You see, even if it is the wicked who perish, nevertheless the souls of good people are likely to show compassion when they see people being punished. And you will find each of the good people and the inspired writers making earnest supplication for them, as for example the patriarch did for the Sodomites and the inspired writers all continued to do. One, for instance, said, "Woe is me, Lord; are you wiping out the remnant of Israel?" Another said, "Will you make people like the fish of the sea, deprived of a leader?" So since without even this the good man was troubled in mind and sick at heart, the Lord, in case the sight of these things should cast Noah into deeper depression, locked him in the ark as though in a prison, lest he have a sight of these events and be terror-struck. In his care for him, therefore, the loving God does not allow him to view the torrent of water or see the disaster occurring that involved the destruction of the world.

Peter, anxious for such desirable life, and preferring his own benefit to that of many, had said, It is good for us to be here. But since charity seeks not her own, Jesus did not this which seemed good to Peter, but descended to the multitude, as it were from the high mount of His divinity, that He might be of use to such as could not ascend because of the weakness of their souls; whence it is said, And when he was come to the multitude; for if He had not gone to the multitude with His elect disciples, there would not have come near to Him the man of whom it is added, There came to him a man kneeling down, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son. Consider here, that sometimes those that are themselves the sufferers believe and entreat for their own healing, sometimes others for them, as he who kneels before Him praying for his son, and sometimes the Saviour heals of Himself unasked by any. First, let us see what this means that follows, For he is lunatic, and sore vexed. Let the physicians talk as they list, for they think it no unclean spirit, but some bodily disorder, and say, that the humours in the head are governed in their motions by sympathy with the phases of the moon, whose light is of the nature of humours. But we who believe the Gospel say that it is an unclean spirit that works such disorders in men. The spirit observes the moon’s changes, that it may cheat men into the belief that the moon is the cause of their sufferings, and so prove God’s creation to be evil; as other dæmons lay wait for men following the times and courses of the stars, that they may speak wickedness in high places, calling some stars malignant, others benign; whereas no star was made by God that it should produce evil. In this that is added, For ofttimes he falls into the fire, and oft into the water,

Of the changefulness of the sinner it is said, The fool changes as the moon. (Ecclus. 27:12.) We may see sometimes that an impulse towards good works comes over such, when, lo! again as by a sudden seizure of a spirit they are laid hold of by their passions, and fall from that good state in which they were supposed to stand. Perhaps his father stands for the Angel to whom was allotted the care of this lunatic, praying the Physician of souls, that He would set free his son, who could not be delivered from his suffering by the simple word of Christ’s disciples, because as a deaf person he cannot receive their instruction, and therefore he needs Christ’s word, that henceforth he may not act without reason.