約伯倫理 第 473 章

Ver. 13. But thou hast hardened thy heart, and stretched out thy hands toward him. 25. Zophar accuses Job of a hardened and proud spirit. The wicked and heretics imitate that man against the good and the catholic. To harden the heart is here said not of virtue, but of insensibility. For every soul that subjects itself to the consideration of inmost strictness at once grows soft from fear of it; and the arrow of divine dread pierces it, because through humility it bears tender inward parts. But whoever grows hard through the obstinacy of insensibility, as it were hardens his heart, lest the darts of supernal fear pierce it. Hence to certain men the Lord mercifully says through the prophet:

I will take away from you the stony heart, and give you a heart of flesh (Ezek. xxxvi, 26). For he takes away the stony heart when he withdraws from us the hardness of pride, and he bestows a heart of flesh when he at once turns that same hardness of ours to sensitivity. But by the hands, as I have often taught, works are designated. Therefore, together with guilt, to stretch out the hands to God is to grow proud of the virtue of one's works against the grace of the Giver. For he who, speaking in the sight of the eternal Judge, attributes to himself the good he does, stretches out proud hands to God.

So indeed the reprobate against the elect, so heretics against the catholic, are ever unbridled, that when they cannot reproach deeds, they contrive to blame the good for the pride of their deeds, so that those whom they are not able to refute out of weakness of action, they may accuse out of the crime of arrogance. Hence too the good works that are done outwardly they now by no means reckon to be good, works which are, as it were, displayed through the zeal of a swollen thought. And they, being puffed up, often rebuke humble things, and know not that by their own words they wound themselves. But because Zophar has thus far chastised the just man by rebuking, now, as though teaching, he subjoins: