約伯倫理 第 497 章

Verse 11. — Does not the ear discern words, and the palate of him who eats the taste? 8. How diverse are the gifts of one and the same wisdom, and how diverse the modes of its indwelling. — It escapes almost no one that the five senses of our body — namely sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch — in all that they perceive and discern, draw the power of discernment and of sense from the brain. And although the judge of sense which presides within is one, that is, the brain, yet through its own passages it discerns the five senses, God working wondrously, so that neither may the eye hear, nor the ear see, nor the mouth smell, nor the nostrils taste, nor the hand smell.

And although all things are ordered through the one sense of the brain, yet any one of these senses can do nothing other than that which it has received from the disposition of its Maker. From these bodily and outward things, therefore, inward and spiritual things are to be gathered, so that through that which is public in us we may pass to the secret which is in us and lies hidden from ourselves. For it must be observed that, since wisdom is one, it inhabits one man less, another more;

to one it grants this, to another that, and, as it were after the manner of the brain, it uses us as certain senses, so that, although it is never unlike itself, yet through us it always works diverse and dissimilar things — inasmuch as one receives the gift of wisdom, another of knowledge; one has kinds of tongues, another the grace of healings. 9.

The reprobate only hear the words of wisdom, the elect also taste them. — But in these words of blessed Job, in which he says: The ear discerns words, and the palate of him who eats the taste, he seems to intimate something also concerning the elect and the reprobate, because the words of wisdom, which the reprobate hear, the elect not only hear, but also taste, so that there savours to them in the heart that which to the reprobate sounds not in their minds, but only in their ears. For it is one thing to hear only a food that is named, another indeed also to taste it. The elect, therefore, so hear the food of wisdom, that they savour it, because that which they hear savours to them inwardly through love, to the marrow.

But the knowledge of the reprobate is stretched only as far as the recognition of the sound, so that indeed they hear the virtues, yet with cold heart are ignorant how they savour. By which words indeed blessed Job reproves the unskillfulness of his friends, and the arrogance of those who are puffed up over the doctrine of wisdom, because it is one thing to know something of God, another indeed to taste with the palate of intelligence that which is known. Rightly, therefore, is it said: Does not the ear discern words, and the palate of him who eats the taste? As if it were openly said to the arrogant: The words of doctrine, which come to you as far as the ear, touch me also, through the inmost savour, at the palate of intelligence.

But because an immature age, even when it savours rightly, ought not incautiously to leap forth to preaching, rightly it is subjoined: