taking your ease in a low place should say that you came not on account of the martyrs, but to increase your passion and to incite your bad desires. This I say, prohibiting not feasting but sin, prohibiting not wine but drunkenness. It is not the wine which is evil, it is intemperance. Wine is the gift of God, intemperance is the devil’s invention.... Intemperance is ever an evil, beloved brethren, and most of all on the feast day of the martyrs. Together with the sin, it is a most open contempt and folly and putting aside of the divine words; hence the chastisement would be double. If, therefore, you have come to the martyrs and mean afterwards to drink, you had better remain at home and not shame nor insult the martyrs’ feast, nor scandalise your neighbour, nor distort your understanding, nor add to your sins. You came to look upon men who were racked with torments, covered with blood, and adorned with wounds, who gave up this present life and took their flight to the life above. Show yourself worthy of those wrestlers. _They_ despised life, do _you_ despise luxury; they renounced their life in this world, do you renounce the craving for drink. Do you wish for feasting? Remain by the martyr’s tomb, weep there a fountain of tears, grieve in your mind, take a blessing from that tomb. Let it assist you in your prayers; make the account of his fight your constant reading; embrace the coffin; nail yourself to the shrine. Not only the bones of the martyrs, but their tombs also and their coffins, produce an abundant blessing. Take holy oil and sign your whole body with it, your tongue, your lips, your throat and eyes, and you will avoid the abyss of drunkenness. · · · · · · · The Bodies of the Martyrs. (_Homily on the Martyrs, Benedictine Edition_, t. ii., p. 650.) · · · · · · ·