約伯倫理 第 773 章

(Verse 9) — You have sent widows away empty, and crushed the arms of the fatherless. 10. They disparage her for kindly receiving the masters of errors who come to their senses. — The common folk who are subject to heretical preachers conceive, out of carnal understanding, the perverse seeds of their errors, and are associated with them in their damnation. But when the holy Church receives to herself the very preachers of errors — either overcome by reason, or, if hardened in zeal for perversity, binds them under the bond of her discipline — the heretics, thus bereft, when they see the common folk remaining among them without preachers, what else do they grieve over than that widows have been left empty by the holy Church?

And because, their heretical masters being taken away, they suspect that their disciples are weakened in their work, they complain that the arms of the fatherless have, as it were, been crushed by the Church. Or certainly, because the holy Church, when she receives some who come from the heretics, plainly contradicts their former error. For there are some who so devote themselves to virginity of the flesh that they condemn marriage; and there are some who so praise abstinence that they detest those who take necessary food. Of whom it is said through Paul: Forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful (1 Timothy 4:3).

Since, then, she recalls them from the carnal aim of their superstition, the heretics, when they behold these living otherwise than they had taught, testify that their arms have been crushed by the Church from the work which they had formerly held to. Whence also in this time of discipline, if any adversity befalls her, they suspect that it has befallen through the deserved retribution of sins. For there follows: