And by what reasoning shall you bind anything on earth so that it may be bound even above the world — seeing that you, of yourselves, are so bound by iniquities and held in this world, that you in no way ascend to heaven, but, not converted to the Lord in this life, fall down into the ill-omened dungeons of Tartarus? Nor let any priest applaud himself merely on account of the consciousness of a clean body, since of those over whom he presides (if any have perished through his ignorance or sloth or flattery) the souls shall be required at his hands in the day of judgment, as of a murderer. For death is not sweeter when inflicted by a good man than by an evil one. Otherwise the Apostle would not have said, as though leaving a paternal legacy to his successors:
I am then clean from the blood of all. For I have not shrunk from declaring unto you all the mystery of God (Acts 20:26-27). For you, intoxicated by the long-standing and frequent practice of sins, and ceaselessly battered, as if by waves, by the assaults of your heaped-up crimes, seek out with the whole effort of your soul that one plank of repentance which remains after the shipwreck (the plank by which you may escape to the land of the living), that the wrath of the Lord may be turned away from you, who says mercifully: I desire not the death of the sinner, but that he be converted and live (Ezekiel 33:11). May He Himself, the almighty God of all consolation and mercy (2 Corinthians
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i, 3) paucissimosbonospastoresconservetabomnimalo, etmunicipesfaciat, subactocommunihoste, civitatisJerusalemcoelestis, hocestsanctorumomniumcongregationis, PateretFiliusetSpiritussanctus: cuisithonoretgloriainsæculasæculorum. Amen.
1:3) Himself preserve from all evil those very few good shepherds, and, the common enemy being subdued, make them fellow-citizens of the heavenly city of Jerusalem, that is, of the congregation of all the saints — the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: to whom be honour and glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.