In his funeral oration upon his brother Satyrus, he cries out: "To Thee now, O omnipotent God, I commend this innocent soul,--to Thee I offer my victim. Accept graciously and serenely the gift of the brother--the sacrifice of the priest." [Footnote 1: De excessu frateris satyri, No. 80, p. 1135.] In his discourse on the deceased Emperor Valentinian the Younger, murdered in 392: "Give the holy mysteries to the dead. Let us, with pious earnestness, beg repose for his soul. Lift up your hands with me, O people, that at least by this duty we may make some return for his benefits." [1] Joining him with the Emperor Gratian, his brother, dead some years before, he says: "Both blessed, if my prayers can be of any force! No duty shall pass over you in silence. No prayer of mine shall ever be closed without remembering you. No night shall pass you over without some vows of my supplications. You shall have a share in all my sacrifices. If I forget you let my own right hand be forgotten." [2] [Footnote 1: St. Ambr. de obitu Valent, No. 56, t. 2, p 1189, ed. Bened.] [Footnote 2: Ibid., No. 78, p. 1194.] "It was not in vain," says ST. CHRYSOSTOM, "that the apostles ordained a commemoration of the deceased in the holy and tremendous mysteries. They were sensible of the benefit and advantage which accrues to them from this practice. For, when the congregation stands with open arms as well as the priests, and the tremendous sacrifice is before them, how should our prayers for them not appease God? But this is said of such as have departed in faith." [1] [Footnote 1: Hom. 3 in Phil., t. n., p. 217 ed. Montfauc.] ST. AUGUSTINE again says: "Nor is it to be denied that the souls of the departed are relieved by the piety of their living friends, when the sacrifice of the Mediator is offered for them, or alms are given in the Church. But these things are profitable to those who, while they lived, deserved that they might avail them. There is a life so good as not to require them, and there is another so wicked that after death it can receive no benefit from them. When, therefore, the sacrifices of the altar or alms are offered for all Christians, for the very good they are thanksgivings, they are propitiations for those who are not very bad. For the very wicked, they are some kind of comfort to the living." In another of his works he says that prayer for the dead in the holy mysteries was observed by the whole church. He expounds the thirty- seventh Psalm as having reference to Purgatory. The words: "Rebuke me not in thy fury, neither chastise me in thy wrath," he explains as follows: "That you purify me in this life, and render me such that I may not stand in need of that purging fire." ARNOBIUS speaks of the public liturgies: "In which peace and pardon are begged of God for kings, magistrates, friends and enemies, both the living and those who are delivered from the body."