約伯倫理 第 1000 章

14. Lest fault proceed to the deed, let it be extinguished within, where it is born. — The holy man, therefore, knowing that a wicked thought often comes to the mind through the eyes, said a little above: 'I made a covenant with my eyes, that I would not so much as think upon a virgin.' Weighing also that sometimes it arises in the mind, but the eyes serve it perversely once it has arisen, he says: 'If my eye has followed my heart' (Job 31:7). As if he plainly said: I neither wished to look at random upon what I might covet, nor by looking did I ever follow what I coveted. Let him therefore say:

'If my eye has followed my heart,' because even if his mind ever conceived anything unlawful — as being human — by the mastery of a higher discipline he refused to let his eyes, constrained, follow after him through unlawful things and serve him. Let us weigh our own consciences against these things, and from the abasement of our own heart let us see of what great height this man was. For behold, if he ever thought anything unlawful, because he extinguished it within the secret places of the heart by the sword of holy vigour, he did not permit those things to reach as far as the deed. Whence, as we have premised, he at once subjoins: 'And if a stain has cleaved to my hands' (Job 31:7). For when does a stain cleave to the hands — that is, fault to actions — which the censure of discipline did not allow to make progress in thought?

For fault is not permitted to proceed to the deed, if it is extinguished within, where it is born. But if resistance is not swiftly made to the temptation being born in the heart, it is strengthened by this very delay by which it is nourished; and, once existing outwardly in works, it can scarcely be overcome, because it holds captive the mind itself, the mistress of the members within. But because the holy man brought forward all the foregoing things under a condition, if he had ever perpetrated these, he binds himself with a sentence of malediction, saying: