約伯倫理 第 827 章

Verse 15. — The eye of the adulterer watcheth for the darkness, saying: No eye shall see me. 74. Heretics adulterate the word of God. — There is nothing to hinder this being understood also according to the letter, because he who desires to commit adultery seeks out the darkness. But since a sentence is being brought forward against heretics, it is fitting that what is said should be perceived mystically. For Paul says: For we are not, as many, adulterating the word of God (2 Corinthians ii, 17). For the adulterer in carnal intercourse seeks not offspring but pleasure. And every perverse man who serves vainglory is rightly said to adulterate the word of God, because through the sacred word he desires not to beget sons unto God, but to display his own knowledge.

For him whom the lust of glory draws to speaking bestows his labour rather upon pleasure than upon generation. Whereupon it is aptly subjoined: No eye shall see me, because the adultery which is enacted in the mind is very difficult to be penetrated by human sight. Which thing the perverse mind perpetrates the more securely, the more it does not fear to be seen by the men before whom it would blush.

It must also be known that, just as he who commits adultery unlawfully joins to himself the flesh of another man's wife, so all heretics, when they snatch a faithful soul into their error, take as it were another man's wife; because, namely, a mind spiritually cleaving to God, and joined to him as in a certain bridal-chamber of love, when by perverse persuasions it is led away to the depravity of a false doctrine, is as another's wife defiled by a corrupter. And it is well subjoined: