Teaching Christianity
intrusive ones, are dealt with and solved, the argument stretches on and on to such lengths, that unless the disputant has an extremely good and disciplined memory, he is unable to get back to the original point he started from. It is, however, a very good thing if anything that can be gainsaid should be refuted as soon as it crops up, in case it should also crop up on an occasion when there is nobody who can answer it, or where such a person is indeed present but keeps quiet, and the person who raised it should go away, his mind not put at rest.
40. The apostle adopts a moderate style in these words: Do not rebuke an older man, but entreat him as a father, younger men as brothers, old women as mothers, young women as sisters (1 Tm 5:l-2). And again in these: But I implore you, brothers, by the compassion of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrificial victim, holy, pleasing to God (Rom 12:1). And almost the whole of that passage of exhortation displays a moderate kind of oratory—particularly fine, where things that are appropriately due in appropriate circumstances follow one another handsomely like debts being paid, in this way: Having gifts that vary according to the grace that has been given to us, whether prophecy according to the rule of faith, or service in serving, or the one who teaches in teaching, or the one who encourages in encouragement, or the one who is bountiful in simplicity, or the one who is in charge in solicitude, or the one who takes pity in cheerfulness. Love without pretense, hating what is evil, cleaving to the good, loving one another with fraternal charity, vying with one another in mutual respect, not sluggish in zeal, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, patient in trouble, punctilious in prayer, sharing with the saints in their needs, pursuing hospitality. Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. Rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep, sharing each other's thoughts (Rom 12:6–15).