the Church in general has always been, and to the end will be, liable to
be afflicted by the wicked, as is said in the Psalms (Psalms cxxix., 1),
"From my youth up they have tormented me, and dragged the plow over me
from one end to the other." The Holy Spirit there brings in the ancient
Church, in order that we, after being much acquainted with her afflictions,
may not regard it as either new or vexatious when the like is done to
ourselves in the present day. St. Paul, also, in quoting from another
Psalm (Rom. vii., 36; Psalm xliv., 22), a passage which says, "We have
been led like sheep to the slaughter"; shows that that has not been for
one age only, but is the ordinary condition of the Church, and shall be.

Therefore, on seeing how the Church of God is trampled upon in the
present day by proud worldlings, how one barks and another bites, how
they torture, how they plot against her, how she is assailed incessantly
by mad dogs and savage beasts, let it remind us that the same thing was
done in all the olden time. It is true God sometimes gives her a truce
and time of refreshment, and hence in the Psalm above quoted it is said,
"He cutteth the cords of the wicked"; and in another passage (Psalm
cxxv., 3), "He breaks their staff, lest the good should fall away, by
being too hardly pressed." But still it has pleased Him that His Church
should always have to battle so long as she is in this world, her repose
being treasured up on high in the heavens. (Heb. iii., 9.)

Meanwhile, the issue of her afflictions has always been fortunate. At
all events, God has caused that tho she has been prest by many
calamities, she has never been completely crusht; as it is said (Psalm
vii., 15), "The wicked with all their efforts have not succeeded in that
at which they aimed." St. Paul glories in the fact, and shows that this
is the course which God in mercy always takes. He says (I Cor. iv., 12)
that we endure tribulations, but we are not in agony; we are
impoverished, but not left destitute; we are persecuted, but not
forsaken; cast down, but we perish not; bearing everywhere in our body
the mortification of the Lord Jesus, in order that His life may be
manifested in our mortal bodies. Such being, as we see, the issue which
God has at all times given to the persecutions of His Church, we ought
to take courage, knowing that our forefathers, who were frail men like
ourselves, always had the victory over their enemies by remaining firm
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