約伯倫理 第 1397 章

Those who fight for Antichrist against the saints will believe that they are rendering obedience to God. For ointments, when they boil, give off a fragrance of sweetness. Because, therefore, this Leviathan will so seduce the hearts of the reprobate that whatever they do out of the iniquity of perfidy they will suppose themselves to be doing for the truth of right faith, that which they perform out of zeal for religion smells sweet to them, as it were. Hence in the Gospel the Truth says to His disciples: 'That everyone who kills you will think he is rendering obedience to God' (John 16:2). Therefore, just as they boil like a pot while they persecute cruelly, so among them the persecution itself gives off the fragrance of ointments, while their mind, deceived by empty suspicions, reckons that it is paying obedience to God.

For in sacred Scripture the reputation of virtues is wont to be signified by the odours of ointments. Hence the bride in the Song of Songs, longing for the bridegroom, says: 'We run in the fragrance of your ointments' (Song 1:3). And hence the apostle Paul, knowing that he was fragrant with the praise of virtues, says: 'We are the good odour of Christ unto God' (2 Cor. 2:15). And so, because this Leviathan ensnares the ministers of his lost vessel in works of cruelty under the appearance of praise and the pretext of virtue, after He had said, 'He will make the deep sea to boil like a pot,' He rightly added at once: 'He shall smell as when ointments boil.'

For the fact that the sea boils with the fire of cruelty, this in the judgment of those very men who are stirred up by a false name of virtue displays itself as if ointments were boiling, so that they become the more atrocious in cruelty the more they suppose that they even merit rewards as it were for zeal for religion. And this is just by the divine judgment, that those who neglect to weigh and to keep the force of piety should be deceived by the odour of their own suspicion. Hence also, for the increase of their delusion, signs and wonders follow upon them as they perpetrate cruel deeds, just as it is rightly added: