To us no human affectation of canine equanimity, modelled by insensibility, furnishes the warrant for exercising patience; but the divine arrangement of a living and celestial discipline, holding up before us God 708 Himself in the very first place as an example of patience; who scatters equally over just and unjust the bloom of this light; who suffers the good offices of the seasons, the services of the elements, the tributes of entire nature, to accrue at once to worthy and unworthy; bearing with the most ungrateful nations, adoring as they do the toys of the arts and the works of their own hands, persecuting His Name together with His family; bearing with luxury, avarice, iniquity, malignity, waxing insolent daily: so that by His own patience He disparages Himself; for the cause why many believe not in the Lord is that they are so long without knowing that He is wroth with the world.
Apocrypha · Chapter 2 of 15
Of Patience 2
Patristic Treatise
About Of Patience
An apocryphal or pseudepigraphal text — outside the canon of the Western churches, yet widely circulated among ancient Jews and Christians. English text: Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, Of Patience (Buffalo, 1885), S. Thelwall, 1885 (public domain). Portuguese and Spanish: Lux Veritas translations from this edition.
Source: Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, Of Patience (Buffalo, 1885), S. Thelwall (1885) · public domain