d prove who are
Christians, and who hypocrites and dissemblers under so great a name,
whose lives are an injury and blasphemy against Christ and his holy
religion. His book On Perfection teaches, that that life is most perfect
which resembles nearest the life of Christ in humility and charity, and
in dying to all passions and to the love of creatures that in which
Christ most perfectly lives, and which is his best living image, which
appears in a man's thoughts, words, and actions; for these show the
image which is imprinted on the soul. But there is no perfection which
is not occupied in continually advancing higher. His book On the
Resolution of Perfection to the monks, shows perfection to consist in
every action being referred to God, and done perfectly conformable to
his will in the spirit of Christ. St. Gregory had excommunicated certain
persons, who instead of repenting, fell to threats and violence. The
saint made against them his sermon, entitled, Against those who do not
receive chastisement submissively; in which, after exhorting them to
submission, he offers himself to suffer torments and death, closing it
thus: "How can we murmur to suffer, who are the ministers of a God
crucified? yet under all you inflict, I receive your insolences and
persecutions as a father and mother do from their dearest children, with
tenderness." In the discourse On Children dying without Baptism, he
shows that such can never enjoy God; yet feel not the severe torments of
the rest of the damned. We have his sermons On Pentecost, Christ's
Birth, Baptism, Ascension, and On his Resurrection, (but of these last
only the first, third, and fourth are St. Gregory's) and two On St.
Stephen, three On the forty Martyrs: the lives of St. Gregory
Thaumaturgus, St. Theodorus, St. Ephrem, St. Meletius, and his sister,
St. Macrina: his panegyric on his brother St. Basil the Great, the
funeral oration of Pulcheria, daughter to the Emperor Theodosius, six
years old, and that of his mother, the empress Flaccilla, who died soon
after her at the waters in Thrace. St. Gregory was invited to make these
two discourses, in 385, when he was at Constantinople. We have only five
of St. Gregory's letters in his works. Zacagnius has published fourteen
others out of the Vatican library. Caraccioli of Pisa, in 1731, has
given us seven more with tedious notes.

Saint Gregory surpasses himself in perspicuity and strength of
reasoning, in his polemic works against a