約伯倫理 第 148 章

Ibid. — But thou hast moved Me against him, that I should afflict him without cause. 3. God afflicted Job without cause, because in him He did not punish sin; and not without cause, because He increased his merit. — Since God is just and truthful, it must be earnestly asked how He declares that He afflicted blessed Job without cause. For because He is just, He could not afflict without cause; but again, because He is truthful, He could not have spoken otherwise than He did. Therefore, that both may agree with One who is just and truthful, so that He both speaks true things and does no unjust things, let us understand blessed Job to have been smitten in one respect without cause, and again in another respect not without cause.

For since, being just and truthful, He asserts these things concerning Himself, let us show both that what He said was true, and that what He did was right. For it was necessary that the holy man, known only to God and to himself, should become known to all as a pattern for imitation, in how great virtue he was strong. For plainly he would not have given to others examples of virtue, if he himself had remained without temptation. It was brought about, therefore, both that the very force of the smiting should display his strength for all to imitate, and that the scourges should reveal what had lain hidden in tranquility. But by those same scourges the virtue of patience grew, and from the pain of the stripe the glory of the recompense was increased.

Therefore, that in the Lord's saying truth may be maintained, and in the deed rightness, blessed Job is both smitten not without cause, because his merit is increased; and yet is smitten without cause, because no transgression is punished. For he was smitten without cause, in whom no fault is cut away; and he was not smitten without cause, in whom the merit of virtue is heaped up. [Old Version II.] 4. In what sense God is understood to be moved. — But what is it that is said: Thou hast moved Me against him? Is Truth kindled by Satan's words, so that He is incited to the torments of His subjects? Who would think these things of God, which he judges unworthy even of an upright man? But because we know not how to strike except when moved, the divine smiting itself is called a being moved;

and there is a descent to our words by the divine voice, so that His deed may in some fashion be grasped by man. For that Power which created all things without necessity, and presides over all without contempt, and sustains all things without labor, and governs without being occupied, corrects also without being moved, and so shapes human minds by scourges to those things which It wills, that It passes not from the light of Its own unchangeableness into the shadow of variableness. There follows: