FROM THE FATHERS

“AS THE LAW leads them [the Israelites leaving Egypt with Moses] along the royal highway, they deviate from it in no way at all. It is easy for a traveller to turn aside. Suppose two precipices form a high narrow pass; from its middle the person crossing it veers at his peril in either direction (for the chasm on either side swallows the person who turns aside). In the same way the Law requires the person who keeps in step with it not to leave the way which is, as the Lord says, narrow and hard, to the left or to the right. This teaching lays down that virtue is discerned in the mean. Accordingly, all evil naturally operates in a deficiency of or an excess of virtue. In the case of courage, cowardice is the lack of virtue and rashness is its excess. What is pure in each of these is seen to lie between these corresponding evils and is virtue.”