約伯倫理 第 297 章

Verse 22. — At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh. 47. The reprobate shall be tormented within and without. For then shall the reprobate suffer destruction and famine, when, condemned in the last judgment, they are separated from the vision of the eternal Bread. For it is written: Let the wicked be taken away, that he see not the glory of God (Isaiah xxvi, 10, according to the LXX). And through himself the Lord says: I am the living bread, who came down from heaven (John vi, 51). Together therefore do destruction and famine torment those who not only feel torments without, but within also die by the plague of hunger. Gehenna lays waste, because it burns up; famine slays, because the Redeemer hides his face from them.

For fittingly do they receive recompense within and without, because both by thinking they were wretched and by working they transgressed. Whence well it is said through the Psalmist: Thou shalt make them as an oven of fire in the time of thy countenance; the Lord in his wrath shall trouble them, and fire shall devour them (Psalm xx, 10). For that which is devoured by fire is kindled from the outer part, but an oven is inflamed within. In the time therefore of the Lord's countenance all the unjust are both set as an oven and devoured by fire; because, at the appearing of the judge, when their multitude is repelled from his vision, both within the conscience burns through desire, and without Gehenna torments the flesh. 48. The just shall then laugh, nor shall they be moved by any mercy toward the damned.

The scourge of the tongue may also be understood as the sentence of the last punishment, by which the strict judge says to the reprobate: Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. xxv, 41). The just man therefore is hidden from the scourge of the tongue and from the coming calamity, because amid so great strictness of the sentence he is then cherished by the kindly voice of the judge, when it is said: I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye covered me; sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came to me (Ibid., 35, 36). To whom it is prefixed:

'Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world' (Matt. 25:34). In the desolation, therefore, and the famine the just man shall laugh; for when the utmost vengeance strikes down all the wicked, he himself rejoices in the glory of a worthy recompense. Nor does he then feel any human compassion for the damned; because, cleaving to the divine justice through vision, he is made steadfast with the unshaken vigour of that inmost severity. For no pity touches the minds of the elect, raised up into the brightness of the supernal righteousness, since the height of their blessedness renders them strangers to all miseries. Whence it is also well said through the Psalmist: 'The just shall see and fear, and shall laugh at him, and shall say:'

'Behold the man that made not God his helper' (Ps. 52:7). For the just now see the wicked and fear, but then they shall see them and shall laugh. Because now they are able to fall by imitating them, here they have dread; but because then they can be of no profit to the damned, there they have no compassion. That those given over to eternal punishment are not to be pitied, they read in that very justice of the Judge wherein they themselves are blessed; they who — a thing it is not lawful even to suspect — would diminish the quality of the felicity they have received, if, set in the kingdom, they wished for what they can in no wise fulfil. But whosoever directs himself to the precepts of life, before he receives the eternal rewards, here already tastes the beginnings of a security that shall endure forever;

so that he fears not the ancient enemy, so that when the moment of death intervenes he in no wise dreads its violent assaults. [Old Chapter XXI.] For to the just the beginning of their recompense is very often that security of mind at their departure. Whence also it is rightly added: