23.
But if it were necessary to add a ninth 1 reason, we might say, that this tribulation maketh those who are troubled more approved; "For tribulation worketh patience; and patience, probation; and probation, hope; and hope maketh not ashamed." 2 Do you see that the probation, which comes of tribulation, fixes in us the hope of the good things to come, and that the abiding in trials causes us to have a good hope of the future? So that I did not say rashly, that these tribulations themselves mark out to us hopes of a resurrection, and make those who are tried the better; for, he saith, "as gold is tried in a furnace, so an acceptable man in the furnace of humiliation." 3
