約伯倫理 第 995 章

8. The just travel to the homeland of salvation by a rough road; the reprobate go to the pit through pleasant meadows. — A ready consolation of the good is the considered end of the wicked. For while from their destruction they behold the evil they escape, they count light whatever adversity they suffer in this life. Let the reprobate therefore now go on and fulfil the desires of their delights; in the damnation of their end they shall perceive that, living wickedly, they loved death. But let the elect be afflicted by a passing scourge, that the scourges may correct from wickedness those whom fatherly love preserves for the inheritance. For now the just man is scourged and corrected by the rod of discipline, because he is being prepared for the patrimony of the eternal inheritance.

But the unjust man is left loose in his own pleasures, because temporal goods are supplied to him in proportion as eternal goods are denied him. The unjust man, running to the death he deserves, indulges in unbridled pleasures, just as the calves that are to be slaughtered are left in free pastures. But on the contrary the just man is restrained from the merriment of passing delight, just as the calf appointed for the work of life is kept under the yoke. Earthly goods are denied to the elect in this life, just as to the sick who have hope of living, not all the things they crave are granted by the physician. But goods that they crave in this life are given to the reprobate, just as to sick men despaired of, everything they desire is not refused.

Let the just, then, weigh well what evils await the wicked, and let them by no means envy that happiness which passes swiftly away. For what is there that they should marvel at in the joys of the wicked, when both they themselves travel to the homeland of salvation by a rough road, and those others go, as if through pleasant meadows, to the pit? Let the holy man therefore say: 'Is not destruction to the wicked, and alienation to those who work iniquity?' (Job 31:3). This word of alienation would sound harsher, if the translator had rendered it in the term of his own tongue. For what among us is 'alienation,' this among the Hebrews is called 'anathema.' Then, therefore, there shall be alienation to the reprobate, when they behold themselves cut off from the inheritance of the stern Judge as an anathema, because here they despised Him by their perverse ways.

Let the wicked, therefore, flourish, being alien from the flower of the eternal inheritance; but let the just diligently examine themselves, and in all their actions dread greatly to be seen by the Lord. Whence also it is fittingly added next: