Moralia in Job 930

15. Job foretells the last times of the Church, which it must suffer from carnal men and heretics. — For since a parable is called a likeness, it is plainly evident that he who is said to have taken up a parable to speak, utters mysteries through the form of outward words. For when he relates his own affairs, he announces whatever things are to come upon the holy Church; and by that which he himself suffers, he indicates what she shall suffer. Yet sometimes he so intermingles the words of his own history that nothing allegorical resounds; and sometimes he so speaks of his own griefs as if he were speaking with the voice of the grieving Church.

But in this last portion of his discourse he designates the last time of the Church, when she is compelled to endure her adversaries—that is, the carnal, or the heretics and pagans, whom she now strives to restrain by the authority of wisdom—as they are exalted with unbridled boasting and mock her. Hence in this discourse also it is said: 'But now the younger in time deride me, whose fathers I would not have deigned to set with the dogs of my flock' (Job 30:1). And the very order of reason demands that through the words of blessed Job the last days of the holy Church at the end be designated, when, as persecution grows, she is forced to endure the open voices of heretics, when they then reveal in the utterance of manifest error the movements of their heart, which they now conceal within the folds of their thoughts.

For now, as it is said through John (Rev. 20:3), the dragon is held bound in the abyss, because diabolical malice is hidden in their crafty hearts. But as it was there said, the dragon shall be led forth from the pit of the abyss, because what is now covered through fear, then all the serpentine venom shall be openly disclosed from the hearts of the wicked against the Church. For now he hides himself under a flattering tongue while raging in conscience, and by the malice of his cunning, as it were, he covers himself with a certain abyss of dissimulation; now the Lord, as is said by the voice of the Psalmist, 'gathers together the waters of the sea as in a wineskin' (Ps. 32:7). For the wineskin is the carnal thought.

The waters of the sea, then, are gathered in the wineskin, when the bitterness of a perverse mind does not burst forth outwardly into the voice of wicked license. There shall surely come a time when the perverse and carnal shall proclaim with open voice against her that which they now contrive by hidden thought. There shall come a time when they shall press the Catholic Church not only with unjust words, but even with cruel blows. 16. The Church suffers persecution in two ways, by words and by swords. — For from her adversaries the Church suffers persecution in two ways, namely either by words or by swords. But when she endures persecution by words, her wisdom is exercised; when by swords, her patience is exercised.

But the persecutions of words we even now endure daily from heretics, when the heretics themselves flatter us with crafty tongues and false humility. But the persecutions of swords are to follow near the end of the world, so that the grains to be stored in the heavenly barns may be all the more truly stripped from the chaff of sinners, the more sharply they are afflicted. Then all the elect who shall have been caught up in that tribulation shall remember these times in which the Church now holds the peace of faith, and restrains the proud necks of heretics, not by the power of eminence, but by the yoke of reason. They shall remember us who now spend the times of faith; we who, though we are hemmed in by the wars of nations, are nevertheless not overcome in the sayings of the fathers.

Blessed Job, therefore, holding the type of the holy Church, which is then found in those straits, and yet, as I have said, remembering our peace, relates the things past and announces the things to come to others, saying: