Orations

^24. But what was most excellent and most characteristic, though least generally recognized, was his simplicity, and freedom from guile and resentment. For among men of ancient and modern days, each is supposed to have had some special success, as each chanced to have received from God some particular virtue: Job unconquered patience in misfortune, Moses and David meekness, Samuel prophecy, seeing into the future, Phineas zeal, for which he has a name, Peter and Paul eagerness in preaching, the sons of Zebedee magniloquence, whence also they were entitled Sons of thunder. But why should I enumerate them all, speaking as I do among those who know this? Now the specially distinguishing mark of Stephen and of my father was the absence of malice. For not even when in peril did Stephen hate his assailants, but was stoned while praying for those who were stoning him as a disciple of Christ, on Whose behalf he was allowed to suffer, and so, in his long-suffering, bearing for God a nobler fruit than his death: my father, in allowing no interval between assault and forgiveness, so that he was almost robbed of pain itself by the speed of pardon.