“I have been as an ill-favoured painter pourtraying a handsome man; and how I direct…”

I have been as an ill-favoured painter pourtraying a handsome man; and how I direct others to the shore of perfection, while myself still tossed among the waves of transgressions.

Gregory I · The Book of Pastoral Rule · NPNF2 XII, Pastoral Rule, Part IV

The last movement of the book, addressed back to the bishop whose reproof provoked it. The pope who wrote the manual for bishops ends it by saying he has painted a portrait he does not resemble, and asks John to hold him up in the shipwreck of this present life by the plank of his prayer.