約伯倫理 第 1056 章

VERSE 22. 'His soul shall draw near to corruption, and his life to those that bring death.' 53. We are delivered from corruption at the very moment when it seems most to threaten us in temptation. For the soul of each just man is said to draw near to corruption when, lest virtue should be able to exalt it, it is compelled through scourges to feel what it is of its own weakness. It draws near to corruption, indeed, because it is not ignorant that by its own strength it is close to perdition, so that it may attribute this its distance from perdition not to itself but to the Lord. And it draws near to those things that bring death, because from the weakness of the flesh it perceives itself close to sins that carry death; from which, by the divine gift, it is set the farther off the more it detects itself close to them by its own merits.

By contemplating his own condition David had drawn near to corruption, when he said: 'Remember, O Lord, that we are dust; man's days are as grass' (Psalm 103:14-15). By contemplating his own weakness Paul too had drawn near to the things that bring death, when he said: 'I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and leading me captive in the law of sin, which is in my members. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' (Romans 7:23-24). To draw near, therefore, to corruption and to the things that bring death is, having considered the weakness of one's own humanity, to reckon oneself a sinner by one's own merits, and to hold within oneself no arrogance drawn from one's own strength.

For what are we, if we be forsaken by the protection of our Creator? Which protection, assuredly, is believed to be less necessary unless it be always possessed. But it is often profitably withdrawn, that man may be shown how, without it, he is nothing to himself. The hand of God, therefore, sometimes makes itself known to us through adversities, that same hand which, even when we know it not, bears us up in prosperity. Deprived of it, while we begin to fall and yet are held up by its help, both it becomes a teaching that we tremble in our fall, and a keeping that we remain standing in our estate. 54. We must never presume upon our own strength. Let no one, therefore, esteem himself possessed of any virtue, even when he is able to do something strongly; for if the divine protection forsake him, there he is suddenly overwhelmed in weakness, where he was glorying that he stood in strength.

For what is the meaning of this, that the man of God, sent to prophesy against the altar of Samaria, exercised the authority of a free voice in the king's presence, and marvellously drew the king's outstretched arm into rigidity, which yet he presently restored in mercy to health (1 Kings 13:4)? Who, invited into the king's house, refused to eat, because he kept the commands of the Lord's prohibition not to eat by the way? Yet he, on that same way, both seduced ate, and by that food perished. In this matter what do we gather by subtle consideration, what, so to speak, do we timidly suspect, except that perhaps within himself he silently gloried that, for the Lord's commands, he had despised the king? Whence presently he was shaken from his inward firmness;

and thence the fault crept upon him in deed, whence the vainglory had risen up in his heart, so that, deceived by the words of the false prophet, he might learn that it had been by no strength of his own that he had withstood the king's words. And rightly he received the sentence of death from the mouth of him by whose seduction he had turned aside from the precept of life, that he might truly take punishment from that same source whence he had negligently admitted the fault. Since, therefore, the divine grace then all the more guards each one of its elect by instructing him, when as it were smiting it forsakes him, it is rightly said: 'His soul shall draw near to corruption, and his life to those that bring death'; so that whereby he considers himself, through adversities, near to death by his own strength, thereby in all things which he does strongly he may flee to the support of divine hope, and may live the more solidly.