Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

³ Therefore, “O Lord, are You become our refuge.” To You do we betake ourselves, and with Your help it will be well with us. For ill is it with us by ourselves. Because we have left You, You have left us to ourselves. Be we then found in You, for in ourselves were we lost. “Lord, You have become our refuge.” Why then, brethren, should we doubt that the Lord will make us gentle, if we give up ourselves to be tamed by him? You have tamed the lion which you made not; shall not He tame you, who made you?

For from whence did you get the power to tame such savage beasts? Are you their equal in bodily strength? By what power then have you been able to tame great beasts? The very beasts of burden, as they are called, are by their nature wild. For in their untamed state they are unserviceable. But because custom has never known them except as in the hands and under the bridle and power of men, do you imagine that they could have been born in this tame state? But now at all events mark the beasts which are unquestionably of savage kind.

“The lion roars, who does not fear?” And yet wherein is it that you find yourself to be stronger than he? Not in strength of body, but in the interior reason of the mind. You are stronger than the lion, in that wherein you were made after the image of God. What! Shall the image of God tame a wild beast; and shall not God tame His own image?