Moralia in Job 1192

VERSE 4, 5. — 'Declare unto me, if thou hast understanding, who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?' 15. By His nod holy preachers are sent to certain parts of the world, and repelled from others. — The lines of measures are stretched out in the partitioning of lands, so that the fairness of the dimension may be held from the very stretching of the lines. But the Lord, coming to the Church in the flesh, measured the measures of the earth by lines, because He distinguished the bounds of the Church by the subtlety of His hidden judgment. The measures or lines of this hidden earth were being stretched when the holy preachers, by the working of the Spirit, were called to go into some parts of the world, but were kept back from other parts lest they should approach.

For Paul the apostle, when he neglected to preach in Macedonia, there appeared to him in a vision a man of Macedonia who said: 'Come over into Macedonia and help us' (Acts XVI, 9). But on the contrary, as it is written: 'The apostles attempted to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not' (Ibid., 7). While therefore the holy preachers are both called to Macedonia and forbidden from Asia, that line of hidden measures was drawn thither, drawn back hence. Thither it is stretched, that Macedonia may be gathered within the spaces of the holy Church; hence it is drawn back, that Asia may be left outside the bounds of the faith.

For there were then in it those who were not to be gathered; and these being lost according to their own desert, now already Asia has been received within the measures of the Church by God's bounty. 16. Within the measures set by Christ are the elect, outside them the reprobate. Their disposition is in God's hand, not in man's. — Within these measures therefore are all the elect, outside these all the reprobate, even if they seem to be within the boundary of the faith. Whence also in the Apocalypse it is written: 'The court which is without the temple cast out, and measure it not' (Rev. XI, 2). For what else does the court signify but the breadth of the present life? And rightly they are without the temple who are designated by the court, and therefore they are not to be measured, because narrow is the gate which leadeth unto life (Matt.

VII, 14), and the breadth of the life of the depraved is not admitted to the measures and rules of the elect. These spiritual lines were stretched out by a hidden judgment when to a certain man saying: 'Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest' (Matt. VIII, 19), it was answered by the voice of that same Master: 'The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head' (Ibid., 20). These measures and lines were stretched when to a certain man saying: 'Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father' (Luke IX, 59), it was answered by the voice of that same Master: 'Let the dead bury their dead; but go thou and preach the kingdom of God' (Ibid., 60). Behold, one promises that he will follow, and is repelled;

another asks to be released, and is retained. Whence is this, unless because over the hidden spaces of the heart the lines of the supernal judgments were being stretched, so that this one within the incomprehensible measures might be constrained, and that one without might not unjustly remain? But since no one is ignorant that God stretches these lines of hidden judgments, why is it said to Job: 'Declare unto me, if thou hast understanding, who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest, or who hath stretched the line upon it?'

Is it therefore required, that what he could know, but nevertheless could pass over, be called to remembrance, to the end that he might more carefully weigh the weight of God's secrets — namely that the disposition of man consists not in human powers, but in the hand of the Creator — so that, while he considers who invisibly does these things, he may attribute nothing to his own virtue, nor now dare anything of himself, since he dreads the hidden judgments of God; but pondering the measures and lines stretched incomprehensibly from above, he may consist so much the more in the humility of fear, by however much he sees all things to hang upon the power of the Measurer? There follows: