De consolatione ethnica et christiana, censura theologica

16. But if, according to the opinion of Apollodorus in Stobaeus, better things are always to be hoped for, there is no reason why we should utterly lose heart in adversity, since hope alone is accustomed to console a person in miseries, as Cicero said somewhere. And the verses are known:

Hope also consoles the one bound in strong fetters,
The legs resound with iron, but he sings amidst his toil.

However, to say nothing of all those forms of consolation which the Peripatetics provide, let us observe what Cicero himself says about the latter: O fallacious hope of men, and fragile fortune, and our empty contentions: which are often broken and collapse in the middle of the course, and are overwhelmed in the very harbor before they could catch sight of the harbor 3. De Oratore.

X.

Now, that Academic Consolation is the one which Plato handed down in the 10th book of the Republic in these words: "Reason dictates that it is best in adversity, as much as possible, to remain quiet and not to complain: because it is uncertain whether that which has happened is a good or a bad thing; then because pain contributes nothing to the things that follow, and nothing in human affairs is to be valued greatly, and for that which can suddenly be a protection, pain becomes a hindrance." And that of Seneca: He can guard against fortune who can bear it.

XI.

But omitting Ethnic pagan Consolations (about which Philip Melanchthon, that man great in piety, doctrine, and merit, dealt briefly but prudently in his Theological Examination), let us approach Christian Consolations, original Greek: "nothing worse". For these will teach what we ought to determine about those things. For the reason of our undertaking demands that we approach the superior and more effective Consolations, to which we lay down this truly golden, and, if you look at its firmness, adamantine foundation. "Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father, I say, of mercies and the God of all comfort. Who comforts us in all our oppression, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any oppression, with that very consolation with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so also our consolation abounds through Christ." 2. Cor. 1. 3. 4. 5.