On Patience 16

This is the reason of patience, this its discipline, these its works: heavenly and true, that is, Christian; not, like that patience of the nations of the earth, false and disgraceful. For so that the devil might rival the Lord in this too, as if on equal terms (except that the very difference between evil and good is equal to the magnitude of each), he too taught his own a patience of their own: I mean that which subjects husbands, sold for a dowry or trafficking in pandering, to the power of their wives; which, for the hunting of legacies from the childless, tolerates with feigned affection all the labor of forced attention; which binds the workmen of the belly, by the subjection of their liberty to the gullet, to insulting patronage. Such pursuits of patience the nations know, and they seize the name of so great a good for foul practices: patient of rivals, of the rich, of those who invite them to dinner, they live impatient of God alone. But let them see to their patience and that of their leader, which the fire beneath the earth awaits. We, however, let us love the patience of God, the patience of Christ; let us repay to 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.