約伯倫理 第 747 章

Verse 13. — 'They lead their days in good things, and in a moment they descend to hell.' 49. Whatever has an end is momentary. The prosperity of innocence, the adversity of iniquity, is no proof. — Behold, O blessed man, you had long narrated their joys; how do you now assert that in a moment they descend to hell, except that all the length of the present life's time is known to be a mere point, since it is ended by a limit? For when each one is brought to his end, he holds nothing of the past, because all times have slipped away; he has nothing in the future, because the moments of a single hour do not remain. The life therefore which could thus be narrowed was a point.

For as we said before, at a point we set down the stylus and lift it up. As it were, therefore, at a point he touched life, who received it and lost it. It can also in this 'moment' be understood, that often those who have long been tolerated in iniquity are snatched away by sudden death, so that they are not even permitted to weep before death for what they have sinned. But because sometimes even the life of the just is ended by a sudden end, we better take this if we understand it of their temporal life, that whatever was able to pass away was sudden.

But to the friends of blessed Job, who for this reason believed him to be unrighteous, because they saw him scourged, it was rightly shown by the voice of that same holy man, from the flowering and perdition of the wicked, that the prosperity of the present life is no witness to innocence, because many return to everlasting life through scourges, and very many, who are to be led to infinite torments, die without a scourge. Concerning whom it is still subjoined: