XII. As regards the discipline of peace, most acceptable to God, who that is born of impatience will forgive his brother even once, let alone seventy times seven? Who, in taking his cause before a judge together with his adversary, will settle the matter by agreement, unless he first cut away wrath, resentment, hardness, and bitterness — the very poisons of impatience? How will you forgive, and be forgiven, if through the absence of patience you cling fast to the injury? No one who is convulsed in spirit against his brother will complete his offering at the altar, unless he first return to patience by being reconciled to his brother. If the sun set upon our wrath, we are in peril: it is not lawful for us to remain even a single day without patience.
But since patience governs every kind of saving discipline, what wonder that it also ministers to that repentance which is wont to succour the fallen? This repentance patience awaits, this it longs for, this it entreats, on behalf of those who will one day enter upon salvation. When a marriage has been dissolved — for that cause which is permitted, that either husband or wife may be sustained in perseverance of widowhood — patience makes the one no adulterer and amends the other: how much good it confers upon both! So too in those examples of the Lord's parables it stands ready on the side of repentance for the holy: the patience of the shepherd seeks and finds the straying sheep (for impatience would easily have despised a single one, but patience takes up the labour of the search), and the patient bearer carries home upon his shoulders besides the forsaken sinner.
That prodigal son, too, the patience of the father both receives and clothes and feeds, and excuses before the impatience of the angry brother. He therefore is saved who had perished, because he entered upon repentance; the repentance does not perish, because it found patience. For love, the highest sacrament of faith, the treasure of the Christian name, which the Apostle commends with all the powers of the Holy Spirit — by what but by the disciplines of patience is it schooled? 'Love,' he says, 'is magnanimous': this it takes from patience; 'it is beneficent': love does no evil, from patience; 'it is not jealous': that indeed is proper to patience; 'nor does it savour of insolence': it drew its modesty from patience; 'it is not puffed up, it is not insolent': for this pertains not to patience; 'nor does it seek its own':
it endures its own troubles, that it may profit another; 'nor is it provoked': for what else would it have left to impatience? 'Therefore,' he says, 'love sustains all things, endures all things,' assuredly because it is patient. Rightly, then, it shall never fail. For the rest shall be done away and brought to consummation: tongues, knowledge, prophecies are exhausted, but faith, hope, and love abide — faith which the patience of Christ brought in, hope which man's patience awaits, love which patience accompanies with God for its teacher. XIII.
Thus far concerning patience — that patience which is simple and uniform and seated only in the soul — although I have laboured in many ways over this same patience even in the deserving of the Lord through the body, inasmuch as it too is displayed by the Lord Himself in the virtue of the body, since indeed the ruling soul readily communicates to its dwelling-place the things introduced by the spirit. What, then, is the business of patience in the body? First of all, the affliction of the flesh, a sacrifice propitiatory to the Lord through the offering of humiliation, when with squalor, with straitness of diet, it makes libation to the Lord, content with simple fare and pure drink, when it joins fastings thereto, when it grows familiar with ashes and sackcloth. This patience of the body commends our prayers, confirms our supplications;
it opens the ears of God, scatters severity, draws forth clemency. So that Babylonian king, having offended the Lord, when in squalor and filth for seven years he had been an exile from human form, by sacrificing the patience of his own body both recovered his kingdom and — what is more desirable for man — gave satisfaction to God. Again, if we set out the higher and more blessed degrees of bodily patience, the same continence of the flesh procures sanctity also: this both keeps the widow and consecrates the virgin and lifts the voluntary eunuch to the kingdoms of heaven. What comes from virtue of soul is perfected in the flesh: the patience of the flesh does battle, in short, in persecutions. If flight presses, the flesh soldiers on amid the hardships of flight;
and if the prison forestall it, the flesh in chains, the flesh in the stocks, the flesh on the bare ground, and in that poverty of light and in that penury of the world. But when it is brought forth to the trial of felicity, to the occasion of a second baptism, to the very ascent unto the divine seat, there is nothing there more than the patience of the body. If the spirit is willing but the flesh (without patience) is weak, where is the salvation of the spirit and of the flesh itself? But when the Lord says this of the flesh, pronouncing it weak, He shows what is needed to strengthen it, namely patience, in preparation against every device for subverting the faith or for punishing it — that it may most steadfastly endure scourges, fire, cross, beasts, sword, which the prophets and the apostles overcame by enduring. XIV.
By these powers of patience Isaiah is sawn asunder yet is not silent about the Lord; Stephen is stoned yet begs pardon for his enemies. O most blessed also was he who wiped out every kind of patience against every power of the devil, whom neither the flocks driven away, nor those riches in cattle, nor his sons taken from him by one onslaught of ruin, nor at last the tortures in the wound of his own body, shut off from the faith of patience owed to the Lord — whom the devil with all his might smote in vain!
For he was not, by so many sufferings, called away from regard for God, but stood as an example and testimony to us of the patience that must be carried through as much in spirit as in flesh, as much in soul as in body, so that we may not fall beneath the losses of worldly goods, nor the deprivations of our dearest ones, nor even the afflictions of the body. What a bier did God erect in that man over the devil, what a standard did He raise up over the enemy of His own glory, when that man, at every bitter tidings, uttered nothing from his mouth but 'Thanks be to God,' when he cursed his wife, already worn out by evils and urging him to depraved remedies! What? Was God laughing? What?
Was not the Evil One being cut to pieces, when Job with great even-temperedness scraped away the unclean overflow of his own sore, when in sport he called back the little creatures breaking forth thence into the same caverns and feeding-places of his re-opened flesh? And so that workman of God's victory, having blunted all the darts of temptation with the breastplate and shield of patience, soon both recovered from God the integrity of his body and possessed, doubled, what he had lost. And if he had wished his sons also to be restored, he would have been called father again. But he preferred to have them restored to him on that Day: so secure was he of his joy from the Lord that he deferred it, and endured that voluntary bereavement, lest he should live without some patience! XV. So sufficiently fit a sponsor of patience is God: if you deposit an injury with Him, He is the avenger;
if a loss, He is the restorer; if a grief, He is the physician; if death, He is the raiser to life. How much is permitted to patience, that it should have God for its debtor! And not without reason. For it guards all His good pleasures, it intervenes in all His commandments: it fortifies faith, governs peace, aids love, instructs humility, awaits repentance, marks out confession, rules the flesh, preserves the spirit, bridles the tongue, restrains the hand, treads down temptations, drives off scandals, consummates martyrdoms; it consoles the poor man, tempers the rich, does not overstrain the weak, does not consume the strong, delights the faithful, invites the Gentile; it commends the slave to his master, the master to God, it adorns the woman, it approves the man;
it is loved in the boy, praised in the youth, looked up to in the old man; in every sex, in every age it is beautiful! Come now, let us also grasp its very likeness and bearing. Its countenance is tranquil and placid, its brow pure, contracted by no wrinkle of sorrow or anger; the eyebrows relaxed likewise into a cheerful cast, the eyes cast down in humility, not in misfortune; the mouth sealed with the honour of silence, the complexion such as belongs to the untroubled and innocent; the head moved frequently against the devil, and a menacing laugh; for the rest, the garment about the breast is white and pressed close to the body, as of one who is neither puffed up nor disquieted.
For she sits enthroned upon the throne of that most gentle and mildest Spirit, who is not gathered up in a whirlwind, nor grows livid in a cloud, but is of tender serenity, open and simple, whom Elijah beheld the third time. For where God is, there too is His foster-child, namely patience. When, therefore, the Spirit of God descends, patience, inseparable, accompanies Him. If we do not admit her together with the Spirit, will He tarry with us forever? Nay, I know not whether He will remain any longer: without His companion and handmaid He must needs be straitened in every place and time; whatever His enemy shall inflict, He will not be able to endure alone, lacking the instrument of endurance! XVI. This is the reasoning of patience, this its discipline, these its works — heavenly and true, that is:
the Christian patience, not that patience of the nations of the earth, which is false and shameful. For, that the devil might rival the Lord even in this matter, as though quite on equal terms (except that the very diversity of evil and good is equally a match in greatness), he too taught his own a patience of their own — that patience, I mean, which subjects husbands, saleable by dowry or trafficking in the powers of their wives through pandering, which for the hunting of childless inheritances endures every toil of a forced compliance with feigned affections, which by insulting patronage, by subjection of liberty to the belly, addicts the workers of the belly. Such are the pursuits of patience that the nations know, and they seize the name of so great a good for their foul operations: patient of rivals, of the rich, of those who invite them to dine, they live impatient of God alone.
但讓他們自去看顧他們自己的忍耐，並他們那位守護者的忍耐，就是那地底之火所等候的。至於我們，讓我們愛神的忍耐、基督的忍耐；讓我們償還祂那為我們親自所付出的；讓我們獻上心靈的忍耐、肉體的忍耐，我們這相信肉體與心靈復活的人！文本由 Jean-Claude Fredouille 校訂。由 Roger Pearse 掃描，英國伊普斯威奇，2003 年。
But let them look to their own patience and that of their patron, whom the subterranean fire awaits. As for us, let us love the patience of God, the patience of Christ; let us repay Him that which He Himself paid out for us; let us offer the patience of the spirit, the patience of the flesh, we who believe in the resurrection of the flesh and of the spirit! Text edited by Jean-Claude Fredouille. Scanned by Roger Pearse, Ipswich, 2003.