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purpose, and this not with any dishonest intention, but in a sincere desire to arrange their ideas in systematical groups, while yet their powers of thought were not accurate enough, nor their common sense stern enough, to detect the fallacy, or disdain the finesse, by which these arrangements were frequently accomplished.

§ 52. Thus St. Ambrose, in his commentary on Luke vi. 20, is resolved to transform the four Beatitudes there described into rewards of the four cardinal Virtues, and sets himself thus ingeniously to the task:

“’Blessed be ye poor.’ Here you have Temperance. ‘Blessed are ye that hunger now.’ He who hungers, pities those who are an-hungered; in pitying, he gives to them, and in giving he becomes just (largiendo fit justus). ‘Blessed are ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh.’ Here you have Prudence, whose part it is to weep, so far as present things are concerned, and to seek the things which are eternal. ‘Blessed are ye when men shall hate you.’ Here you have Fortitude.”

§ 53. As a preparation for this profitable exercise of wit, we have also a reconciliation of the Beatitudes as stated by St. Matthew, with those of St. Luke, on the ground that “in those eight are these four, and in these four are those eight;” with sundry remarks on the mystical value of the number eight, with which I need not trouble the reader. With St. Ambrose, however, this puerile systematization is quite subordinate to a very forcible and truthful exposition of the real nature of the Christian life. But the classification he employs furnishes ground for farther subtleties to future divines; and in a MS. of the thirteenth century I find some expressions in this commentary on St. Luke, and in the treatise on the duties of bishops, amplified into a treatise on the “Steps of the Virtues: by which every one who perseveres may, by a straight path, attain to the heavenly country of the Angels.” (“Liber de Gradibus Virtutum: quibus ad patriam angelorum supernam itinere recto ascenditur ab omni perseverante.”) These Steps are thirty in number (one expressly for each day

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