hath on that account always from the beginning permitted to be visited with affliction, that thou mightest thus be the occasion of virtue as well as of salvation to brave men. HAIL, land of promise, which, formerly (lowing only with milk and honey for thy possessors, now stretchest forth the food of life, and the means of salvation to the entire world. Most excellent and happy land, I say, which receiving the celestial grain from the recess of the paternal heart iu that most fruitful bosom of thine, hast produced such rich harvests of martyrs from the heavenly seed, and whose fertile soil hast no less manifoldly engendered fruit a thirtieth, sixtieth, and a hundredfold in the remaining race of all the faithful throughout the entire world. Whence most agreeably satiated, and most abundantly crammed with the great store of thy pleasantness, those who have seen thee diffuse around them (éructant) in every place the remembrance of thy abundant sweetness, and tell of the magnificence of thy glory to the very end of the earth to those who have not seen thee, and relate the wonderful things that are done in thee." " Glorious things are spoken concerning thee, CITY OF GOD!"