25. The Church is a lioness whose cubs were the apostles. — This indeed is that lioness of whom Job spoke, when he beheld proud Judea passed over while the Church preached: 'The children of the traders have not trodden it, nor has the lioness passed through it' (Job 28:8). For this lioness, then, the Lord takes prey, that He may fill the soul of her cubs, because for the increase of this Church He plundered countless souls from the heathen world, and by the gain of souls He satisfied the hungering desires of the apostles. For those cubs were called on account of the tenderness of their minds and the weakness of their fearfulness, because, when the Lord had suffered, they sat behind closed doors, as it is written of them:
'When it was late on that day, the first of the week, and the doors were shut where the disciples were gathered for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst' (John 20:19). Whence here also concerning these same cubs it is fitly added: