約伯倫理 第 1254 章

50. By the name of the free wild ass are understood those who, freed from the servitude of secular affairs, are at leisure for solitude. — You understand: unless I. For the wild ass, which dwells in the solitude, not incongruously signifies the life of those who, remote from the crowds of the populace, spend their lives. Who is also fittingly called free, because great is the servitude of secular business, by which the mind is vehemently worn down, although in these things it toils of its own accord. To be free of the condition of that servitude is to covet nothing in the world any longer. For prosperous things, as it were by a certain yoke of servitude, press us down while they are coveted; adverse things press us down while they are feared.

But if anyone has once shaken from the neck of the mind the domination of temporal desires, he enjoys already even in this life a certain liberty, while he is affected by no desire of felicity, constrained by no terror of adversity. This heavy yoke of servitude the Lord saw impressed upon the necks of worldly men, when he said: 'Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is sweet, and my burden light' (Matt. xi, 28).

For it is a harsh yoke and a burden of hard servitude, as we have said, to be subject to temporal things, to strive after earthly things, to retain things that are slipping away, to wish to stand in things that do not stand, to seek indeed transitory things, yet with the transitory to be unwilling to pass away. For when all things flee against our wish, which before had afflicted the mind out of the desire of obtaining them, afterwards they press us out of the dread of losing them. Free therefore is he dismissed who, having trodden down earthly desires, is unburdened from the seeking of temporal things by the security of the mind. 'And who has loosed his bonds?' You understand: unless I. 51. By divine help the restraints of carnal desires are broken.

— The bonds of each one are loosed, when by divine help the inner restraints of carnal desires are broken asunder. For when pious intention calls to conversion, but the weakness of the flesh still calls back from this intention, the soul is hindered as though bound by certain bonds. For we often see many desire indeed the life of holy conversion; but lest they be able to attain this, they now dread the disasters rushing upon them, now the adversities to come. Who, while as though cautious they look ahead to certain evils, are incautiously held in the bonds of their own sins. For they set before their eyes many things, which if they should befall them in that manner of life, they dread that they cannot subsist. Of whom Solomon well says: 'The way of the slothful is like a hedge of thorns' (Prov.

xv, 19). For when they seek the way of God, the suspicions of their own fears, set against them, prick them like the thorns of obstructing hedges. Because this is not wont to hinder the elect, well does he add, following there: 'The way of the just is without stumbling-block' (Ibid.). For the just, in their manner of life, whatever of adversity may meet them, do not stumble, because they leap over the obstacles of temporal adversity by the leap of eternal hope and inner contemplation. And so God looses the bonds of the wild ass, when in the mind of each of the elect he breaks the knots of weak thoughts, and mercifully scatters everything that was binding the enticed mind. There follows: