The perverse reject the upright sayings of their opponents as though they were crooked; the good do otherwise. Perverse minds, if once they have broken forth into a zeal for contradiction, whether they hear something crooked or upright from those who contradict them, assail it with hostile replies, because when a person displeases them through opposition, not even the upright things he brings forth please them. But on the contrary, the hearts of the good, to whom not the person but the fault comes into hatred, so judge perverse things as to take up the upright things that are said. For they sit as most equitable arbiters in discerning the meanings of those who contradict, and so reject what is ill spoken as nevertheless to approve what they recognize from the truth. For it is wont, among a multitude of thorns, that an ear of corn should spring up even from a grain of the harvest.
With a cautious hand of the worker, therefore, must one act, that while the thorn is taken away, the ear of corn may be nourished, so that he who strives to root out what pricks may know how to preserve what refreshes. Whence too blessed Job, because Bildad the Shuhite had rightly said, by way of inquiry: Doth God pervert judgment, or doth the Almighty subvert what is just (Job 8:3)?—because he had brought forth things true and robust against hypocrites—beholding well that these things had also been generally uttered against the perverse, tramples down the zeal of his own defense, and forthwith approves what he has heard, saying: