約伯倫理 第 1026 章

26. We ought patiently to tolerate our domestics and familiars who oppose us. The sacrifice of the altar. Adversities are to be endured outwardly with fortitude, and inwardly with clemency. Which sentence indeed can also be understood by mystery from the voice of the Redeemer. For the men of His tabernacle desired to be sated with His flesh, namely either the Jews persecuting, or the Gentiles believing, because both these strove to extinguish His body as it were by consuming it, and those desire to satisfy their hungering mind by the daily sacrifice of immolation from His flesh. But now, following the virtue of the history alone, let us weigh with how great fortitude the mind of the holy man, solicitous outwardly and inwardly, distributes itself to all things.

For if he had ever either yielded through silence to those acting unjustly, or not opposed them through uprightness, he assuredly would not have had adversaries. But in that he held to the ways of life, he found those who longed for his death. He endured adversaries open on the outside, hidden within. But the virtue of the contest is less to see outwardly evils which one may overcome, and not to have inwardly what one must tolerate. But it is the praise of perfect greatness to endure adversities both outwardly with fortitude, and inwardly with clemency. For there are some things which, even in the very conversation of familiars, cannot be corrected without the fault of the one correcting;

And therefore, when men either defile one who corrects them, or burden one who is not doing these things at all, such conduct must be disregarded with great skill of governance, and by that very disregard patiently borne. The wrongs done against us we more readily loose from our heart if we recognize our own errors toward our neighbours. Whence it is also well said through Solomon: 'Do not give your heart to all the words that are spoken, lest perhaps you hear your servant cursing you; for your own conscience knows that you also have often cursed others' (Eccles. VII, 22, 23). For while we weigh what sort of men we have been toward others, we grieve the less that others are such toward us, since another's injustice avenges upon us what our own conscience justly accuses in itself. There follows: