約伯倫理 第 402 章

Same verse: Who has resisted Him, and had peace? 5. He who resists God falls from peace. What it is to resist God. For He who wondrously creates all things, Himself ordains that the created things should be in harmony with Himself. In whatever the Maker is resisted, therefore, the concord of peace is dissolved, because those things cannot remain ordered which lose the disposition of the supreme governance. For the things which, being subject to God, would abide in tranquillity, when left to themselves confound themselves, because they find no peace within themselves, since they contradict, in their Author, the peace that comes from above. So that highest angelic spirit, who, being subject to God, might have stood upon the summit, suffered himself to be cast down, because through the unrest of his own nature he wanders forth abroad.

So the first parent of the human race, because he resisted his Author's command, straightway felt the shame of the flesh; and because through obedience he refused to be subject to his Maker, he was prostrated beneath himself, and straightway lost the peace of his body. Well, then, is it said: Who has resisted Him, and had peace? because the perverse mind, in that very point wherein it raises itself against its Author, therein confounds itself within itself. Now we are said to resist God when we strive to fight against His dispositions. For our weakness does not thwart His unchangeable sentence, and yet it attempts what it cannot accomplish. For often human weakness secretly acknowledges the force of His disposition, and yet desires to change it, if it were able.

It busies itself to oppose, but is broken by the very sword of its own contradiction. It struggles against the inner order, but, overcome by its own efforts, is bound fast. He who resists, therefore, cannot have peace, because, while confusion follows upon pride, that which is foolishly done through fault is wondrously ordained unto the punishment of the doer. But the holy man, filled with the power of the prophetic spirit, when he beholds the confusion of human pride in general, straightway turns the eyes of his mind to the special evil of the people of Israel, and shows, from the destruction of one nation, what punishment awaits all the proud. For he suddenly subjoins, saying: