1. 1. The virtue of the mind that is called patience is so great a gift of God that patience is even attributed to him who bestows it upon us, by which he waits for the wicked that they may be corrected. And so, although God can suffer nothing, while patience takes its name from suffering, we nevertheless not only faithfully believe but also profess for our salvation that God is patient. But who could explain in words what the patience of God is like and how great it is—he whom we call one who suffers nothing, and yet is not impatient, indeed is most patient? That patience, then, is ineffable, yet it is not nothing, just like his zeal, his anger, and anything else of this kind. For if we think of these as our own, there are none of them in him. We feel none of these without distress; but far be it from us to suspect that the impassible nature of God endures any distress. But just as he is zealous without any envy, is angry without any disturbance, has mercy without any sorrow, and repents without any correction of some wrongdoing of his own, so he is patient without any suffering. Now, then, I will set forth, as far as the Lord grants and as the brevity of the present sermon allows, what kind of thing human patience is—the patience that we are able to grasp and ought to have.

2. 2. The patience of a man that is right and praiseworthy and worthy of the name of a virtue is that by which we bear evils with an even mind, so that we may not, with an uneven mind, abandon the goods through which we come to better things. And so the impatient, while they refuse to suffer evils, do not bring it about that they are rescued from evils, but that they suffer more grievous ones. The patient, on the other hand, who prefer to bear evils by not committing them rather than to commit them by not bearing them, both make lighter the things they suffer through patience and escape the worse things in which they would be plunged through impatience. But they do not lose the eternal and great goods, since they do not yield to brief and temporal evils: for the sufferings of this present time are not worthy (Rom 8:18), as the Apostle says, to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us (Rom 8:18). And again he says: For our momentary and light affliction is working in us, beyond all measure, an eternal weight of glory (2 Cor 4:17).

3. 3. Let us therefore consider, dearly beloved, how many hard things men endure amid labors and pains for the sake of the things they love with a depraved love, and how, the more they think themselves made happier by these things, the more unhappily they desire them. How many most dangerous and most distressing things are borne most patiently for the sake of false riches, for vain honors, for frivolous amusements! We see those greedy for money, glory, and wantonness endure—in order to attain what they desire and not to lose it once attained—suns, rains, ice, waves, and the most stormy tempests, the rough hazards of wars, the strokes of monstrous blows, and dreadful wounds, not by any unavoidable necessity, but by a blameworthy will. Yet these things seem to be in a way permitted madnesses.

4. 4. For greed, ambition, extravagance, and the delights of various games—provided no crime is committed for their sake, or any disgrace forbidden by human laws—are thought to belong to innocence. Indeed, when someone has borne great labors and pains without defrauding anyone, whether to keep or increase his money, or to gain or hold on to honors, or in contending in a contest, or in hunting, or in putting on some theatrical show to applause, it is a small thing that the vanity of the crowd restrains him with no reproaches; he is even, on top of this, exalted with praises: for the sinner is praised, as it is written, in the desires of his soul (Ps 10:3 (9:24)). For the force of desires produces the endurance of labors and pains; and no one of his own accord undertakes to bear what torments him except for the sake of what delights him. But these desires, as I have said, for the sake of fulfilling which those who burn with them bear many hard and bitter things most patiently, are reckoned permitted and allowed by the laws.

5. 4. What of the fact that men endure many most grievous things even for open crimes, not in order to punish them, but in order to commit them? Do not the authors of secular literature speak of a certain most notorious parricide of his country, that he could bear hunger, thirst, and cold, and that his body was capable of fasting, cold, and sleeplessness beyond what anyone would believe? What shall I say of robbers, all of whom, when they lie in wait for travelers, pass sleepless nights, and, in order to seize the innocent passersby, fix their guilty mind and body under whatever harshness of the weather? Some of them are even said to torture one another, so that their training against punishments differs in nothing from punishments. For perhaps they are not so tortured by a judge that the truth may be sought from those in pain as they are by their own companions that they may not be betrayed by those who suffer. And yet in all these cases the patience is to be wondered at rather than praised—indeed, it is neither to be wondered at nor praised, since it is no patience at all; but the hardness is to be wondered at, and the patience is to be denied. Nothing there is rightly to be praised, nothing usefully to be imitated; and the more it puts the instruments of the virtues at the service of the vices, the more rightly will you judge such a mind worthy of greater punishment. Patience is the companion of wisdom, not the handmaid of desire; patience is the friend of a good conscience, not the enemy of innocence.

6. 5. When, therefore, you see someone suffering something patiently, do not at once praise the patience, which is shown only by the cause of the suffering. When that cause is good, then the patience is true; when that cause is not polluted by desire, then the patience is distinguished from falsehood. But when that cause is held fast in wrongdoing, then there is much error in giving this the name of patience. For it is not the case that, just as all who know share in knowledge, so all who suffer share in patience; rather, those who use suffering rightly are the ones praised for the truth of patience, the ones crowned with the reward of patience.

7. 6. Nevertheless, since men marvelously suffer many dreadful things for the sake of their lusts, or even their crimes, and finally for the sake of this temporal life and well-being, they sufficiently warn us how much ought to be suffered for the sake of a good life, so that afterward it may also be eternal, secure in true happiness without any end of time and without the loss of any benefit. The Lord says: In your patience you shall possess your souls (Luke 21:19); he does not say, your country estates, your praises, your luxuries, but your souls (Luke 21:19). If, then, the soul suffers so much in order to possess that by which it perishes, how much ought it to suffer that it may not perish? Then, to mention what is not blameworthy: if it suffers so much for the well-being of its flesh under the hands of physicians who cut or burn, how much ought it to suffer for its own well-being amid the rage of any enemies whatever? For physicians, that the body may not die, take thought for the body through pains; but enemies, by threatening the body with pains and death, drive on that soul and body may be slain in hell.

7. 7. And yet even the body itself is then more providently cared for, if its temporal well-being is despised for the sake of justice, and its punishment or death is most patiently suffered for the sake of justice. For the Apostle speaks of the redemption of the body that is to come at the end, where he says: And we ourselves groan within ourselves, awaiting the adoption of sons, the redemption of our body (Rom 8:23). Then he added: For in hope we have been saved. But hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we await it through patience (Rom 8:24-25).

8. 7. When, therefore, some evils torment but do not wring out evil deeds, not only is the soul possessed through patience; but even when through patience the body itself is for a time afflicted or lost, it is taken up again into eternal stability and well-being, and through pain and death there is acquired for it an inviolable health and a happy immortality. Hence the Lord Jesus, exhorting his martyrs to patience, promised that even the body itself would in the future be whole, without the loss—I will not say of a limb, but of a hair. Amen I say to you, he says, not a hair of your head shall perish (Luke 21:18). So that, since no one ever, as the Apostle says, hated his own flesh (Eph 5:29), the faithful man may keep watch over the state of his flesh through patience rather than through impatience, and may make up for whatever present losses of it by the inestimable gain of the incorruption to come.

8. 8. But although patience is a virtue of the mind, the mind nevertheless uses it partly in itself, partly in its body. It uses patience in itself when, with the body unharmed and untouched, it is provoked by any adversities whatever, or by the foulness of things, or by the goads of words, to do or say something that is not expedient or not fitting, and it patiently bears all evils, lest it should commit some evil itself by deed or by word.

9. 8. By this patience we endure, even while we are sound in body, the fact that amid the scandals of this world our blessedness is deferred; whence comes what I mentioned a little before: If we hope for what we do not see, we await it through patience (Rom 8:25). By this patience the holy David bore the reproaches of one reviling him, and although he could easily have taken revenge, not only did he not do so, but he even restrained another who was grieved and stirred up on his behalf; and he used his royal power more in forbidding vengeance than in carrying it out. Nor was his body then afflicted by any disease or wound, but it was recognized as a time of humility, and the will of God was being borne, for the sake of which the bitterness of the insult was drunk down with a most patient mind. This patience the Lord taught, when, the servants being stirred up by the mixing in of the weeds and wishing to gather them, he said that the householder replied: Let both grow until the harvest (Matt 13:30). For what ought not to be taken away hastily ought to be borne patiently. Of this patience too he himself furnished and showed an example, when, before the suffering of his body, he bore with the devil Judas before he pointed him out as the betrayer, a thief; and before the experience of bonds and the cross and death, he did not deny the kiss of peace to his deceitful lips. All these things, and any others there may be that it would be long to recount, belong to that mode of patience by which the mind patiently bears in itself not its own sins, but whatever evils come from outside, while its own body remains wholly unharmed.

10. 8. But there is another mode of patience, by which this same mind bears whatever is distressing and grievous in the sufferings of its body—not as foolish or malicious men do, for the sake of attaining vain things or perpetrating crimes, but as has been determined by the Lord, for the sake of justice (See Matt 5:10). In both modes the holy martyrs contended. For they were both sated with the reproaches of the impious, where the mind, with the body untouched, bears whole, as it were, certain wounds of its own; and in their bodies they were bound, shut up, afflicted with hunger and thirst, tortured, cut, torn apart, burned, butchered: and with unshaken devotion they subjected their mind to God, while they suffered in the flesh whatever came into the mind of cruelty as it devised its torments.

10. 9. The struggle of patience is surely greater when it is not a visible enemy that drives one to wickedness by persecuting and raging—an enemy who is openly and plainly overcome by one who does not consent—but the devil himself, who, even through the children of unbelief, as through his own vessels, pursues the children of light, hidden as he is, secretly assails by himself, raging and pressing on that something may be done or said against God.

11. 9. Such an enemy the holy Job experienced, harassed by both temptations, but in both standing firm by the strength of patience and invincible by the arms of devotion. For first, with his body unharmed, he lost all that he had, so that his mind, before the torment of his own flesh, with the goods that men are wont to esteem highly taken away, might be broken and might say something against God once those things were lost for the sake of which he was thought to worship him. He was struck also by the sudden bereavement of all his children, so that those whom he had received one by one he lost all at once, as though their great number had existed not as something by which his happiness might be adorned, but as something by which his calamity might be increased. But when, having suffered these things, he remained unmoved in his God, he was fixed fast to the will of him whom he could not lose except by his own will; and in place of what he lost he held onto him who had taken it away, in whom he might find what would never perish. For it was not the one who had the will to harm that had taken it away, but the one who had given the power.

12. 9. The enemy attacked the body too, and struck not the things that belonged to the man from outside, but now the man himself in the part where he could. From head to foot pains burned, worms swarmed, putrid matter flowed down; in his rotting body the mind remained whole, and it bore the dreadful torments of its wasting flesh with inviolate devotion and uncorrupted patience. His wife was at hand, and brought no help to her husband, but suggested blasphemy against God. For the devil, when he had taken away even his children, had not left her behind, as though unskilled in harming; he had already learned in Eve how necessary she would be to a tempter. But this time he had not found another Adam whom he might capture through a woman. This man was more cautious amid his pains than that one amid the groves: that one was conquered amid delights, this one conquered amid punishments; that one consented to enticements, this one did not yield to torments. Friends too were at hand, not to console him in his evils, but to suspect evil of him. For they did not believe that the man who was suffering such things was innocent, nor was their tongue silent about what his conscience did not hold; so that, amid the monstrous torments of his body, his mind might also be cut by false reproaches. But he, bearing his pains in his flesh and the errors of others in his heart, rebuked the folly of his wife, taught his friends wisdom, and everywhere kept his patience.

13. 10. Let those look upon this man who bring death upon themselves when they are sought for life, and who, by taking away their present life, deny themselves the future one as well. If they were being compelled to deny Christ, or to do something against justice, like the true martyrs, they ought to have borne everything patiently rather than impatiently bring death upon themselves. But if it could rightly be done for the sake of fleeing evils, the holy Job would have killed himself, in order to escape such great evils of diabolical cruelty in his possessions, in his children, in his members. But he did not do so. For far be it that the wise man himself should commit against himself what not even his foolish wife suggested. For even if she had suggested it, he would deservedly have heard here also what he heard when she suggested blasphemy: You have spoken like one of the foolish women. If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, shall we not bear evil things? (Job 2:10) Indeed, he would have lost his very patience as well, whether by blaspheming, as she had wished, or by killing himself—which not even she had dared to suggest; and he would have been among those of whom it is said: Woe to those who have lost patience! (Sir 2:14) and he would have increased rather than escaped his punishments, since after the death of his body he would have been carried off to the punishments of blasphemers, or of murderers, or even of more than parricides. For if a parricide is more wicked than any other murderer, because he kills not merely a man but a kinsman; and among parricides themselves, the nearer the kinsman one has slain, the more monstrous he is judged: then without doubt he is worse who kills himself, since no one is nearer to a man than he is to himself. What, then, do those wretches do who—though even here they pay the punishments due both for the death they have brought upon themselves and afterward not only for their impiety against God but also for the very cruelty they have practiced upon themselves—on top of this seek even the glories of the martyrs? For even if they were suffering persecution for the sake of true testimony to Christ, and were to kill themselves lest they suffer anything from their persecutors, it would rightly be said to them: Woe to those who have lost patience! (Sir 2:14) For how is the just reward of patience rendered, if an impatient suffering is also crowned? Or how shall one be judged innocent, to whom it has been said, You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 22:39), if he commits against himself the murder he is forbidden to commit against his neighbor?

14. 11. Let the saints, then, hear from the holy Scriptures the precepts of patience: Son, when you draw near to the service of God, stand in justice and fear, and prepare your soul for temptation. Humble your heart, and endure; that your life may grow in the last days. Accept whatever comes upon you, and in pain endure, and in your humiliation have patience. For gold and silver are tested in the fire, but acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation (Sir 2:1-5). And in another place we read: Son, do not grow faint under the Lord's discipline, nor be wearied when you are rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves he chastens; and he scourges every son whom he receives (Heb 12:5-6). What is set down here, the son whom he receives (Heb 12:6), is in the testimony cited above, acceptable men (Sir 2:5). For this is just: that we who were sent away from the former happiness of paradise because of a stubborn appetite for delights should be received back through a humble patience of distresses—fugitives by doing evil, returning by suffering evil; there acting against justice, here suffering for justice.

15. 12. But we must ask whence is to be drawn the true patience that is worthy of the name of this virtue. For there are those who attribute it to the powers of the human will—not the powers they have from divine help, but those they have from free choice. But this error is a proud one: for it belongs to those who abound, of whom it is said in the Psalm: A reproach to those who abound, and contempt to the proud (Ps 123:4 (122:4)). This, then, is not the patience of the poor, which shall not perish forever (Ps 9:18 (9:19)). For these poor receive it from that rich one to whom it is said: You are my God, for you have no need of my goods (Ps 16:2 (15:2)); from whom comes every best gift and every perfect gift, to whom the needy and poor man cries out, who praises his name and, by asking, seeking, knocking, says: My God, deliver me from the hand of the sinner, and from the hand of the lawbreaker and the unjust man; for you are my patience, O Lord, my hope from my youth (Ps 71:4-5 (70:4-5)). But those who abound, and disdain to be needy before the Lord, so that they may not receive true patience from him, boasting of their own false patience, wish to confound the counsel of the poor man, since the Lord is his hope. Nor do they consider that, being men, and attributing so much to their own—that is, to the human—will, they fall into what is written: Cursed is everyone who puts his hope in man (Jer 17:5). Hence, even if it should befall them to bear certain hard and rough things with that same most proud will—whether so as not to displease men, or so as not to suffer worse things, or by pleasing themselves and loving their own presumption—this must be said to them about patience that the blessed apostle James says about wisdom: This is not the wisdom that comes down from above; but it is earthly, sensual, devilish (Jas 3:15). For why should the false patience of the proud not be theirs, just as the false wisdom of the proud is theirs? But from him from whom comes true wisdom, from him also comes true patience. For to him the poor man sings in spirit: My soul is subject to God, for from him is my patience (Ps 62:1,5 (61:1,5)).

16. 13. But they answer and speak, saying: Just as the will of man, without any help of God, by the powers of free choice, bears so many grievous and dreadful things, whether in the mind or in the body, in order to enjoy fully the delight of this mortal life and of sins, why does not, in the same way, this same will of man, by the same powers of free choice—not waiting to be divinely helped for this, but sufficing for itself by its natural capacity—bear most patiently, for the sake of justice and eternal life, whatever labor or pain is brought upon it? Or is it indeed, they say, that the will of the unjust is competent, without God's help, to exercise itself in torments for the sake of injustice, and before they are tortured by others; that the will of those who love the delays of this life is competent, without God's help, to persevere in a lie amid the most atrocious and prolonged torments, lest, by confessing their crimes, they be ordered to be killed; and yet the will of the just is not competent, unless powers be supplied to them from above, to bear any punishments whatever, whether for the very beauty of justice or out of love of eternal life?

17. 14. Those who say these things do not understand that each of the unjust is the harder for bearing any evils whatever the greater is in him the desire of the world, and that each of the just is the stronger for bearing any evils whatever the greater is in him the love of God. But the desire of the world has its beginning from the choice of the will, its progress from the pleasantness of gratification, its firmness from the bond of habit: but the love of God is poured out in our hearts (Rom 5:5)—not, of course, from ourselves, but through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5). Accordingly, from him comes the patience of the just, through whom their love is poured out. Praising and commending this love, the Apostle said, among its other good qualities, that it also bears all things. Love, he says, is magnanimous (1 Cor 13:4). And a little after he says: It endures all things (1 Cor 13:7). The greater, therefore, the love of God is in the saints, the more, for the sake of what is loved; and the greater the desire of the world is in sinners, the more, for the sake of what is desired, are all things endured. And by this the true patience of the just is from that source from which the love of God is in them; and the false patience of the unjust is from that source from which the desire of the world is in them. For this reason the apostle John says: Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him; for all that is in the world is the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and the ambition of this age; which is not from the Father, but is from the world (1 John 2:15-16). This desire, therefore, which is not from the Father but from the world, the more vehement and ardent it is in a man, the more patient does each one become of all distresses and pains, for the sake of what he desires. For this reason, as we said above, this is not the patience that comes down from above; but the patience of the devout is from above, coming down from the Father of lights. And so the one is earthly, the other heavenly; the one sensual, the other spiritual; the one devilish, the other godly. For the desire by which it comes about that sinners suffer all things stubbornly is from the world; but the love by which it comes about that those who live rightly suffer all things bravely is from God. And therefore for that false patience the human will can suffice without the help of God—the harder, the more covetous; and bearing evils the more tolerably, the worse it itself becomes. But for this patience, which is the true patience, the human will does not suffice unless helped and set aflame from above, because the Holy Spirit is its fire; for unless it is kindled by him to love the impassible good, it cannot bear the evil that it suffers.

18. 15. For as the divine words testify: God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him (1 John 4:16). Whoever, then, contends that the love of God can be had without the help of God, what else does he contend than that God can be had without God? But what Christian would say this, which no madman would dare to say? Exulting, therefore, in the Apostle, the true, devout, and faithful patience says by the mouth of the saints: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation? or distress? or persecution? or famine? or nakedness? or peril? or the sword? As it is written: For your sake we are put to death all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. But in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (Rom 8:35-37): not, therefore, through ourselves, but through him who loved us (Rom 8:37). Then it follows and adds: For I am certain that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:38-39). This is that love of God (Rom 8:39) which is poured out in our hearts (Rom 5:5): not from ourselves, but through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom 5:5). But the desire of the wicked, on account of which there is in them a false patience, is not from the Father, as the apostle John says, but is from the world (1 John 2:16).

19. 16. Here someone will say: If the desire of the wicked is from the world, by which it comes about that they bear all evils for the sake of what is desired by them, how is it said to be from their will? As though they too were not from the world, since the world is loved by them, while he through whom the world was made is forsaken. For they serve the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever (Rom 1:25). Whether, then, by the word "world" the apostle John meant the lovers of the world, the will that is from them is surely from the world; or whether by the name "world" he embraced heaven and earth and whatever is in them—that is, the whole of creation—the will of the creature, which is not the Creator's, is beyond doubt from the world. For this reason the Lord says to such men: You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world (John 8:23). But to the apostles he says: If you were of this world, the world would love what is its own (John 15:19). But lest they should claim for themselves more than their measure demanded, and should think that this, that he said they were not of the world, belonged to nature, not to grace: But because, he says, you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you (John 15:19). They were, then, of the world; for in order that they might not be of the world, they were chosen out of the world.

20. 17. And demonstrating that this is an election not of merits preceding in good works, but an election of grace, the Apostle speaks thus: And at this present time a remnant has been saved through the election of grace. But if by grace, then no longer from works; otherwise grace is no longer grace (Rom 11:5-6). This is the election of grace, that is, the election by which men are chosen through the grace of God. This, I say, is the election of grace, by which all human good merits are anticipated. For if it is given for any good merits, then it is no longer given freely, but is rendered as a debt, and by this it is not called grace by its true name; where the wage, as the same Apostle says, is not reckoned according to grace, but according to debt (Rom 4:4). But if, in order that grace may be true—that is, gratuitous—it finds nothing in a man to which it may be owed by merit; which is well understood also in what is said: For nothing you will save them (Ps 56:7 (55:8)); then it surely gives merits, and is not given for merits. It anticipates, therefore, even faith, from which all good works begin. For the just man, as it is written, lives by faith (Rom 1:17). Furthermore, grace not only helps the just, but even justifies the impious. And therefore even when it helps the just, and seems to be rendered to his merits, it does not on that account cease to be grace; since it helps that which it itself bestowed. On account of this grace, then, which precedes all human good merits, not only was Christ killed by the impious, but he even died for the impious (Rom 5:6). And before he died, he chose as apostles not the just, surely, but those to be justified, to whom he says: I have chosen you out of the world (John 15:19). For to those to whom he said, You are not of the world (John 15:19)—and lest they should think that they had never been of the world, he straightway added, but I have chosen you out of the world (John 15:19)—it was surely conferred by his own election upon them that they should not be of the world. Wherefore, if they were chosen through their own justice, not through his grace, they would not have been chosen out of the world: for they would no longer be of the world, if they were already just. Then, if they were chosen for the reason that they were already just, they themselves would have first chosen the Lord. For who can be just except by choosing justice? But the end of the law is Christ, unto justice to everyone who believes (Rom 10:4). Who has been made for us wisdom from God, and justice, and sanctification, and redemption; so that, as it is written, He who glories, let him glory in the Lord (1 Cor 1:30-31). He himself, therefore, is our justice.

21. 18. Hence the ancient just men too, before the incarnation of the Word, were justified in this faith of Christ and in this true justice, which is Christ for us; believing that to be future which we believe to have been done: and they too were saved by grace through faith, not from themselves, but as the gift of God; not from works, lest perchance they should be lifted up. For their good works did not precede the mercy of God, but followed after it. For they themselves heard, they themselves wrote, long before Christ had come in the flesh: I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I have been merciful (Exod 33:19). From which words of God the apostle Paul, so long afterward, would say: It is therefore not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy (Rom 9:16). Theirs too is the voice, long before Christ had come in the flesh: My God, his mercy shall go before me (Ps 59:10 (58:11)). But how could they be strangers to the faith of Christ, by whose love Christ was foretold even to us; without whose faith no mortal ever was, or is, or ever could be just? If, then, the apostles had been chosen by Christ as already just, they themselves would first have chosen him, so that they could be chosen as just; for without him they could not be just. But it was not done so; for he himself says to them: You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you (John 15:16). Hence the apostle John says: Not that we have loved God, but that he first loved us (1 John 4:10).

22. 19. Since this is so, what is man, using his own will in this life before God chooses him and loves him, but unjust and impious? What is man, I say—a creature straying from his Creator—unless his Creator be mindful of him, and choose him freely, and love him freely? For he himself cannot choose or love, unless, first chosen and loved, he is healed—he who in his blindness does not discern what is to be chosen, and in his sickness loathes what is to be loved. But perhaps someone will say: How does God first choose and love the unjust, in order to justify them, since it is written: You hate, O Lord, all who work iniquity (Ps 5:5 (5:7))? How do we suppose, except in a wonderful and ineffable way? And yet we too can conceive how a good physician both hates and loves a sick man: for he hates him because he is sick, the very man whom he loves in order to drive away the sickness.

23. 20. Let these things be said on account of love, without which there cannot be in us a true patience: since in the good there is the love of God, which bears all things, just as in the wicked there is the desire of the world. But this love is in us through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. Hence, from him from whom love is in us, from him is patience. But the desire of the world, when it patiently endures the burdens of any calamity whatever, boasts of the powers of its own will—as of the stupor of disease, not the strength of health. This boasting is insane; it belongs not to patience, but to madness. This will seems the more patient of bitter evils the more greedy it is of temporal goods, because it is the more empty of eternal ones.

24. 21. But if an unclean and devilish spirit, joined to it in malign conspiracy, harasses and inflames it with deceitful visions and persuasions, and makes the will of a man—whether deranged by error, or burning with appetite for some worldly delight—marvelously bear whatever things seem intolerable, yet an evil will cannot, for that reason, be without the instigation of another unclean spirit, as a good will cannot be without the help of the Holy Spirit. For that an evil will can exist even without any spirit either seducing or inciting it is shown well enough in the devil himself, who is found to have been made a devil by his own will, through no other devil. And so an evil will, whether it be seized by desire, or called back by fear, or diffused in gladness, or contracted by sadness, and in all these disturbances of the mind despises and bears whatever things are more grievous to others or at another time—it can seduce itself even without the prompting of another spirit, and, by falling away from higher things into lower ones, the more pleasant it has reckoned that which it desires to attain, or fears to lose, or rejoices to have attained, or grieves to have lost, the more tolerably does it bear, for the sake of that, what is to it of less account to suffer than that is to enjoy. For whatever that thing is, it is from creation, of which the will takes notice. For in a way, by a familiar contact and connection, the beloved creature lies close to the loving creature for the experiencing of its sweetness.

25. 22. But the delight of the Creator, of which it is written, And you will give them to drink of the torrent of your delight (Ps 36:8 (35:9)), is of a far different kind; for it is not, like us, a creature. Unless, then, love of him be given to us from that source, there is no source from which it can be in us. And by this a good will, by which God is loved, cannot be in a man except in one in whom God works even the willing. This good will, therefore—that is, a will faithfully subject to God, a will kindled by the holiness of a heavenly ardor, a will that loves God and the neighbor for the sake of God; whether by love, of which the apostle Peter answers, Lord, you know that I love you (John 21:17); or by fear, of which the apostle Paul says, work out your own salvation in fear and trembling (Phil 2:12); or by joy, of which he says, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation (Rom 12:12); or by sadness, such as he says he had, great sadness for his brethren—whatever bitter and rough things it suffers, it is the love of God, which bears all things, which is not poured out in our hearts except through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

26. 22. Hence, with no wavering of devotion, just as the love of those who love in holiness, so the patience of those who endure in devotion is the gift of God. For divine Scripture neither deceives nor is deceived, which has the testimonies of this matter not only in the old Books, when it is said to God, You are my patience (Ps 71:5 (70:5)), and, From him is my patience (Ps 62:5 (61:6)), and where another prophet says that we receive the Spirit of fortitude; but it is read also in the apostolic Letters: For it has been granted to you for Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him (Phil 1:29). Let the mind, then, not be lifted up as if over something of its own, when it hears that it has been granted to it.

26. 23. But if anyone who does not have the love that belongs to the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace, by which the Catholic Church is gathered together and bound, being set in some schism, suffers—lest he deny Christ—tribulations, distresses, hunger, nakedness, persecution, perils, prisons, bonds, torments, the sword, or flames, or beasts, or the cross itself, out of fear of hell and of eternal fire; these things are in no way to be blamed; indeed, here too the patience is to be praised. For we cannot say that it would have been better for him to suffer none of those things that he suffered by confessing, by denying Christ; but it must be reckoned that his judgment will perhaps be more tolerable than if he had avoided all those things by denying Christ; so that what the Apostle says—If I deliver up my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing (1 Cor 13:3)—is understood to profit nothing toward obtaining the kingdom of heaven, not toward undergoing a more tolerable punishment at the final judgment.

27. 24. But it may rightly be asked whether this patience too is a gift of God, or is to be attributed to the powers of the human will—the patience by which anyone separated from the Church suffers temporal punishments, not for the error that separated him, but for the truth of the sacrament or of the word that remained with him, out of fear of eternal punishments. For we must beware lest perhaps, if we say that this patience is a gift of God, those in whom it is present be believed to belong also to the kingdom of God; but if we deny that it is a gift of God, we be forced to confess that, without the help and gift of God, there can be something good in the will of man. For neither is this not a good: that a man believe he is to be punished with eternal punishment if he denies Christ, and for this faith bear and despise any human punishment whatever.

27. 25. Accordingly, just as it is not to be denied that this too is a gift of God, so it is to be understood that there are other gifts of God belonging to the children of that Jerusalem which is free, our mother above.

28. 25. For these are in a way hereditary, in which we are heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ (Rom 8:17); but there are others that even the sons of the concubines can receive, to whom the carnal Jews and the schismatics or heretics are compared. For although it is written, Cast out the slave woman and her son; for the son of the slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac (Gen 21:10), and God said to Abraham, In Isaac shall your seed be called (Gen 21:12)—which the Apostle so interpreted as to say, That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God; but the children of the promise are accounted as the seed (Rom 9:8), so that we might understand the seed of Abraham according to Isaac to belong, for Christ's sake, to the children of God, who are the body and members of Christ, that is, the one, true, genuine, Catholic Church of God, holding the devout faith—not the faith that works through being lifted up or through fear, but the faith that works through love; yet to the sons of the concubines too, when Abraham sent them away from his son Isaac, he bestowed some gifts, lest they be left utterly empty—not so that they might be kept as heirs. For we read thus: And Abraham gave all his substance to Isaac his son; and to the sons of his concubines Abraham gave gifts, and sent them away from Isaac his son (Gen 25:5-6). If, then, we are children of the free Jerusalem, let us understand that the gifts of the disinherited are some, the gifts of the heirs others. For these are heirs, to whom it is said: For you have not received the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but you have received the spirit of the adoption of sons, in whom we cry: Abba, Father (Rom 8:15).

29. 26. Let us cry out, then, in the spirit of love, and, until we come to the inheritance in which we may abide forever, let us be patient with a liberal love, not with a servile fear. Let us cry out, as long as we are poor, until we are enriched with that inheritance. For we have received great pledges from it, in that, to enrich us, Christ became poor; and when he was exalted to the riches on high, the Holy Spirit was sent, to inspire holy desires in our hearts. Of these poor who still believe but do not yet contemplate, who still hope but do not yet hold fast, who still sigh with desire but do not yet reign in happiness, who still hunger and thirst but are not yet satisfied—of these poor, then, the patience shall not perish forever (Ps 9:18 (9:19)); not because there too there will be patience, where there will be nothing to be endured, but it is said that it shall not perish (Ps 9:18 (9:19)) because it will not be fruitless. For it will have eternal fruit, and therefore it shall not perish forever. For whoever labors in vain, when the hope for which he labored has deceived him, rightly says: I have wasted so much labor; but whoever has come to the things promised for his labor, rejoicing says: I have not wasted my labor. Labor is said, then, not to have perished, not because it remains perpetual, but because it was not poured out in vain. So too the patience of the poor of Christ—but of those who are to be enriched as heirs of Christ—shall not perish forever: not because there too we shall be bidden to bear patiently, but because, for the things we have here borne patiently, we shall fully enjoy eternal blessedness. He who grants temporal patience to the will will not put an end to everlasting happiness: for both gifts are given to the love that is given. Amen.