Yet even these poor remnants of the human race are smitten daily and without ceasing. The scourge of heaven's justice strikes without end, because even under its strokes our bad actions are not corrected. We see men led into captivity, beheaded, slain before our eyes. What pleasure, then, does life retain, my brethren? If yet we are fond of such a world, it is not joys but wounds which we love. We see the condition of that Rome which anon seemed to be mistress of the world: worn down by sorrows which have no measure, desolate of inhabitants, assaulted by enemies, filled with ruins. We see in it fulfilled what long ago our prophet said against Samaria: 'Set on a vessel; set it on, I say, and put water into it. Heap together into it the pieces thereof.' And then: 'The seething of it is boiling hot; and the bones thereof are thoroughly sodden in the midst thereof.' And further: 'Heap together the bones, which I will burn with fire: the flesh shall be consumed, and the whole composition shall be sodden, and the bones shall be consumed. Then set it empty upon burning coals, that it may be hot, and the brass thereof may be melted.' Now the vessel was set on when our city was founded. The water was put into it and the pieces heaped together, when there was a confluence of peoples to it from all sides. Like boiling water they bubbled up with the world's actions; like bits of flesh they were boiled in their own heat. He says well, 'The seething of it is boiling hot, and the bones thereof are thoroughly sodden in the midst thereof'. For great, indeed, in it at first was the heat of secular glory; but presently the glory itself and those who followed it burnt out. Bones mean the powerful of the world; flesh its various peoples: as bones support flesh, so the powerful of the world rule the weakness of the masses. But now, behold, all the powerful of this world have been taken from it. The bones, then, are thoroughly sodden. The peoples are gone; the flesh, then, is boiled up. There follows then: 'Heap together the bones, which I will burn with fire; the flesh shall be consumed, and the whole composition shall be sodden; and the bones shall waste away'. For where is the senate? where any longer a people? The bones are wasted, the flesh consumed; all pride of secular dignities is perished out of it. The whole composition is sodden. Yet every day the sword, every day innumerable sorrows press upon us, the poor remaining remnant. So, then, this also applies: 'Set it empty upon burning coals'. For since there is no senate, since the people has died out, and yet sorrow and suffering are multiplied day by day on the few that remain, Rome is empty, and yet it burns. We apply this to men, but we see the very structures destroyed by the multiplication of ruins. So that he adds, upon the empty city, 'Burn it and melt its brass'. For it is come to the vessel itself being destroyed, in which before both flesh and bones were consumed.