Yes, but this is very good advice, rightly addressed to those who have resources and will not use them: those who have enough, who can work and earn their living by the sweat of their brows, by their trade, who still have something. Someone who has birds can catch birds. But what are we to do—we who are slaves by nature, powerless and unable to help ourselves, outright beggars wasting and pining away, with no means at all, no hope of getting any, no prospect of deliverance or a better outcome?

Like the ancient Britons, oppressed by the Picts, who complained to their lords and masters, the Romans: “The sea drives us to the barbarians; the barbarians to the sea.” The barbarians drove them to the sea, and the sea drove them back to the barbarians. Our present misery forces us to cry out and howl, to appeal to the rich; they send us back to our misfortune with a scornful answer and take no pity on us.

They commonly overlook their poor friends in adversity. If they happen to meet them, they deliberately forget them and refuse to acknowledge them. They will not help us; they cannot. Instead of comforting us, they threaten, abuse and mock us, adding to our misery with insults. Or if they do offer kind words, what relief is that? As Thales said, “It is easy to advise others.” Who cannot give good advice? It is cheap; it costs them nothing.

It is easy, with a full belly, to declaim against fasting: “The well-fed man praises fasting on a full stomach.” “Does the wild ass bray when he has grass, or the ox low when he has fodder?” Job 6:5. “For nothing can be more cheerful than the Roman people.” No one alive was so cheerful, so merry, as the people of Rome when they had plenty. But when they fell into want and were starved with hunger, neither shame, nor laws, nor arms, nor magistrates could keep them obedient.

Seneca argues strongly for poverty, and so did those lazy philosophers. Yet he was rich, and they had enough to support themselves. Does any poor man praise it? “Some people,” says Bernard, “approve of a humble condition, on condition that they themselves never go without. Others are meek so long as they may say or do whatever they please; but when put to the test, how far they are from patience!” I wish to God, as someone said, that no one would praise poverty unless he were poor himself; or that whoever admires it so much would relieve, help or ease the burden of others.

Now, if you hear us and are divine, Apollo, Tell me where someone without money can get it.

Now, if you hear us and are a good man, Tell someone in need how to get a living, if you can.

But no one hears us. We are utterly cast down, the scum of the world:

There is scarcely room on us now for another blow.

We can get no relief, no comfort, no help:

And I found nothing that could bring me help.

We have tried every means and found no remedy. No one alive can express the anguish and bitterness of our souls except those of us who endure it. We are afflicted and abandoned, tormented in body and mind, in another hell. What are we to do?

When Crassus, the Roman consul, fought the Parthians, he fled by night after a disastrous battle, leaving four thousand severely sick and wounded men in his camp to face the enemy’s fury. When the poor men realized this, “they filled everything with cries and howls.” They lamented miserably and roared aloud, as loudly as Homer’s Mars when wounded—a roar that ten thousand men could not drown out—all from fear of imminent death.

But our condition is far more tragic and miserable, far more pitiable; we have much greater cause to lament. The devil and the world persecute us; all good fortune has forsaken us. We are left at the mercy of beggary, cold, hunger, thirst, filth, sickness and weariness, to endure continual torment, toil and pain, mockery and contempt—all bitter enemies, far worse than any death. Death alone is what we desire; death we seek, yet cannot have. What are we to do?

“What you bear badly, grow used to; you will bear it well.” Accustom yourself to it, and eventually it will become tolerable. “Yes, but I cannot; it is beyond me. Fortune has exhausted her strength in harming me. I am at the utmost limit of human adversity. As a shadow leaves the body when the sun is gone, so I am now abandoned, lost, utterly forsaken by the world.”

“Someone lying on the ground has nowhere left to fall.” Take comfort in this, at least: you are at the worst, and before long either it will overcome you or you will overcome it. If it is violent, it cannot last: “Either it will break up, or it will break you.” Let the devil himself and all the plagues of Egypt fall on you at once:

Do not yield to adversity; meet it with greater courage.

Be courageous: misery is virtue’s whetstone.

Serpents, thirst, heat and sands Are sweet to courage.

As Cato told his soldiers marching through the deserts of Libya, thirst, heat, sands and serpents were pleasant to a brave man. Honourable undertakings bring dangers and losses, as experience proves; they will make the rest of your life taste sweeter.

But suppose they continue. You are not as poor as when you were born; and, as some maintain, it is much better to be pitied than envied. Suppose, then, that you have lost everything: you are poor, cast down, in bodily pain and mental anguish; your enemies gloat over you; you are as badly off as Job. Yet tell me, says Chrysostom, who was the greater victor, Job or the devil? Surely Job. The devil had his goods; Job sat on the dunghill and kept his good name. He lost his children, health and friends, but kept his innocence. He lost his money, but kept his trust in God, which was better than any treasure.

Do as Job did, then; triumph as Job did, and do not let yourself be disturbed as every fool does. “But how shall I be able to?” How is this to be done? Chrysostom answers, “Easily, if you think of heaven”: very easily, if you will only meditate on heaven.