What, then, ought we to do for the death of the soul?  For this, however terrible, may be forever prevented, without such great labor, without such great expense.  The Lord seeks us ourselves, and not what is ours.  He stands in no need of our wealth who bestows all things.  For it is he to whom it is said, “My goods are nothing unto thee.”  With him a man is by so much the greater, as, in his own judgment, he is less.  With him a man is as much the more righteous, as in his own opinion he is the more guilty.  In his eyes we hide our faults all the more, the more that here by confession we manifest them.

THE LAST ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM

“He came unto his own, and his own received him not.”  That is, he entered Jerusalem.  Yet now he entered, not Jerusalem, which by interpretation is “The Vision of Peace,” but the home of tyranny.  For now the elders of the city have so manifestly conspired against him, that he can no longer find a place of refuge within it.  This is not to be attributed to his helplessness but to his patience.  He could be harbored there securely, seeing that no one can do him harm by violence, and that he has the power to incline the hearts of men whither he wills.  For in that same city he freely did whatever he willed to do; and when he sent his disciples thither, and commanded them that they should loose the ass and the colt, and bring them to him, and said that no man would forbid them, he accomplished that which he said, although he was not ignorant of the conspiracy against himself.  Of which he saith to his disciples whom he sends, “Go ye into the castle over against you”; that is, to the place which is equally opposed to God and to you; no longer to be called a city, an assembly of men living under the law, but a castle of tyrannical fortification.  Go confidently, saith he, into the place, though such it is, and though it is therefore opposed to you, and do with all security that which I command you.  Whence he adds, also:  “And if any man say aught unto you, say that the Lord hath need of them, and he will straightway send them away.”  A wonderful confidence of power!  As if the Lord, using his own right of command, lays his own injunction on those whom he knows already to have conspired for his death.  Thus he commands, thus he enjoins, thus he compels obedience.  Nor do they who are sent hesitate in accomplishing that which is laid upon them, confident as they are in the strength of the power of him who sends them.  By that power they who were chiefly concerned in this conspiracy had been more than once ejected from the Temple, where many were not able to resist one.  And they, too, after this ejection and conspiracy, as we have said, when he was daily teaching in the Temple, knew how intrepid he showed himself to be, into whose hands the Father had given all things.  And last of all, when he desired to celebrate the Passover in