Chapter 12.—13. For I am a man of the threshing-floor of Christ: if a bad man, then part of the chaff; if good, then of the grain. The winnowing-fan of this threshing-floor is not the tongue of Petilianus; and hereby, whatever evil he may have uttered, even with truth, against the chaff of this threshing-floor, this in no way prejudices its grain. But whereinsoever he has cast any revilings or calumnies against the grain itself, its
faith is tried on earth, and its reward increased in the heavens. For where men are holy servants of the Lord, and are fighting with holiness for God, not against Petilianus, or any flesh and blood like him, but against principalities and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world,2362
such as are all
enemies of the
truth, to whom I would that we could say, "Ye were sometime
darkness, but now are ye
light in the
Lord,"
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—where the
servants of
God, I say, are waging such a
war as this, then all the calumnious revilings that are uttered by their
enemies, which cause an
evil report among the malicious and those that are rash in believing, are
weapons on the left
hand: it is with such as these that even the
devil is defeated. For when we are tried by good
report, whether we
resist the exaltation of ourselves to
pride, and are tried by
evil report, whether we
love even those very
enemies by
whom it is
invented against us, then we overcome the
devil by the
armor of
righteousness on the right
hand and on the left. For when the
apostle had used the expression, "By the
armor of
righteousness on the right
hand and on the left," he at once goes on to say, as if in explanation of the terms, "By
honor and
dishonor, by
evil report and good
report,"
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and so forth,—reckoning
honor and good
report among the
armor on the right hand, dishonor and evil report among that upon the left.
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