How comes it, then, that you are numbered with the violent, the lawless, with those who renounce their citizenship and dishonour the State?
Could not all your worldly meditations preserve you from so gross an incoherence of thought and action ?' 'Indeed, it should have done.' 'And would, perchance, had not your spleen overcome your reason.

Why, that is the case, O Basil, of all but every man who this day calls himself a Roman citizen.

Therefore is it that Italy lies under the wrath of the Most High.

Therefore is it that Rome has fallen, and that the breath of pestilence, the sword of the destroyer, yea, earthquake and flood and famine, desolate the land.

Yet you here find little time, my son, to meditate the laws of God, being so busied for the welfare of men.