Moralia in Job 466

Verse [ibid.]. And that you might understand that you are required by God far less than your iniquity deserves. 11. The knowledge of our faults tempers the pain of the scourges. The pain, indeed, as we have said, of the scourge is tempered when the fault is recognized, because each man the more patiently endures the physician's instrument, the more he beholds that what is being cut is putrid. He, therefore, who understands the manifoldness of the law, weighs how much smaller are all the things he suffers, because through this, that the weight of the fault is acknowledged, the penalty of the affliction is lightened.

12. They sin venially who, in the fervour of zeal, exceed the measure of correction. But amid these things it must be known that it was not without great iniquity that Zophar rebuked a righteous man even to the charge of iniquity. Whence Truth also justly refutes their boldness, but kindly leads them back to grace, because with a merciful judge a fault is by no means left without pardon, when one sins out of love through the fervour of zeal. For often it happens to great and admirable teachers that, in proportion as they grow hot with deep charity, they exaggerate the measure of correction, and the tongue says something it ought not, because love inflames the mind as much as it ought.

But the word of the insult uttered is the more quickly pardoned, the more it is weighed from what root it proceeds. Whence the Lord well commanded through Moses, saying: If any man goes with his friend simply into the wood to cut wood, and the wood of the axe slips from his hand, and the iron, gliding from the handle, strikes his friend and kills him, this man shall flee to one of the aforesaid cities, and live; lest perchance the neighbour of him whose blood was shed, stung by grief, pursue him, and lay hold of him, and strike his soul (Deut. 19:5).

We go into the wood with a friend as often as we turn with any neighbour to considering our faults, and we simply cut the wood when with pious intention we cut away the vices of those who offend. But the axe slips from the hand when the rebuke drags itself into harshness more than is necessary. And the iron leaps from the handle when speech, in correcting, oversteps into too harsh a word; and, striking the friend, it kills him, because the insult uttered slays one's hearer from the spirit of love. For the mind of the one corrected suddenly breaks out into hatred, if immoderate rebuke consigns it to more than it ought.

But he who incautiously struck the wood and extinguished his neighbour must needs flee to three cities, that, defended in one of them, he may live; because if, turned to the laments of penitence, he is hidden in the unity of the sacrament under hope, faith, and charity, he is not held guilty of the homicide committed; and the neighbour of the slain man, even when he finds him, does not kill him, because when the strict Judge comes, who joined himself to us through the fellowship of our nature, He without doubt does not demand from him vengeance for the guilt of the fault whom hope, faith, and charity hide under His pardon. More quickly, then, is a fault forgiven that is by no means perpetrated out of the pursuit of malice. Whence also Zophar calls unjust the man whom the sentence from above had praised;

and yet, being reproved, he is not excluded from pardon, because he is moved to the words of insult by the zeal of divine love. He who, for this reason that he does not recognize the merits of blessed Job, out of still unskilled mockery adds, saying: