manner that would not redound to the advantage of their souls. Sometimes parents made it a dying request to their children that they would preserve none of their property, but would bestow it all among the poor.(297) It was one of the most honourable incidents of the life of St. Augustine, that he, like Aurelius, Bishop of Carthage, refused to receive legacies or donations which unjustly spoliated the relatives of the benefactor.(298) Usually, however, to outrage the affections of the nearest and dearest relations was not only regarded as innocent, but proposed as the highest virtue. “A young man,” it was acutely said, “who has learnt to despise a mother’s grief, will easily bear any other labour that is imposed upon him.”(299) St. Jerome, when exhorting Heliodorus to desert his family and become a hermit, expatiated with a fond minuteness on every form of natural affection he desired him to violate. “Though your little nephew twine his arms around your neck; though your mother, with dishevelled hair and tearing her robe asunder, point to the breast with which she suckled you; though your father fall down on the threshold before you, pass on over your father’s body. Fly with tearless eyes to the banner of the cross. In this matter cruelty is the only piety.... Your widowed sister may throw her gentle arms around you.... Your father may implore you to wait but a short time to bury those near to you, who will soon be no more; your weeping mother may recall your childish days, and may point to her shrunken breast and to her wrinkled brow. Those around you may tell you that all the household rests upon you. Such chains as these, the love of God and the fear of hell can easily break. You say that Scripture orders you to obey your parents, but he who loves them more than Christ loses his soul. The enemy brandishes a sword to slay me. Shall I think of a mother’s tears?”(300)