My friends scorn me: but my eye pours out tears unto God.
Read Chapter 16
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
29. For what is denoted by the eye, but the intent of the heart? as it is written, if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. [Matt. 6, 22] For when any thing is done with a good intention, the enacting of that intention contracts no soil in the sight of God; and so when friends are full of words, i.e. when the very same persons detract that are joined with us in faith, ‘the eye’ must needs ‘pour out tears to God,’ that so the whole bent of our heart may run out in the piercing of interior love, and lift itself up to the things of the interior, the more exactly that being forced back by external reproaches, it is driven to turn back within, lest it should vanish away without.
