Work as the Cure for Many Faults

So he loses no time in applying a fitting remedy to what had given rise to so many faults. Laying aside the apostolic power he had used a little before, he takes up once more the tender part of a good father or a kind physician, and, as though they were his children or his patients, he applies remedies to cure them through his healing counsel: “Now we command those who are like this, and urge them by the Lord Jesus, to work in silence and eat their own bread.” Like a skilled physician, he heals the cause of all these ulcers, which spring from the root of idleness, by a single healing command to work. For he knows that all the other bad symptoms, which grow, as it were, from the same clump, will disappear at once when the cause of the chief disease has been removed. [a]