約伯倫理 第 1362 章

34. In the net of the Church first the fishermen were caught, then through them the rhetoricians and philosophers. — What is designated by the seines or the fish-basket of fishes, but the churches of the faithful, which make one Catholic Church? Whence in the Gospel it is written: 'The kingdom of heaven is like to a net cast into the sea, and gathering together of all kinds of fishes' (Matt. XIII, 47). The kingdom of heaven, namely, is called the Church, whose morals when the Lord lifts up to things supernal, already this same Church reigns in the Lord through heavenly conversation. Which is rightly also compared to a net cast into the sea, gathering together of all kinds of fishes, because, cast into this world of heathenism, it rejects none;

but it took the bad with the good, the proud with the humble, the wrathful with the meek, and the foolish with the wise. But in the skin of this Leviathan we understand the foolish of his body, and in the head the prudent. Or certainly by the skin, which is on the outside, are designated the subjects who serve for these outermost things, and by the head the prelates. And well does the Lord, preserving the order, declare that He will fill these seines or fish-basket of fishes — that is, His Church — and the vows of the faithful, first from his skin and afterward from his head, because, as we said above (above, ch. 16 of this book, n. 32), He first chose the weak things, that afterward He might crush the strong. He chose indeed the foolish things of the world, that He might confound the wise (1 Cor. I, 27).

For first He gathered the unlearned, and afterward the philosophers; and He did not teach the fishermen through orators, but by wondrous power He subdued the orators through the fishermen. He says therefore: 'Wilt thou fill the seines with his skin, or the fish-basket of fishes with his head?' Understand: as I do, who within the Church of the faithful first gather, as it were the skin of the devil, the lowest and meanest, and afterward subject his head — that is, the prudent — to Myself as adversaries. There follows: 'Wilt thou lay thy hand upon him?' — that is, as I do, who repressing him with mighty power, permit him not to rage more than is expedient, and turn back his savagery, as far as I shall permit it, to the benefit of My elect. Or certainly to lay the hand upon him is to overcome by the power of strength.

To blessed Job, therefore, it is said by way of interrogation [Old Version XXIII]: As if it were openly said: 'Wilt thou repress him by thine own power?' Whence too it is aptly presently subjoined: