約伯倫理 第 1348 章

The shadows are the devil's—sinners who protect one another. A crime, while it is defended, is increased. For the shadows of the devil are all the wicked, who, while they serve to imitate his iniquity, draw as it were from his body the appearance of an image. But just as the reprobate are his shadows in the plural, so in the singular each individual sinner is his shadow. Yet while the wicked contradict the teaching of the just, while they permit not any wicked man to be corrected by them, the shadows of this Behemoth protect his shadow; because sinners, in whatever thing they are ill conscious to themselves, in that very thing defend another who sins also. The shadows protect his shadow, while the more wicked defend the deeds of the most wicked with perverse patronage.

This they do assuredly with this zeal, lest, while the fault in which they too are bound is corrected in others, it should at some time come round to themselves. They therefore shield themselves while they protect others, because they foresee that their own life is assailed by the very means whereby they observe others confounded by free reproof. And so it comes about that the sum of crimes, while it is defended, is increased, and each one's wickedness is the easier to perpetrate the harder it is to punish. For the crimes of sinners receive so much the greater increase, the longer they are tolerated unpunished through the defence of the powerful. But all such, whether they seem to be outside or within holy Church, show themselves the more open enemies of God, the greater patrons they are of vices.

For against him whom his own defenders defend, the very things which they multiply by defending fight—against him to whom they are displeasing. This deed the Lord fittingly rebuked through the prophet under the figure of Babylon, saying: 'There shall spring up in her houses thorns and nettles, and the thistle in her fortifications' (Isa. 34:13). For what do we understand by 'nettles' but the itchings of thoughts, and what by 'thorns' but the prickings of vices? In the houses of Babylon, then, nettles and thorns sprout, because in the confusion of the reprobate mind there rise up both desires of thoughts which exasperate, and sins of deeds which prick. But those who do these things have also other, more wicked men as their defenders. Whence there it fittingly subjoins at once: 'And the thistle in her fortifications.'

For the thistle grows thick with so great a surrounding of thorns, that from its roughness it can scarcely be touched. Within, then, the nettle and the thorn are born, but both are here fortified outwardly by the thistle, because, namely, the lesser wicked do whatever evils, but the most wicked greater ones protect them. Whence here too it is well said: 'The shadows protect his shadow.' For here a worse evil vindicates an evil, as a shadow a shadow, so that, lest it be irradiated by the light of truth, it obscures it. There follows: