{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/101/1010355.htm","path":"chr/ecf/101/1010355.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/101/1010355.htm","text":"To My Lord Eudoxius, My Brother and Fellow-Presbyter, Beloved and Longed For, and to the Brethren Who are with Him, 1679 Augustin and the Brethren Who are Here Send Greeting.\n1. When we reflect upon the undisturbed rest which you enjoy in Christ, we also, although engaged in labours manifold and arduous, find rest with you, beloved. We are one body under one Head, so that you share our toils, and we share your repose: for \u201cif one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or if one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.\u201d 1680 Therefore we earnestly exhort and beseech you, by the deep humility and most compassionate majesty of Christ, to be mindful of us in your holy intercessions; for we believe you to be more lively and undistracted in prayer than we can be, whose prayers are often marred and weakened by the darkness and confusion arising from secular occupations: not that we have these on our own account, but we can scarcely breathe for the pressure of such duties imposed upon us by men compelling us, so to speak, to go with them one mile, with whom we are commanded by our Lord to go farther than they ask. 1681 We believe, nevertheless, that He before whom the sighing of the prisoner comes 1682 will look on us persevering in the ministry in which He was pleased to put us, with promise of reward, and, by the assistance of your prayers, will set us free from all distress.\n2. We exhort you in the Lord, brethren, to be stedfast in your purpose, and persevere to the end; and if the Church, your Mother, calls you to active service, guard against accepting it, on the one hand, with too eager elation of spirit, or declining it, on the other, under the solicitations of indolence; and obey God with a lowly heart, submitting yourselves in meekness to Him who governs you, who will guide the meek in judgment, and will teach them His way. 1683 Do not prefer your own ease to the claims of the Church; for if no good men were willing to minister to her in her bringing forth of her spiritual children, the beginning of your own spiritual life would have been impossible. As men must keep the way carefully in walking between fire and water, so as to be neither burned nor drowned, so must we order our steps between the pinnacle of pride and the whirlpool of indolence; as it is written, \u201cdeclining neither to the right hand nor to the left.\u201d 1684 For some, while guarding too anxiously against being lifted up and raised, as it were, to the dangerous heights on the right hand, have p. 295 fallen and been engulphed in the depths on the left. Again, others, while turning too eagerly from the danger on the left hand of being immersed in the torpid effeminacy of inaction, are, on the other hand, so destroyed and consumed by the extravagance of self-conceit, that they vanish into ashes and smoke. See then, beloved, that in your love of ease you restrain yourselves from all mere earthly delight, and remember that there is no place where the fowler who fears lest we fly back to God may not lay snares for us; let us account him whose captives we once were to be the sworn enemy of all good men; let us never consider ourselves in possession of perfect peace until iniquity shall have ceased, and \u201cjudgment shall have returned unto righteousness.\u201d 1685\n3. Moreover, when you are exerting yourselves with energy and fervour, whatever you do, whether labouring diligently in prayer, fasting, or almsgiving, or distributing to the poor, or forgiving injuries, \u201cas God also for Christ\u2019s sake hath forgiven us,\u201d 1686 or subduing evil habits, and chastening the body and bringing it into subjection, 1687 or bearing tribulation, and especially bearing with one another in love (for what can he bear who is not patient with his brother?), or guarding against the craft and wiles of the tempter, and by the shield of faith averting and extinguishing his fiery darts, 1688 or \u201csinging and making melody to the Lord in your hearts,\u201d or with voices in harmony with your hearts; 1689 \u2014whatever you do, I say, \u201cdo all to the glory of God,\u201d 1690 who \u201cworketh all in all,\u201d 1691 and be so \u201cfervent in Spirit\u201d 1692 that your \u201csoul may make her boast in the Lord.\u201d 1693 Such is the course of those who walk in the \u201cstraight way,\u201d whose \u201ceyes are ever upon the Lord, for He shall pluck their feet out of the net.\u201d 1694 Such a course is neither interrupted by business, nor benumbed by leisure, neither boisterous nor languid, neither presumptuous nor desponding, neither reckless nor supine. \u201cThese things do, and the God of peace shall be with you.\u201d 1695\n4. Let your charity prevent you from accounting me forward in wishing to address you by letter. I remind you of these things, not because I think you come short in them, but because I thought that I would be much commended unto God by you, if, in doing your duty to Him, you do it with a remembrance of my exhortation. For good report, even before the coming of the brethren Eustasius and Andreas from you, had brought to us, as they did, the good savour of Christ, which is yielded by your holy conversation. Of these, Eustasius has gone before us to that land of rest, on the shore of which beat no rude waves such as those which encompass your island home, and in which he does not regret Caprera, for the homely raiment 1696 with which it furnished him he wears no more.\nThe monastery of these brethren was in the island of Capraria\u2014the same, I suppose, with Caprera\u2014now so widely famous as Garibaldi\u2019s home.\n294:1680 294:1681 294:1682 294:1683 294:1684 295:1685 295:1686 295:1687 295:1688 295:1689 295:1690 295:1691 295:1692 295:1693 295:1694 295:1695 295:1696\nCilicium, the garment of goats\u2019 hair worn by the brethren. These were the staple article of manufacture in Caprera, \u201cthe goat island.\u201d","title":"Nicene and Post Nicene-Fathers, Vol. I: Letters of St. Au...","type":"page"}