約伯倫理 第 1177 章

(VERSE 16) 'Do you know the great paths of the clouds, and their perfect knowledge?' (61) The strict discipline of living well is not a broad way, but a narrow path. — These clouds have most subtle paths, namely the ways of holy preaching. For 'narrow is the gate that leads to life' (Matt. 7:14). They therefore bind those men to paths who do not go astray from the track of their purpose by wandering through the broad desires of the world. For the strict standard of living well is not a broad way, but a path, on which every preacher is zealously constrained, since under the guardianship of the precepts he is anxiously narrowed.

Is it not, as it were, a certain narrowness of the way, to live indeed in this world, yet to have nothing of this world's covetousness — not to desire what belongs to others, not to hold onto what is one's own, to despise the praises of the world, and for God's sake to love reproaches, to flee glory, to pursue contempt, to despise flatterers, to honor those who despise you, to dismiss from the heart the evils of those who harm you, and to keep toward them, unmoved in the heart, the grace of love? All these are indeed paths, but great paths, because the more they are narrow in the present life for the very sake of keeping oneself in right living, so much the more are they widened in the eternal recompense. Whence it is also well added: 'And their perfect knowledge.' (62) Perfect knowledge is to know that one is nothing.

Perfect knowledge indeed is both to do all these things anxiously, and to know that of one's own merits one is nothing. Whence these clouds also are taught concerning this perfect knowledge, when it is said to them by the voice of Truth: 'When you have done all the things that are commanded you, say: We are unprofitable servants' (Luke 17:10). Perfect knowledge is to know all things, and yet in a certain manner, though knowing, to know oneself not to know; because although we now know God's precepts, although we now weigh the power of His words with anxious attention, although we now do the things we believe ourselves to have understood, nevertheless we still do not know with what strictness of examination these same deeds are to be scrutinized; we do not yet behold the face of God, nor yet see His hidden counsels.

How great, then, is our knowledge, which, so long as it is pressed down by the weight of mortality, is blinded by the very cloud of its own uncertainty? Of which it is well said through Paul: 'He who thinks he knows something has not yet known as he ought to know' (1 Cor. 8:2). And so in this life, while we live, we then perfectly know the things that are to be known, when, advancing through understanding, we recognize that we know nothing perfectly. He says therefore: 'Do you know the great paths of the clouds, and their perfect knowledge?' As if he were openly to say: Do you already behold the highest deeds of those who preach, who, after they raise themselves on high through knowledge, humbly bow themselves downward through the recognition of their own ignorance?

Because this is brought about only by the gift of the Holy Spirit — that the human heart should be perfectly taught not only concerning knowledge, but even concerning its own ignorance, and should burn with the warmth of love toward heavenly things, while it weighs the things it has known to be but small in comparison with the lowest — it is rightly added: