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What follows? "Let them be turned away immediately blushing, that say to me, Well, well" [Psalm 70:3]. Two are the kinds of persecutors, revilers and flatterers. The tongue of the flatterer does more persecute than the hand of the slayer: for this also the Scripture has called a furnace. Truly when the Scripture was speaking of persecution, it said, "Like gold in a furnace it has proved them" (speaking of Martyrs being slain), "and as the holocaust's victim it has received them." [Wisdom 3:6] Hear how even the tongue of flatterers is of such sort: "The proving," he says, "of silver and of gold is fire; but a man is proved by the tongue of men praising him." [Proverbs 27:21] That is fire, this also is fire: out of both you ought to go forth safe. The censurer has broken you, you have been broken in the furnace like an earthen vessel. The Word has moulded you, and there has come the trial of tribulation: that which has been formed, must needs be seasoned; if it has been well moulded, there has come the fire to strengthen. Whence He said in the Passion, "Dried up like a potsherd has been My virtue." For Passion and the furnace of tribulation had made Him stronger....

Overcoming well means overcoming all the machinations of the devil. He serves up enticements, he is overcome by self-restraint; he inflicts pains and tortures, he is overcome by patience; he suggests errors, he is overcome by wisdom. As a last resort, when all these ploys have been defeated, he suggests to the soul, "Well done, well done, how much you've been able to do! How valiantly you've contended! Who can be compared with you? How well you have overcome!" The holy soul must answer him, "Let them be put to confusion and shame, those who say to me, Well done, well done!" So when do you overcome, if not when you say, "It is in the Lord that my soul shall be praised; let the gentle hear and rejoice"?