“Let us think over that night, the stocks, and the hymns of praise. This let us also do…”
Let us think over that night, the stocks, and the hymns of praise. This let us also do, and we shall open for ourselves—not a prison, but—heaven. If we pray, we shall be able even to open heaven.
John Chrysostom · Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles · NPNF1 XI, Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily XXXVI (on Acts XVI. 25, 26)
Closing his homily on Paul and Silas singing at midnight in the Philippian jail, Chrysostom turns the earthquake into an argument for praying at night: their prayer opened a prison, and the Christian's opens heaven.
How this is known
These words were matched, word for word, against this project’s own copy of the volume cited.
The volume this project holds carries these words at the close of Homily XXXVI, and the build checks them against its bytes. The homilies on Acts were taken down by a reporter and never revised by Chrysostom — the Oxford editors say so in their own preface — so this is his preaching as a hearer wrote it down, not as he published it.
Read in Walker, Sheppard & Browne, NPNF series 1 vol. 11 (1889) · J. Walker, J. Sheppard and H. Browne, revised by George B. Stevens
Also by
- John Chrysostom every saying recorded of this person, and their page