Moralia in Job 320

Verse 6. — Or can that which is unsavory be eaten which is not seasoned with salt? Or can anyone taste that which, when tasted, brings death? 15. How grievous to the elect are the words and manners of carnal men. For the words and manners of carnal men force themselves, as it were as food, upon our minds, that they may be seized into the belly of delight. But every elect person does not eat what is unsavory, because, judging the sayings and deeds of the depraved, he repels them from the mouth of his heart. Paul forbade unsavory things to be brought in as food for minds, when he said to his disciples: Let your speech be always seasoned with salt in grace (Col. iv, 6). And to the Psalmist too the words of the reprobate tasted unsavory in the mouth of his heart, when he said:

The wicked have told me idle tales, but not as your law, O Lord (Ps. cxviii, 81). But often the words of carnal men, while they thrust themselves importunately upon our ears, beget in the heart the war of temptation; and although both reason rejects these things and the tongue reproves them, yet with labor is that inwardly conquered which is outwardly judged with authority. Whence it is necessary that what the mind, watchful, would repel from the entrance of thought, should not even come to the ears. Holy men therefore, while they pant with desires of eternity, raise themselves to so great a height of life that they now count it a heavy and depressing weight to hear the things that are of the world. For they reckon exceedingly unbearable and intolerable whatever does not sound forth that which they inwardly love. [Old Version VII.] 26.

It is not for everyone to gird himself to undergo bodily torments for God. — But often the mind is already caught up by desire to sublime things, is already utterly separated from the foolish speech of earthly men, and yet is not yet girded for love of truth to endure the torments of the present life; it already seeks the things above, already despises foolish things in the depths, but does not yet direct itself to the endurance of adversity. Whence it is also added: Or can anyone taste that which, when tasted, brings death?