約伯倫理 第 362 章

Verse 10: 'Nor shall he return any more to his house' (Job 7:10). 34. The house of the mind is that which by loving it dwells in. Despairing hearts are like clouds. They are poured out beyond themselves. — Just as a house is the bodily dwelling-place of the body, so to each mind that becomes a house which out of desire it is accustomed to inhabit. To his house, therefore, he shall no more return, because, once each one has been delivered to eternal torments, he is in no way recalled to that in which by love he had clung. By the name of the nether world can also be signified the despair of the sinner, of which it is said through the Psalmist: 'But in the nether world, who shall confess to you?' (Ps. 6:6). Whence again it is written: 'The impious man, when he has come into the depth of sins, holds all in contempt' (Prov. 18:3).

But whoever succumbs to impiety assuredly abandons the life of righteousness by dying. And he who, even after sin, is overwhelmed by the mass of despair, what else is he but one buried, after death, in the torments of the nether world? Well therefore is it said: 'As the cloud is consumed and passes away, so he who descends to the nether world shall not come up,' because very often, together with the perpetration of wickedness, despair too is joined, and the way of return is now cut off. And rightly are the hearts of the despairing compared to clouds, because they are both dark with the murk of error and made dense by the manifoldness of sins; but, being consumed, they pass away, because, struck by the brightness of the final judgment, they are dispersed. Sometimes too by 'house' the inhabiting of the heart is to be understood.

Whence to a certain man who had been healed it is said: 'Go into your house' (Mark 5:19), because indeed it is fitting that the sinner, after pardon, return to his own mind, lest he again admit that for which he would justly be struck. But he who has descended to the nether world shall not ascend any more to his house, because him whom despair overwhelms, it casts forth from the dwelling-place of his heart, and he is not able to return within, because, poured out abroad, he falls, driven daily to worse things. For man had been created for the contemplation of the Creator, that he might ever seek his beauty and dwell in the solemnity of that love. But sent outside himself through disobedience, he lost the place of his mind, because, scattered upon dark ways, he departed far from the indwelling of the true light.

Whence there is fittingly still subjoined: