John Chrysostom

"In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves." For he that teaches must be especially careful to do it with meekness. For a soul that wishes to learn cannot gain any useful instruction from harshness and contention. For when it would apply, being thus thrown into perplexity, it will learn nothing. He who would gain any useful knowledge ought above all things to be well disposed towards his teacher, and if this be not previously attained, nothing that is requisite or useful can be accomplished. And no one can be well disposed towards him who is violent and overbearing. How is it then that he says, "A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject"? He speaks there of one incorrigible, of one whom he knows to be diseased beyond the possibility of cure. "If God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth." What he says amounts to this. Perhaps there will be a reformation. Perhaps! for it is uncertain. So that we ought to withdraw only from those, of whom we can show plainly, and concerning whom we are fully persuaded, that whatever be done, they will not be reformed. "In meekness," he says. In this temper, you see, we ought to address ourselves to those who are willing to learn, and never cease from conversing with them till we have come to the demonstration.