4. Nay more; for is it not so that even for open wickednesses, not to punish but to perpetrate them, men put up with many most grievous troubles? Do not authors of secular letters tell of a certain right noble parricide of his country, that hunger, thirst, cold, all these he was able to endure, and his body was patient of lack of food and warmth and sleep to a degree surpassing belief?7    Sallust Catilin, c. v. Why speak of highway robbers, all of whom while they lie in wait for travellers endure whole nights without sleep, and that they may catch, as they pass by, men who have no thought of harm, will, no matter how foul the weather, plant in one spot their mind and body, which are full of thoughts of harm? Nay it is said that some of them are wont to torture one another by turns, to that degree that this practice and training against pains is not a whit short of pains. For, not so much perchance are they excruciated by the Judge, that through smart of pain the truth may be got at, as they are by their own comrades, that through patience of pain truth may not be betrayed. And yet in all these the patience is rather to be wondered at than praised: nay neither wondered at nor praised, seeing it is no patience; but we must wonder at the hardness, deny the patience: for there is nothing in this rightly to be praised, nothing usefully to be imitated; and thou wilt rightly judge the mind to be all the more worthy of greater punishment, the more it yields up to vices the instruments of virtues. Patience is companion of wisdom, not handmaid of concupiscence: patience is the friend of a good conscience, not the foe of innocence.

CAPUT V.

4. Immanis tolerantia Catilinae ac latronum. Quid quod etiam pro apertis sceleribus, non ut ea puniant, sed ut perpetrent, multa homines gravissima perferunt? Nonne de quodam nobilissimo patriae parricida saecularium litterarum loquuntur auctores, quod famem, sitim, frigus ferre poterat, ejusque erat corpus patiens inediae, algoris, vigiliae, supra quam cuiquam credibile est (Sallust., Catil. cap. 5)? Quid de latronibus dicam, quorum omnes cum insidiantur viatoribus, noctes perpetiuntur insomnes, atque ut transeuntes excipiant innocentes, sub qualibet coeli asperitate nocentem animum corpusque defigunt? Quidam vero eorum invicem torquere perhibentur, ita ut exercitatio contra poenas nihil distet a poenis. Non enim tantum fortassis excruciantur a judice ut a dolentibus veritas inquiratur, quantum a suis sociis ut a patientibus non prodatur . Et tamen in his omnibus miranda est potius quam laudanda patientia: imo nec miranda nec laudanda, quae nulla est; sed miranda duritia, neganda patientia: nihil autem illic jure laudandum, nihil utiliter imitandum ; tantoque rectius majore supplicio dignum judicaveris animum, quanto magis vitiis subdit instrumenta virtutum. Patientia comes est sapientiae, non famula concupiscentiae: patientia amica est bonae conscientiae, non inimica innocentiae.