Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Gregory Thaumaturgus/Acknowledged Writings/Oration to Origen/Part 9

Argument IX.—But He Imbues Their Minds, Above All, with

Ethical Science; And He Does Not Confine Himself to Discoursing on the

Virtues in Word, But He Rather Confirms His Teaching by His

Acts.

Moreover, as to those things which excel all in

importance, and those for the sake of which, above all else, the

whole family of the

philosophical labours, gathering them like good fruits produced by the

varied growths of all the other studies, and of long practised

philosophizing,—I mean the divine virtues that concern the moral

nature, by which the impulses of the mind have their equable and stable

subsistence,—through these, too, he aimed at making us truly

proof against grief

and disquietude under the pressure of all ills, and at imparting to us

a well-disciplined and stedfast and religious spirit, so that we might

be in all things veritably blessed. And this he toiled at

effecting by pertinent discourses, of a wise and soothing tendency, and

very often also by the most cogent addresses touching our moral