約伯倫理 第 380 章

Verse 3. Doth God pervert judgment, or doth the Almighty subvert that which is just? 59. The wicked hunt for the praise of doctrine. They praise the justice of God where it is well with them; where it is ill, they condemn it. This blessed Job had neither denied in speaking, nor by keeping silence was he ignorant of it. But the insolent, as we have said, utter even known things boastfully, that they may seem learned by speaking; they scorn to keep silent with moderation, lest they be believed to have been silent from ignorance. But it is to be known that they then praise the rectitude of divine justice, when soundness raises them to gladness, and scourges chastise others; when they behold themselves enjoying the prosperity of things, while others are wearied by adversity.

For while they act perversely, yet nevertheless deem themselves upright, they believe that this—that prosperous things abound to them—is owed to their own merits; and thence they gather that God does not judge unjustly, since no adversity saddens them as though they were just. But if the force of the supernal chastisement shall have touched their life ever so briefly, being struck, they presently reproach the counsel of the divine examination, which a little before, being unharmed, they with admiration extolled; and they deny that judgment to be just which is contrary to their own ways; they dispute concerning the divine equity, they leap forth to words of resistance, and, being corrected because they have transgressed, they transgress the more grievously. Whence well also through the Psalmist against the sinner's confession it is said:

He will confess to Thee, when Thou doest well to him (Ps. xlviii, 19). Despised indeed is that voice of confession which the pleasantness of prosperity fashions. But that confession alone has the merit of great weight which the force of grief in no way separates from the truth of rectitude, which even unto the judgment the adversity of the witness of the heart sharpens the voice. It is no wonder, then, that Bildad praises the divine justice, who endures nothing adverse from that same justice. 60. The madness of heretics against the Church when she is pressed by adversities.

But since we have said that the friends of blessed Job hold the likeness of heretics, it pleases us to show in a few words how the words of Bildad accord with the subtle assaults of heretics. For these, when they behold the holy Church chastised by temporal correction, swell up more boldly within themselves into the boasting of perverse preaching; and, holding forth the rectitude of the supernal examination, they assert that they prosper from their merits, but attest that she is afflicted with deserved retributions; and with flattering words they presently seek amid her sorrows an entrance for their subtle assault, and they smite the life of others by reproaching the deaths of others, as though those had now justly died who refused to believe worthy things concerning God.

Whence Bildad the Shuhite, after he had set forth the divine justice, immediately adds: