THAT this letter is addressed to the same person as the preceding, in spite of the discrepancy in the address, is clear from the first sentence (See Introd. to xxv.). It resumes the subject, and dwells in detail on the example of our Lord’s dealing with the woman taken in adultery. AMBROSE TO IRENÆUS. [STUDIUS?] 1. ALTHOUGH in my previous letter I have resolved the question which you proposed to me, I will not refuse your request, my son, that I would somewhat more fully state and express my meaning. 2. Much agitated has ever been the question, and very famous this acquittal of that woman who in the Gospel according to John was brought to Christ accused of adultery. The stratagem which the equivocating Jews devised was this, that in case of the Lord Jesus acquitting her contrary to the Law, His sentence might be convicted of being at variance with the Law, but if she were to be condemned according to the Law, the Grace of Christ might seem to be made void. 3. And still more warm has the discussion become, since the time that bishops[152] have begun to accuse those guilty of the most heinous crimes before the public tribunals, and some even to urge them to the use of the sword and of capital punishment, while others again approve of such kind of accusations and of blood-stained triumphs of the priesthood. For those men say just the same as did the Jews, that the guilty ought to be punished by the public laws, and therefore that they ought also to be accused by the priests before the public tribunals, who, they assert, ought to be punished according to the laws. The case is the same, though the number is less, that is to say, the question as to judgment is similar, the odium of the punishment is dissimilar. Christ would not permit one woman to be punished according to the Law; they assert that too small a number has been punished. Sidenote: S. John x. 30. Sidenote: Ib. vii. 16. Sidenote: Ib. viii. 20. Sidenote: S. Luke xxi. 2. 4. But in what place does Christ give this decision? For He generally vouchsafed to adapt His discourses to the character of the place wherein He was teaching His disciples[153]. For instance while walking in the porch of Solomon, that is, of the Wise man, He said, _I and My Father are One_; and in God’s Temple He said, _My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me_. It was in the Temple also that He gave the sentence of which we now speak, for in the verse following it is thus written, _These words spake Jesus in the treasury, as He taught in the Temple, and no man laid hands on Him_. What is the Treasury? It is the place of offering for the faithful, the bank of the poor, the refuge of the needy, near which Christ sat, when, according to Luke, He declared that the widow’s two mites were to be preferred to the gifts of the rich, thus bearing Divine testimony to a zealous and cordial charity as preferable to the offerings of an affluent munificence. Sidenote: Ib. x. 35.