約伯倫理 第 223 章

1. That the saints here dread prosperity more than adversity. — Since the divine judgements are exceedingly hidden—why in this life it sometimes goes ill with the good and well with the wicked—they are yet more hidden when it goes well here with the good, and ill with the wicked. For when it goes ill with the good and well with the wicked, this perhaps is understood: that the good too, if they have transgressed in anything, receive it here, that they may be more fully freed from eternal damnation; and the wicked find here the good things which they do in this life, that they may be dragged off to torments alone hereafter. Whence also to the rich man burning in hell it is said: 'Remember, son, that thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime, and Lazarus likewise evil things' (Luke 16:25).

But when here it goes well with the good and ill with the wicked, it becomes exceedingly uncertain whether the good receive good things for this reason, that, provoked, they may grow toward something better; or whether by a just and hidden judgement they receive here the recompense of their works, that they may be made void of the rewards of the life to follow; and whether adversities strike the wicked for this reason, that they may be defended from eternal torments by being corrected; or whether their punishment begins here, that, being one day to be completed, it may lead them on to the final torments of Gehenna. Because, then, amid the divine judgements the human mind is pressed by the heavy darkness of its own uncertainty, holy men, when they perceive the prosperity of this world at their disposal, are troubled with a fearful suspicion. For they fear lest here they receive the fruit of their labours;

they fear lest the divine justice, hidden, should behold some wound in them, and, heaping them with outward gifts, should thrust them away from inward things. But when they silently consider that they do no good deeds save that they may please the Lord alone, and that they do not exult in the very abundance of their prosperity, they indeed fear less the hidden judgements against themselves on account of prosperity; yet nevertheless they bear that same prosperity with grief, because it impedes them from their inmost intention; and they endure the allurements of the present life with annoyance, because they are not ignorant that through these they are somehow retarded in their inward desire. For in this world honour occupies a man more than contempt, and the loftiness of prosperity weighs him down more than the adversity of need.

For through the latter it sometimes happens that when a man is outwardly pressed down, he is the more freely released to long for the things that are within. But through the former the soul, while it is compelled to serve many things, is held back from the course of its own desire. Whence it comes about that holy men dread prosperity in this world more than adversity. For they know that the mind, while it is pressed with a soothing occupation, is sometimes willingly diverted to outward things. They know that a clandestine thought often so deceives it that it knows not by what means it is changed. But they weigh what the eternal goods are which they long for, and they recognise how utterly nothing is all that smilingly allures for a season;

and their mind endures all the prosperity of this world with the greater grief, the more it is wounded with the love of heavenly felicity, and it is raised up to the disdaining of present sweetness the more, the more it perceives this to flatter it stealthily in contempt of eternal glory. Whence blessed Job, when, contemplating the heavenly rest, he had said: 'The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master,' immediately adds: