約伯倫理 第 381 章

Verses 4, 5, 6. Even if thy sons have sinned against Him, and He hath dismissed them into the hand of their iniquity; yet if thou wilt rise early to God, and wilt beseech the Almighty; if thou wilt walk pure and upright, He will straightway awake to thee, and will render peaceful the habitation of thy righteousness. 61. They cast up the sundering of peoples from the Church as though an argument of error.—As if the preachers of errors said to the afflicted catholics: Look to your life, and how perverse are the things you hold, learn from the damnation of those who have died among you; for unless your faithlessness displeased the Creator of all, He would by no means with raging destruction withdraw from you peoples so numerous. For he says:

Even if thy sons have sinned against Him, and He hath dismissed them into the hand of their iniquity. As if plainly saying: Into the hand of their iniquity have they been dismissed, who refused to imitate the life of our rectitude. Yet if thou wilt rise early to God, and wilt beseech the Almighty. For because the heretics deem that they hold the light of truth, they call the holy Church, as though placed in the night of error, to the dawn of truth, that both through the knowledge of God she may rise as through a dawn, and through the prayer of penitence may wash away things past. If thou wilt walk pure and upright. Pure, namely, in thought; upright in work. He will straightway awake to thee. As if he plainly said:

Because He who now does not put forth the strength of His protection in thy tribulations, as it were sleeps from the help of him who errs. And He will render peaceful the habitation of thy righteousness. That is, He removes the adversities of the present life, and straightway grants the security of tranquillity. For because perverse men deem temporal joy to be the singular good of divine remuneration, the very things which they themselves anxiously covet, these they promise to others as something great. Whence it very often comes about that either they pledge that lost things shall be recovered, or they stretch the minds of their hearers toward yet greater rewards of the present life. This Bildad openly expresses, when he presently adds: