me; trees and rocks, give me the grace of the sacrament." Which
miserable death more afflicted the city than all the rest of the war.
His sermons, Against Fornication, On Penance, On Alms, On Pentecost, are
in the same style. In that against Usurers, he exerts a more than
ordinary zeal, and tells them: "Love the poor. In his necessity he has
recourse to you to assist his misery, but by lending him on usury you
increase it; you sow new miseries on his sorrows, and add to his
afflictions. In appearance you do him a pleasure, but in reality ruin
him, like one who, overeome by a sick man's importunities, gives him
wine, a present satisfaction, but a real poison. Usury gives no relief,
but makes your neighbor's want greater than it was. The usurer is no way
profitable to the republic, neither by tilling the ground, by trade,
&c.; yet idle at home, would have all to produce to him; hates all he
gains not by. But though you were to give alms of these unjust
exactions, they would carry along with them the tears of others robbed
by them. The beggar that receives, did he know it, would refuse to be
fed with the flesh and blood of a brother; with bread extorted by
rapine, from other poor. Give it back to him from whom you unjustly took
it. But to hide their malice, they change the name usury into milder
words, calling it interest or moderate profit, like the heathens, who
called their furies by the soft name Eumenides." He relates that a rich
usurer of Nyssa, so covetous as to deny himself and children
necessaries, and not to use the bath to save three farthings, dying
suddenly, left his money all hid and buried where his children could
never find it, who by that means were all reduced to beggary. "The
usurers answer me," says he, "then we will not lend; and what will the
poor do? I bid them give, and exhort to lend, but without interest; for
he that refuses to lend, and he that lends at usury, are equally
criminal;" viz. if the necessity of another be extreme. His sermon On
the Lent Fast displays the advantage of fasting for the health of both
body and soul; he demands these forty days' strenuous labor to cure all
their vices, and insists on total abstinence from wine at large, and
that weakness of constitution and health is ordinarily a vain pretence.
Saint Gregory's great Catechistical Discourse is commended by Theodoret,
(dial. 2 & 3;) Leontius, (b. 3;) Enthymius, (Panopl. p. 215;) Germanus,
patr. of Constantinople, (in Photius