約伯倫理 第 653 章

Verse 5. — Shall not the light of the wicked be extinguished, and shall not the flame of his fire not shine? 8. Often evils befall the good, and goods the wicked, in this life. — If he announces these things as a definition of the present life, he is deceived; because very often the light of prosperity is seen to be in the ungodly, and the darkness of obscurity and poverty hides the godly. But if his discourse is directed to this, that he may show what the ungodly suffer in their end, then it is truly said: Shall not the light of the wicked be extinguished, and shall not the flame of his fire shine? But though this could be rightly said of the ungodly man, yet it ought not to have been said against a holy man set in the midst of scourges.

But let us, weighing the strength of his arms in his own sentences, consider how mightily he hurls his javelins, and let us cease to regard, in his hurling, the one whom he attacks, knowing for certain that with frustrated strokes he strikes a stone. Let him then say: Shall not the light of the wicked be extinguished? Because the ungodly too have their light, namely the prosperity of the present life. But the light of the wicked shall be extinguished; because the prosperity of a fleeting life is ended together with that very life the more quickly. Whence it is fitly added: And shall not the flame of his fire shine? 9. The wicked very often obtain what they crave unto the heaping up of their perdition.

— For every ungodly man has the flame of his own fire, which he kindles in his heart out of the fervour of temporal desires, while he burns now with these, now with those cravings, and inflames his thoughts yet more through the manifold flatteries of the world. But if a fire has no flame, it by no means shines with diffused light. The flame of his fire, therefore, is the outward comeliness or power which proceeds from his inner burning, because what he anxiously desires to obtain in this world, he very often obtains unto the heaping up of his own perdition, and shines, as it were, through outward glory, whether in the power of high station or in the riches of increase. But the flame of his fire shall not shine;

since in the day of his departure all outward comeliness is withdrawn, and he is burned up inwardly by his own burning alone. The flame therefore is withdrawn from the fire when the outward glory is separated from his inner burning. The righteous too have the flame of their fire, but forsooth one that shines forth, because indeed their desires shine in good works; but the flame of the unrighteous by no means shines, because through the fact that they crave evil things they are dragged down to darkness. Whence there also follows: