約伯倫理 第 1063 章

IBIDEM. 'And He shall render to man his righteousness.' 13. In what sense our righteousness is so called. It is called our righteousness, not that which is ours from ourselves, but that which becomes ours by divine bounty, as in the Lord's Prayer we say: 'Give us this day our daily bread' (Matthew 6:11; Luke 11:3). Behold, we call it ours; and yet we pray that it may be given. For it becomes ours when it is received, which nevertheless is God's, because it is given by Him. And so it is both God's from His gift, and truly becomes ours by our receiving. So, therefore, in this place the Lord renders to man his righteousness, not that which he had of himself, but that which, when created, he received that he might have, and in which, having fallen, he was unwilling to persevere.

That righteousness, therefore, God will render to man, unto which he was created, that it may please him to cleave to God, that he may dread God's threatening sentence, that he may not believe the now blandishing promises of the crafty serpent. 14. Daily the devil strives to pluck out the words of God from the hearts of men. For what he did in paradise (Genesis 3:5), that the ancient enemy ceases not daily to do. For he labours to pluck out the words of God from the hearts of men, and to root in them the feigned enticements of his own promise; daily he makes light of that which God threatens, and invites to the believing of that which he falsely promises. For he falsely promises temporal things, that he may make light in the minds of men those eternal punishments which God threatens.

For when he promises the glory of the present life, what else does he say than, 'Taste, and ye shall be as gods'? As if he openly said: Touch temporal concupiscence, and appear exalted in this world. And when he strives to remove the fear of the divine sentence, what else does he speak than that which he said to the first men: 'Why hath God commanded you, that ye should not eat of every tree of paradise?' (Genesis 3:1). But because man, redeemed by the divine gift, has received the righteousness which long ago, when created, he lost, he now exercises himself more robustly against the enticements of crafty persuasion, because by experience he has learned how obedient he ought to be to the precept.

And him whom then fault led to punishment, now his punishment restrains from fault, and let him the more fear to transgress, the more, by the compelling penalty, he himself now accuses that which he perpetrated. Whence there follows: