A.D . 1187. LETTER OF POPE GREGORY. 71 quarters, so that only a few places are said to be remaining which have not fallen into their hands, we do not think requires to be set forth in our letters. However, although we may now say with the Prophet, ' Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep night and day for the slain of my people ;'6? still, we ought not to be so utterly cast down as to fall into distrustfulness, and to believe that God is so angered with His people, that what in His wrath He has allowed to be done through the multitude of our sins in common, He will not speedily, when appeased by our repentance, in His compassion alleviate, and will, after our tears and lamentation, cause gladness and rejoicing. Whatever person then, amid such vast grounds for lamentation, does not, if not in body, still in heart, condole with us, is not only forgetful of the Christian faith, which teaches us to grieve with all who grieve, but even of his own self and of our common humanity, as every person of ordinary discretion is able well to estimate both the very magnitude of the danger, thefierceness of the barbarians who thirst for Christian blood, and exert the whole of their might in profaning the holy places, and using their endeavours to sweep away the name of God from off the earth, points on which we will not enlarge. And whereas the Prophets first laboured with all their zeal, and after them the Apostles and their followers, that the worship of God might exist in that land, and flow thence unto all regions of the world, aye, and even more than that, God (who was willing to becomeflesh, by whom all things were made, and who in his ineffable wisdom and his incomprehensible mercy was willing thus to work out our salvation, through the infirmity of the flesh, through hunger, fasting, thirst, the cross, and His death and resurrection, according to the words, ' Of himself he wrought out our salvation in the midst of the earth ;') also deigned here to undergo labours as well, neither tongue can tell, nor sense can imagine what grief it causes to us and to all Christian people to think what this land has now endured, and what under its former people it is read of as having suffered. Still, we ought not to believe that it is through the injustice of the judge who smites, but rather through the iniquity of the sinful people that these things have come to pass ; since we read that when the people turned unto the Lord, one thousand pursued, and twelve thousand fled; nay more, that, while the people slept, the army « Jer. ix. 1.