約伯倫理 第 38 章

With what lowliness of spirit, with what trust in God. By what method the same work was revised, completed, and divided. What senses it examines. — But as soon as I came to know, in this obscure work — hitherto undiscussed before us — that I was being drawn to so great and such matters, overcome by the mere weight of hearing it, I confess, wearied, I sank down. But suddenly, caught between dread and devotion, when I lifted the eyes of my mind to the Giver of gifts, laying aside all hesitation, I straightway attended, certain that it could not be impossible which charity commanded me from the hearts of my brethren. For indeed I despaired of being fit for these things:

but, made stronger by that very despair of myself, I straightway raised my hope to Him through whom the tongue of the dumb is opened, who makes the tongues of infants eloquent (Wisd. x, 21); who distinguished the immense and brutish brayings of the she-ass through the intelligible modes of human speech. What wonder, then, if He should grant understanding to a foolish man, who, when He wills, narrates His own truth even through the mouths of beasts of burden (Num. xxii, 28)? Girded, therefore, with the strength of this consideration, I roused my dryness to search out the fountain of so great a depth. And although the life of those whom I was compelled to instruct far transcended me, yet I did not believe it injurious if a pipe of lead should minister streams to the uses of men.

Whence forthwith, in the presence of those same brethren, I spoke the earlier parts of the book off-hand; and because I found a time somewhat more free, I dictated the later parts by treating them in due order. And when larger spaces of time were afforded me, augmenting many things, withdrawing a few, and leaving some just as they had been found, I composed by correction into books, through emendation, those things which, while I was speaking, had been taken down off-hand; for even when I was dictating the last parts, I carefully attended to the style in which I had spoken the first. I acted, therefore, so that both the things I had spoken, running over them with careful emendation, I might raise up as it were to the likeness of dictation; and the things I had dictated might not differ far from the manner of speech of one conversing;

so that, while the one is stretched toward and the other drawn back, a thing not dissimilar might be given shape in a somewhat dissimilar manner. Yet the third part of this work, just as I brought it forth in speaking, I left almost as it was; because, when the brethren drew me away to other matters, they did not wish it to be more subtly emended. Obeying these brethren in their many commands — while I wished to comply now through the ministry of exposition, now through the ascent of contemplation, now through the instrument of morality — I completed this work, extended through thirty-five volumes, in six codices. Whence also in it I am often found, as it were, to postpone the order of exposition, and to labor a little longer at the breadth of contemplation and of morality.

Yet nevertheless, whoever speaks of God must needs take care to examine whatever instructs the morals of his hearers; and let him reckon this the right order of speaking, if, when the opportunity of edification demands it, he usefully turns aside from that of which he had begun to speak. For the expounder of sacred eloquence ought to imitate the manner of a river. For a river, while it flows down through its channel, if it touches hollow valleys at its side, straightway diverts the course of its onrush into them; and when it has sufficiently filled them, it suddenly pours itself back into its channel. So indeed, so ought the expounder of the divine word to be, that when he discourses on any matter whatever, if perhaps he finds occasion near at hand for fitting edification, he may bend, as it were, toward a neighboring valley the waves of his speech;

and when he has sufficiently flooded the field of the added instruction, he may run back to the channel of the subject he had proposed.