約伯倫理 第 679 章

Verse 8. — 'He has hedged about my path, and I cannot pass, and in my track He has set darkness.' 41. God is illumination and salvation to those who sin from ignorance and weakness. — He saw his path hedged about with blows, when, desiring to pass over to security, he could not escape the scourges. And because he saw himself struck, and yet found in himself no life deserving of such striking, he found, as it were, in the track of his heart the darkness of his own ignorance, since he could not penetrate why he was thus scourged. This too is not unfittingly referred to the weak members of holy Church, when, by the very fact that they remember they have acted wickedly, they are held back even from good work;

and, timid from their own weakness, they do not presume to undertake strong good deeds against these evils. For they fear to begin great good works, who remember that they are weak in their own acts. And since for the most part they do not even know what good to choose, they shudder as if at darkness set in their own track. For often the soul becomes so uncertain about its own work that it is wholly ignorant of what is virtue, what is fault. In his own track, then, he finds darkness, who in the things he desires to do does not know what he ought to choose. Because, therefore, one often sins from weakness, and sometimes indeed from ignorance, it is said on behalf of the weak members: 'He has hedged about my path, and I cannot pass.' And on behalf of those who are in the dark as to the very good work they should choose, it is added:

'And in my track He has set darkness.' For it belongs to the punishment of fault to see the good that one ought to do, and yet not to be able to fulfil it; and again, it belongs to a graver punishment of fault not even to see what one ought to do. Whence against both these things it is said in the voice of the Psalmist: 'The Lord is my illumination and my salvation; whom shall I fear?' (Ps. 26:1). For against the darkness of ignorance the Lord is illumination, and against weakness He is salvation, when He both shows what ought to be sought for the doing, and supplies the strength that what He has shown may be fulfilled. There follows: