約伯倫理 第 1215 章

20. God does not forsake man, and in the last times more anxiously purges the elect.—For by 'earth' is designated the man who savours of base things, to whom, when he sinned, it was said: 'Earth thou art, and into earth thou shalt go' (Gen. 3:19). But because the loving Creator does not forsake His own creature, He both tolerates the evils of men through His wisdom, and at length relaxes them through their conversion. But when He regards hard and insensible minds, now with threats, now with scourges, now with revelations He terrifies them, so that those which had hardened in most evil security may soften with wholesome fear, so that they may return at least late, and may be ashamed of this very thing—that they were long awaited. For thus the Lord, because He judges the last things of our life more,

therefore in the end He more anxiously purges His elect. For it is written: 'God shall judge the ends of the earth' (1 Kings 2:10). So much the more diligently, therefore, does He watch over our last things, as He weighs that upon them the beginnings of the following life depend. And because He does this mercifully, His tenderness being brought into the midst, whereby He receives even sinners converted late, He instructs the justice of blessed Job, saying: 'Hast thou not held, shaking, the ends of the earth, and shaken the impious out of it?' You are to understand, then: I who in their last things often, by terrifying, shake sinners, by converting hold them, and pluck out from their hearts the impious motions of thoughts. And rightly does the Lord intimate to blessed Job how He converts sinners toward the end. As if He were openly to say:

Look upon the power of my mercy, and press down the loftiness of thy justice. And since this is man's final lot that, even when he is converted, the punishment of his ancient guilt attends him through the death of the flesh, he at once suggests this, saying: