulfilling of the law, because patience alone had been lacking to the teaching of righteousness. For formerly they demanded an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (Exodus 21:24), and repaid evil for evil. Patience was not yet on the earth, because faith was not either. Meanwhile, impatience enjoyed the occasions the law provided. It was easy while the Lord and teacher of patience was absent. But after he came and composed grace of faith with patience, it is no longer permitted even to insult with a word, or even to say 'Fool,' without the danger of judgment (Matthew 5:22). Anger is forbidden, the spirit is restrained, wantonness of hand is checked, the tongue's poison is removed. The law has found more than it lost. As Christ says: Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, and pray for your persecutors, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:44-45). You see what a father patience acquires for us.

7This chief precept, which does not even allow us to wrong someone who deserves it, girds up the whole discipline of patience. Now as we run through the causes of impatience, the other precepts will answer each in its own place. If the mind is stirred up by loss of property, the Lord's Scriptures remind us in almost every place to despise the world. Nor is there any greater encouragement to despise money than the fact that the Lord himself is found in no riches. He always justifies the poor and condemns the rich beforehand. So the casting away of riches has supplied beforehand a distaste for wealth, showing that when riches are cast aside, the wounds they bring should also be counted as nothing. What we have no need to desire, because the Lord did not desire it, we should not bear with bitterness when it is cut off or even taken away. The Spirit of the Lord declared through the apostle that covetousness is the root of all evils (1 Timothy 6:10). Let us not interpret it as consisting only in desiring what belongs to another. For even what seems to be ours belongs to another. Nothing is ours, since all things are God's, and we ourselves are his. Therefore if we feel impatient when we suffer loss, grieving over the loss of what is not ours, we will be caught as akin to covetousness. We seek what belongs to another when we bear with bitterness the loss of what belongs to another. Whoever is stirred up by impatience at loss, putting earthly things before heavenly things, sins against his neighbor and so against God. For he shakes the spirit he received from the Lord for the sake of a worldly thing. Let us therefore willingly lose earthly things so that we may keep heavenly things. Let the whole world perish, if only I gain patience. Now whoever decides he cannot steadfastly bear the loss of some small thing through theft or force or even negligence, I do not know whether he could easily or from the heart lay his hand on his own property for the sake of almsgiving. For who, not bearing at all to be cut by another, draws the knife himself in his own body? Patience in losses is training for giving and sharing. He does not regret giving who does not fear losing. Otherwise, how will the one who has two tunics give one of them to the naked (Luke 3:11), unless he is the same person who can offer his cloak also to the one taking his tunic (Matthew 5:40)? How will we make friends for ourselves from mammon (Luke 16:9), if we love it so much that we cannot bear to lose it? We will perish with what is lost. Here we find where we have to lose. It belongs to pagans to apply impatience to every loss, since they perhaps put money before the soul. For they do this when they carry out profitable dangers of trade on the sea through desire for gain, when for money's sake they do not hesitate to undertake in the forum what must be feared even at the cost of condemnation, when finally they hire themselves out to the games and the camps, when they rob on open roads, forgetful of the beasts. But we, according to the difference between us and them, should lay down not the soul for money but money for the soul, whether willingly in giving or patiently in losing.

8We carry our very soul and body through this world exposed to every kind of wrong, and we take up patience of that wrong as the highest thing. Shall we be wounded by the tasting of lesser things? Far be it from a servant of Christ to have such a stain, that patience prepared for greater temptations should fail in trifles! If someone tries to provoke you with his hand, the Lord's admonition is ready: "If anyone strikes you on the face," he says, "turn the other cheek also" (Matthew 5:39). Let shamelessness be wearied by your patience; whatever blow he lands, let him be bound fast by pain and disgrace. You strike that shameless man more by enduring, and he will be beaten more severely by the Lord; for he will be beaten by the one for whose sake you endure. If the bitterness of a tongue bursts out in cursing or insult, look to the saying: "When they curse you, rejoice" (Matthew 5:11). The Lord himself was cursed in the law, and yet he alone is blessed. Therefore let us servants follow the Lord and be cursed patiently, so that we may be able to be blessed. If I hear some shameless or wicked word spoken against me with too little calm, I must either return bitterness in kind, or be tormented by silent impatience. So when I strike back with curses, how will I be found to have followed the Lord's teaching, by which it was handed down that a person is defiled not by the uncleanness of vessels but by the things that come out of the mouth (Matthew 15:11), and likewise that we remain guilty of every empty and idle word (Matthew 12:36)? It follows, then, that the very thing from which the Lord restrains us, he also warns us to endure calmly from another. Now see the pleasure of patience. For every wrong, whether inflicted by tongue or by hand, when it strikes against patience, will be settled with the same outcome as a weapon aimed at a rock of the firmest hardness and blunted. It will fall there, its work void and fruitless, and sometimes it will be driven back and rage with returning force against the one who sent it. Surely the reason someone harms you is so that you will grieve, because the fruit of the one who harms lies in the grief of the one harmed. Therefore when you overturn his fruit by not grieving, he himself must grieve at the loss of his fruit. Then you not only go away unharmed—which alone would be enough for you—but beyond that, you are delighted by the frustration of your adversary and defended by his grief. This is the usefulness and the pleasure of patience.

9Not even that form of impatience is excused—the one in the loss of our own people—for which some claim of grief pleads as advocate. The apostle's warning must be placed first. He says: Do not be saddened by anyone's sleep, as the pagans are, who lack hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). And rightly so. For since we believe in Christ's resurrection, we believe in our own as well, because it was for us that he both died and rose again. Therefore, since the resurrection of the dead is certain, grief over death is empty, and impatience in grief is empty too. Why should you grieve if you do not believe the person has perished? Why should you bear impatiently the temporary removal of someone you believe will return? It is a departure that you think is death. The one who goes ahead is not to be mourned, but certainly to be longed for. And that longing too must be tempered by patience. Why should you bear immoderately the departure of someone you will soon follow? Besides, impatience in such matters speaks ill of our hope and violates our faith. We also wrong Christ when we do not accept with equanimity those he has called away, as if they were to be pitied. I long, the apostle says, to be received now and to be with the Lord (Philippians 1:23). How much better he shows his desire! So if we grieve impatiently when others have attained the desire of Christians, we ourselves do not want to attain it.

10There is also another supreme goad of impatience: the desire for revenge, a business that cares for either glory or malice. But glory is always empty, and malice is never anything but hateful to the Lord—especially in this matter, when one person's malice is provoked and sets itself up as superior in carrying out revenge. By repaying a wicked person, it doubles what was done once. Revenge seems to the erring a comfort for grief, but in truth it is exposed as a contest of wickedness. What difference is there between the provoker and the provoked, except that the one is caught first in the evil deed and the other later? Yet both are guilty before the Lord of the wronged man, who both forbids and condemns every wicked thing. There is no order of rank in wrongdoing, and place does not separate what likeness joins. An equal deed has equal merit. So it is absolutely commanded that evil is not to be repaid with evil. How will we observe this if we are not thoroughly disdainful of revenge? What honor will we offer the Lord God if we claim for ourselves the right of defense? We are rotten, earthen vessels! When our slaves take revenge on their fellow slaves, we are gravely offended. Those who offer us their patience, mindful of the humility of their servitude and loving the honor of their master, we not only approve but ourselves make greater satisfaction than they would have presumed for themselves. Does this imperil us before the Lord, who is so just in judging and so powerful in accomplishing? He promises this to us, saying: Vengeance is mine, and I will repay (Romans 12:19; Deuteronomy 32:35)—that is, patience is yours, and I will reward patience. For when he says, Do not judge, lest you be judged (Matthew 7:1), does he not demand patience? Who will not judge another except the one who is patient enough not to defend himself? Do we believe that judge is not also an avenger? Who judges for the purpose of forgiving? And if he does forgive, he has still guarded against the impatience of judging and taken away the honor of the one judge, that is, God. How many disasters impatience of this kind is accustomed to rush into! How often defense has been regretted! How often its insistence has turned out worse than the causes themselves! For impatience knows how to undertake nothing without violence, and nothing done with violence fails to offend, or collapse, or rush headlong away. If you defend yourself too feebly, you will rage; if too fully, you will be burdened. What is revenge to me, whose measure I cannot control through impatience of grief? But if I rest upon patience, I will not grieve; if I do not grieve, I will not desire revenge.

11I have now set down the principal sources of impatience as best I could. Why should I wander among the rest, whether at home or abroad? The working of evil is wide and spread out. The serpent's manifold incitements hurl at us now small things, now the greatest. If they are small, you may despise them for their mediocrity. If they are greatest, you may yield to them for their excess. Where the wrong is smaller, there is no necessity for impatience. But where the wrong is greater, there the remedy for the wrong is more necessary: patience.

Let us strive, then, to endure what evil inflicts, so that our equanimity may elude the enemy's zeal. And if we ourselves bring certain things upon us, whether through imprudence or even willingly, let us equally bear patiently what we attribute to ourselves. But if we believe some things are inflicted by the Lord, to whom should we offer patience more than to the Lord? Moreover, he teaches us to rejoice and be glad in the condescension of divine chastisement. Scripture says, "I correct those whom I love" (Proverbs 3:12). O blessed servant, whose correction the Lord presses upon, whom he deigns to be angry with, whom he does not deceive by concealing his admonition!

On every side, then, we are bound to the duty of administering patience. Through it we meet equally our own errors, the snares of evil, or the admonitions of the Lord. The great reward of this duty is happiness, of course. For whom has the Lord called happy except the patient, saying, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3)? No one is poor in spirit unless humble. And who is humble unless patient? Because no one can subject himself without the prior patience of subjection itself.

The Lord says, "Blessed are those who weep and mourn" (Matthew 5:4). Who endures such things without patience? And so to such people both advocacy and laughter are promised. "Blessed are the meek" (Matthew 5:5). By this title the impatient cannot be counted at all. Likewise, when he marks the peacemakers with the same title of happiness and calls them sons of God (Matthew 5:9), are the impatient akin to peace? Only a fool would think so.

And when he says, "Rejoice and be glad whenever they curse and persecute you, for your reward is great in heaven" (Matthew 5:11-12), he certainly does not promise this to the impatience of exultation, because no one will exult in adversities unless he has first despised them. No one will despise them unless he has practiced patience.

12Now consider the discipline most pleasing to God. Who, if he is born of impatience, will forgive his brother even once, let alone seven times, or seventy-seven times (Matthew 18:21-22)? When he brings his dispute with his adversary before the judge, will he settle the matter agreeably unless he has first destroyed his anger, his hardness, his bitterness—that is, cut off the very veins of impatience? How will you forgive and be forgiven if you cling to a wrong because patience is absent? No one whose spirit is torn against his brother will complete his offering at the altar unless he first turns back, reconciles with his brother, and returns to patience (Matthew 5:23-24). If the sun goes down on our anger, we are in danger (Ephesians 4:26). We are not permitted to remain a single day without patience.

And since patience governs every aspect of the discipline of salvation, is it any wonder that it also ministers to repentance? Accustomed to coming to the aid of the fallen, patience waits for repentance, longs for it, entreats it on behalf of those who will one day enter into salvation. How much good it brings to both parties when a marriage is dissolved—for that cause alone which permits either husband or wife to endure separation—it keeps the one from becoming an adulterer and reforms the other. So too it stands by those who are saved in the Lord's parables about repentance. The shepherd's patience seeks and finds the wandering sheep (Luke 15:4-6). Impatience would easily despise a single sheep, but patience undertakes the labor of the search, and carries the abandoned sinner back on his shoulders, a patient bearer. The father's patience also receives the prodigal son, clothes him, feeds him, and excuses him before the impatience of his angry brother (Luke 15:20-32). So the one who had perished is saved because he entered into repentance; repentance did not perish, because it found patience.

Now love, the highest sacrament of faith, the treasure of the Christian name, which the apostle commends with all the strength of the Holy Spirit—by what training is it taught if not the disciplines of patience? Love, he says, is patient: it takes this from patience. It is kind: patience does no evil. It does not envy: that is patience's own property. It is not arrogant: it has drawn its modesty from patience. It is not puffed up, not rude: those things have nothing to do with patience. It does not seek its own: it endures its own while benefiting another. It is not provoked: otherwise what would be left for impatience? Therefore, he says, love bears all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)—precisely because it is patient. Rightly, then, it will never fail. For the rest will be emptied, completed, exhausted: tongues, knowledge, prophecies. But faith, hope, and love remain (1 Corinthians 13:8-13): faith, which Christ's patience brought in; hope, which human patience waits for; love, which patience accompanies under God as its teacher.

13So far I have spoken of patience as something simple and uniform, something that exists only in the soul. But we also labor in many ways to earn the Lord's favor with this same patience in the body, since the Lord himself displayed it in bodily strength as well. For the ruling mind easily shares the spirit's impulses with its dwelling place.

What then is the business of patience in the body? First of all, the affliction of the flesh: a sacrifice pleasing to the Lord through the offering of humiliation, when the flesh offers him squalor and a meager diet, content with plain food and pure water, when it joins fasts to these and grows accustomed to ashes and sackcloth.

This bodily patience commends our prayers and strengthens our petitions. It opens the ears of Christ and God, scatters severity, and draws out clemency. Thus that king of Babylon, when he had offended the Lord and was exiled from human form for seven years in squalor and filth, offered the patience of his own body as a sacrifice, and he both recovered his kingdom and, what is more desirable for a man, made satisfaction to God.

Now if we go on to set out the higher and more blessed degrees of bodily patience, this same patience also procures continence of the flesh for holiness. It keeps the widow, marks out the virgin, and lifts the voluntary eunuch to the kingdom of heaven. What comes from the virtue of the soul is completed in the flesh.

Finally, the patience of the flesh fights in persecutions. If flight presses hard, the flesh serves as a soldier through the hardships of flight. If prison comes first, the flesh is in chains, the flesh is on the wood, the flesh is on the ground; it is there in the poverty of light and in the want of the world.

But when a person is brought forward for the test of blessedness, for the opportunity of the second washing, for the very ascent to the divine throne, nothing is more present there than the patience of the body. If the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, where is the salvation of the spirit without the patience of the flesh itself?

But when the Lord says this about the flesh, declaring it weak, he shows what it needs to be strengthened: patience, of course, against every preparation for overturning or punishing faith, so that it may endure blows, fire, the cross, beasts, and the sword with the greatest steadfastness. The prophets and the apostles conquered these things by enduring them.

14Isaiah is sawn in two by the powers of patience, and he does not stop speaking about the Lord. Stephen is stoned, and he asks forgiveness for his enemies. Oh, how blessed was that man too, who worked out every form of patience against every force of the devil! His flocks were driven away, his wealth in livestock was taken, his children were snatched from him in a single crashing blow, and then his own body was tortured with wounds—yet none of this shut him out from the patience he had given to God in faith. The devil struck him with all his strength and accomplished nothing. He was not called away from looking to God by so many sorrows; instead, he stood as an example and witness for us, showing that patience must be carried through in spirit and flesh, in mind and body alike, so that we do not collapse under losses of worldly goods, or the loss of those we love most, or even the afflictions of the body itself. What a bier God built from the devil in that man! What a standard he raised from the enemy of his glory, when that man, at every bitter message, let nothing come from his mouth except thanks to God (Job 1:21), and when he cursed his wife, already worn out by evils and urging him toward wicked remedies (Job 2:9-10)! How God laughed, how the evil one was cut to pieces, when Job scraped off the foul overflow of his ulcer with great composure, and when he calmly called the little creatures bursting out of it back into the same hollows and feeding places of his reopened flesh! And so that workman of God's victory, having blunted every dart of temptation with the breastplate and shield of patience, soon recovered the wholeness of his body from God, and possessed double what he had lost (Job 42:10). And if he had wished his children also to be restored, he could have been called father again. But he preferred to have them returned to him on that day; he postponed such great joy, confident in the Lord. He endured a voluntary childlessness for a time, so that he would not live without some patience.

15So God is a fully sufficient trustee of patience. If you deposit a wrong with him, he is the avenger; if a loss, the restorer; if pain, the physician; if death, the raiser-up. How much patience is allowed, to have God as a debtor! And not without reason. For patience guards all his good pleasure, and comes between us and all his commands. It fortifies faith, governs peace, assists love, instructs humility, waits for repentance, marks out confession, rules the flesh, preserves the spirit, bridles the tongue, restrains the hand, tramples temptations, drives away scandals, consummates martyrdom, consoles the poor, tempers the rich, does not crush the weak, does not stretch the strong, delights the faithful, invites the pagan, commends the servant to his master and the master to God, adorns the woman, approves the man. It is loved in the boy, praised in the young man, looked up to in the old man. In every sex, in every age, it is beautiful.

Come now, let us also grasp its appearance and bearing. Its face is tranquil and calm, its brow pure, contracted by no wrinkle of sorrow or anger. Its eyebrows are relaxed in a measured way, its eyes cast down with humility, not with misery. Its mouth is sealed with the honor of silence. Its color is that of the carefree and innocent. Its head moves often toward the devil with a threatening laugh. For the rest, its clothing is white, pressed close around the chest and body, as of one who is neither puffed up nor defiled. For it sits on the throne of that most gentle and mild spirit, who is not whirled up in a storm, nor dark with cloud, but is of tender serenity, open and simple, whom Elijah saw third (1 Kings 19:12). For where God is, there also is his foster child, patience, of course. When the Spirit of God descends, then patience accompanies him inseparably. If we do not admit it along with the Spirit, will it remain in us always? No, I do not know whether it will persist longer. Without its companion and minister, it must be distressed at every place and time. Whatever its enemy inflicts, it will not be able to endure alone, lacking the instrument of endurance.

16This is the principle of patience, this its discipline, this its work—heavenly and true. It is not, of course, the pagan patience of the peoples of the earth, which is false and shameful. For in this matter too the devil wanted to rival the Lord, as if on equal terms—except that the very difference between evil and good is matched by an equal greatness. He taught his own followers a patience of his own: the patience, I mean, that subjects husbands who are for sale by dowry, or who trade on their wives' prostitution, to the power of their wives; that endures every labor of forced obedience with feigned affection for the sake of hunting after childless estates; that binds workers of the belly to insulting patronage by surrendering their freedom to gluttony. Such are the pursuits of patience that the pagans know, and they occupy the name of so great a good with filthy practices. Patient toward rivals, toward the rich, toward those who are invited, they live impatient toward God alone. But let them look to their own affairs and their own patron, and to what patience the fire under the earth awaits. As for us, let us love the patience of God and the patience of Christ. Let us repay to him what he himself has paid out for us. Let us offer the patience of the spirit and the patience of the flesh, we who believe in the resurrection of flesh and spirit.