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On the Ruin of Britain
St Gildas, tr. Williams, 1899
Which of them, as Elisaeus, punished a beloved disciple, when burdened beyond his wont by…
Which of them, as Elisaeus, punished a beloved disciple, when burdened beyond his wont by the weight of earthly things which had previously been despised by himself, though earnestly entreated to accept them, not by perpetual leprosy, it is true, yet by dismissal? Which of them, as he, has opened the eyes of the soul for a servant, when, in despair of life, he was excited and trembling at the sudden warlike preparations of the enemies, besieging the city in which they were? Who among us, as he, has done this with fervent prayer offered unto God, so that he could see the mountain full of the heavenly army of allies, and of armed chariots or horsemen flashing with fiery countenances, and that he might believe that God was stronger to save than the enemies to fight? Which of them also by contact with his body, when dead to the world, yet living unto God, shall profit, as the above-named did, another lying in a different death, that is, dead unto God, but living unto sins, so that he should forthwith leap forth and give thanks to Christ for a healing despaired of in the conversation of almost all men? Of which of them, with live coal carried from off the altar in the tongs of the cherubs, so that his sins should be blotted out, were the lips purified, as those of Isaiah, by humble confession? Was it not by those lips, with the help of the efficacious prayer of the pious king Hezekiah, that 185,000 of the Assyrian army, like the men mentioned above, were thoroughly overthrown, with no trace of wound, by the hand of the angel? Which of them, like blessed Jeremiah, because of the commands of God and his public utterance of threats given from heaven, and the truth even to men who heard not, experienced the squalor and filth of prisons, equivalent to death for a time? To be brief, who of them, as the teacher of the gentiles has said, suffered the wandering on mountains, in caves and holes of the earth, the stoning, the cutting asunder, the trial by every kind of death for the Lord’s name, like the holy prophets?