約伯倫理 第 1392 章

23. He, in his pride, despises God's vengeance. As if he said: He despises even the weight of that visitation which strikes him, coming from above by punishment. For in Sacred Scripture by the name of hammer sometimes the devil is signified, through whom now the faults of transgressors are struck; but sometimes the heavenly stroke is understood, by which either the elect feel the supernal blows, that they may be corrected from their depraved ways, or just wrath strikes the reprobate, so that, already anticipating eternal punishments, it may show what they will deserve hereafter as well. For that by the name of hammer the ancient enemy is expressed, the prophet testifies, when he contemplates the force of the last judgment over him, saying: 「How is the hammer of the whole earth broken and shattered!」 (Jeremiah

50:23). As if he said: Him by whom the Lord strikes his vessels to be formed for the use of ministry—who can weigh with what whirlwind, at the coming of the last judgment, He shatters him in eternal damnation? Again, by the hammer the heavenly stroke is expressed, which is signified when Solomon builds the temple, when it is said: 「And the house, when it was being built, was built of stones hewn and finished; and hammer and axe and every tool of iron were not heard in the house while it was being built」 (1 Kings 6:7). For what did that house prefigure but the holy Church, which the Lord inhabits in the heavens? To whose building the souls of the elect, as certain polished stones, are borne.

When it is built in the heavens, no hammer of discipline resounds there any longer, because as stones hewn and finished we are led thither, to be arranged in places suited according to merit. For here we are beaten without, that we may come thither without reprehension. Here the hammer, here the axe, here all the tools of the beating resound. But in the house of God no blows are heard, because in the eternal fatherland all the din of strokes falls silent. There the hammer never strikes, because no visitation afflicts. There the axe never cuts, because no sentence of severity casts those received within out of doors. There the tools never clatter, because not even the least of scourges is felt any more.

Because, therefore, by the hammer coming from above the weight of the heavenly stroke is expressed, what does it mean that this Leviathan despises the hammer, but that he scorns to dread the blows of the supernal visitation? And he reckons the hammer as stubble, because he prepares himself against the weights of just wrath as though against the lightest of terrors. Whence still more expressly it is added: