約伯倫理 第 1285 章

34. He first winnowed the ark of God, afterward gathered it together. Let us consider who Saul was: since from his very youth he was an abettor of those who stoned, since he laid waste the various places of the Church, and, having received letters, sought out others to lay waste; since no death of the faithful sufficed him, but, when some were slain, he ever panted for the destruction of others (Acts 7). And assuredly we recognize that none of the faithful would then have believed that God would bend to the yoke of His awe so great a force of arrogance. Whence Ananias too, even after he heard by the Lord's voice that this man was converted, was afraid, saying: Lord, I have heard from many of this man, how great evils he hath done to thy saints in Jerusalem (Acts 9:13).

Yet he, suddenly changed, from an enemy is made a preacher, and in all parts of the world instills the name of his Redeemer, endures torments for the truth, exults to suffer the very things he had inflicted; some he calls by allurements, others he recalls to faith by terrors. To these he promises the kingdom of the heavenly homeland; to those he threatens the fire of Gehenna. These he corrects by authority; those he draws to the way of uprightness by humility; and on every side he bends himself to the hand of his ruler, and gathers together the threshing-floor of God with as great skill as he had formerly winnowed it in his pride. [Old text, 15.] 35. Paul, chastising his body by abstinence, strikes those given over to the belly.

Nor is this alien to Paul, that the rhinoceros is said to be of a boxwood color, and is reported to strike the bellies of elephants with its horn. For because he was accustomed to live under the rigor of the Law, the guarding of each single virtue grew more strictly ingrained in him than in others. For what is expressed by the boxwood color but the pallor of abstinence? To which he himself testifies that he tenaciously clings, saying: I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway (1 Cor. 9:27). He who, endowed with the learning of the divine Law, while he reproves the gluttony of others, strikes the belly with the elephantine horn. For indeed he had struck the elephants in the belly when he said: For many walk, of whom I have told you often;

and now I tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame (Phil. 3:18–19). And again: They that are such serve not Christ the Lord, but their own belly (Rom. 16:18). With his horn, therefore, this rhinoceros strikes no longer men, but beasts, when Paul by the strength of his teaching in no wise assails the humble, who are not to be slain, but slays the proud worshippers of the belly. What things, then, we have known written concerning Paul, it remains that we believe done also in others. For many were converted to the grace of humility from the arrogance of that people, and when the Lord tamed their savagery beneath the yoke of an inspired fear, He surely subdued to Himself the strength of the rhinoceros.

But since we have heard what God's wondrous power has wrought concerning the elect, let us now hear what His wondrous patience has endured in those whom He reprobates: