Egypt's marrow; Rabshakeh's vines

Cyril went on: '...and taking your father, come, and do not spare with your eyes your vessels; for all the goods of Egypt shall be yours.' So the ruler of the Egyptians promised them rest, and to fatten them well with luxury, and he even granted wagons, smoothing, I think, the descent for those who hesitated. But they went down at once with their whole house, having somehow preferred the temporary enjoyment of food to land and country given by God; for it was far better and finer, I suppose, to inhabit that, even if the thing was accomplished with a little labor. And when they had come into Egypt, they thought perhaps they had also escaped thereafter the labors at home, to whom the sense of the delights at hand was somehow sweet. But as time crept on, the crowd noble and free from above and from the fathers runs under the inglorious yoke of slavery. So if falling into the more shameful things should come with worldly good days, it must be refused, my good man, if freedom is of any account with us, and the slavish thing and mind is abominable and hated.

Palladius said: You have spoken best.

Cyril: And what? Do we not also say that other thing, which, as it seems to me, is in no moderate labor together with what we have just said, toward profit?

Palladius: What do you mean?

Cyril: Rabshakeh the Babylonian, general of the Assyrians, once dragged a crowd of spear-bearers beyond number, and came to besiege, or rather, having supposed that he would take the holy city from the foundations with very little toil. Then, before the weapons, he put forward the unpracticed — no, the very customary — sickness of the tongue against God. And saying a thousand things of ill omen, he called out at last to those who lived in the holy city: 'Thus says the king of the Assyrians: If you wish to be blessed, come over to me, and each of you shall eat his vine and his fig-trees, and you shall drink water of your cistern, until I come and take you into a land like your land, a land of grain and wine and breads and vineyards.' See then that he too promises the luxury and delight upon vine and fig, and he added that 'And you shall drink water of your cistern.'

Palladius: But what would these things wish to show, if they were led to a spiritual contemplation?

Cyril: In a double manner, I think, the power of what is cheap is brought to its end in us. For either by the pleasures from outside, or by those inborn and in us, being persuaded by ourselves and also by others to revel, those easy toward sin would be caught, having slipped toward anything most shameful. And the Savior's disciple would also show us that this is true, saying in this way, 'that all that is in the world, the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life.'