I say these things, not in scorn nor in reproach at his misfortune, but in the wish to soften your judgment, and to enkindle your pity, and to persuade you to be satisfied with the chastisement already inflicted. For there are amongst you many inhuman men who would even reproach me for receiving him at the sanctuary. I should desire to soften their cruelty by dwelling on the sufferings of this man. Why do you reproach me, beloved brethren? Because, you say, he who warred incessantly against the Church has found shelter in it. For this very reason you should have praised God the more for allowing him to fall into a need so great as to learn both the power and the kindness of the Church: the power, on the one hand, to outlive so overwhelming a reverse inflicted by his enemies, and the kindness with which she who was persecuted extends her shield, and covers him with her own wings, putting him in perfect security, and bearing no memory of former things, but opening her heart to him with the most tender love. This is more wonderful than any trophy, this is a magnificent victory: by this the heathen is converted and even the Jew put to shame: this it is which shows forth the brightness of her countenance; that, taking her foe captive, she spares him; that whereas all men forsake him, she alone, as a tender mother, hides him in her own sanctuary curtains, and encounters imperial wrath, an angry populace, a boundless hatred, on his account. This is the altar’s adornment. What adornment is it, you ask, that the man who is abominable, and avaricious, and cursed, should touch the altar? Speak not thus, since the harlot too touched the feet of Christ, and she was indeed full of sin and impurity, yet it was no reproach to Jesus, but a great wonder and song of praise, for she who was unclean did not defile the Holy One; on the contrary, He, the Good and the Pure, made that abandoned harlot clean through His touch. Do not bear malice, O man. We are servants of Him Who was crucified, and Who said, _Forgive them, for they know not what they do_. ‘But,’ you say, ‘it was he who, by various laws and regulations, cut off flight to the altar.’ Consider, then, that experience has taught him the value of his own action, and he himself has been the first to break the law which he made. He has become a spectacle to the world, and in his silence he raises a voice of warning to all men, ‘Do not likewise, that you may not suffer in like manner’. Through his misfortune he has become a teacher, and through it the altar sends forth a great radiance. It is now especially terrible, and evident to all men, because it holds the lion in chains. The royal statue would be greatly adorned, not so much by depicting the king as he sits on the throne, clothed in purple, and wearing his crown, as by barbarians under the royal feet, with their hands tied behind them and their faces to the ground. You yourselves, in your eagerness to come here, can testify that