Homilies on the Statues

^23. But if it were necessary to add a ninth reason, we might say, that this tribulation makes those who are troubled more approved; “For tribulation works patience; and patience, probation; and probation, hope; and hope makes not ashamed.” Do you see that the probation, which comes of tribulation, fixes in us the hope of the good things to come, and that the abiding in trials causes us to have a good hope of the future? So that I did not say rashly, that these tribulations themselves mark out to us hopes of a resurrection, and make those who are tried the better; for, he says, “as gold is tried in a furnace, so an acceptable man in the furnace of humiliation.”