約伯倫理 第 1243 章

When God is revealed in His majesty, preaching will cease. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and the Son, coeternal with both. — For in this life the Lord has spoken to our infirmity not by the open appearance of His majesty, but by the voice of His preachers, that a carnal tongue might strike hearts still carnal, and that they might the more easily perceive things unaccustomed, the more they heard them through the sound of an accustomed voice. But after the flesh is dissolved into dust through death, and the dust is quickened through resurrection, then we do not seek to hear words about God, because we behold through vision the Word of God, that one thing itself which fills all things. Which sounds to us so much the more loftily as it also penetrates our minds by the force of inmost illumination.

For when the words of the strong and of the perishing are taken away, the very image of the inward vision becomes, as it were, a certain sound of eternal preaching. Whence also the Lord now rightly says to blessed Job: 'Who shall declare the account of the heavens, and who shall make the harmony of heaven to sleep?' For what is understood by the account of the heavens but the supernal force of hidden things? What is signified by the harmony of heaven but the concordant discourse of preachers? Therefore our Creator, when He shall have begun to relate the account of the heavens, makes the harmony of heaven to sleep, because when He is now shown to us through vision, assuredly the words of preachers are withdrawn. Hence the Lord says through Jeremiah: 'A man shall teach his neighbour and his brother no more, saying, Know the Lord.'

'For they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest, saith the Lord.' Hence Paul says: 'Whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be destroyed.' Or certainly the account of the heavens is that very life-giving power which forms the spirits of the angels. For God, as He is the cause of causes, as He is the life of the living, so also is He the reason of rational creatures. Then, therefore, does the Lord relate the account of the heavens, when He intimates to us how He presides over the elect spirits. Then does He relate the account of the heavens, when, the darkness of our mind being wiped away, He manifests Himself by clear vision. Whence also in the Gospel the Lord says:

'The hour cometh when I shall no more speak to you in proverbs, but shall show you plainly of the Father.' Indeed He asserts that He will announce plainly of the Father, because through the then-disclosed appearance of His majesty He shows both how He Himself, though begotten, arises not unequal to His Begetter, and how the Spirit of them both proceeds coeternal with both. For openly then shall we see how that which is by arising is not subsequent to Him from whom it arises, how He who is produced through procession is not preceded by those who bring Him forth. Openly then shall we see how the One is divisibly Three, and how indivisibly the Three are One. Therefore the tongue of God then relating is the beheld brightness of the One who lifts us up.

And the harmony of heaven shall then sleep, because when the Rewarder of works appears in judgement, the words of exhortations shall then cease. Whence also the very time of resurrection is openly subjoined, when it is immediately brought forth: