“For what sort of man should he be who rules an entire city—and why do I say a city?—the whole world rather—and has to propitiate God for the sins of all—not the sins of the living only, but those of the dead also.”
“For what were the Lord’s words to him? _Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall_ _be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven._ For Peter was somewhat severe, and if he had been faultless how would he have excused his disciples?”
“God indeed bound the Jews to a remembrance of their domestic blessings every year at the feasts, but you He has bound to a daily remembrance, so to say, through these mysteries.”
“He had courage to sacrifice his son, that son being Isaac, in the bloom of his age, in the very flower of his youth, his own and only-begotten son, vouchsafed to him contrary to all hope, and full of righteousness, his one stay in his old age.”
“He who can do this has overcome the tempest of natural emotion, and is able to speak tearlessly those words of Job: _The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away_; he will take his place even with Abraham, and be proclaimed with Job for this one word alone.”
“How after this did it occur to men to foretell such things, for instance, as that the Gospel should be preached in the whole world, that the Jewish dispensation should stop and not come back again?”
“How do you know that there is a God? ‘From visible things,’ you reply; ‘from the order which is in the whole creation; from the fact that this is evident to all.’ Therefore, apply the same argument to that which concerns judgment. ‘How am I to do this?’ you ask.”
“How, then, O Corinthians, are you not doing the opposite to this when praising God for turning you away from idols you hasten back to their tables? _Is not the chalice of benediction which we bless the communion of the Blood of Christ?_ He spoke these words with an awful assurance.”
“If a body were to be distorted or maimed, you would think it the saddest matter in the world; yet, contemplating that man’s soul wholly maimed, do you consider him a happy man? ‘But,’ you say, ‘he does not feel it.’ And for this very reason he is the more to be pitied, just as men who lose their wits are.”
“If Christ did not die and did not rise again, what reason was there that those who had fled from Him when living, on account of impending danger, should have encountered a thousand dangers for Him when dead?”
