For he selected this one nation to teach the knowledge of God to all the others. … The Philistines also testified to this. They feared the presence of the ark and said to one another, This is the God who struck Egypt. Woe to us Philistines. Then God gave the ark to the Philistines to convict his people of transgressing the law. For he could not make those who flagrantly broke the law its upholders. But in giving the ark he safeguarded his majesty, teaching the Philistines that it was sinful men they had conquered and not God.

How will it be true to say about that [earthly] tabernacle that only the innocent in hands and pure in heart, who did not receive his soul in vain,^[1] will inhabit it, when the history of the kings transmits that the worst priests, sons of pestilence, have dwelt in the tabernacle of God and the ark of the covenant itself also was captured by foreigners and detained with the impious and profane? From all of this it is evident that the prophet felt in a far different sense about this tabernacle^[2] in which he says that only the innocent in hands and pure in heart, who did not receive his soul in vain nor do evil to his neighbor and did not accept reproach against his neighbor will dwell.^[3] It is necessary, therefore, that the inhabitant of this tabernacle which the Lord erected, not man, be such a person.

See what chastity is required in a bishop! If his child is unchaste, he himself cannot be a bishop, and he offends God in the same way as did Eli the priest, who had indeed rebuked his sons, but because he had not put away the offenders, fell backwards and died before the lamp of God went out.

Read the Scriptures and you will never find holy women bearing children in pain, with the exception of Rachel, who, when she was on a journey and in the hippodrome, that is, in the course for horses which had been sold to Egypt,^[1] suffered while delivering her son, whom his father later called son of the right hand.^[2] Eve, when she was expelled from paradise and was told You will bear children in pain,^[3] is described as experiencing pain in childbirth. The wife of Phinehas, who was bent over and could not stand erect, like the woman whom the devil bound in the gospel,^[4] gave birth after she had heard that the ark of God was captured and her people were destroyed. But Sarah, because she was holy and postmenopausal,^[5] said to Isaac when he was born: God has made laughter for me, for whoever hears about this will congratulate me.^[6] The pains, therefore, which overcame the tower of the flock,^[7] are the pains of hell and the pains of death, which surrounded and attacked even the Savior but were never able to overtake him, as he himself says in Psalm 17:5: The pains of death surrounded me and the torrents of evil shook me and the pains of hell attacked me.