Moralia in Job 1067

VERSE 29. — All these things God works three times with each one. Three times the elect are wont first to be affected with grief, afterward with joy. Concerning this tempted and scourged man it had been said above: 「Bread becomes abominable to him in his life; and his soul draws near to corruption, and his life to deadly things.」 But below it was subjoined: 「He shall pray to God, and He shall be favorable to him; and he shall see His face with jubilation, and He has delivered his soul, that it should not go into destruction, but living should see the light.」 In these sentences, now collected and heaped together, both above the grief of bitterness, and below is subjoined the gladness of security; and presently after these things it is said: 「All these things God works three times with each one.」

As if he said: What I have said once of one, this is done three times with each one. But it is to be intently observed what those three times are, in which each man is affected with the anxiety of grief, and after grief is straightway recalled to the security of joy. For this, as I have already said, he had above narrated: that grave grief first affects, and great joy afterward uplifts. Therefore if we intend vigilantly, we find these three times of grief and joy alternating in these modes in the soul of each elect one, that is, in conversion, in temptation, and in death. I. In conversion, when on the one side the spirit calls, on the other the flesh calls back.

For in the first turn, which we called conversion, there is grave grief, when each one, considering his own sins, wishes to break the fetters of worldly cares, and to walk the way of God through the space of a secure manner of living; to cast off the heavy burden of temporal desires, and to bear the light yoke of the Lord in free servitude. For to him thinking on these things there occurs that familiar carnal delight of his, which, long ago grown inveterate, the longer it has held him, the more tightly it constrains, and the more slowly permits him to depart from it. And what grief is there, what anxiety of heart, when on the one side the spirit calls, on the other the flesh calls back; on the one side the love of the new manner of living invites, on the other the habit of the old perversity assails;

on the one side he burns with desire for the heavenly homeland, and on the other in himself he endures carnal concupiscence, which delights him even in some measure against his will? Rightly therefore can it be said of this man growing bitter: 「Bread becomes abominable to him in his life; and his soul draws near to corruption, and his life to deadly things.」 But because divine grace does not permit us to be affected by these difficulties for long, having broken the chains of our sins, it more quickly leads us by consoling to the liberty of the new manner of living, and a following gladness revives the preceding sadness; so that the soul of each converted one rejoices the more in reaching his desire, the more he remembers he grieved, laboring for its sake.

An immense gladness comes to the heart, because it now draws near, through the hope of security, to Him whom it desires; so that it may rightly be said of this: 「He shall pray to God, and He shall be favorable to him; and he shall see His face with jubilation.」 Or certainly: 「He has delivered his soul, that it should not go into destruction, but living should see the light.」 2. In the exercise of temptations. The goads of temptations are sharper after conversion. But lest anyone converted should now believe himself to be holy, and lest that very security should lay low him whom the battle of grief could not overcome, by God's dispensation it is permitted that after his conversion he be wearied by the goads of temptations. Now indeed by conversion the Red Sea has been crossed;

but still in the wilderness of the present life enemies meet us before our face. Now we leave past sins behind our backs like the drowned Egyptians; but still assailing vices, like other enemies, come to meet us, that they may cut off the journey begun for those going to the land of promise. Now former faults, like pursuing adversaries, have been laid low by divine power alone, but the goads of temptations, like other enemies, come against our face, who are overcome only with our labor. Conversion indeed gives birth to security, but security is wont to be the mother of negligence. Therefore, lest security beget negligence, it is written: 「Son, coming to the service of God, stand in justice and fear, and prepare your soul for temptation」 (Sir.

2:1). For he does not say, 「for rest,」 but 「for temptation,」 because our enemy, the more he beholds us, still placed in this life, rebelling against him, the more he strives to assail us. For he neglects to attack those whom he perceives he possesses by a quiet right. But against us he is the more vehemently incited, the more he is expelled from our heart as from the right of his own dwelling. For the Lord Himself figured this in Himself under a certain dispensation (Matt. 4:1), who permitted the devil to tempt Him only after baptism, that He might intimate to us a certain sign of the future conversion, namely, that His members, after they should advance toward God, would then endure the sharper snares of temptations.

After the first turn, therefore, of grief and joy, which each one recognizes through the zeal of conversion, this second arises, because, lest he be dissolved by the negligence of security, he is afflicted by the assault of temptation. And indeed each one, in the very beginning of conversion, is for the most part received with great sweetness of consolation, but afterward experiences the hard labor of probation. Three degrees of conversion. For there are three modes of the converted: the beginning, the middle, and perfection. In the beginning, however, they find the allurements of sweetness; in the middle time also the contests of temptation; but at the last, the perfection of fullness. First therefore sweet things receive them, which console;

afterward bitter things, which exercise them; and then at last sweet and sublime things, which confirm. For every man first cherishes his bride with sweet blandishments, but proves her, now joined to him, with harsher rebukes, and possesses her, once proved, with secure thoughts. Whence also the people of Israel, when it was called out of Egypt by God betrothing it to the sacred nuptials of the mind, first received, as it were in place of a pledge, the blandishments of signs; but, joined, is exercised with probations in the wilderness; and, proved, is confirmed in the land of promise in the fullness of virtue. Before, therefore, in miracles it tasted what it might desire, afterward in labor it was tested whether it knew how to keep what it had tasted;

and at the last it also merited to receive more fully that which, proved by labors, it had kept. So therefore both the bland beginning soothes the life of each converted one, and the harsh middle proves it, and the full perfection afterward strengthens it. The most peaceful beginnings of conversion are received by grave temptations. For often the converted, while still in the very entrance of their beginning, receive either the most peaceful tranquility of the flesh, or gifts of prophecy, or the endowments of teaching, or the miracles of signs, or the grace of healing (1 Cor. 12:10); but after these things they are wearied by hard probations of temptations, from which temptations, when they were beginning, they believed themselves to be very free.

This is wrought by the dispensation of divine grace, that in their beginning they be not touched by the harshness of temptations, because if the bitterness of temptation received their beginnings, they would as easily return to the things they had left as they had not departed far; for, the vices formerly despised, they would be entangled again as with things placed close by. Whence also it is written: 「When Pharaoh had sent forth the people, the Lord led them not by the way of the land of the Philistines, which is near, considering lest perhaps it repent them, if they should see wars rise up against them, and they return into Egypt」 (Exod. 13:17).

Those going out from Egypt, therefore, are withdrawn from the nearby war, because to those forsaking the world a certain tranquility is first shown, lest, troubled in their very tenderness and beginning, they return terrified to that which they escaped. First, therefore, they feel the sweetness of security, first they are nourished by the quiet of peace; but after the sweetness is known, they now sustain the contests of temptations the more tolerably, the more highly they have come to know in God that which they love. Whence also Peter is first led into the mountain, first contemplates the brightness of the Lord's transfiguration (Mark 9:1), and only then is permitted to be tempted at the questioning of the maidservant (Matt.

26:70), so that, made conscious to himself of his weakness through temptation, he might, by weeping and loving, run back to that which he had seen; and, when the wave of fear was snatching him into the sea of sin (Matt. 16:24), there might be an anchor of the former sweetness to hold him back. But often the contests of temptations are as lasting as the allurements of the beginnings had been long. Often, however, more is given in the sweetness of the beginning, less in the labor of probation. Often less in the sweetness of the beginning, more in the labor of probation. But never does a perfection of firmness unequal to it follow the labor of temptation, because each one is rewarded with a fullness of perfection according to the height of the contest.

But for the most part each converted one falls in this, that while he is received with some gifts of grace, with the sweetness of the beginning, he supposes himself to have received the confirmation of perfection, and reckons that to be the consummation of fullness which he does not yet know to be the allurements of the beginning. Whence it comes about that, while he is touched by the sudden storm of temptation, he suspects himself to be despised by God and lost. But if he did not everywhere trust his beginning, he would, while still placed in prosperity, prepare his mind for adversities, and would afterward the more firmly resist the coming vices, the more sagaciously he had foreseen them. Which things indeed, if he foresees them, he bears the more tranquilly.

Yet he by no means altogether escapes their contests, even if he foresees them, because the course of our journey is in no way accomplished without the dust of temptation. Why temptations after conversion seem sharper than before. But for the most part each converted one is agitated by such goads of temptations as he remembers he was never struck by before the grace of conversion, not because this same root of temptation was then lacking, but because it did not appear. For the human mind, occupied with many thoughts, often in some way remains unknown to its very self, so that it altogether knows not what it endures, because, while it is scattered through many things, it is removed from the inner knowledge of itself.

But if it desires to be free for God, and to cut off the branches of manifold thought, then it freely beholds what proceeds from the inmost root of the flesh. For a thistle, if it is born in the road, is trodden by the feet of the travelers, and by the very passage of those going by its surface is rubbed away so that it does not appear. But although the sprouting thorns do not appear above, yet beneath the hidden root endures. If, however, the feet of the passersby cease to tread and trample it, straightway by rising it advances to the surface, and through the thorn there comes forth into the open whatever was living hidden in the root.

So too, in the heart of worldly men, a certain hidden root of temptations often does not easily appear to rise up, because, lying as it were in the roadway of actions, it is worn down by the feet of passing thoughts, and through countless cares it is trodden down as by many travellers, so that it is not seen. But if, through the grace of conversion, the throng of cares is removed from the road of the heart, so that no insolence of actions may crush it and no tumult of thoughts may press upon it, then what lay concealed is recognized, then from the root of the vices the thorn of temptations pricks freely. Against this the hand of one who lives well acts so that, as far as it can be done, the hidden thing may not be covered over, but rather be plucked out by the very root.

Until this is done, this thorn so disturbs the mind of each convert that often, by a sudden blow, he feels himself almost overcome, and dreads with deadly fear its wound inflicted to the very marrow. Temptations, when they are despised through habituation, are perilous. God tests by temptations, He does not reprobate. — But for the most part the very goads of temptation, when they become customary, are drawn out, and prove not indeed sharper but longer. They pain less, but infect more, because, while they cling to the mind for a longer time, they become so much the less to be feared as one grows the more accustomed to them.

Amid these things, then, the mind, caught unawares, is stretched this way and that, and is scattered by the manifold surges of temptations; and often, assailed from every side, it does not know which tempting vice to meet, or which to attack first. Whence it often happens that, while vices rising up too violently torment it, while they now well-nigh incline the resisting soul into the downfall of despair, the convert dreads this very path of loftiness which he had chosen for his remedy, and, as one led up to the summit, totters — he who stood more firmly in the depths. So indeed is he straitened by the temptations roaring around him, that it may rightly be said of him: His bread becomes abominable to him in his life, and the food that was before desirable to his soul (Job 33:20). Or assuredly:

His soul draws near to corruption, and his life to things deadly (Job 33:22). But because the merciful God permits us to be tested by temptations, not reprobated, as it is written: God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able, but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that you may be able to bear it (1 Cor. 10:13), He more quickly comes to our aid with the help of consolation, and mitigates the rising goads of temptations, and stills with inward peace the assailing motions of thoughts. And presently the soul receives from heavenly hope an immense gladness, while it looks back upon the vanquished evil which it has endured; so that it may rightly be said of this man tempted and set free: He shall see His face with joy (Job 33:26);

and, He has delivered his soul, that it should not go into destruction, but that living he should see the light (Job 33:28). And so, when these two turns — namely of conversion and of testing — have been passed through in sorrow and in gladness, there remains a third, whose sorrow he must still endure and whose joys he must obtain. In the third turn the righteous are aided out of the dread of death and the fear of the final judgment. — For after the struggles of conversion, after the hardship of testing, there still remains a hard temptation, because one cannot come to the joys of perfect liberty unless he first pays the debt of the human condition.

But every convert, cautiously anxious for himself, does not cease to consider silently within himself how strict the eternal Judge will come, and daily he foresees his own end, and considers before the severity of so great a justice what accounts of his life he shall have to render. Even if he has shunned all the depraved works that he was able to understand, yet, about to come before the strict Judge, he rather dreads those things which he does not understand in himself. For who can reckon how many evils, moment by moment, we commit through the very inconstant motions of our thoughts? For it is easy to avoid perverse deeds, but exceedingly difficult to wipe the heart clean from unlawful thought. And yet it is written: Woe to you who think what is unprofitable (Micah 2:1).

And again: In the day when the Lord shall judge the hidden things of men (Rom. 2:16). And He had premised: Their thoughts between themselves accusing, or also defending one another (Rom. 2:15). And again: Deceitful lips, they have spoken in the heart, and with a double heart they have spoken evils (Ps. 12:2). And again: For in your heart you work iniquities in the earth (Ps. 58:2). But the human soul, once forsaking the state of eternity, having slipped down into the flux of temporality, is compelled unwillingly to endure this mutability of alternating motions which, while it fell, it willingly desired, when it strives to rise again. For it is punished in the very thing wherein it took delight, because from that source, being converted, it has the labor of the struggle, from which, being perverse, it sought the joy of pleasure.

Often, then, even upon the elect, though unwilling, there creeps in a thought which indeed they carefully examine in themselves, and they consider before the eyes of God how great its guilt is; and although concerning all these things they always dread strict judgments, yet they fear these things most vehemently when, coming to pay the debt of the human condition, they perceive themselves drawing near to the strict Judge. And the fear becomes so much the sharper as the eternal recompense is nearer. Then, before the eyes of the heart, nothing empty flits by from the phantasm of thought, because, all things being withdrawn from their midst, they consider only themselves and Him whom they are approaching.

The dread grows as the recompense of justice draws near, and as the dissolution of the flesh presses on; the more the strict judgment is now, as it were, all but touched, the more vehemently is it feared. And even if they remember that they have never neglected the things which they know, yet they dread those things which they do not know, because clearly they cannot at all judge and comprehend themselves, and, as their departure presses on, they are terrified with a subtler fear. Whence our Redeemer, drawing near to the dissolution of the flesh, and preserving the likeness of His members, being in an agony, began to pray at greater length (Luke 22:44). For what would He ask for Himself when He was in agony, who, placed on earth, bestowed heavenly things with authority?

But at the approach of death He expressed the struggle of our mind within itself — we who suffer a certain force of terror and dread, when through the dissolution of the flesh we draw near to the eternal judgment. For not without cause is any soul then terrified, when after a little while it finds that which it cannot change for eternity. What is to be dreaded at the approach of death. — For we consider that we could by no means pass through the way of this present life without fault; we consider also that not even this — that we have done praiseworthily — is without some guilt of ours, if we be judged apart from mercy. For who of us can either surpass or equal the life of the fathers who went before? And yet David says:

Enter not into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no living man shall be justified (Ps. 143:2). Paul, when he said: I am conscious of nothing against myself, cautiously added: But I am not thereby justified (1 Cor. 4:4). James says: For in many things we all offend (James 3:2). John says: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8). What then shall the planks do, if the pillars tremble? Or how shall the immovable shrubs stand, if by the whirlwind of this dread even the cedars are shaken? Drawing near, then, to the dissolution of the flesh, sometimes even the soul of the righteous is troubled by the terror of vengeance.

And even if he could taste anything tranquil in this life, it is shaken when the moment of death intervenes, so that it may rightly be said: His bread becomes abominable to him in his life, and the food that was before desirable to his soul. Or assuredly, on account of the penalty of dread, that which is there subjoined: His soul has drawn near to corruption, and his life to things deadly. The souls of the righteous are purged from light faults by this dread.

— But because the souls of the righteous are often purged from every light contagion by the very dread of death, and already receive the joys of eternal recompense from the very dissolution of the flesh, and for the most part indeed grow glad by a certain contemplation of the inner recompense even before they are stripped of the flesh, and while they pay the debt of the old nature, already enjoy the gladness of the new gift, it is rightly said: He shall see His face with joy. Or assuredly: He has delivered his soul, that it should not go into destruction, but that living he should see the light. And so the soul of the righteous beholds the face of God with joy, because it receives as much of inward gladness as, even when taken up, it can scarcely contain. There, then, living, it sees the light, because it fixes the spiritual eye upon the rays of the eternal Sun.

There, living, it sees the light, because, having now trodden down every vicissitude and shadow of mutability, it cleaves to the truth of eternity; and by cleaving to Him whom it beholds, it rises to the likeness of unchangeableness, and, while it looks upon the unchangeable image of its Author, it takes that image into itself. For that which through itself had fallen into mutability is, by beholding immutability, formed unto the state of immutability. Therefore Elihu, since concerning this afflicted and delivered man he first expressed the bitterness of sorrow and afterward the joys of consolation, aptly subjoined: All these things God works three times with each one — namely, of conversion, of testing,

and of death, because through these three things he is both afflicted first with the harsh goads of sorrow, and afterward refreshed with the great joys of security. And because the mind of each of the elect is worn down by these same three turns — that is, either by the labor of conversion, or by the temptation of testing, or by the dread of dissolution — and, being purged by that very attrition, is set free, it is aptly subjoined: