2. The patience of man, which is right and laudable and worthy of the name of virtue, is understood to be that by which we tolerate evil things with an even mind, that we may not with a mind uneven desert good things, through which we may arrive at better. Wherefore the impatient, while they will not suffer ills, effect not a deliverance from ills, but only the suffering of heavier ills. Whereas the patient who choose rather by not committing to bear, than by not bearing to commit, evil, both make lighter what through patience they suffer, and also escape worse ills in which through impatience they would be sunk. But those good things which are great and eternal they lose not, while to the evils which be temporal and brief they yield not: because “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared,” as the Apostle says, “with the future glory that shall be revealed in us.”4    Rom. viii. 18 And again he says, “This our temporal and light tribulation doth in inconceivable manner work for us an eternal weight of glory.”5    2 Cor. iv. 17

CAPUT II.

2. Patientia recta quaenam et quam utilis. Patientia hominis, quae recta est atque laudabilis et vocabulo digna virtutis, ea perhibetur qua aequo animo mala toleramus, ne animo iniquo bona deseramus , per quae ad meliora perveniamus. Quapropter impatientes dum mala pati nolunt, non efficiunt ut a malis eruantur, sed ut mala graviora patiantur. Patientes autem qui mala malunt non committendo ferre, quam non ferendo committere, et leviora faciunt quae per patientiam patiuntur, et pejora evadunt quibus per impatientiam mergerentur 0612 . Bona vero aeterna et magna non perdunt, dum malis temporalibus brevibusque non cedunt: quoniam non sunt condignae passiones hujus temporis, sicut Apostolus dicit, ad futuram gloriam quae revelabitur in nobis (Rom. VIII, 18). Et iterum ait: Quod est temporale et leve tribulationis nostrae, in incredibilem modum aeternum gloriae pondus operatur nobis (II Cor. IV, 17).