約伯倫理 第 350 章

Verse 30.— And you will not find iniquity in my tongue, nor shall folly resound in my jaws. 6. The censor of his own sayings judges more rightly of others'. False things must first be refuted before true ones are taught. As if he openly said: If you more subtly weigh your own, you more truly weigh others', and when what you say begins to be right, you will recognize as just what you hear. For by no means does my tongue sound forth folly to you, if it does not proceed from your own conscience. Thus holy Church strives first to show the false assertions of the enemies, and then to open the proclamations of truth, because when they suppose themselves to hold right things, they contumaciously assail the right things they hear.

First, therefore, it is necessary that the heretics perceive their own error, lest they contradict the truth they have heard, because, if the ploughman does not root out the thorns of the fields by the cutting of the ploughshare, the earth does not bring forth the received seeds into a crop; and when the physician does not, by opening, cast out the putrid matter from a wound, by no means does sound flesh grow together in the place of putrefaction. First therefore destroying perverse things, let him say: Judge, speaking what is just; but afterward insinuating right things, let him add: And you will not find iniquity in my tongue, nor shall folly resound in my jaws. [Old Version, chapter 3.] But heretics are wont to say some things openly, and to hold other things in secret. For by the tongue open speech, but by the jaws secret discussion, is designated. 7.

The Church does not, after the manner of heretics, openly put forth some things and conceal others.— In holy Church, therefore, neither does iniquity resound in the tongue, nor folly in the jaws, because the things she preaches by public speech she also keeps by inmost faith; nor does she teach one thing in the open and retain another in secret, but both casts out by speaking what she feels, and guards by living what she speaks; and of whatever, from the banquet of supernal wisdom, flows forth through the tongue of preaching, this she tastes through the jaws of silent expectation.

But let blessed Job, being namely one member of the universal Church, insinuating his own things and manifesting the hearts of all the elect, open up all that he feels, so that the attestation of his speech may make known the rectitude of his mind. There follows: