Moralia in Job 958

18. Those who curiously scrutinize divine things labor under want and barrenness. — All heretics, while in the sacred discourse they strive to scrutinize the secrets of God more than they grasp, become barren by their own hunger. For they do not seek those things from which they may train themselves unto humility, order their morals in tranquility, keep patience, exhibit long-suffering; but they desire to know only those things which show them learned and eloquent, those things by which they may appear singularly erudite. For very often they boldly treat of the nature of the Godhead, while, wretched men, they know not themselves. By their want, therefore, and by their hunger they become barren, because they desire to scrutinize those things from which they bring forth no shoots of a good life.

For the things which they scrutinize are beyond themselves, and while they reach for that which they cannot comprehend, they neglect to know those things by which they might have been instructed. This their audacity the excellent preacher restrains, saying: 'Not to be more wise than it behooves to be wise, but to be wise unto sobriety' (Rom. 12:3). Hence Solomon says: 'Set a limit to your prudence' (Prov. 23:4). Hence again he says: 'You have found honey; eat what is sufficient for you, lest perhaps, being sated, you vomit it up' (Prov. 25:16). For he who desires to eat of the sweetness of spiritual understanding beyond what he can hold, vomits up even what he had eaten, because while he seeks to understand the highest things beyond his powers, he loses even the things he had well understood. Hence again he says:

'As it is not good for him who eats much honey, so he who is a scrutinizer of majesty shall be overwhelmed by glory' (Prov. 25:27). For the glory of the invisible Creator, which sought with moderation lifts us up, scrutinized beyond our powers presses us down. And so the heretics, because the more they aspire to be filled with sublime understanding, the more they are emptied, it is well said of them: 'Barren through want and hunger.' For by immoderate ventures of knowledge, the more they crave the knowledge of things above, the more they lose. 19. The humble understand heavenly things, or venerate what they do not understand.

But on the contrary, those who in Holy Church are truly humble and truly learned, know both to understand some things considered concerning heavenly secrets, and to venerate some things not understood, so that they both hold with veneration the things they understand, and humbly await the things they do not yet understand. Hence it is said to us through Moses: 'That, eating the lamb, whatever is left of it we burn with fire' (Exod. 12:10). For we eat the lamb when, understanding much of the Lord's humanity, we store it up in the belly of the mind. Of which some things remain to us which cannot be eaten, because much still remains concerning Him which can by no means be understood.

Which nevertheless are to be burned with fire, because those things which we cannot grasp concerning Him we humbly reserve to the Holy Spirit. Which humility oftentimes opens even to the senses of the elect those things which seemed impossible to understand. For while the perverse minds of heretics proudly attribute understanding to themselves, they presume to give, as it were, sure judgments even about unknown things. Hence it comes to pass that the very elation which within lifts them up in their own eyes, thrusts them outward from the truth, and they scarcely grasp the outward things in the sayings of God, who singularly thought they had penetrated the spiritual secrets. Hence here too there is added: