The fourth degree of humility is that meeting in this obedience with difficulties and contradictions and even injustice, he should with a silent mind hold fast to patience, and enduring neither tire nor run away, for the Scripture saith: He that shall persevere to the end shall be saved.1 And again: Let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord.2 And showing how the true disciple ought to endure all things, however contrary, for the Lord, it saith in the person of sufferers: For thy sake we are put to death all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.3 Then, confident in their hope of the divine reward, they go on with joy to declare: But in all these things we overcome, through him that hath loved us.4 And again in another place the Scripture saith: Thou, O God, hast proved us: thou hast tried us by fire, as silver is tried. Thou hast brought us into the snare: thou hast laid afflictions on our back.5 And to show that we ought to be under a superior, it goeth on to say: Thou hast set men over our heads.6 Moreover, in adversities and injuries they patiently fulfil the Lord’s commands: when struck on one cheek they offer the other, when robbed of their tunic they surrender also their cloak, when forced to go a mile they go two, with the apostle Paul they bear with false brethren, and they bless those that curse them.
1Matt x, 22
2Ps xxvi, 14
3Rom viii, 36
4Ibid 375 Ps lxv, 10,116 Ibid 12