約伯倫理 第 1349 章

The wicked are like willows: they are green indeed, but bear no fruit. Willows are indeed unfruitful trees; yet they are of such greenness that they can scarcely wither even when cut off at the root and cast away. Whence in sacred discourse by the name of 'willows' are designated sometimes the reprobate for their sterility, sometimes for the greenness of good. For unless they expressed the life of the elect by the constancy of their greenness, the prophet would by no means have said of the children of holy Church: 'They shall spring up among the grass as willows beside the running waters' (Isa. 44:4).

For the children of holy Church spring up among the grass like willows, while amid the withering life of carnal men they endure with manifold multitude and with perpetual greenness of mind. Who are well said to spring up beside running waters, because each of them receives fruitfulness for fruit from the doctrine of sacred discourse, which flows on in time. And again, unless the life of sinners were signified by the sterility of willows, the Psalmist would by no means, in the voice of those who preach against Babylon, have said: 'On the willows in the midst thereof we hung up our instruments' (Ps. 136:2).

For willows are described in the midst of Babylon, because, namely, all the unfruitful, and those estranged from the Author of the heavenly homeland, are rooted with the whole of their heart's inmost parts in this confusion of the world. Whence too the holy preachers do not exercise their instruments on those willows, but hang them up, since, when they behold unfruitful and reprobate minds, they display not the force of their preaching, but rather, mourning, are silent. What also is expressed by 'the torrent,' but the course of this mortal life? Of which again it is said through the Prophet: 'He shall drink of the torrent in the way, therefore shall he lift up the head' (Ps. 109 [110]:7),

because, namely, our Redeemer touched the penalty of mortal life in a certain passing-through, and therefore clung not long to that same death to which He of His own will submitted. Whence on the third day He lifted up, by rising, the head which He had laid down by dying. What, then, is it that is said of this Behemoth: 'The willows of the torrent shall compass him about,' but that the lovers of mortal life, estranged from good acts as from fruits, cling to him the more closely, the more abundantly the delight of transitory pleasure pours itself into them? For the torrent waters these as though at their roots, while the love of carnal life inebriates them in their thoughts.

Who, indeed, after the manner of willows, bear no fruit, but are green in leaves, because those things which are not weighty to speak of they sometimes utter as words of honesty, but they show no weight of life from good works. Well, then, is it said: 'The willows of the torrent shall compass him about,' because all the unfruitful, while they serve the love of temporal life, more familiarly comply with the ancient enemy by their perverse ways. But since we have heard what is rendered to him by his clients, let us also hear what he himself does in them. There follows: