約伯倫理 第 541 章

Verse 4.—Who can make clean that which is conceived of unclean seed? Is it not Thou, who alone art? 70. Man, because of his corrupted origin, suffers unclean things even against his will. He who alone of Himself is clean has the power to cleanse the unclean. For man, living in corruptible flesh, has the uncleannesses of temptations impressed within himself, since indeed he drew them from his origin. For his very conception, through the delight of the flesh, is uncleanness. Whence the Psalmist also says: Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother conceive me (Ps. 51:7). Hence it is, therefore, that very often he is tempted even against his will.

Hence it is that he suffers certain unclean things in the mind, although by his judgment he resists them, because being conceived of uncleanness, while he tends toward cleanness, he strives to overcome that which he is. But whosoever has overcome the motions of hidden temptation and the uncleanness of thought, let him by no means attribute his cleanness to himself, because no one can make clean that which is conceived of unclean seed, save He who alone is clean of Himself. He therefore who has now attained in mind to the place of cleanness, let him look back upon the way of his own conception, by which he came, and thence let him gather that he has not the cleanness of living from his own virtue, he for whom the beginning of subsisting was made from uncleanness.

But this may be understood in this place, that blessed Job, contemplating the incarnation of the Redeemer, saw that alone in the world was a man not conceived of unclean seed, who came into the world from a Virgin in such a way that he had nothing of unclean conception. For he proceeded not from man and woman, but from the Holy Spirit and Mary the Virgin. He alone therefore truly existed clean in his flesh, who could not be touched by the delight of the flesh, because neither did he come hither through carnal delight.