Complete Works of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Volume 3

For if I should wish to pursue individual points as they occur to me in speaking, I would truly not know what to execute first and what last. Therefore, I will commemorate one thing from which anyone can easily measure the rest. Since there is no praise more illustrious than that which is expressed by the voices of enemies, shall I not judge it the most magnificent praise of all that such honor was paid to you by the Greeks as hardly their Patriarch would have obtained? We call him an excellent Prince who bears the person of a parent and uniquely desires the concord and peace of the people, whose name is sweet, but the thing itself most salutary. And shall we doubt that we should venerate this most beautiful image of a Prince in you, when you brought it about, on your first arrival in Corfu, that both the common people and both clergies, who were previously fighting with daily dissensions, coalesced marvelously into an intimate and sincere agreement of minds? If only such power of speaking were granted to me, and such abundance, that I could fittingly proclaim what followed this concord of minds. For most abundant