Letters

^3. Wherefore, my beloved, even when you meet those whose words you say you cannot bear, because they say, “If we have deserved these things for our sins, how comes it that the servants of God are cut off not less than ourselves by the sword of the barbarians, and the handmaids of God are led away into captivity?”— answer them humbly, truly, and piously in such words as these: However carefully we keep the way of righteousness, and yield obedience to our Lord, can we be better than those three men who were cast into the fiery furnace for keeping the law of God? And yet, read what Azarias, one of those three, said, opening his lips in the midst of the fire: “Blessed are You, O Lord God of our fathers: Your name is worthy to be praised and glorified for evermore; for You are righteous in all the things that You have done to us; yea, true are all Your works: Your ways are right, and all Your judgments truth. In all the things which You have brought upon us, and upon the holy city of our fathers, even Jerusalem, You have executed true judgment; for according to truth and judgment You brought all these things upon us because of our sins. For we have sinned and committed iniquity, departing from You. In all things have we trespassed, and not obeyed Your commandments, nor kept them, neither done as You have commanded us, that it might go well with us. Wherefore all that You have brought upon us, and everything that You have done to us, You have done in true judgment. And You delivered us into the hands of lawless enemies, most hateful forsakers of God, and to an unjust king, and the most wicked in all the world. And now we cannot open our mouths: we have become a shame and reproach to Your servants, and to them that worship You. Yet deliver us not up wholly, for Your name's sake, neither disannul Your covenant; and cause not Your mercy to depart from us, for Your beloved Abraham's sake, for Your servant Isaac's sake, and for Your holy Israel's sake, to whom You have spoken, and promised that You would multiply their seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that lies upon the sea-shore. For we, O Lord, have become less than any nation, and be kept under this day in all the world because of our sins.” Here, my brother, you may surely see how men such as they, men of holiness, men of courage in the midst of tribulation—from which, however, they were delivered, the flame itself fearing to consume them, were not silent about their sins, but confessed them, knowing that because of these sins they were deservedly and justly brought low.