If in a small parish one advanced in years is not to be found, let some younger person who has a good report among his neighbors and is esteemed by them worthy of the office of a bishop—who has carried himself from his youth with meekness and regularity, like a much elder person—after examination and a general good report, be ordained in peace. . . . Joash governed the people at seven years of age. Wherefore, although the person is young, let him be meek, gentle and quiet.

Some such thing we read of in the book of Chronicles. For Joash the king of Judah at the age of seven was summoned by Jehoiada the priest to the kingdom and by the witness of Scripture is commended for all his actions as long as the aforesaid priest lived. But hear what Scripture relates of him after Jehoiada’s death and how he was puffed up with pride and given over to a most disgraceful state. But after the death of Jehoiada the princes went in and worshiped the king: and he was soothed by their services and hearkened to them. And they forsook the temple of the Lord, the God of their fathers, and served groves and idols, and great wrath came on Judah and Jerusalem because of this sin. And after a little: When a year was come about, the army of Syria came up against him: and they came to Judah and Jerusalem and killed all the princes of the people, and they sent all the spoils to the king to Damascus. And whereas there came a very small number of the Syrians, the Lord delivered into their hands an infinite multitude, because they had forsaken the Lord the God of their fathers; and on Joash they executed shameful judgments. And departing they left him in great diseases. You see how the consequence of pride was that he was given over to shocking and filthy passions. For he who is puffed up with pride and has permitted himself to be worshiped as God, is (as the apostle says) given over to shameful passions and a reprobate mind to do those things that are not convenient.^[1] And because, as Scripture says, everyone who exalts his heart is unclean before God,^[2] he who is puffed up with swelling pride of heart is given over to most shameful confusion to be deluded by it, that when thus humbled he may know that he is unclean through impurity of the flesh and knowledge of impure desires, a thing that he had refused to recognize in the pride of his heart; and also that the shameful infection of the flesh may disclose the hidden impurity of the heart, which he contracted through the sin of pride, and that through the patent pollution of his body he may be proved to be impure, who did not formerly see that he had become unclean through the pride of his spirit.

If there are any who think that they can return to the church without prayers but with threats, or think that they can make an entrance for themselves, not by lamentations and reparations but by terrors, let them certainly consider that the church of the Lord remains closed against such and that the camp of Christ, invincible and brave and fortified by the protecting Lord, does not yield to threats. The bishop of God, holding the gospel, can be killed as observing the precepts of Christ; he cannot be conquered. Zachariah, the high priest of God, suggests and gives to us examples of virtue and of faith. When he could not be terrified by threats and stoning, he was killed in the temple of God, crying out and saying the same thing that we shout also against heretics and say, Thus says the Lord: You have forsaken the ways of the Lord, and the Lord will forsake you.

Zechariah was son of high priest Jehoiada, a man who was likewise very holy. They stoned Zechariah between the temple and the altar, as the Lord himself bore witness when he made mention of the blessed martyrs in the Gospel.^[1]