Moralia in Job 1139

Verse 19. — 'Lay aside your greatness without tribulation, and all the strong in fortitude.' 82. Lest we presume upon ourselves, God permits us to be assailed by temptation. — The strong ones are the motions of the heart, when they feel nothing except the things that are of virtue. But we lay aside our greatness and our strong motions, when, at the assault of vice, we are compelled to weigh what we are. We lay aside our strong motions, when we are no longer uplifted by virtue, but, sinking down by consenting to fault, we dread from that very infirmity to be overwhelmed. For the mind trusts much in itself when it beholds that its powers suffice to its wish. Already it arrogates to itself the confidence of holiness; already it thinks itself fit even for all the summits of virtues which it has conceived by thought alone.

But when a suddenly arisen temptation transfixes it, it utterly confounds those elated thoughts which it had formed concerning its virtues. For, as into a city thought secure an unforeseen enemy enters, and by a sudden sword the necks of the proud citizens are struck, so nothing then is carried on except continual mourning, while the captured city of the soul is emptied by the intervening slaughter of the glory of its magnates. Whence now it is said: 'Lay aside your greatness without tribulation, and all the strong in fortitude.' As if it were openly said:

'Repress all that you had drunk in inwardly from good action, and lay aside the motions of the heart which you had held as strong from right work, because now in the very temptation of adversity you consider how vainly you before, elated, esteemed great things concerning yourself.' Which greatness indeed is said to be laid aside without tribulation, because, forsooth, when humility profits through temptation, that very adversity is prosperous which keeps the mind free from elation. Yet nevertheless it is carried on with great tribulation, when the tranquil mind is troubled by the inrushing temptation as by a sudden enemy. For the very adversity of temptation, while it inserts bitterness into the mind, begets in it certain darknesses;

and it troubles with the obscurity of its bitterness that which a little before had shone bright with the irradiating sweetness of the virtues. Whence also fitly is it subjoined: