Miscellaneous Letters.
Letter LXXXI.
Ep. LXXXI.
You are distressed by your travels, and think yourself unsteady, like a stick carried along by a stream. But, my dear friend, you must not let yourself feel so at all. For the travels of the stick are involuntary, but your course is ordained by God, and your stability is in doing good to others, even though you are not fixed to a place; unless indeed one ought to find fault with the sun, for going about the world scattering his rays, and giving life to all things on which he shines; or, while praising the fixed stars, one should revile the planets, whose very wandering is harmonious.
Edition and rights
NPNF2-07. Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen. Historical English edition; series volume first published 1894.
Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow, translators
Ancient work and historical English translation: public domain in the United States (published before 1931). Copyright rules vary by country. This is a historical source transcription, not an official Church edition. Modern website material is not reproduced.
Historical footnotes and publisher introductions are omitted. Author-written openings are retained. Paragraph whitespace is normalized. Transcriptions can contain errors; this is not a critical edition. Attribution follows the historical edition, not universal scholarly agreement.
Digitization provenance (not an external reading link): https://www.ccel.org/ccel/s/schaff/npnf207.xml
Source section: iv.iv.ii.vi · Text SHA-256: 1170085a16f3917700ca837e578a98370e3a2dbf6bd6389940b9fcb18468e675