約伯倫理 第 418 章

Ibid. And he will multiply my wounds even without cause. 32. Little ones are condemned from original guilt alone. For some are withdrawn from the present light before they come to bring forth the good or evil deserts of the active life. And because the sacraments of salvation do not free them from the guilt of origin, and here they have done nothing of their own, they nevertheless come thither to torments. To these one wound is to be born corruptibly, another to die carnally. But because after death eternal death also follows, by a hidden and just judgment their wounds are multiplied even without cause. For they receive perpetual torments who also have sinned nothing of their own will. For hence it is written:

There is none clean in his sight, not even an infant of one day upon the earth (Job 15:14). Hence through himself the Truth says: Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God (John 3:5). Hence Paul says: We were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest (Ephesians 2:3). He, therefore, who, adding nothing of his own, is destroyed from the guilt of origin alone—what is that one in that final examination, so far as pertains to the estimation of the human sense, but wounded without cause? But yet under the divine strictness it is just that the mortal offspring, like an unfruitful tree, should preserve even in its branches the bitterness which it drew from the root. He says therefore:

For he will crush me in a whirlwind, and will multiply my wounds even without cause. As if, openly considering the losses of the human race, he said: With what animadversion does the strict judge slay those whom the fault of their own action condemns, if he strikes even for eternity those whom the guilt of will does not adjudge? 33. Job fears the judgment of God. He was struck that his merit might be increased, not that his vices might be wiped away.—Which words we recognize not to differ especially even from blessed Job, if we search out how truly they are uttered. For, weighing himself subtly, and judging himself in every action, he intimates with what solicitude he dreads the force of the supernal strictness, subjoining: For he will crush me in a whirlwind. As if he openly said:

Therefore I always fear him even in tranquility, because I am not ignorant in what manner he comes in the whirlwind through scourges. Which scourges indeed, both fearing he foresaw, and foreseeing he endured. Whence he subjoins: And he will multiply my wounds even without cause. For as we have already often said, blessed Job was by no means struck that in him the striking might wipe away vice, but that it might increase merit. Asserting himself, therefore, to be wounded without cause, he speaks openly of himself that which the Truth in secret testifies concerning him, saying: Thou hast moved me against him, that I should afflict him in vain (Job 2:3). The holy man, therefore, does not proudly say what he truly says, nor through these words does he differ from rectitude, through which he does not disagree with the judge.

Who straightway expresses the continuation of those same wounds, when he subjoins: