約伯倫理 第 838 章

2. The punishment of the wicked is to be blotted out from the memory of God. — For into the remembrance of his Creator he is not brought back, whosoever unto the end of life is subjugated to vices. For if the memory of the supernal regard touched him, without doubt it would recall him from iniquity. His deserts indeed demand that he be utterly blotted out from the remembrance of his Author. But it must be known that God is by no means properly said to remember. For he who cannot forget, in what manner can he remember? But because we embrace those whom we remember, and are removed from those whom we forget, by human usage God is both said to remember, when he bestows gifts, and to forget, when he abandons in fault. But because he weighs all things, considers all things without any alternation of interruption;

and he both remembers the good, of whom nevertheless he never forgets; and in no wise remembers the evil, whom nevertheless he ever beholds through judgment. For he as it were returns to the memory of the good, which nevertheless he never deserted; and as it were in no wise regards the evil, whose deeds nevertheless he considers, but over these he keeps the judgment of damnation unto the last. For hence it is written: The eyes of the Lord behold the good and the evil (Proverbs xv, 3). Hence it is said through the Psalmist: The countenance of the Lord is upon them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth (Psalm xxxiii, 17). He considers, therefore, whom he may punish, but these same ones he did not before see, whom he knows not. For to certain men he will say at the end: I know you not whence you are;

depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity (Matthew vii, 23; Luke xiii, 27). In a wondrous manner, therefore, he both beholds and forgets the life of the depraved, because those whom he judges through the strictness of his sentence, as far as concerns the memory of mercy, he knows not. 3. Who shall be crushed like an unfruitful tree. — Who, since they come not into his remembrance, are as an unfruitful tree, by whose judgment they are crushed. For the earth nourished them with temporal sustenance, poured upon them from above the rain of preaching. But because their life by no means brought forth the fruit of good work, the husbandman, being angry, cut it down, that, according to the sentence of the Truth, it may not occupy the place which another is able to hold unto fruit (Luke xiii, 7).

Concerning this unfruitful tree it is said through John: 'Now the axe is laid to the root of the tree. Every tree therefore that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be cut down, and cast into the fire' (Matt. III, 10; Luke III, 9). But in this passage, that the eternal torments of the reprobate may be signified, the wood is by no means said to be cut down, but to be crushed; for indeed the death of the flesh cuts off the reprobate, but the punishment that follows crushes them. For here, as it were, one is cut off, when he is separated from the present life; but in Gehenna he is crushed, when he is tormented with everlasting damnation. Now the holy man, because he had set forth the strict punishment of the perverse, at once returns to the guilt, so that from the vastness of the injustice he may teach that so great a damnation is not unjust for him. There follows: