約伯倫理 第 1306 章

80. Beginners despise the threats of the enemy. — 'He despises fear,' because by the dread of no temptation is he terrified even to the point of falling silent. 'Nor does he yield to the sword,' because though violent temptation strikes him, yet it does not drive him back from care for his neighbor. Whence Paul also, insinuating to us an example of unconquered conduct, both tells what swords he receives from the enemy, and shows how he does not yield to those same swords. For, every battle of carnal work being now surmounted, he had received the sword of carnal temptation from the enemy, he who said: 'I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and leading me captive under the law of sin which is in my members' (Rom.

7:23). But to that same sword which he had conquered in himself, he did not yield even in others, when he assuredly said to his neighbors: 'Let not sin reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the desires thereof' (Rom. 6:12). And again: 'Mortify your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence' (Col. 3:5). A grievous sword of temptations was striking him, of which he himself says: 'In labors very many, in prisons more abundantly, in stripes above measure, in deaths often. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one; thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I was in the deep of the sea' (2 Cor.

11:23ff.), and the rest, which he himself was able to endure, and which we grow weary of enumerating. But how he does not yield to that same sword in love of his neighbor, he himself subjoins after many things: 'Besides those things which are without, my daily instance, the solicitude for all the Churches' (ibid., 28). The horse of God therefore is struck by the sword, yet is not by that same striking hindered from his course, while the strong soldier of the spiritual contest both himself receives wounds from the enemy, and yet draws others to salvation. But against so hard a breast of the heavenly soldier the ancient enemy seeks out darts the sharper, the more sturdily he beholds himself despised. Whence there also follows: