約伯倫理 第 295 章

Verse 21. — From the scourge of the tongue thou shalt be hidden. 45. Against the scourge of the tongue, against bodily pains, one must arm oneself. The scourge of the tongue is the reproach of insult inflicted. With the scourge of the tongue they smite the good, who persecute their works by mocking them. For often the tongue, while it reviles, calls back from a good work; and as it were exerts itself as a scourge, because it lashes the back of the timid mind. This scourge of the tongue the Prophet had seen lying in wait for the elect mind, when, promising supernal aid, he said: He himself shall deliver from the snare of the hunters, and from the harsh word (Psalm xc, 3). For hunters seek nothing else but the flesh.

But we are rescued from the snare of the hunters, and from the harsh word, when we overcome by despising both the snares of carnal men and the reproaches of mockeries. For their words are harsh, which are adverse to our good journeys. But to escape the harshness of the word is to trample down the mockeries of detractors by disregarding them. The holy soul therefore is hidden from the scourge of the tongue, because, while in this world it seeks not the honour of praise, neither does it feel the insults of detraction. But there are some who now despise the words of the disparaging, now heed mockeries as nothing, yet still greatly dread the pains and torments of the body. For the ancient adversary, that he may draw us back from a right intention, assails us in manifold ways;

and he attacks our temptation now by famine of the word, now by the struggle of the flesh, now by the scourge of speech, now by the calamity of persecution. But because each perfect man, when he has conquered vices within himself, at once girds his mind also against the wounds of suffering, fitly it is subjoined: