the voice of praise, and I will let my vineyard to others, who will bear fruit in season. Yet, according to the common proverb, friends are found among enemies. Therefore, will I send to my friends, words sweeter than dates, more delicious than honey, more precious than gold. Who receive and keep them, shall have that treasure which is happily forever, and faileth not, but increases in life everlasting.
Before I began to walk and labor, a voice resounded before me, saying: "The axe is laid to the tree.” What was this voice but John the Baptist, who, sent before me, cried out in the desert: "The axe is laid to the tree as if to say: "Man is now ready, because the axe is ready.” And he came, preparing the way to the city, and extirpating all obstacles. And I, coming, labored from sunrise to sunset; that is, from my incarnation to my death on the cross, I worked out man’s salvation, flying in the beginning of my entrance into this wilderness, on account of the persecution of Herod, my enemy; and I suffered persecution, I ate and drank, and fulfilled all the other necessities of nature, without sin to the instruction of faith, and the manifestation of my true assumed nature. — Lib. iii., c. 15.
