Letter 39: Just as it is not safe to travel through a wilderness with a violent companion, so it is not easy to engage in...
To Timotheos, the Reader [a lector, a minor order of the church].
Why, having chosen the narrow way, and having offered God your covenants on its behalf, do you travel the broad road, the one that leads to death? [an allusion to Matthew 7:13-14]. For the unsparing self-indulgence here brings down punishment there; but the present hardship, and the constraining of the bodily cravings, prepares the enjoyment of the good things to come.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
(39) Τί τὴν στενὴν ἑλόμενος, καὶ [τὰς] συνθήκας ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς Θεῷ παρασχόμενος, τὴν πλατεῖαν ὁδεύεις ὁδόν, τὴν εἰς θάνατον φέρουσαν; Ἡ γὰρ ἐνταῦθα ἀφείδεια, τὴν ἐκεῖθεν φέρει τιμωρίαν. Ἡ δὲ παροῦσα κάκωσις, καὶ τῶν ῥηξέων στένωσις, τὴν μέλλουσαν τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἑτοιμάζει ἀπόλαυσιν.
Revision history
- 2026-05-27v2.2.34-import
Initial corpus import from modern isidore pelusium workflow v1.
Fields: letter text, metadata, source links. Source: https://archive.org/details/PatrologiaGraeca (PG vol.78)
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