1Every creature obeys its master, so man ought to obey God and not be held fast by pleasures that end in death.
2Hardship strengthens body and soul and leads to lasting goods, as with the sick, children at school, and athletes; only treasure stored in heaven escapes life's changes.
4Everything in creation changes, the seasons, sun, moon, stars, and springs, so change in human life should not offend anyone.
5Man should accept the changes God appoints, including loss and travel, as discipline, and seek God's purpose instead of lamenting.
6What can be lost was only lent; earthly goods wither like grass, so we should seek the lasting goods and be content with enough.
7Christ, John the Baptist, and the poor widow show that one should despise temporal goods, renounce the broad way, and serve the needy for an eternal reward.
authentic · Preserved complete only in Old Church Slavonic; Bonwetsch's German translation of the Slavonic is the source in hand, so the passages are route-3 (translated from the German, original-language column empty).
Standing
Honoured by the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Honoured as a saint or in a church calendar by: Catholic, Orthodox.
Older English translation
Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 6 (1886) (public domain, at CCEL; for comparison: our translation is made from the original first and checked against it afterwards) · ANF 6 prints only some Methodius treatises and fragments; check whether this one is included before relying on it.
Date
late 3rd cent. (disputed) (approximate) · Methodius died about 311; the date within his career is not established.
Written at
Lycia (traditional) (disputed)
Language
Greek
Genre
treatise
Reference system
chapter (Bonwetsch's chapters; his sections are not yet recovered)
SBL abbreviation
Vit.Not yet checked
Clavis
CPG number not yet checked
Text from
G. Nathanael Bonwetsch, ed., Methodius, GCS 27 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1917) (Printed edition in the public domain; Tesseract OCR of a public-domain scan (Internet Archive))