Moralia in Job 772

For you have taken away the pledge of your brethren without cause, and stripped the naked of their garments. You gave no water to the weary, and withdrew bread from the hungry. In the strength of your arm you possessed the land, and being most mighty you held it. The typical sense. 6. The heretics falsely claim that their own people err and lose the Holy Spirit when they return to the Church. — In Sacred Scripture, by the name of 'pledge' sometimes the gifts of the Holy Spirit are signified, and sometimes truly the confession of sin. For the gift of the Holy Spirit is received as a pledge, as it is said through Paul: Who has given us the pledge of the Spirit (2 Corinthians 1). For to this end we receive a pledge, that we may hold certainty concerning the promise that is made to us.

The gift of the Holy Spirit, then, is called a pledge, because through it our soul is strengthened to the certainty of interior hope. Again, by the name of 'pledge' the confession of sin is wont to be understood, as it is written in the Law: When your brother owes you anything, and you have taken a pledge from him, restore the pledge before sunset (Exodus 22:26). For our brother becomes our debtor when any neighbor is shown to have offended against us in anything. For sins we call debts. Whence to the servant who has sinned it is said: I forgave you all the debt (Matthew 18:32). And in the Lord's Prayer we daily pray: Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors (Matthew 6:12).

But from our debtor we receive a pledge when, from him who is known to have sinned against us, we already hold the confession of his sin, through which we are besought to remit the sin that was committed against us. For he who confesses the sin he has committed and asks pardon has already, as it were, given a pledge for his debt. And this pledge we are commanded to restore before sunset, because before the sun of justice sets within us through grief of heart, we ought to render the confession of pardon to him from whom we receive the confession of fault, so that he who remembers he has offended against us may feel at once that what he did wrong is remitted by us.

Since, then, the holy Church, when she receives any who return from heretics to the truth of the faith, first persuades them that they ought to confess the fault of their error, it is said, as though under the guise of heretics, through Eliphaz: For you have taken away the pledge of your brethren without cause. That is: from those who come from us to you, you have uselessly exacted a confession of error. But if, as we said before, we understand by 'pledge' the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the heretics say that the holy Church has taken away the pledge of their brethren, because they suspect that those who come to her lose their spiritual gifts. Whence there follows: And you have stripped the naked of their garments. 7. They call the same people slothful and dull.

— Those whom the heretics draw by their perverse preaching they reckon to have, as it were, certain garments, namely the precepts of their teaching; and they think them clothed for just so long as they observe what these heretics have preached to them. When some of these return to the holy Church, they at once suspect that they have lost the garments of doctrine. But since one who is naked cannot be stripped, we must ask how they are said first to be naked and afterward to be stripped. Yet it must be known that everyone who enjoys purity of heart is, by that very fact — having no covering of duplicity — naked.

And there are some among the heretics who indeed have purity of heart, yet receive the perverse dogmas of their teaching. These are without doubt both naked by their own purity and, as it were, clothed by their preaching. And because such people easily return to the holy Church, since they use not the malice of duplicity, the heretics acknowledge them to be naked, and say that they have been stripped of their garments by her, because they regard the simple as slothful and dull, whom they consider to have lost their depraved dogmas. 8. They charge the Church with ignorance, when they themselves speak of things unknown. — There follows: You gave no water to the weary, and withdrew bread from the hungry.

The heretics, in proportion as they do not hold the solidity of truth, so much the more do they sometimes strive to appear more talkative, and against the faith of Catholics they boast as though of the knowledge of doctrine; they seek to draw to themselves by their depraved speeches all whom they behold, and whence they associate others to themselves for destruction, thence they think they are doing something lively. But we call those 'weary' who are wearied under this world's laborious burden. Whence also Truth Himself says: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you (Matthew 11:28). The heretics, therefore, because they cease not to preach their dogmas, mock the holy Church as though for unskillfulness, saying:

You gave no water to the weary, and withdrew bread from the hungry. For they think they give water to the weary when to certain men laboring under an earthly burden they offer the cup of their error. And they suspect they have not withdrawn bread from the hungry, because even when questioned about invisible and incomprehensible things, they answer with proud boldness. And then they believe themselves learned above all when they most unhappily presume to speak of things unknown. But the holy Church, when she sees anyone hungering for what it would not profit him to receive, either — if the things are already known to her — modestly suppresses them, or — if they still seem unknown — humbly confesses it, and recalls them to the mind of ordered humility when through her preacher she says to them:

Not to be more wise than it behooves to be wise, but to be wise unto sobriety (Romans 12:3). And again: Do not be high-minded, but fear (Romans 11:20). And yet again: Seek not things too high for you, and search not into things too mighty for you (Ecclesiasticus 3:22). And again: You have found honey, eat what is enough for you, lest perhaps being sated you vomit it up (Proverbs 25:16). For to find honey is to taste the sweetness of holy understanding. And this is eaten sufficiently when our intelligence is held under restraint according to the measure of our capacity. For he vomits up the honey when sated who, striving to penetrate more than he grasps, loses even that by which he could have been nourished.

Since, then, the holy Church forbids weak minds to search into lofty things, it is said to blessed Job: You withdrew bread from the hungry. 9. They envy her greatness and universality. — And because the heretics also envy her greatness, in that she universally holds the peoples in the true faith, when they find a time of earthly prosperity, they break out against her in proud words, and by their reproaches they lay open how much they had secretly envied her power before. For there follows: In the strength of your arm you possessed the land, and being most mighty you held it. As if they were to say plainly: That in your preaching you universally occupied the land was the power of strength, not the reason of truth.

For because they behold Christian princes holding to her preaching, they suspect that what is believed of her by the peoples is not the virtue of rectitude, but the cause of worldly power. There follows: