約伯倫理 第 842 章

8. 'Mercy shown to the sinner and neglected is turned into punishment.' — Whosoever sins and lives, God's dispensation therefore bears with him in his iniquity, that it may restrain him from iniquity. But he who is borne with longer, and yet is not restrained from iniquity, indeed receives the gift of supernal patience, but by the very gift binds himself more tightly with the chains of his own guilt. For because he turns aside to guilt the times of penance he has received, the Judge, strict at the last, converts the tokens of mercy bestowed into punishment. For hence it is said through Paul: 'Or knowest thou not that the patience of God leadeth thee to repentance?'

But according to thy hardness and impenitent heart thou treasurest up to thyself wrath in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God' (Rom. II, 4, 5). Hence Isaias says: 'The child of a hundred years shall die, and the sinner of a hundred years shall be accursed' (Isa. LXV, 20). As if he plainly warned us, saying: The life of the child is indeed drawn out to length, that he may be corrected from childish deeds; but if he is not restrained from the perpetration of sin even by length of time, this very length of life which he received through mercy grows for him unto a heap of malediction. Whence it is necessary that, when we perceive ourselves awaited longer, we should fear those very times of granted mercy as though they were tokens of damnation,

lest from the clemency of the Judge the punishment of the sinner should grow; and whence one might have been snatched from death, thence he should tend more grievously unto death. And this for the most part comes to pass, because the eye of the mind is by no means separated from present things. For the sinner neglects to consider the ways of the Redeemer, and therefore in his own paths grows old without ceasing. Whence it is also added: