{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/212/2120260.htm","path":"chr/ecf/212/2120260.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/212/2120260.htm","text":"What diversity there ought to be in the art of preaching.\nDifferently to be admonished are these that follow:\u2014\nThe wise of this world and the dull.\nThe forward and the fainthearted.\nThe impatient and the patient.\nThe kindly disposed and the envious.\nThose who fear scourges, and therefore live innocently; and those who have grown so hard in iniquity as not to be corrected even by scourges.\nThe too silent, and those who spend time in much speaking.\nThe gluttonous and the abstinent.\nThose who mercifully give of their own, and those who would fain seize what belongs to others.\nThose who neither seize the things of others nor are bountiful with their own; and those who both give away the things they have, and yet cease not to seize the things of others.\nThose that are at variance, and those that are at peace.\nLovers of strifes and peacemakers.\nThose that understand not aright the words of sacred law; and those who understand them indeed aright, but speak them without humility.\nThose who, though able to preach worthily, are afraid through excessive humility; and those whom imperfection or age debars from preaching, and yet rashness impels to it.\nThose who prosper in what they desire in temporal matters; and those who covet indeed the things that are of the world, and yet are wearied with the toils of adversity.\nThose who are bound by wedlock, and those who are free from the ties of wedlock.\nThose who have had experience of carnal intercourse, and those who are ignorant of it.\nThose who deplore sins of deed, and those who deplore sins of thought.\nThose who bewail misdeeds, yet forsake them not; and those who forsake them, yet bewail them not.\nThose who even praise the unlawful things they do; and those who censure what is wrong, yet avoid it not.\nThose who are overcome by sudden passion, and those who are bound in guilt of set purpose.\np. 25b Those who, though their unlawful deeds are trivial, yet do them frequently; and those who keep themselves from small sins, but are occasionally whelmed in graver ones.\nThose who do not even begin what is good, and those who fail entirely to complete the good begun.\nThose who do evil secretly and good publicly; and those who conceal the good they do, and yet in some things done publicly allow evil to be thought of them.\nBut of what profit is it for us to run through all these things collected together in a list, unless we also set forth, with all possible brevity, the modes of admonition for each?\n(Admonition 1.) Differently, then, to be admonished are men and women; because on the former heavier injunctions, on the latter lighter are to be laid, that those may be exercised by great things, but these winningly converted by light ones.\n(Admonition 2.) Differently to be admonished are young men and old; because for the most part severity of admonition directs the former to improvement, while kind remonstrance disposes the latter to better deeds. For it is written, Rebuke not an elder, but entreat him as a father (1 Tim. v. 1).>","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. XII: The Book of Pastoral Rule, and Selected Epistles, of Gregory the Great.: Chapter I","type":"page"}