Poems 31.1–31.605

Before, the boy was Celsus through his famous fathers and ancestral name, but now he lives lofty by merit, whom the Lord Christ has heaped with so great a gift that he went, unformed in years and new, to the waters, and grace, doubled for God, advanced him, twice an infant, by span of age and by the font of washing. Alas, what shall I do? Hanging in doubtful affection, I struggle: shall I congratulate or grieve? The boy is worthy of both; love urges tears on me and love urges joys, but faith bids rejoice, affection bids weep. I lament that so little fruit was given to his fathers from so sweet a pledge in so slight a time. Again, as I turn over the everlasting goods of eternal life, which God prepares in heaven for the innocent, I rejoice that he died, having finished mortal things in a short age, so that he might quickly enjoy divine riches, nor, mingled long with the wicked, draw earthly contagions in the fragile lodging of the body, but, defiled by no crime of this world, might go more worthily to the eternal Lord. So the infant was owed to God rather than to us, and indeed, for our sake too, he pleased God. The little one had begun to draw out his eighth year, driving his first times in swift courses. Already he bore the boyish yoke on his tender neck, subject to the hard commands of a grammarian, and what the boy was taught, as his teacher marvelled, the noble boy drank in with teachable talent. His parents rejoiced, with foreboding, trembling hearts, while they feared envy of so great a gift.

Nor was there long delay; God, Christ, summoning from heaven the pleasing soul, took it up with deserved honour and snatched him suddenly from earth, because he was worthier to live joined to the godly assemblies. The cause of death was a moisture spread in his throat, by which a heavy swelling puffed up his milky neck; then, repressed, it went away, but, slipping to the inmost parts, it fled into the body and drove life from the vitals. The earth received its part, the flesh being buried; the spirit went away, carried in an angelic bosom. The bereft parents led an empty funeral; Celsus lives glad in a lofty grove. Refrain, I pray, godly parents, from sinning with many tears, lest affection come into fault. For it is impious affection to mourn a blessed soul, and a harmful love to weep for one rejoicing in God. Is it not plain how much sin is drawn on by such affection? We are accused of holding faith deceitfully, or of rejecting God's laws by rebellious error, unless what pleased the Lord pleases us. It is more just to mourn those human darknesses which we, degenerate, make for our souls, forgetful of the first origin of the heavenly image, which the Father, pitying, calls back to his kingdom. For love of it the Son took up my limbs, conceived of a virgin, born a man of a virgin, bearing all things of men, and in one body all men, the Lord of all taking them up as servant. For he was made in the form of a servant, he who was highest, God reigning in the form of God with the Father King. He took up the form of a servant and destroyed the guilt by which man was once a slave of punishment and death.

And our flesh, made Lord in the image of a servant, restored the servant to freedom, so that the heavenly image might return to me through Christ, who on the cross stripped off the earthly Adam. So my Creator bore my flesh and my death and redeemed his dear work by death. He had given me many things before, promises of salvation and precepts by which I might be directed through good things. But because, though the medicine of the law was applied, I had not washed away the inveterate wounds of the first father, nor had I believed, though prophets were sent ahead from the divine mouth, that I should wait for the gifts of God, and despaired salvation had plunged the human race everywhere into darkness without the light of faith, and sin reigned at the same time in our body, death in sin, the demon in destruction, and sad fear and wretched error were driving captive man headlong more deeply into death: meanwhile the Father himself, from high heaven, pitying the pestilent falls of erring men, and the serpent ruling in the savage death of the fallen, did not bear it, and sent his Son for every good. He obeyed willingly, God in harmony with the Father in all things, caring for their common cause with equal kindness. He came and became man, and, perfect, mingled of both, showed that God was in the frail flesh. He uses the services of a man, but also shows forth signs of the God hidden within by healing commands. He teaches divine things with a human voice, and performs mortal things in the body, but apart from sin. For, caring only to restore to himself the substance of his own work, he came to take nature, not vice.

For the good one made man good in nature for good things; man, fallen by his own mind, corrupted himself. Therefore the maker of men came in a mortal body, not made man with mortal crime as well. For he would not destroy faults unless free of them, nor could he release the guilty if himself guilty, nor would death have yielded to a sinner, since it would lawfully hold one bound by the chains of sin. So it rightly yielded to Christ as he broke open hell, in whom it had nothing it could bind. And death itself, made guilty in turn of an unjust judgment, was subdued by right to man, slain through crime. The serpent grew pale with envy, seeing the infernal bars opened, the law reversed, as man was led back, and the mortal in turn released from the bonds of death, and the body shaken out of its earth to rise, and moreover seeing it, alive again, climb the heavens, he gnashed in vain, livid, with savage tooth. And now he wastes away, as with the growing ranks of the godly the destroyer himself perishes through Christ. So he healed the vices of my soul and took on the weaknesses of my body, man from a mother, God from a Father. Weak indeed, but natural, were the things of the flesh he bore, and he showed the affections of the body. With human senses he eats and drinks, and lowers his eyes in sleep, and tires on the road by walking. As man he sheds tears for a dead friend, whom soon, as God himself, he raises from the tomb. As man he is carried in a boat, and as God he commands the winds, and by the power of God the man walks on the sea. With the mind of man he trembles at the hour of approaching death; with the mind of God he knows the time of death is at hand.

As man he is fixed on the cross; as God he terrified the world from the cross. As man he suffers death, but death itself suffers God. As man he hangs on the cross; as God he forgives crimes from the cross, and dying he kills the life of crime; and, reckoned among the guilty and thought worse than the robber whom Judea preferred to the godly Lord, he gives the heavenly kingdom to the believing robber, and, still shut in the earth, already opens paradise. So it befits us to strengthen our souls, to raise our minds, and to thrust idle fears from the heart, we for whom, behold, that Son of God laid down his life and took it up again, remaining God throughout. God the victor celebrated a triumph over our death and carried our body with him to the stars, not content that he drank all mortal things for us, to take away our wounds by his own. But lest the anxious care of a doubtful mind should keep me in suspense, he rose in the body in which he fell. Clear proof lay open to mortal eyes; he himself was seen after death as he was before death. For he offered himself of his own accord to the doubting disciples and gave himself to be examined by eyes and hands. Nor did the apostle once doubt without the purpose of God, so that no one might doubt that he lives after death. He strengthened faith by doubting; while Thomas, hesitant, is reproved face to face, every man is instructed. What Thomas is bidden to see and touch in person, I learn to believe steadfastly with firm faith: that the death of men has been subdued by the death of Christ crucified, and the hope of rising again placed in bodies, in our bodies, because Christ rose victorious in this flesh which I bear, in which I die.

And, teaching me, for my sake he presents his limbs to the doubters and proves his solid flesh through its structure of bones, and moreover shows the wounds of side and hands and bids the doubter put his fingers into them. “See,” he says, “behold my side, and hands and feet; behold the nails of the cross, behold the path of the spear. Behold, it is plain that the very framework of the whole body stands alive in sinews, bones, face and skin. So hold the faith which you see and, moreover, which you touch, and drive doubtful thoughts from your heart, and be witnesses to all of so great a salvation, and free the hearts of all men from fear. Let the fear of death perish for all, and let this hope of rising again animate all peoples together. Yet this is the salvation of believers, who with faithful heart will receive what you behold with your eyes. Behold, in me, with no distinction among all men, death has been overcome and has gone; salvation stands revived. I gave life from death, I subdued death by dying, and restored the human race with my blood; overcoming the sin of the flesh in the flesh, I destroyed the material of guilt and brought forth justice. In the body death fell, in the body life rose; in the flesh by which he had died before, man has come alive again. And now, behold, carrying Adam alive again in my body, I display him as victor over death and the serpent.” What consolations, I ask, will suffice us, or what rest will heal souls now weary, if not even so great a medicine can heal the sick, which teaches that lives return when death has died?

Grief, depart; fear, go away; guilt, flee. Death falls, life has risen, Christ calls to the stars, having undergone my death, dead for me and victor for me, so that the death of sin may be for me the life of God. In short, he led the robber, saved now from the cross, by an open path to where paradise is, and by this gift gave a sign both of expiating sins and of overcoming by faith the hedges of the forbidden grove. With such examples, with so great a guarantor of salvation, it befits us, raised up, to turn sad things into glad. Let us drive away complaining griefs with an ungrateful heart, and let pure light return to our eyes when they are wiped. Let us believe Christ that, as we have seen in him, we rise in the same bodies in which we die, and then, the garment of divine beauty poured over us, changed, we put on the angelic appearance. But if so great a night stands in the way of darkened minds, and the sluggish sense grows dull in a blunted body, so that, because divine things are hidden from bodily eyes, you say that the Scriptures hold no credibility: let Paul teach that eternal things are not seen, that eternal things are hidden from human eyes. Fool, see earthly things, believe heavenly things; look at the world with the eye, at God with the mind. Hence faith is precious; for just as grace will no longer be grace if it is attributed to merits, so there is no faith except that which believes what it does not see and follows an eternal thing with hope as guide. Wretched mortals, complaining race, at last strip off impious hearts with softened minds. Alas, how long, I pray, with heavy heart do you seek lies and love the slippery things of vanity?

Change your ways, break the bonds of death, and give your free necks to the very sweet yoke. Take divine chains in exchange for liberty, which release from crime and bind with piety. You who follow darkness wander in the open light, and you who see in the night act blind in the light. So let us unlock the eyes and ears of the mind to Christ, so that the mind, shut to sin, may be open to God. For God already reveals his promises to bodily sight too and shows hidden things through clear ones. All things rehearse the likeness of rising again in every body, both seeds on earth and stars in the sky. Nights and days, risings and settings, alternate in turn; I die at night, I rise in the day. I sleep, lulled in the bodily image of death; I am roused from sleep as from destruction. What of seeds, what of the leaves of the groves, what of the seasons? Surely by these laws all things pass away and return. In rising spring a new appearance returns to all things, brought to life after the death of winter. What man will do once, to whom the bodies of the world are subject, all things under heaven do often. But they ask with what body every dead man is restored, or in what way a man is made from ash. If the things recorded by the sacred prophets are not enough, dumb things cry out faith; believe what is visible. See that no seeds emerge in their fields unless they first perish, dissolved by rotting decay. You sow naked, you gather clothed; you cast dry grains and reap the same multiplied in fruit. O perverse faith and distrust in us, that we trust the earth and doubt God!

And certainly the earth neither dared nor was able to promise me anything; indeed the field has often deceived me, barely returning the seed entrusted to it; nor yet, though deceived, do I hesitate to entrust it with the hope of a crop, nor does it irk me to sweat at sure labour for uncertain fruits and to entrust bare seeds to bare soil. But if the earth can give back corrupted seed, which yet it does by the law of the eternal Lord, is it believed that it will be a hard work for the Almighty to restore from something us who were made from nothing? I was nothing, and by God's making I was born to be; now I shall be again from my own seed. For though even the bones be reduced to fine ash, the dust holds the seeds of the whole body, and even when the earth has sucked up the ashes from emptied tombs, mixed with kindred turf, then also the Almighty holds whole those who seem to have vanished from the bodily eyes of men, and on the great day we shall see the bodies we now think consumed rise whole for God, for whom no nature perishes, because whatever is anywhere is all enclosed in the Creator's bosom. Those whom water has swallowed in rivers and sea and fish, those whom birds and beasts have torn apart, the earth owes all to God, because those whom water has drowned the ground has received, laid on shore or seabed; the earth, though one, yet not received in one tomb, covers the bones of a torn body scattered in places; and because consumed and consumer alike fall in the one bosom of the earth as death brings them, or through the excretion by which animals purge themselves they give back devoured limbs in digested food, the human body is poured over from another's body and does not lose the force of its own kind.

But though the limbs of men, passed into the ground from the limbs of beasts, remain safe by a living seed, when the beast dies, for which a human corpse may have been food, the account is divided. For man is a rational animal, and therefore in him the king excels the other bodies in body, so that, although he may be given as prey to dumb animals, he refuses to be joined with them in lot. Only the flesh which was the vessel of a rational soul will receive the vigour of rising again, so that, its frame restored, it may receive the soul returned to earth in a covering that will no longer fall, and as here mind and flesh are joined in every act, so they may be associated for the eternal day, so that they may gather the rewards of their deeds with shared fruit, partners in merit, in the light or the fire of their place. Therefore, although we and all breathing things have received one matter in body, yet we, released by death, are not called back into emptiness, without share of soul, from the setting of the flesh; but when the trumpet sounds, the lands on every side giving back our bodies from hidden seeds, with body, mind and soul knit again in their covenants, we are set whole before God the Lord. If you doubt that ashes can be gathered again into bodies and souls brought back into their vessels, Ezekiel will be your witness, to whom long ago the whole appearance of rising again was revealed by the Lord.

There you will see coming alive in the whole plain the dry remains of ancient men, and bones scattered widely through the extended field running of their own accord, as bidden, to their joints, and putting forth sinews from their marrowy inner parts, and soon drawing skin over the flesh grown upon them, and, quicker than a word, the limbs completed in order, new men standing from old dust. And lest perhaps you think what the manifest vision of the holy prophet brings to be the vain dreams of a sleeper, take a greater and full witness besides; for the Lord of the prophets himself speaks: “I am the life; whoever believes in me, not destroyed by death, will live blessed in light shared with me.” In short, what he said in word he proved by power, himself calling back his own man from the abysses, although at that time Christ gave signs not only in his own body, when he died, victor, on the cross. For as he opened hell, the earth shaken, and released Adam bound in the infernal prison, the buried, rising, burst the split rocks, and a new dome flowered in the holy city. Many saw the bodies of the ancient godly renewed, brought to life by the descent of God. Then also the world, blinded as the light fled, feared to expiate the crime with eternal night. Then too the altars, laid bare as the veil was torn, lost the sanctity of the sacred shrine, so that it might be shown that the temple was to be emptied of divinity and its holy things profaned by an enemy hand, as the great outcome later taught under a Roman leader, when the citizens were overthrown with the temple and the sacred things with the city.

For it was right that Judea, for which Christ was not its sacrifice and through which Christ was made a victim, bereft at once of the seat and place of its ancient rites, having denied faith, should lose everything sacred. For Christ is the end of the law, because, foretold by the faithful law, he was by his coming the law to the law, prescribing an end to the old and a law of faith, establishing for the nations the law of the prophets. Hence the teacher says: the old things have flowed away, their times completed; all things everywhere come forth new. And now with unveiled face we behold God openly in Christ in the honour of his own light. And I think that the mysteries of the veil torn in the temple signified this too, which grace bestows. For as the sanctuary lay open when the veil was torn, so faith unlocks for us the hidden things of the law. Hence Moses is read under the ancient veil by the Jews, still covered with a cloud of the heart, which Christ, believed by me, takes from the eyes of my mind, scattering the shadowed appearances, and teaching that he was veiled in the ancient shadow of the law and is now revealed in the face of a body, such as the prophets sent before sang would come, such as appeared before the apostles' eyes, such as the Jews did not perceive though they saw, their minds blunted by their own impiety, and such as, though not seen by us in the body, we behold by believing with inner light. For what the truthful teachers teach that they saw and touched, I touch and see by faith.

And by believing it lies open to all to know Christ, who blinds the impious hearts of faithlessness and pours his light through faithful hearts, that he may dwell in pleasing souls and glorify them. So, my brothers, my care, my heart, in this faith gladden your sorrowing souls. Drive away sadness, teachable in faithful piety, and, trusting God, put on joy. Unhappy mourning and mad grief befit those for whom no hope remains, because no faith, and for whom all good is only to live in this age, to despair of God, to trust in bodily things. Let an inner stupor besiege the inconsolable breast of those deserted by true understanding, whom a mind faithless to God disowns, and for whom a lot without share in Christ falls into infernal darkness. For us let the apostle be present as consoler with the mouth of God, let loving Christ teach us by the gospel; let the examples of the fathers and the proclamations of the prophets, let the book of apostolic history strengthen us, in which we see Christ return bodily to the stars and be carried to heaven in the bosom of a cloud, and we are bidden to hope for him to return from the heavens such as we saw him go to the Father in heaven. On his coming all things now hang, all hope and faith gape toward this King. And now the ages, to be changed for new ones, are in labour with the end approaching in the last time. The true oracles in the sacred books warn all to believe what was foretold and to prepare themselves for God. Hasten, I pray, while the opportunity lies open here, to provide good things and to guard against evils beforehand.

Turn away your perverse cares with a converted heart; faith shows how to weep with useful tears. It is good to mourn sin and to wash away with poured tears the wounds contracted by faults, tears with which that David, groaning much, mighty with humble heart, watered his bed every night. If he, beloved of God, ate ashes like bread and mixed his cups with tears, what, alas, befits wretched me to do? Whence shall I be expiated? Whence shall I make satisfaction? By what help shall I be saved? My pumice heart lacks tears, ashes revolt me as food, and delicacies please my hungry soul. Who would supply me a fountain for rivers of tears, with which I might weep for my deeds and my days? For, according to the deserts of a life spent in crimes, I need to weep for huge wounds with a river. Break the stone of my heart, Saviour Jesus, so that my softened inmost parts may flow with a godly fountain; you, I pray, O Christ the fountain, be born in my fibres, so that the living vein of your water may spring up in me. For you are the fountain from which life flows, from which grace streams, from which light is poured on peoples of every kind. Those who drink you, Christ, refreshed by the sweet torrent, will thirst no more, and yet they will thirst. For those whom the abundance of the divine Word has satisfied, its sweetness, once drunk, makes thirst the more. So, Lord, God, let souls always hunger and thirst for you, the bread and fountain of salvation. Neither fasting hunger nor dry thirst will consume life if the mind eats and drinks you. Ever-flowing, you are always drunk, and, though drained, more generous, you surpass the crowd and the thirst of the drinkers.

For you are wholly sweetness, God, love, Christ; hence you can fill rather than satiate. And, always to be thirsted for with greedy desires, you flow in and are received, nor is love sated, and so piety is made perfect, that you may be loved without end, Christ, by your own, to whom you will give life without end. Grant me now to mourn, God, and with saving weeping to sow beforehand the seeds of eternal joy; let this mourning, I pray, rather remain for me in the age in which whatever is present passes by a short road. Go far off, you glad; I prefer the company of those who weep, so that with brief tears I may reap long joys. If now heavy sackcloth with its rough covering of goats' bristles covers and goads me as I mourn, then, the Father appeased, the ring of deserved honour will be returned, and the robe of joy will gird me; then rightly the Father will kill the fatted calf for me, if only, fasting, I hunger for justice. I would rather endure hunger for bread than for the holy Word; I do not want the house of wine, I thirst for the water of light; here let dire hunger torment me, here foul poverty besiege me, shrunk in sad rags, here let the rich man pass me by before his house, scorning to fill me even with his crumbs. I do not want a silken garment to glow on me with Tyrian purple, to the envy of a body that will burn, lest after purple robes the everlasting flame surround me and I pay for my garment in fire. Here rather let us lie wretched on a foul heap of dung, and let dogs lick our sores, so that, released after a sad life by a calm death, a gentle angel may receive us as we meet him and set us down rejoicing in the bosoms of the patriarchs, far from where Gehenna rages with gaping chasm.

I do not speak fictions that terrify little children: the dog barking at the gates through three mouths, and Charon terrifying shades with sad squalor, the Eumenides savage with viper hair, Tityos, the eternal food of the deadly vulture, and Tantalus parched with thirst amid the waters, the wheel turning without end and the rolling stone, and the vain jars of the sweating Danaids. These things poets empty of truth sang with vain words, who did not hold Christ, the head of truth. But God has taught us true things, the sower of his own works himself recounting to us all the truth of them. Learn from the gospel the places of the poor man and of the rich: the poor man lies in Abraham, the rich in fire. With justice reversing their lots, he who had wept here rejoices there, and the rich man is in want while the poor is full. The one enjoys good rest, the other groans in fires; the rich man receives punishment for his wealth, the poor man riches. The rich man begs a little dew from the poor man, whom he had scorned when he begged in the world above. Hence not even a small drop of refreshment trickled on him, burning, from the tip of the poor man's finger, since from his great feasts not even a crumb had fallen into the mouth of the hungry poor man. By these warnings let us learn to live holy justice for Christ and to set aside a share for the poor. You, to whom the needy man is filthy, who shudder at the sight of the poor and hold meeting a godly suppliant to be an ill omen, who admire yourself shining in a precious garment and do not see that you are filthy in your inner dress, you carry in your mind all that you shudder at in the poor man's body, a rich man filthier than rags and sores;

you despise the blind, you avoid touching the leper, greedy rich man, you yourself love your own leprosy. He is wretched and weak in the eyes of men; but you are foul before God by weakness of soul. Shameless one, you spurn the needy man, your partner in nature, and by avarice deprive him of his share. Whatever overflows for you, unjust one, with no use, which you hide in dug turf, is the share of the poor. Why do you hold what belongs to others? With what hope do you keep what must be left, neither returned to its owners nor to be enjoyed by you? You, to whom the needy man is filthy, who, senseless in the name of a rich man, raise a sad eyebrow with wrinkled brow, and do not deign even to call them men whom you do not see flowing with like luxury, look in what form that Son of God came, who, though he was rich, was poor in the world. And coming, God chose not the lofty but the cheap things of the world, to destroy the strong by the weak. Let not the rich now rejoice in riches, nor the strong in strength, nor the wise in great talent. Let no one trust in his own resources or applaud himself, since all things are sown or given from God as fountain. Christ, made the refuge and the person of the needy, is shame to the rich, glory to the poor. Let us run eagerly toward his ambrosial fragrance, that the odour of death may flee far from us. Who will grant me to pour precious nard from alabaster and to wash the Lord's sacred feet with weeping? You, I pray, my care, give your effort to godly cares, and give yourselves to God, the immense spouse, with united mind. The time is here, the Lord is now near; hasten to be prepared to meet the King while the short hour lies open.

Use your riches with kindly piety, and pluck the root of evil from your hearts. Store the price of your life in the hearts of the poor, and anoint your heads with godly expenditure. And, kissing the chaste footprints of the Lord Christ, wipe them, both of you, with your hair, wash them with your eyes. If you desire to enjoy Celsus without end, act so that the same hall may lie open to you. For him whom holy faith, an age not knowing crime, and a godly mind contained in a chaste body, it is sure faith that he possesses that region above, where the fiery altar of God protects the saints. So we do not want you, good brothers, to grieve over our pledge like men without hope; for if we surely believe that Christ Jesus died and now lives in the citadel of God, so also the Father will bring with Christ when he returns those who rest in living faith. For this that teacher teaches in the word of the Lord, with whom as guide we strive to go the starry ways: that for those whose life was spent in Christ, there will be everlasting life with Christ. And when the chief angel has sounded with the trumpet the sign of the Lord's coming from the lofty seat of the Father, those who died in Christ will rise first, deemed worthy to go on the clouds to meet God. And when all live again in the flesh in which they lived, not all will become light, their bodies changed. For we shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed; this will be the distinction among the nations before God. The bodies of the profane too will rise incorruptible from the tombs, food for long punishment.

For them life will be to die without end, and death to live in punishments, and to feed their tortures with enduring flesh. The sinner himself will beget his own executioners from his own body and will be food for his own worms. But those whom piety has lifted by heavenly conduct will wear shared crowns with God as King, and, their body clothed with divine light, will live always conformed to Christ the Lord. Since this is so, take consolation from these words, and restore your souls, faithful to the true hope; and believe that Celsus, our common pledge, in the light above enjoys the milk and honeycombs of the living. Either kindly Abraham cherishes him, received in his bosom, and gentle Lazarus feeds him with the dew of his finger, or, with the infants of Bethlehem in paradise, whom wicked Herod struck in envy, he plays in a fragrant grove and weaves crowns, rewards for the martyrs to be honoured. Mingled with such, the infant will accompany the Lamb, the King, added to the virgin ranks. Celsus, boy dwelling in the chaste land of the blessed, Celsus, grief of your fathers, glory, Celsus, of your fathers, Celsus, love and longing and light of your own, Celsus, a grace brief for us, long for you. But yet your grace will be able to live long for us too, if you remember us before the Lord. For in you, of short age but great merits, life was short in time but mighty in piety. For of such infants the kingdom of heaven is proved to be, such as you were, a boy in age, mind and faith, and such as was ours too, he of your blessed name, called away at the time he was given, offspring long desired and not granted to us, unworthy to rejoice in godly posterity;

we believe that he, Celsus, plays with you, sharer of joy and life, in the eternal green places, he whom we entrusted, in the city of Complutum, to the neighbouring martyrs, joined to them by the covenant of a tomb, so that from the nearby blood of the saints he may draw that with which to sprinkle our souls in that fire. For perhaps for us sinners too, one day, this little drop of our blood will be a light. Celsus, help your brother, labouring with shared piety, that we may have a place in your rest. Live as partners, live eternally, brothers, and inhabit the glad places, a worthy pair, and, equal infants, overcome the sins of your parents by innocent merits and chaste intercessions. As many years as you, Celsus, had, so many days of life did he draw; but he, the younger, is the elder in being first. For he is younger in that he lived less; but yet the same, in that he departed first, is now your elder there. Celsus, with your brother, stand by your own, to whom we are added; for we are a vein of your father's blood. Together with your father Pneumatius and your mother Fidelis, name also Paulinus and Therasia as your own, so that by your prayers, as Christ pities, we too, Celsus, may have with your own a common protection. But yet it remains for us to give effort, so that we may follow you with like simplicity. Then we shall be able to live as companions of our Celsus, and to be eternally fathers of a sweet pledge.