For a nation has come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he has the fangs of a lioness.
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John Chrysostom
AD 407
How shall we be enabled to mortify those inordinate affections that mar our soul? Only by the precious blood of Christ, if it is received with full assurance, for this will have power to extinguish every disease; and together with this the divine Scriptures carefully heard, and almsgiving added to our hearing. And then only shall we live; for now surely we are in no better state than the dead. For as long as we live, those passions live within us. But we must necessarily perish. And unless we first mortify them here, they will be sure to kill us in the other life. Even before death, they will exact of us, in this life, the utmost penalty. Every inordinate passion is both cruel and tyrannical and insatiable, and it never ceases to devour us every day. For “their teeth are the teeth of a lion,” or rather even far more fierce. For the lion, as soon as ever he is satisfied, wants to leave the carcass that has fallen. But these passions neither are satisfied, nor do they leave the one whom they have seized, until they have set one near the devil.
