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How everything may be performed to the divine acceptance.

When a person inquired how any one might eat to the divine acceptance, If he eats with justice, said Epictetus, and with gratitude, and fairly, and temperately, and decently, must he not also eat to the divine acceptance? And if you call for hot water, and your servant does not hear you, or, if he does, brings it only warm, or perhaps is not to be found at home, then to abstain from anger or petulance, is not this to the divine acceptance?

" But how is it possible to bear such things? "

O slavish man ! will you not bear with your own brother, who has God for his Father, as being a son [p. 1052] from the same stock, and of the same high descent? But if you chance to be placed in some superior station, will you presently set yourself up for a tyrant? Will you not remember what you are, and over whom you bear rule, -that they are by nature your relations, your brothers; that they are the offspring of God?

"But I have them by right of purchase, and not they me."

Do you see what it is you regard? Your regards look downward towards the earth, and what is lower than earth, and towards the unjust laws of men long dead; but up towards the divine laws you never turn your eyes.


The Works of Epictetus: His Discourses, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments. Epictetus. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. translator. New York. Thomas Nelson and Sons. 1890.

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