Letters449 Letter CDXLIX. To a friend.

He writes that he is at length regaining health, having escaped from the very jaws of death.

Health and happiness.

You have industriously drawn out a work useful, and as far as appears to me, Catholic. Yet I should like, if my life endures, to go over it in your presence, and to discuss various passages with you: and then, if there is any phrase or sentence rightly open to objection, it may either be expunged altogether or so altered, as no longer either to be calculated to move the objections of readers, or to be removed itself. For the rest, rejoice with me that though the Lord hath chastened and corrected me, yet He hath not given me over unto death (Ps. cxviii. 18). For when the axe was already laid at the root of the barren tree, and I feared instantly to be cut down, I was restored by the prayers of my friends, who, promising that they would render fruitful with the most precious soil of their tears, the sterile soil of my heart, obtained some extension of time for me from the bountiful Lord of the vineyard (S. Luke xiii. 6).