約伯倫理 第 1031 章

44. The helper to be sought: Christ, who is lawgiver and judge. The prophecy concerning him given to Ezekiel. — For since the Law was transmitted through a servant to a people that still feared, whereas the grace of the Gospel was bestowed upon loving sons through the Lord, who, coming for our redemption, established a New Testament for us, but, examining us according to the commandment of that same testament, comes also one day as judge—there is no need that it be made clear by exposition that he who judges is himself the one who writes the book. For Truth itself says of itself: 'The Father judgeth no man, but hath given all judgment to the Son' (John v, 22). He, therefore, will then be the author of the judgment who is now the composer of the book, so that he may then strictly exact what now in gentleness he commands.

For thus we daily behold that masters coaxingly set before children the elements of letters, but in fierceness exact these of them; and what they give with gentleness they require with the rod. For the commandments of the divine word now sound pleasant, but they will be felt as harsh in the exacting. Now the admonition of him who calls is gentle, but then the justice of the judge will come strict, because it is certain that not even the least commandment will pass without scrutiny. Whereby it is evident that he who judges is the one who wrote the book. And that he, the Redeemer of the human race, would himself compose this book of the New Testament at the last, the prophet Ezekiel well proclaims, saying:

'Behold, six men came from the way of the upper gate, which looketh toward the north, and each one's instrument of destruction in his hand. One man also in the midst of them was clothed with linen, and a writer's inkhorn at his loins' (Ezek. ix, 1-2). For what else is signified by the six men coming, but the six ages of the human race? They come from the way of the upper gate, because from the condition of paradise, as from the entrance of the world, they are unrolled from the higher generations. And this gate looks toward the north, because the mind of the human race, laid open to vices, would not have come forth into this breadth of mortality unless, forsaking the warmth of charity, it had sought the torpor of the mind.

'And each one's instrument of destruction in his hand,' because every generation, unrolled through each successive age before the coming of the Redeemer, had in its own working that whence it took the penalty of damnation. 'One man also in the midst of them clothed with linen,' because our Redeemer, having deigned according to the flesh to have parents even of the priestly tribe, is declared to come clothed with linen. Or surely, because linen springs from the earth, not, like wool, from corruptible flesh, he came to us clothed with linen precisely because he took the garment of his own body from a virgin mother, and not from the corruption of intercourse. 'And a writer's inkhorn at his loins.' The loins are the hinder part of the body.

And because the Lord himself, after he had died for us, and risen again, and ascended into heaven, then wrote the New Testament through the apostles, this man had the inkhorn at his loins. For he who founded the Scripture of the New Testament after his departure carried the inkhorn as it were behind his back. He, therefore, considers this inkhorn to cleave to the man clothed with linen, who says: 'And let him who judges himself write the book.' But why, blessed Job, dost thou desire that the book be written by him who is judge? There follows: