Have not I commanded you? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be you dismayed: for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.
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Gregory the Theologian
AD 390
What aspects of theology should be investigated, and to what limit? Only aspects within our grasp, and only to the limit of the experience and capacity of our audience. Just as excess of sound or food injures the hearing or general health, or, if you prefer, as loads that are too heavy injure those who carry them, or as excessive rain harms the soil, we too must guard against the danger that the toughness, so to speak, of our discourses may so oppress and overtax our hearers as actually to impair the powers they had before.
Yet I am not maintaining that we ought not to be mindful of God at all times. My adversaries, ever ready and quick to attack, need not pounce on me again. It is more important that we should remember God than that we should breathe: indeed, if one may say so, we should do nothing else besides. I am one of those who approve the precept that commands us to “meditate day and night,” to tell of the Lord “evening, and morning, and at noon,” and to “bless the Lord at all ...
Still, toss all pride far from your side, and be valiant. Look: when Joshua [son] of Nun was valiant, God delivered his enemies into his hands. If you are fainthearted, you become a stranger to the law of God. Faintheartedness fills you with pretexts for laziness, mistrust and negligence, until you are destroyed. - "Instructions 21"
You should not be like a wanderer, rambling about the streets, without just cause, to spy out those who live wickedly. But by minding your own trade and employment, endeavor to do what is acceptable to God. And keeping in mind the oracles of Christ, meditate in the same continually. For so the Scripture says to you: “You shall meditate in his law day and night; when you walk in the field, and when you sit in your house, and when you lie down, and when you rise up, that you may have understanding in all things.” No, although you are rich and so do not want a trade for your maintenance, don’t be one that wonders and walks around at random; but either go to some that are believers, and of the same religion, and confer and discourse with them about the lively oracles of God. Or if you stay at home, read the books of the Law, of the Kings, with the Prophets; sing the hymns of David; and peruse diligently the gospel, which is the completion of the other. - "Constitutions of the Holy Apostles...
