{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/101/1010422.htm","path":"chr/ecf/101/1010422.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/101/1010422.htm","text":"To His Most Excellent Daughter, the Noble and Deservedly Illustrious Lady Proba, Augustin Sends Greeting in the Lord.\nYou speak the truth when you say that the soul, having its abode in a corruptible body, is restrained by this measure of contact with the earth, and is somehow so bent and crushed by this burden that its desires and thoughts go more easily downwards to many things than upwards to one. For Holy Scripture says the same: \u201cThe corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things.\u201d 2495 But our Saviour, who by His healing word raised up the woman in the gospel that had been eighteen years bowed down 2496 (whose case was, perchance, a figure of spiritual infirmity), came for this purpose, that Christians might not hear in vain the call, \u201cLift up your hearts,\u201d and might truly reply, \u201cWe lift them up to the Lord.\u201d Looking to this, you do well to regard the evils of this world as easy to bear because of the hope of the world to come. For thus, by being rightly used, these evils become a blessing, because, while they do not increase our desires for this world, they exercise our patience; as to which the apostle says, \u201cWe know that all things work together for good to them that love God:\u201d 2497 all things, he saith\u2014not only, therefore, those which are desired because pleasant, but also those which are shunned because painful; since we receive the former without being carried away by them, and bear the latter without being crushed by them, and in all give thanks, according to the divine command, to Him of whom we say, \u201cI will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth,\u201d 2498 and, \u201cIt is good for me that Thou hast humbled me, that I might learn Thy statutes.\u201d 2499 The truth is, most noble lady, that if the calm of this treacherous prosperity were always smiling upon us, the soul of man would never make for the haven of true and certain safety. Wherefore, in returning the respectful salutation due to your Excellency, and expressing my gratitude for your most pious care for my welfare, I ask of the Lord that He may grant to you the rewards of the life to come, and consolation in the present life; and I commend myself to the love and prayers of all of you in whose hearts Christ dwells by faith.\n(In another hand.) May the true and faithful God truly comfort your heart and preserve p. 470 your health, my most excellent daughter and noble lady, deservedly illustrious.\nPs. 119.71 (LXX.).","title":"Nicene and Post Nicene-Fathers, Vol. I: Letters of St. Au...","type":"page"}