Book Three

I.1.  Blessed Job, though the tempter sought his death, grew
under the lash to life itself.  The ancient enemy had thought to
extinguish his goodness, but found instead to his dismay that it
had been multiplied.  When he saw himself fail in the first
contest, he revived himself for other battles of temptation and
still had hopes in his impudence of drawing evil from the holy
man:  for evil cannot believe in goodness, even the goodness it
experiences.  But now the things that were passed over in the
frist trial are brought up again, when it says:

Then one day when the sons of God had come and were standing
before the Lord, Satan also came in their midst to stand in the
sight of God, and the Lord was saying to Satan, 'Whence do you
come?'  He answers, saying, 'I have gone all around the earth,
passing through it to and fro.'  And the Lord said to Satan,
'Have you considered my servant Job?  For there is none like him
on the earth, simple and upright, who fears God and draws back
from all evil-doing.' (2.1-3)

Because we have discussed these words extensively above, we do
better to pass over them now in silence lest we be retarded in
getting to new material by continual repetition of what we have
already said.  (But I do think that when it is said in the voice
of God to Satan, 'Whence do you come?' it should not be taken the
same as before.  When Satan returns beaten from the contest that
had been granted to his request and God, who already knows, asks
whence he comes, what else does this question do but rebuke the
feebleness of Satan's pride?  It is as if the divine voice said
openly, 'See how you are beaten by one man, a man burdened by the
weakness of the flesh, and you try to set yourself up against me,
the author of all things.')  So it is that when the Lord has
recounted the virtues of Job as before, he adds this enumeration
of his new triumphs:

II.2.  'And still he maintains his innocence.' (2.3)

As if to say:  'You have tried your malice, but he has not lost
his innocence.  Where you thought to lessen his credit, you have
rather been forced to serve his reputation yourself, because he
preserved the innocence of his mind, which he had possessed with
distinction in time of peace, yet more gloriously in time of
tribulation.'

III.3.  'But you have stirred me up against him, that I should
afflict him for nothing.' (2.3)

Since God is just and true, it surely must be asked how he can
say that he had afflicted blessed Job for nothing.  Because he is
just, he could not afflict him for nothing; but again because he
is true, his words could not have contradicted his deeds.  In
order that he may be both just and true, saying what is true and
doing what is not unjust, we should recognize that blessed Job
was afflicted in vain in one sense, but effectively in another
sense.  Because the one who is just and true says these things of
himself, we must demonstrate that what he said was true and what
he did was right.  It was necessary that the holy man, known to
himself and to God alone, should reveal to all who might imitate
him how great was his virtue.  But he could not give clear
examples to others of his virtue if he remained untested. It was
brought about therefore that the power of temptation should be
the force to display his strength as as model to all, that the
whip should reveal what had been hidden in time of tranquility. 
Under those sufferings his patience grew and the glory of his
eventual reward was enhanced by the pains he had suffered.  To
preserve the truth of what the Lord says and the rightness of
what he did, we acknowledge that blessed Job was not tested for
nothing, because his merits were increased; and yet it was all
for nothing because he is not punished for any offence of his
own.  Someone is punished for nothing if no guilt is removed
thereby; but it is not for nothing if the merits of his virtues
are thus increased.

4.  But why is it said, "You have stirred me up against him?" 
Was Truth itself been so enflamed by the words of Satan as to be
virtually driven to torment its subjects?  Who would believe this
of God, when we would rightly believe it unworthy of a just man? 
But because we do not know how to smite another except when
roused up, so we call the divine trial a kind of commotion.  The
divine voice descends to use our words in order to make divine
deeds intelligible to any mortal.  The power that created all
things without any compulsion and rules over all things without
negligence and sustains all things without effort and governs all
things without distraction--that power can also punish without
anger and so shape human minds according to its own will with a
touch of the whip, lest we pass from the light of God's
immutability into the shadow land of alienation.

IV.5.  To which Satan answered, saying, 'Skin for skin!  A man
will give up everything he has to save his life.  But reach out
your hand and touch his face and his flesh:  then you will see
that he will curse you to your face.'  (2.4-5)  

The ancient enemy draws from material things the wherewithal to
press a charge against the mind of the blessed man.  He says that
skin is given for skin because often when we see a blow coming
against our face, we put our hands before our very eyelids, to
keep the blow from our eyes.  Thus we subject one part of the
body to a wound to protect a more vulnerable part from injury. 
Satan knows that we always do this, saying:  'Skin for skin!  A
man will give up everything he has to save his life.'  As if to
say, 'Job has borne up calmly under so many blows landing around
him just because he fears that he might be struck himself.  It is
concern for his own flesh that leaves him unmoved by all the
losses felt by the emotions of the flesh.  While he fears for his
own skin, he feels the blows to his family and property the
less.'  So next Satan demands that his flesh itself be smitten,
saying, "But reach out your hand and touch his face and his
flesh:  then you will see that he will curse you to your face." 
Earlier he had said, "But reach out your hand and touch his
wealth, and see if he does not curse you to your face." Now he
would forget his earlier claim and, in defeat, make other claims
of other things.  But this is still rightly allowed by divine
providence, so that the impudent debater should finally fall
silent when he has been beaten often enough.  

V.6.  So the Lord said to Satan, 'So:  he is in your hand--but
preserve his soul.' (2.6)  

See how once again the permission to test is accompanied by
watchful care, as divine providence abandons and protects his
chosen one, protects and abandons him, giving up some of what is
his, protecting the rest.  If he should abandon Job to the hands
of so powerful an adversary, what would a mere man be in the face
of that?  There is, therefore, a balance of pity mixed with the
justice of the decision to allow Job to be tested.  In one and
the same contest the humble servant will profit from his
sufferings and the haughty enemy will be brought down by God's
generosity.  So the holy man is handed over to the hand of the
adversary, but in his inmost soul he is protected by the hand of
his supporter.  He was one of those sheep of whom truth speaks in
the gospel:  "No one shall snatch them from my hand."  In spite
of this, it was said to the enemy as he pressed his request, "So: 
he is in your hand."  But the same man is in the hand of God, and
in the hand of the devil.  God says, "he is in your hand," but
immediately adds, "but preserve his soul," clearly showing his
pity and his help, for he clings to the one he has handed over,
giving but not giving up the man he hands over to the enemy even
as he protects him from the enemy's arrows.  

7.  But why is it said to Satan, "preserve his soul"?  How can he
preserve something when he is always trying to defile things that
have been carefully preserved?  But Satan is said to preserve
something when in reality he simply does not dare to defile it. 
In the opposite case, we pray to the Father in the Lord's prayer,
"Lead us not into temptation."  It is not that the Lord, who
constantly protects his flock from temptation in his mercy, is
going to lead us into temptation, but not to fortify us against
the lures of temptation is, so to speak, to "lead us into
temptation."  God "leads us not into temptation" when he does not
allow us to be tempted beyond our capacity to bear it.  So God
is said to "lead us into temptation" if he allows us to be led by
our adversary, and so the adversary is said to preserve our life
when he is kept from overcoming it with temptation. 

Satan went out therefore from the presence of the Lord. (2.7) 

How it can be said that Satan departed from the presence of the
Lord is clear from our discussion earlier.

VI.8.  And he afflicted Job with the most terrible sores, from
the sole of his foot to the top of his head. (2.7)  

The blows of temptation must be measured in two ways:  what kind
they are, and how many they are.  Often an abundance of blows is
made more bearable if they are of the weaker sort, and often the
more severe blows are mitigated if they are few, if, that is,
they are many but weak, or few but severe.  To show the excesses
of the adversary in inflicting his blows upon the holy man, they
are said to be not only wicked in nature but, to show their
nature more clearly, also of the heaviest number:  "He afflicted
Job with the most terrible sores":  this shows their kind.  "From
the sole of his foot to the top of his head":  this shows their
number.  Surely there will be no glory lacking to the mind of one
whose flesh lacks no suffering.  

VII.9.  And Job was sitting on a dung heap, scraping his oozings
with a potsherd. (2.8)  

Of what is a potsherd made, but mud?  But what are the oozings of
the body, but mud?  So to scrape his oozings with a potsherd is
to try to clean mud with mud.  The holy man had considered
whence the body comes and, with a piece of an earthen vessel he
scraped another broken earthen vessel.  By this act he shows
clearly how he had disciplined the body when it was healthy by
taking such dismissive care of it when it is wounded.  He shows
how little he pampered his healthy flesh when he tended his
wounds not with his hands, not with a piece of his clothing, but
with a broken potsherd.  The potsherd scraped the oozings:  he
saw himself in the piece of clay, and found a cure for his mind's
woes in the cleansing of a physical wound.

10.  Often the mind is puffed up with pride by the things with
which we surround our bodies.  The things with which we surround
ourselves conceal the fragility of our body from the eyes of the
heart.  There are worldly dignitaries, for example, braced by
their worldly success, ruling from lofty positions, seeing the
obsequiousness of the many serving their every whim:  in the face
of this they fail to consider their own fragility and do not
regard the earthen vessel they bear with them:  they forget how
swiftly it is broken.  But blessed Job, seeing evidence of his
fragility in his circumstances and keeping self-abasement clearly
before his eyes, is said to have sat not merely on the ground, on
some clean spot as he could easily have done, but on a dungheap. 
He placed his body on a dungheap so that his mind would learn to
judge well the value of the flesh that is taken from the earth in
the first place.  He placed his body on a dungheap so that the
stench of the place would remind him how quickly the body will
come to such a smelly state itself.

11.  But as we see blessed Job bearing so many losses of
property, grieving at the deaths of his children, tolerating so
many wounds, scraping his running sores with a shard, sitting on
a dunghill, oozing puss:  we may well ask why it is that almighty
God afflicts so terribly, as if contemptuously, those whom he
knows are so dear to him for all eternity.  But as I consider the
wounds and sufferings of blessed Job, I call to mind the case of
John the Baptist, and I am filled with wonder.  He was filled
with the spirit of prophecy while still in his mother's womb,
reborn, if I may say so, before he was born.  He was truly a
friend of the bridegroom; there never rose one greater among the
children of women; he was a prophet and more than a prophet, but
he was cast into prison and beheaded to pay for a girl's dancing,
and though he was a man of high gravity, he died as the
laughing-stock of depraved men.  Can we believe that there was
any fault in his life to be purged by this disgraceful death? 
When could he have sinned even in by the way he ate, when all he
ate were locusts and wild honey?  How could he have sinned by the
luxuriousness of his attire when he covered his body with rough
camel's hair?  What offense could there have been in his way of
life when he never left the desert?  How could he had defiled
himself with his speech when he lived far from the society of
men?  But again, how could he have been held guilty of keeping
silent when he violently reproached those who came out to him,
saying, "Generation of vipers, who has shown you how to flee from
the coming wrath?"

How then are we to understand that Job was singled out for God's
praise and still hurled by his blows to lie on a dungheap?  How
is it that John is praised by the voice of God and still dies at
the command of a drunkard to pay for a dance?  Why does almighty
God so violently despise in this life the people he chose on high
before all ages?  It must be that he wants to show the faithful
in their pity that he thrusts these holy people down to the
depths because he knows how high he will raise them with reward
later.  He casts them outside to face contempt because he leads
them on inwardly to the things that are beyond comprehension. 
Everyone should learn from this how much those God condemns will
suffer in the next life if he punishes so much here below the
ones he loves.  How can we imagine how those who are convicted in
the hour of judgment are to be stricken, if we see the lives of
those whom the judge himself praises taken away in this manner?

VIII.12.  His wife said to him, 'Do you still persist with your
simplicity?  Curse God, and die.' (2.9)

The ancient enemy usually tests the human race in two ways.  He
tries to break the hearts of those who stand to face him with
suffering, or to soften them with persuasion.  He employs both
tactics vigorously against blessed Job.  First he assails the
lord of the estate with property losses, then he bereaves the
father with the deaths of his children, then he smites the
healthy man with wounds and infections.  But because he sees him
infected without but healthy within, and naked without but richer
within for his praise of the creator, and cleverly realizing that
God's champion is taking strength from his troubles, Satan turns
in defeat to the subtleties of persuasion in order to tempt him.

For he goes back to his old tricks, and because he knows how Adam
can be deceived, he turns again to Eve.  He saw blessed Job
standing unconquered, in a veritable citadel of virtues, though
swamped by so much loss of wealth and so many sufferings and
wounds.  Job had set his mind on high, and for that reason the
enemy's ploys could not penetrate his defenses.  So the adversary
looks about to see by what path he might ascend to this
well-fortified citadel.  Near at hand is the man's wife and
helpmate.  Satan took possession of the woman's heart and found
there a kind of ladder by which he could approach the heart of
the man.  The soul of the wife was his access to the husband. 
But he won nothing by this device, because the holy man treated
the woman as one subjected to him and not placed in authority
over him.  Speaking the truth, he showed how the serpent had
stirred her up to speak perversely.  It was appropriate that his
manly criticism should discipline her fickle mind, especially
because he knew from the first fall of the human race that a
woman would not know how to teach rightly.  So it is well put
through Paul, "I do not permit a woman to teach," for one time
when a woman taught she separated us from eternal wisdom.  So the
ancient enemy loses now at Adam's hands upon a dungheap what he
had won from Adam in paradise.  He sends the woman, his helper,
to inflame Job with wickedly persuasive words, but she finds
there instruction and holy teaching.  She had been stirred up to
ruin her husband, but returns well taught so that she might not
be ruined herself.  So it happens in battle at the hands of our
mighty heroes, that the enemy's weapons are themselves snatched
away from him.  Where Satan had thought to worsen the pain of
Job's wounds, instead he supplies virtue with weapons to use
against himself.

13.  From the wife's words of wicked persuasion, we should be
alert to see that the ancient adversary attempts to sway our
state of mind not only by his own actions but even by using the
people who are closest to us.  When he cannot overwhelm our heart
by his own arguments, he creeps up on his goal through the words
of those who are close to us.  Hence it is written:  "Beware of
your sons and watch out for your servants."  Hence it is said
through the prophet:  "Let each one protect himself against his
neighbor and place not his trust in all his brothers."  Hence
again it is written:  "A man's servants are his enemies."  The
enemy is clever, and when he sees himself driven away from the
hearts of the good, he seeks out those whom they love greatly,
and he offers blandishments in the words of the very people who
are loved more than others.  Thus while the power of love
penetrates to the heart, the sword of his arguments readily
breaks through to the innermost defenses of rectitude.  So
therefore it is after the loss of his wealth, after the funerals
of his children, after the wounds and rendings of his body, that
the ancient enemy incites the wife to speak.

14.  We should notice when Satan chooses to attack the man's mind
with poisoned words.  He adds words to wounds in the hope that
the twisted hints of his argument will more easily prevail when
the power of suffering is growing.  If we consider the sequence
of temptations closely we see just how cleverly the enemy rages. 
First he causes losses to property, losses that had nothing to do
with Job's own nature and that did not come near his own flesh.
Then he took away his sons, for they were not yet Job's own
flesh, yet they were naturally of that flesh.  Finally he struck
even Job's body.  But because he did not succeed in wounding the
mind by wounding the body, he now tries to employ the tongue of
the woman joined to Job by marriage.  While he laments losing in
open combat, he hurls a javelin, as if from ambush, through the
words of the wife, when she says, "Do you still persist with your
simplicity?  Curse God and die."  He took everything away to
tempt Job, but he leaves the woman behind to tempt him:  he has
ruined everything for the holy man. But it is extraordinarily
clever of him to have kept the wife as his helper, to say, "Do
you still persist with your simplicity?"  Eve returns to her old
ways of speech.  What does it mean to say, "abandon your
simplicity, " but, "cast aside your obedience and eat what is
forbidden"? And what is it to say, "Curse God and die," but,
"Disobey the command and live beyond the limits with which you
were created"?  But this strong Adam of ours was lying on a
dungheap, though once he had stood, but feebly, in paradise.  So
he responds immediately to the words of wicked persuasion,
saying: 

IX.15.  'You have spoken like a foolish woman.  If we have taken
good things from the hand of the Lord, how When refuse the bad?'
(2.10)

See how the enemy is beaten on all sides, broken on all sides,
failing in every kind of temptation, even losing the woman's
support he had been used to.  At this juncture it is pleasant to
consider the holy man, stripped of everything on the outside, but
full of God within.  When Paul caught sight of the riches of
wisdom within himself and saw his body without subject to decay,
he said, "We have this treasure in earthen vessels." In blessed
Job, the earthen vessel suffered open sores without, but inside
the unfailing treasury of wisdom poured forth running words of
holy learning, as he said, "If we have taken good things from the
hand of the Lord, how shall we refuse the bad?"  The good things
are the gifts of God, both the temporal and the eternal; the bad
things he calls the tribulations he suffers, of which the Lord
spoke through the prophet:  "I am the Lord and there is no other,
shaping the light and creating the darkness, making peace and
creating what is evil."

After all, it is not that evil things, which have no natural
existence of their own, are created by the Lord, but the Lord
says that he creates what is bad when he turns things good in
themselves into sufferings for us when we act badly. In this way
they become bad to sinners by virtue of the suffering they bring,
while by their own nature, they are good.  Thus, venom is death
to man, but life to a serpent.  By loving the things around us,
we draw away from the love of our creator, and while the mind
turns away to subjugate itself to the creatures it loves, it
separates itself from the company of its creator.  Then the mind
must be stricken by the creator through those very things which
the mind had set up for itself against the creator.  Where man in
his pride does not fear to find occasion for sin, there he finds
the punishment that will straighten him out.  He comes back to
the things he had abandoned all the more quickly for seeing that
the things he had sought instead are full of suffering for him.  

So it is well said, "shaping the light and creating the
darkness," because when the darkness of suffering is created by
our outward sufferings, the light of the mind is accordingly lit
within.  He is "making peace and creating what is evil," for
peace with God is restored to us when created things, which are
well made but not well lusted after, are turned into punishments
that are, for us, bad.  By our own fault we fall out of harmony
with God, so it is fitting that we should find peace with Him
again through sufferings, so that when the things that are
created good become sources of suffering for us, the mind of the
sinner should be disciplined and humbly reshaped to be at peace
with the creator.  Blessed Job calls his sufferings bad because
he is thinking of the turmoil from which they arise to strike the
unquestioned goodness of health and tranquility.  

16.  But we should especially note in his words with what skill
and care he musters his presence of mind against his wife's
arguments, when he says, "If we have taken good things from the
hand of the Lord, how shall we refuse the bad?"  It is a great
source of consolation in time of troubles to recall in adversity
the many gifts of our creator.  What sorrow brings will not break
us if we bring to mind quickly the support that comes from God's
gifts.  So it is written:  "On good days, be not unmindful of the
bad ones, and on bad days be not unmindful of the good ones." 
Whoever receives gifts but at the time fears no punishment
rapidly falls into pride through his glee.  If a man is worn down
by punishing troubles, but in the midst of those troubles does
not console himself by thinking of the gifts that have come his
way in the past, his peace of mind is rapidly destroyed by
despair that sets in on all sides.  So therefore the two
attitudes are to be joined together, each supporting the other at
all times.  Recollection of God's gifts tempers the pain of
suffering, and fear of suffering should check the glee we feel on
receiving those gifts.  

The holy man therefore, to ease his worried mind in his
sufferings, considers the delights of God's gifts, saying, "If we
have taken good things from the hand of the Lord, how shall we
refuse the bad?"  So it was fitting that he prefaced this by
saying, "you have spoken like a foolish woman."  Because it is
the woman's sense, not her sex, that is against her, he does not
say, "you have spoken like a woman," but "like a foolish woman,"
to show that her wicked ideas are the result of chance
foolishness, not her inborn nature.

 X.17.  In all this Job did not sin with his lips. (2.10) 

We sin with our lips in two ways:  when we say what is wrong or
keep silent what is right.  If silence was not sometimes a sin,
the prophet would not have said, "Woe is me, that I have

kept silent."  In all that he did blessed Job did not sin with
his lips, for he spoke no arrogant words against the one who
struck him, nor did he stifle a just response to his wife's
persuasions.  He sinned not by speaking, nor by keeping silent,
giving thanks to the father who was testing him and serving up
wise doctrine to meet his wife's wicked arguments. Because he
knew what he owed to God, and what he owed his neighbor
(specifically, patience to his creator, wisdom to his wife), he
therefore taught his wife by his rebuke and praised God by giving
thanks.  But which of us, if we should receive even a single
wound of all those with which Job was smitten, would not soon lie
prostrate at the very center of our being?  See how he was laid
low on the outside by the wounds of the flesh, but remained
strong and erect within, protected by strength of mind.  There he
saw pass beneath him every arrow shot from without by the
avenging hand of his rampaging enemy.  He alertly snatched up the
arrows fired directly, that wounded the flesh, and the ones fired
obliquely, that came in his wife's words.  Our champion, caught
up in the heat of the battle on all sides, opposed the shield of
his patience to those arrows.  He goes out in the face of a hail
of weapons, for his mind is like a shield whose facets are the
several virtues by which he is distinguished.

18.  But the more heroically the ancient enemy is defeated, the
more passionately he is driven to devise new traps.  Because the
wife had fallen silent under Job's reproaches, he immediately

summoned others to rise to the task of rebuke and insult.  Just
as he had sought to increase the pain of Job's earlier losses by
repeated reports of disaster, so now he attacks the stout heart
with repeated barrages of insult.

XI.19.  Three friends of Job heard all the evil that had befallen
him and they came, each from his own home:  Eliphaz the
Themanite, Baldad the Suhite, and Sophar the Naamathite.  For
they had agreed that they would come jointly to see Job and
console him. (2.11)

From the way they joined to come to console the afflicted friend,
we see how great was their charity towards each other and towards
the victim.  Their zeal and good intentions are demonstrated
merely by scripture's testimony that they were friends of so
great a man, yet this very intention of theirs is shadowed in the
eyes of the punishing judge when they burst forth in speech full
of indiscretion.

XII.20.  And when they looked upon him from afar, they did not
recognize him; crying out they wept, rent their garments, and
scattered dust to the heavens upon their heads. (2.12)

Because illness had changed the appearance of the victim, the
friends cry out and weep, rend their garments, and sprinkle dust
on their heads. When they see that the one they come to see is
changed, spontaneous sympathy changes the appearance even of
those who come to console.  The way of consolation is to try to
lift the victim from his grief first by joining with him in
sorrow and weeping.  It is impossible to console someone with
whose suffering you do not sympathize, for the further aloof you
stand from his suffering, the less will the victim, whose state
of mind you do not share, be willing to accept your consolation. 
The mind must be softened to be at one with the sufferer, embrace
him, and thus lift him up.  Iron cannot be joined to iron, unless
both pieces are softened by the heat of the flame.  What is soft
cannot be joined with what is hard unless the hardness of the
latter is softened and tempered so that it might almost become
the very thing to which we seek to attach it.  We cannot help the
fallen to stand, unless we stoop from our rigid height first, for
the posture of the erect is too far different from that of the
fallen, and if we decline to bend, we can never lift.

The friends of the blessed Job, therefore, who came to lift him
from his grief, necessarily took care to grieve along with him,
and when they saw his wounded body took care to rend their own
garments.  When they saw his visage altered, they took care to
dirty their own heads with dust.  Thus the afflicted friend would
more readily hear their words, since he saw something of his own
affliction in them.

21.  But we must realize that whoever wishes to console the
afflicted must set a limit to his own compassionate grief, or he
will not only fail to ease the victim's mind but even, if he
should grieve too deeply, burden the soul of the victim with the
weight of despair.  Our compassion should match the sufferings of
the afflicted in a way that moderates and supports, but does not
exacerbate and weigh down.  So perhaps we might conclude that the
friends of blessed Job were too much afflicted with grief when
they came to console him.  They saw the victim's sufferings but
did not know his mind, and so they fell to sorrowing beyond
measure, as if the victim, for all his strength, had been wounded
in body but had fallen also in his heart.

XII.22.  They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven
nights; none said a word to him, for they saw his sorrow was
overwhelming. (2.13)

We do not know whether they sat by poor Job for seven days and
seven nights without interruption, or whether they came to him
repeatedly and frequently over that period.  Often we say we did
something for so many days, even though we were not constantly
busy with it for that time.  Sacred scripture often takes the
whole for the part, just as it takes the part for the whole.  It
takes the part for the whole when it describes the household of
Jacob:  "Jacob went into Egypt with seventy souls." Mentioning
souls, it clearly intends us to understand bodies as well.  On
the other hand, scripture takes the whole for the part when Mary
Magdalene at the tomb complains that "They have taken the Lord
from the tomb and we do not know where they have put him."  She
had come looking only for the body of the Lord, but speaks as if
the Lord had been entirely taken away at once.  It is not clear
in this present passage whether the whole is to be taken for the
part.

23.  But we must not fail to notice that they were long silent
and were rebuked when at last they spoke.  Some there are who
blurt out speaking hastily and continue carelessly what they
began in haste.  And some there are who begin speaking
reluctantly, but once they begin, cannot keep their words in
check.  Seeing Job's suffering, his friends kept long silent. 
But beginning late, they spoke without caution, because they
would not spare Job's feelings.  They held their tongues, lest
they begin rashly, but once they began they used no moderation to
keep their consolation from becoming insult.  They came with the
good intention of offering consolation, but this pure gift they
offered out of compassion to God was spoiled by their thoughtless
speech.  Indeed, it is written, "If you bring your offering
rightly, but do not apportion it rightly, you have sinned." We
bring our offering rightly when we act with good intentions, but
we apportion it wrongly if we do not carry out our intentions
with care and attention.  To apportion offerings rightly is to
discern our own laudable enthusiasms correctly.  The one who puts
off doing this, even if he brings his offering rightly, is a
sinner.

24.  Often we act with good intentions, but when we neglect to
use discernment and care we fail to see the goal by which our
actions will be judged.  And so sometimes what we thought would
be matter for praise becomes the basis of accusation against us. 
Anyone who considers the actions of Job's friends cannot fail to
see the compassion that brought them to him.  We should measure
carefully the charity of their act, to come together as one at
the side of the afflicted man.  We should value their
long-suffering patience, to sit silently by for seven days and
nights.  We should regard their compassion and sympathy, to sully
their own heads with dust.  But when they began to speak,
thinking to win praise for their virtue, they made themselves
liable to reproach.  Often the uncautious find that what begins
with thought only of reward is turned into sin in the end.  They
lost with their rash words the reward they had bought with their
labors.  If divine grace had not commanded them to offer
sacrifice in atonement, they could have been justly punished by
the Lord for just that which they thought would be wondrous
pleasing to the Lord.  They displease the judge by the
self-satisfied way they deign to speak as if in defense of the
judge himself.

We say these things now to remind our readers to think carefully
about the things they themselves do with bad intentions and
beware of the Lord's punishment, when they see him punish so
severely deeds begun with good intention but tainted with neglect
and carelessness.  Who would not think himself to have earned a
reward if he had either defended God in the eyes of his neighbor
or even at least sat silently by for seven days and nights out of
compassion for a neighbor?  And still the friends of blessed Job
found no reward for their labors, only guilt, for though they
knew how good was the consolation they offered, they did not know
how to balance it with the restraint of discernment.  Whence we
learn it is necessary to consider not only what we do, but also
the care with which we do it.  We should do not evil at all, but
we should also do no uncautious good.  The prophet admonishes us
to perform good deeds with care, saying, "Cursed is the man who
does the Lord's work carelessly."

Let this example profit us in this way, that we remember to
tremble in the presence of the searching and boundless scrutiny
of the awesome judge, not only for the sins we have committed,
but as well for the good deeds (if there are any) we have done. 
Often what had been thought before a virtue becomes a fault when
subjected to God's judgment, and where a fitting reward was
expected, just punishment is found instead.

25.  We have discussed this passage now briefly according to the
historical sense.  Let us turn to the mystery of allegory.  We
spoke at the outset of this work about the unity of head and body
and discussed carefully the great bond of charity between them. 
The Lord still suffers much here in the body (which is us) and
yet his body (the church) already rejoices with its head (the
Lord) in heaven.  Now therefore we should depict the sufferings
of the head, just to show how much it still suffers through its
body.  If our sufferings did not affect the head, he would never
have cried out from heaven on behalf of his afflicted limbs to
the persecutor, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"  If our
sufferings were not pains for him, Paul would not have said, in
affliction after his conversion, "I make up for the sufferings
that Christ lacks, in my own flesh."  And still, rejoicing in
the resurrection of the head, he speaks of the one who "brought
us to life again and made us to sit with him in the heavens." 
Sufferings and persecution kept him bound on earth, but though
weighed down by his pains he was already living vicariously in
heaven through the glory of the head.  Because we know that head
and body are always united, so we begin with the sufferings of
the head to show subsequently the pains of the body. 

We will not bother to repeat what we have already said repeatedly
about Satan coming before the Lord, about their conversation, and
the praises of Job spoken by their creator, for if the mind is
long bogged down in matters already treated in detail, it is kept
from getting to new material.  We will make a beginning for our
allegorical treatment, therefore, where we find something new
said after the phrases already often repeated. 

XIV.26.  'But you have stirred me up against him, that I should
afflict him for nothing.' (2.3)

If blessed Job takes the part of our Redeemer in the time of his
passion, how is it that the Lord says to Satan, "you have stirred
me up against him"?  The Mediator of God and man, the man Christ
Jesus, came to bear the sufferings of our mortality in order to
erase the guilt of our sins.  But how does the Father claim that
Satan stirred him to move against one who was of one and the same
nature as the father, when it is clear that no inequality of
power, no diversity of will disturbs the harmonious unity of
Father and Son?  But yet the one who is equal to the father by
virtue of his divinity came in the flesh to suffer for us.  He
would not have undergone these sufferings if he had not taken on
the appearance of a man to redeem it from its doom. If the
first man had not sinned, the second man would never have come to
bear the indignities of the passion.  So when the first man was
stirred to move away from the Lord by Satan, then is the Lord
himself stirred up against the second man. 

So it is true to say that Satan stirred up the Lord to afflict
Job, for he was the one who brought the first man in paradise
down from the height of justice through the sin of disobedience. 
If Satan had not dragged the first Adam to the soul's death as
punishment for voluntary sin, the second Adam would never have
come, without sin, to accept the voluntary death of the flesh. 
So it is well said of our Redeemer, "You have stirred me up
against him, that I should afflict him for nothing."  As if to
say openly:  'Since he does not die for his own sake but for
another's, you stirred me up to afflict him when you drew the
other away from me by your cunning arguments.'  Then it is
appropriately added, "for nothing."  It is for nothing that
someone is afflicted if he is weighed down with the punishment
for sin but has never been tainted by the stain of that sin.  It
was for nothing that he was afflicted when he was made flesh and,
having no sins of his own to admit, nevertheless undertook
without guilt the punishment due to those who live by the flesh. 
This is what it means when he says through the prophet, "What I
did not take, for that I paid the penalty."  The other one had
been created to live in paradise, but in his pride tried to
snatch away the appearance of divine power.  The Mediator paid
the penalty for that pride though free of guilt himself.  Thus a
certain wise man says to the Father, "Since you are just, you
arrange all things justly.  You also condemn the one who ought
not be punished."

27.  But we must ask how it is that he is just and arranges all
things justly, if he condemns the one who ought not be punished. 
Our Mediator should not have been punished on his own account,
for he had been touched by no stain of guilt.  But if he did not
accept an unearned guilt, he would never have freed us from the
death we had earned.  Since the father is just, therefore, he
punishes a just man and arranges all things justly, because he
justifies all men by punishing one who is without sin in place of
all the sinners.  In that way, the elect might rise to the summit
of righteousness, because the one who is above all things bore
the penalties of our unrighteousness.  Where it says in the one
place that he is condemned when he should not be, here it says
that he is afflicted "for nothing."  Taken in himself he was
afflicted for nothing, but not for nothing when we consider what
we ourselves have done.  The rust of sin could not be scoured
away except by the fire of suffering.  So he came without fault
to subject himself to suffering voluntarily, so that the
punishments due our sins might rightly lose their victims by
wrongly seizing hold of one who had been free of them.  He was
afflicted for nothing, and not for nothing, for he had no sin in
himself, but by his own blood he washed away the stain of our
sin.  

 XV.28.  'To which Satan answered, saying, 'Skin for skin; a man
will give up everything he has to save his life.  But reach out
your hand and touch his face and his flesh:  then you will see
that he will curse you to your face.' (2.4-5)

When the evil spirit sees our Redeemer resplendent with miracles,
he cries out, "We know who you are, holy one of God." The one
who said this recognized the son of God and feared him.  But
sometimes, when he saw our Lord was capable of suffering, he
thought (for he knew nothing of the power of divine pity) that he
was merely a man.  He had learned that there were many placed in
pastoral positions with an appearance of holiness who were
altogether strangers to the inner workings of charity and took no
thought for the sufferings of another.  Taking him to be like the
others, Satan was angry that he could not be overcome by such
losses and burned to touch Job's's flesh with suffering, and
said, "Skin for skin;  a man will give up everything he has to
save his life.  But reach out your hand and touch his face and
his flesh:  then you will see that he will curse you to your
face."  As if to say openly:  'He fails to react to events
outside himself; then we will truly see what sort he is, if he
experiences in himself that which will make him suffer.'  When
Satan seeks these things, he speaks not with real words, but with
his desires; when his followers seek them, they fit words to
their desires.  He himself spoke through his

followers, as we hear in the voice of the prophet, "Let us put
the wood in his bread, and let us erase him from the land of the
living."  To put wood in bread is to raise the gibbet of the
cross on which to fix his body.  They think they can erase his
life from the land of the living when they think him mortal and
think to put an end to him with death.

 XVI.29.  So the Lord said to Satan, 'So:  he is in your
hand--but only preserve his soul.' (2.6)

Who would be so mad as to think that the creator of all things
was given over to the hands of Satan?  But if we have learned
from truth, who of us does not know that all those who lived
wickedly are joined to Satan as limbs of his body?  Pilate was
one of Satan's limbs, failing to recognize even on the brink of
death the Lord come to our redemption.  The leaders of the
priests were Satan's body, when they attempted to drive the
Redeemer of the world from the world, pursuing him even to the
cross.  When therefore our Lord gave himself over into the hands
of Satan's limbs, what else was he doing than allowing the hand
of Satan to hold sway over him?  His mission was to die on the
outside, so that we might be freed within and without.

If we take the "hand of Satan" to be his power, Christ suffered
the force of his hand in the flesh when he felt that power even
in the spittle, the blows, the whips, the cross, and the lance of
his passion.  So he said to Pilate, one of Satan's limbs, when he
came to his hour of passion, "You would not have power over me if
it had not been given to you from above."  But this power to
which he had submitted outwardly he still put to his own uses
inwardly.  Pilate (or Satan, who was Pilate's leader) was under
the power of the one over whom he took power. The one from above
arranged to undergo what he did at the hands of his persecutor,
so that the cruelty that came from the wicked minds of the
faithless could still work to the advantage of all the elect.  It
was inner compassion that determined him to suffer wicked things
outwardly.

This is why it is said of him at the last supper, "Jesus knew
that the Father gave all things into his hands, and that he had
come from God and that he was going to God:  so he rose from
supper and put aside his garments."  See how, just as he was
about to fall into the hands of his persecutors, he knew that he
had even those persecutors in his power.  It is clear that if he
knew he had received all things, he must have possessed even
those by whom he was possessed.  Everything their malice was
allowed to try against him he could inflict upon himself in the
name of pity and compassion.  So let it be said to Satan, "So: 
he is in your hand," for the raving Satan won permission to smite
his flesh, little knowing that he still served the Lord's power. 

30.  Satan is commanded to spare the soul [anima], not because he
is prohibited from touching it, but because he is thus shown to
be unable to overpower it.  The soul of our Redeemer is

not upset by the force of temptation, the way it is with mere men
like ourselves, who are often shaken by temptation's onrush. Our
enemy was unable so much as to budge the mind of the mediator of
God and man with temptation, even though he was permitted to take
him up on a lofty mountain, to promise to give him the kingdoms
of the world, to show him stones to be turned to bread.   The
Mediator bore with all this without, while his mind clung firmly
to its divine strength within.  Even if he was sometimes troubled
and groaned in the spirit, he still arranged in his divine
power how much he would be troubled in his human weakness,
governing all things serenely and showing himself troubled to
make up for human weakness.  He remained calm within himself,
arranging everything that he would do with a show of distress to
manifest the humanity he had accepted.  

31.  When we love rightly, there is nothing in all creation
dearer to us than our soul; thus we try to do justice to the
weight of our love for others by saying we love them as much as
our soul.  Here then Job's's soul can stand for the life of the
elect.  When Satan is allowed to smite the flesh of the Redeemer,
he is kept back from his soul, for when he takes power over the
body to make it suffer, he loses his power over the elect, and
when the flesh of the Redeemer dies on the cross, the minds of
the elect are strengthened against temptation.  So therefore it
can be said, "So:  he is in your hand--but only preserve his
soul," as if to say, 'Have your way with his body and lose all
rights of perverse dominion over his chosen ones, whom he has
possessed in foreknowledge from all eternity.'

 32.  Satan went out therefore from the presence of the Lord and
afflicted Job with the most terrible sores, from the sole of his
foot to the top of his head. (2.7)

None of the elect comes into this life without suffering the
hostility of the enemy.  The limbs of our Lord's body from the
beginning of time, though they live faithfully, have suffered
much cruelty.  Does not Abel show himself to have been one of the
Lord's limbs?  He gave a foreshadowing of the Lord's death not
only in the pleasing sacrifice he offered, but even in the way he
accepted death in silence.  Of him it is written, "Like a lamb
before the shearer he will be silent and not open his mouth."  
From the foundation of the world, Satan has tried to destroy the
body of the Redeemer.  From the sole of his foot, therefore, to
the top of his head, he inflicted wounds, beginning with the
first people and continuing in his fury until he came to the very
head of the church.  

 XVIII.33.  He was scraping his oozings with a potsherd. (2.8)  

In the hand of the Lord, what else is this potsherd but the flesh
he took from our earthy nature?  A shard is hardened by fire,
while the flesh of the Lord came forth from his sufferings all
the stronger.  Dying in his infirmity, he rose again from death
without infirmity.  So it is rightly said through the prophet: 
"My strength is hardened like a potsherd."  His strength
hardened like a potsherd when he fortified the weakness of the
flesh he had accepted with the fire of his sufferings.  But what
should we understand by the oozings if not sin?   Flesh and blood
usually stand for the sins of the flesh, whence it is said
through the psalmist, "Free me from blood." The oozing here is
the blood's festering.  So what is this ooze but the sins of the
flesh grown worse with long habit?  A wound begins to ooze,
therefore, when a fault long neglected grows worse with habit. 
So the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, handed over
his body to the hands of his persecutors, scraping his pus with a
shard in that he cleansed away sin from the flesh.  "For he
came," as it is written, "in the likeness of sinful flesh, so
that he might condemn sin of sin."  When he offered the
innocence of his flesh to the enemy, he wiped away the defilement
of our flesh, and through the flesh by which the enemy held us
prisoner he set us free.  What we had made a tool of sin was
transformed by our mediator into the armor of justice.  With a
shard, therefore, the pus is scraped, when sin is defeated by the
flesh.

XIX.34.  He was sitting on a dungheap. (2.8)

He was not sitting in the forum where the law thunders forth, nor
in some great edifice on a lofty throne, but on a dungheap.  For
the Redeemer of the human race took on flesh (Paul attests this),
"choosing what was weak in the world to overthrow the mighty." 
And was not our Redeemer sitting on a dungheap as buildnigs
toppled when he settled peacefully among the pagans he had
formerly rejected, leaving behind the Jews with their pride?  He
is wounded and away from home, because he suffered the hostility
of Judea, was despised by his own race, and felt the pain of his
sufferings, as John bears witness, saying, "He came to his own
and his own received him not."  But the Truth itself tells us
how it is that he settled peaceably on the dunghill, for it says,
"There will be more joy in heaven for one sinner doing penance
than for ninety-nine just souls in no need of penance." He sits
sorrowfully on a dungheap, for he freely embraces the hearts of
the penitent after all their sins.  For are not the hearts of the
penitent a kind of dungheap?  They weep for their sins as they
regard their lives and put off their old selves as if they were
heaping up their dung before them.  In his troubles Job did not
head for the mountain, but he stayed on the dungheap, because
when our Redeemer came to his passion, he left behind the haughty
hearts of the proud and found peace with the humble and the
afflicted.  He revealed this of himself even before the
incarnation, when he said through the prophet, "To whom shall I
look if not the man who is humble and peaceful and in awe of my
words?"

35.  Who can count up how many injuries he suffered at men's
hands, this one whose compassion brought so many gifts to men? 
Who can count up how much he endures even now, even while he
reigns from heaven over the hearts of the faithful?  He suffers
daily everything that his elect suffer at the hands of the
reprobate.  Though the head of this body (we are the body) has
raised himself free above all things, he still senses the
injuries inflicted by the wicked through his body which remains
here below.  

But why must we say these things about the infidels, when we see
many of those in the church itself who are devoted to things of
the flesh, fighting with their wicked lives against the life of
the Redeemer?  There are those who pursue him with perverse deeds
because they cannot use swords, who become enemies of the good
when they see they cannot get what they want in the church.  They
involve themselves not only in wicked deeds but even work to
twist the rectitude of the just away into perversity.  They fail
to keep their sight fixed on eternity and give way
mean-spiritedly to a desire for things of this world.  Their fall
from eternity is more drastic, for they treating the temporal
goods they see as if they were the only goods.  The simplicity of
the just disturbs them, so when they find a chance to unsettle
the just, they urge their own two-facedness upon their brethren. 
So what follows is particularly fitting:

XX.36.  His wife said to him, 'Do you still persist with your
simplicity?  Curse God and die.' (2.9)  

Whose part is the wickedly persuasive woman playing, if not that
of those church members who live according to the flesh and are
all the more a burden to the just for their worldly ways because
by the words with which they professed their faith they are
inside the church itself.  They would do less harm if the church
had not let them in and made a place for them in the inner
chamber of faith.  When she receives them with their profession
of faith, she makes it impossible for herself to avoid contact
with them.  This is the meaning of the story of the woman who
touched our Redeemer in the middle of a pressing crowd;
straightaway our Redeemer said, "Who touched me?"  When his
disciples answered, "Crowds are all around you and harassing you
and you say, 'Who touched me'?" he answers, "Someone touched me,
for I know the power went out from me."

37.  Many press around the Lord but one woman touches him, for
all the worldly people in the church press upon the one from whom
they are really very distant.  The only ones who touch him are
the ones joined to him in true humility.  The crowd presses upon
him, because the mob of worldly people are more of a burden for
having been allowed to come into the church.  It presses upon but
does not touch him, because although it is insistently present in
one way, it is altogether absent in the way it lives.  Sometimes
they trouble us with their evil words, but sometimes only with
their wicked ways.  Sometimes they try to persuade us of their
beliefs, while sometimes, even if they do not argue their case,
they still give constant example of their iniquity.  So they
entice us towards evil by their words and example and become
thereby our persecutors.  At their hands we face the contests of
temptation, which we must win, if only in our hearts.  

38.  We must beware that the worldly members of the church
sometimes try to urge wickedness upon us by fear, sometimes by
bold pride.  While they themselves go astray through cravenness
or pride, they try to instill the same qualities in us, as if out
of love.  Peter's mind was still worldly before the death and
resurrection of the Redeemer, while the son of Sarvia clung to
David his leader still with a worldly mind, but the one sinned
out of fear, the other out of pride.  The one, hearing of the
death of his master, said, "Far be it from you, Lord, this will
not be for you."  The other could not bear the insults against
his leader and said, "Shall not Semei die for these words, since
he has cursed the anointed one of the Lord?"  But to the first
it was quickly said, "Get thee behind me, Satan;" and the other
soon heard with his brother, "What have I to do with you, sons of
Sarvia?"  These men, when they tried to argue for wickedness,
are expressly compared to the apostate angels, using soft words
to lead us astray to sin in the guise of loving friends.  The
ones who give way to this sin out of pride are much worse than
those who yield through fear.  It is the ones who sin out of
pride whose part the wife of blessed Job takes here, proudly
tempting her husband and saying, "Do you still persist with your
simplicity?  Curse God and die."  She reproaches her husband's
simplicity, because he turned away from everything that would
perish and fixed his heart's pure desire only on what was
eternal.  It is as if she said, 'Why do you simple-mindedly seek
what is eternal and groan through your present trials so calmly? 
Be bold, scorn the things of eternity and escape your present
sufferings, even at the cost of death.'

We learn something about the virtue of the elect in the face of
all that they put up with from worldly members of the church when
we hear the words of this man, wounded but unscathed, sitting
down but standing tall, when he says:

XXI.39.  'You have spoken like a foolish woman.  If we have taken
good things from the hand of the Lord, how shall we refuse the
bad?' (2.10)

Holy men on the battlefield of temptation, attacked by the blows
of some, tempted by the words of others, defend themselves with
the shield of patience against the first, and launch spears of
doctrine against the other.  Their virtue teaches them to stand
up to both kinds of battle, teaching the perverse with deep inner
wisdom and facing violent men boldly without.  These they correct
with teaching, those they defeat with endurance.  They scorn
their attacking enemies by a show of long-suffering, while they
lead their weaker brethren home to safety out of compassion. 
They resist the attackers to keep them from destroying others,
while they fear for the others, hoping to keep them from losing
the path of righteousness altogether. 

40.  Let us see how the warrior of the Lord's camps does battle
in each of these ways.  He says, "Battles without, fears
within."  He counts off the battles he has endured externally,
saying, "In danger of flood, in danger of thieves, in danger from
family, in danger from foreigners, in danger in the city, in
danger in the desert, in danger on the sea, in danger among
unfaithful brothers." But of the other battle, in which he
launches his arrows, he adds, "in toil and pain, in sleepless
nights without number, in hunger and thirst, in repeated
fastings, in cold and nakedness."  But in the middle of such
contests, hear how he tells of the watches he keeps to guard the
camps of the Lord; for he adds, "Beside dangers from without,
there is with me daily my concern for all the churches."  See
how he bravely undertakes these battles and exerts himself in his
mercy to protect his neighbors.  He recounts the evils he
suffers, and he adds the good deeds he performs.

Let us consider therefore how great is his labor, as he bears up
under external attacks at the same time that he is full of care
for others within.  His outward battles are the lashes of
persecution by which he is flayed, the chains by which he is
bound.  Within he endures his fear that his sufferings may harm,
not himself, but those he cares for.  So he writes to them,
saying, "Let no one be disturbed by these troubles.  For you know
that this is what we are here for."  In his own sufferings, he
fears that others may fall, that his followers may see him
feeling the whip for the faith and decline to declare their own
faith.  O the depth of his charity!  He takes no thought for
his own sufferings and takes care that his followers yield to no
wicked persuasion in their hearts.  He despises the wounds of his
body and offers healing care for the wounds of others' hearts. 
Just men have this characteristic, that in the midst of their own
troubles they do not lose their concern for others' welfare. 
They suffer for their own pains while looking out for the others'
needs by their instruction.  

They are like great physicians stricken down by illness.  They
endure the ripping open of their own wounds and offer healing
balm to others.  It is much, much easier either to teach when you
have nothing to suffer or to suffer and endure if you are not
teaching.  But holy men exert themselves strenuously in both
ways.  If they are perchance struck by troubles, they take on
this external combat in such a way that they think carefully how
they can keep their neighbors from being wounded within.  Holy
men and brave stand on the battle line and hurl their darts
against the enemy on one side, while on the other they shield the
weaker ones behind themselves.  So they swiftly turn from one
side to the other with vigilance and care.  They deal wounds
boldly ahead and protect the timorous from wounds behind.  

So because holy men know how to endure attacks without and
correct errors within, let it rightly be said, "You have spoken
like a foolish woman."  Since it is said to the elect, "Act
manfully and let your heart be comforted," so the minds of
worldly people who abandon the Lord in their fickleness are not
inappropriately called "women."  

41.  If we have taken good things from the hand of the Lord, how
shall we refuse the bad?

This is as if to say, 'If we are reaching for eternal goodness,
what surprise is it if we suffer temporal evil?'  Paul had fixed
his eye firmly on this goodness when he endured the injuries he
suffered, saying, "The sufferings of the present time are not to
be measured alongside the coming glory which will be revealed in
us."

In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

When holy men bear persecution within and without, not only do
they not burst forth with insults against God, but they launch no
angry words against their adversaries.  Peter, leader of good
men, rightly admonishes, "Let none of you suffer like a murderer,
or a thief, or an evil-sayer."  An evil-sayer suffers when in a
moment of suffering he lets go with insults at least against the
one persecuting him.  But because the body of the Redeemer
(namely the holy church) bears its burden of suffering in such a
way that it does not overstep the bounds of humility in its
words, it is rightly said of Job as he suffered:  

XXII.42.  In all this Job did not sin with his lips, nor did he
utter any folly against God.  Three friends of Job heard all
the evil that had befallen him and they came, each from his own
home:  Eliphaz the Themanite, Baldad the Suhite, and Sophar the
Naamathite. (2.10-11)

In the preface of this work we said that the friends of blessed
Job, even if they came to him with good intentions, nevertheless
represent the heretics because they fall into error by speaking
without discernment.  So it is said to them by blessed Job, "I
wish to dispute with God, first showing you to be manufacturers
of lies and worshippers of false dogmas."  Through all the
history of the holy church on pilgrimage in this world, as it
suffers its wounds and grieves for those who fall away from it,
it must in addition put up with the presence of enemies of Christ
wearing the name of Christ.  To increase its sorrow, the heretics
even gather to quarrel and pierce the church with the arrows of
their senseless words.  

43.  It is well said, "they came, each from his own home."  The
home of heretics is pride itself, for if their hearts had not
first grown swollen and proud, they would not have come forth to
battle with their wicked teachings.  Pride is the home of the
wicked just as humility is the home of the good.  Of that home it
is said through Solomon, "If the spirit of the one who has power
should lord it over you, do not leave your home."  As if to
say, 'If you see the spirit of the tempter about to overcome you,
do not let go of the humility of repentance.'  He shows that he
means our home to be understood as the penitent humility by his
next words, where he says, "For healing shall make great sins to
cease."  For what is mournful humility but the medicine of sin? 
So the heretics come from their own homes because they are moved
against the holy church out of pride.

44.  The perversity of their actions can be understood from the
translation of their names.  For they are called Eliphaz, Baldad
and Sophar.  As we said above,  Eliphaz means "contempt of
God," for if heretics did not despise God, they would never have
thought wicked thoughts about him.  But Baldad means "oldness
alone," for while they refuse to be bound by truth and seek
victories for their perverse ideas, they fail to convert
themselves to the new life and what they seek comes from oldness
alone.  Now Sophar means "destruction of the watchtower," for
those who are inside the holy church behold the mysteries of
their Redeemer humbly in true faith, but when heretics come along
with their false claims, they destroy the watchtower, for they
distract the minds of those whom they tempt away from the
attentive watchfulness of direct vision.

45.  The places from which they come are named in ways
appropriate to the deeds of heretics, for they are said to be a
Themanite, a Suhite, and a Naamathite.  Now Thema is interpreted,
"south wind," Suhi, "speaker," and Naama, "attractiveness."

But who does not know that the south wind is a warm wind?
Heretics are fired with zeal to be wise, so they seek to be
warmer than is necessary.  For laziness is a thing of numbing
chill, while the restlessness of unrestrained curiosity stems
from unrestrained warmth. Because they seek the heat of wisdom
more ardently than they should, they are said to come from the
direction of the south wind.  Paul took care to restrain the
minds of the faithful from this warmth of unrestrained wisdom
when he said, "Not to be more wise than the wisdom that is
fitting, but to be wise in moderation."  This is why David
attacked the Valley of the Salt-pits, for in the hour of his
judgment our Redeemer wipes out the foolishness of unrestrained
cleverness in those who thing wrongly of him.

But Suhi is called "speaking," for the Suhites desire to have
their warmth not to live well but to speak proudly.  They are
said to come from Thema and Suhi, that is, from warmth and
talkativeness, because they show their study of scripture comes
not from the heart of charity but from the empty words of eager
chatter.

Now Naama is translated "attractiveness," because the Naamathites
do not wish to be learned but to seem so, and so they take on by
their learned words the appearance of those who live well. 
Through the warmth of chatter they present an image of
attractiveness, to persuade us to evil through attractive words
with which they cleverly conceal the foulness of their lives. 
Neither are these names carelessly arranged in the narration: 
first Thema, then Suhi, finally Naama appears, because excessive
warmth lights them first, then their polished words prop them up,
and then finally they show themselves to men all attractive in
their hypocrisy.

XXIII.46.  For they had agreed they would come jointly to see Job
and console him. (2.11)

Heretics are said to agree when they join their thoughts in
wicked concord against the church.  Insofar as they defect from
the truth, they agree with one another in falsehood.  Now all
those who teach us about eternity are consoling us for the
sufferings of our journey, but heretics, desiring to teach the
church their own doctrines, also present themselves as if to give
consolation.  It is nothing to marvel at that those who take the
part of the adversaries should bear the name of friends, since it
was said even to the traitor himself, "Friend, for what have you
come?"  And the rich man who was burning in the fire of hell is
called "son" by Abraham.  Even if the wicked refuse to accept
correction from us, it is still fitting that we call them names
that spring from our own kindness, not from their wickedness.

XXIV.47.  And when they looked upon him from afar, they did not
recognize him.  (2.12)

When heretics look upon the works of the holy church, they are
looking "up on" it, for they are in the lowest place and when
they consider the church's works, they see things placed on high. 
But they do not recognize the church in its sufferings.  For the
church seeks to take on the evils of this world, in order to come
to its eternal reward purged clean.  Often it shies away from
prosperity and rejoices to learn from discipline.  Heretics, who
seek present glory as a great thing, do not recognize the church
covered with wounds.  What they see in the church they do not
find when they read their own hearts.  The church advances even
in adversity, while they stay stuck in their stupor, because they
do not understand from their own experience the things they see
before them.

XXV.48.  They rent their garments, and scattered dust to the
heavens upon their heads. (2.12)

The garments of the church we take to be all its faithful people,
just as it says through the prophet:  "You shall be clothed with
all these people as with adornment."  By this reading, the
garments of the heretics are all the people who join together
with them and are wrapped up in their errors.  Heretics have this
characteristic, that they cannot for long stay at the level they
reach upon leaving the church, but daily they fall into worse
things and as their thoughts continue to go astray they divide
themselves into many factions and are separated from each other
the more by argument and confusion.  So because they wound and
rend and divide those whom they have joined to their wickedness,
it may well be said that the friends who come rend their
garments.  With torn garments, the body is revealed, for often
the malice of their hearts is revealed when their followers are
torn from each other.  Discord reveals their treachery,
previously shut up under a show of guilty harmony.

49.  But they scatter dust to the heavens upon their heads.  What
is that dust but intelligence that is bound to earthly things? 
What is the head if not the mind that governs?  What is heaven,
if not the command that speaks from above?  To scatter dust over
one's head to the heavens is to pervert the mind with worldly
thoughts and to attach earthly interpretations to heavenly words. 
For they discuss the divine words rather than accept them.  They
sprinkle the dust over their heads because they go beyond the
powers of their minds, reading worldly ideas into the commands of
God.

XXVI.50.  They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven
nights.  (2.13)

What we see by day we recognize; but at night we either see
nothing in our blindness or we are confused by doubt as to what
we see.  Day stands for understanding, therefore, and night for
ignorance.  By the number seven is meant the totality of
everything:  so all this transient age is completed in no more
than seven days.  The friends of blessed Job are said to have sat
with him seven days and seven nights, because both in the things
in which they do see the true light and in those things in which
they bear the darkness of ignorance they make as if to condescend
to the church in its weakness.  They are really preparing the
snares of deception under a show of kind words.  They are swollen
with pride for what they know and for what they do not know, and
secretly they think themselves great; but still sometimes they
bow to the church, at least in appearance, and inject their
poison with soft words.  To sit upon the ground, therefore, is to
display an image of humility, hoping to press their haughty ideas
the more convincingly behind a show of humility.

51.  The ground [terra] can also represent the incarnation of the
Mediator. Thus it is said to Israel, "You shall make an altar of
dirt [terra] for me."  To make an altar of dirt for God is to
hope in the incarnation of the Mediator.  Our offering is
accepted by God when our humility places on this altar (that is,
in its faith in the Lord's incarnation) whatever it does.  We
place an offering on an altar of dirt if we fortify what we do
with faith in the incarnation.  But there are some heretics who
do not deny the fact of the Mediator's incarnation, but who
either think otherwise than the truth about his divinity or
disagree about the nature of that incarnation.  The ones who
profess the true incarnation of the Redeemer with us are the ones
sitting with Job on the ground as equals.  But they are said to
have sat there for seven days and seven nights on the ground, for
whether they are able to see something of the fulness of truth or
whether they are blinded by the darkness of folly, they cannot
deny the mystery of the incarnation.  To sit with blessed Job on
the ground is to believe in the true flesh of the Redeemer along
with holy church.

52.  But sometimes heretics are instruments of savage punishment
for us, sometimes they attack us with words alone, sometimes they
stir us up when we are at peace, while sometimes they remain
quiet if they see us silent:  friends in silence, they oppose us
when we speak.  So because blessed Job had not yet said anything
to them, it is rightly added, "No one said a word to him."  We
have silent adversaries if we fail to propagate sons for the true
faith by our preaching.  But if we begin to speak the truth, soon
we hear the heavy insults of their response:  they immediately
leap to oppose us and break out bitterly against us.  They fear
that the hearts which folly bears down to the depths should be
pulled up on high again by the voice of one speaking truth.  So
because, as we said, our adversaries love us when we are silent,
and hate us when we speak, it is rightly said of Job when he was
silent:

XXVII.53.  No one said a word to him. (2.13)  

Sometimes when idleness and inertia keep the hearts of the
faithful sitting quietly, heretics scatter the seeds of error
abroad.  But when they see that the minds of the good are full of
deep wisdom, longing to return to the heavenly homeland,
sorrowing much over the toils of exile here, they restrain their
tongues with careful circumspection, because they see that they
should speak in vain against the hearts of those who sorrow and
so they keep silence.  So it is rightly added, after it says, "No
one said a word to him," by way of expressing the cause of their
silence:

XXVIII.54.  For they saw his grief was overwhelming. (2.13) 

When the powerful sorrow that comes from the love of God has
pierced our heart, the enemy fears to speak his wicked words, for
he sees that if he attacked the mind thus intent, he would not
only fail to turn it toward perversity, but he might even lose,
by stirring up the mind, those souls he already held.

55.  Perhaps it troubles some readers that we have interpreted
this passage in such a way that the good deeds of Job's friends
represent evil acts of heretics.  But it is very often the case
that something is right when read literally but wrong when
understood allegorically.  Just as frequently, something may be a
cause of damnation taken as historical fact, but when written
down it becomes a prophecy of some good thing.  We can show this
more quickly if we take a single text of scripture to show both tendencies.

For who could there be, whether faithful or infidel, who would
not be entirely repelled by hearing that David went walking on
his terrace and lusted after Bersheba, the wife of Urias?  When
Urias returned home from battle, David urged him to return home
to wash his feet.  But Urias answered him, "The ark of the Lord
is camped in a tent and I should rest in my house?"  David
received Urias at his own table and gave him letters that would
be the cause of his death.  When David is walking on his terrace,
whom does he foreshadow but the one of whom it is written, "He
placed his tent in the sun"?  What does it mean to bring
Bersheba to his house but to take the law of the letter, wed to a
worldly people, and join it to oneself in spiritual
understanding?  Bersheba means "the seventh well," because of
course through knowledge of the law, with the infusion of
spiritual grace, perfect wisdom is offered to us.

But whom does Urias represent if not the Jewish people?  His name
translates, "my light is of God."  Now the Jewish people may be
said to glory in the light of God because it is exalted by
knowledge of the law it has received.  But David takes away
Urias's wife and joins her to himself.  This means that the
Redeemer appearing in the flesh "strong of hand" (which is what
"David" means) showed that the law spoke, in the spiritual sense,
of himself and showed that it was no longer the possession of the

Jewish people (who read it literally) and so joined it to
himself, when he declared that he had been proclaimed on its
pages.  David urges Urias to go home and wash his feet because
the incarnate Lord came to the Jewish people commanding that they
heed their consciences and wash away the stain of their deeds
with tears, so that they might understand the commands of the law
spiritually and, finding at last the font of baptism after living
under such harsh rules, they might resort to water after their
labors.

But Urias remembered that the ark of the Lord was dwelling in a
tent and answered that he could not enter his own house. This is
as if the Jewish people were to say, 'I observe God's commands in
sacrifices of flesh and I have no need to give ear to the
spiritual understanding with my conscience.' To say that the ark
is dwelling in a tent is to treat the commands of God only as a
matter of giving service in sacrifices of flesh.  So when Urias
did not want to return home, David invited him to his own table,
for though the Jewish people refused to heed their conscience,
the Redeemer still came and preached his spiritual commands to
them, saying, "if you would believe Moses, you would perhaps also
believe me, for he wrote of me." The Jewish people possessed
the law that spoke of the divinity of the one in whom the same
people refused to believe.  

So Urias was sent to Joab with the letters that would be the
death of him, because the Jewish people bears with it the law
whose words of rebuke will be the cause of its death.  By holding
on to the commands of the law that it refused to fulfill, it was
surely carrying the judgment by which it would be condemned. 
What could be more criminal than this deed of David's?  What
could be more innocent than Urias?  But again in a mystic sense
[per mysterium], what could be more holy than David, what could
be more faithless than Urias?  By the sin of the one, innocence
is foretold prophetically, while sin is prophesied by the
innocence of the other.

It is not therefore inappropriate that the good deeds of Job's
friends, should be read as the evil deeds of heretics.  The power
of sacred scripture recounts the past in such a way that the
future is revealed, and so it can approve the deed of the doer
only to rebuke it in a mystic sense.  It can condemn some deeds
done in fact to preach other deeds in the mystic sense.  

56.  We have now worked through the knots of allegorical mystery
line by line; let us now turn to touch briefly on the moral
interpretation.  The mind hastens to clarify what is obscure; if
it is long delayed with what is obvious, it is hindered from
coming to knock (as it should) on doors that are closed.  Often
the ancient enemy launches his war of temptation against our
mind, then rests from the contest for a while, not to put an end
to his malice but to render hearts carefree in time of respite.
Then suddenly he returns to capture them more easily for
attacking unexpectedly.  This is why he returns to tempt the
blessed man again and asks Job be tortured directly, which the

divine pity allows with a concession, saying, 

XXIX.57.  'So:  he is in your hand--but only preserve his soul.'
(2.6) 

For he abandons us the better to protect us.  He protects us so
that he might reveal to us the weakness of our condition in the
hour of temptation that he allows.  Satan quickly went out from
God's presence and wounded his victim from the sole of his foot
to the top of his head, for when he has his opportunity he begins
with the least things, working up to the greater, meaning to
offer temptation to the mind by piercing the whole body with the
wounds.  But he did not succeed in reaching the soul with his
blows, because inside, beneath all thought, beneath the wounds
left by the pleasures that were indulged, the integrity of the
secret will resisted.  Though self-indulgence should gnaw at the
mind, it could not turn aside the constancy of holy rectitude to
accept the soft delights of sin.  We ought nevertheless to clean
the wounds that pleasure inflicts with the harsh penances and
with strict punishment purify whatever dissolute thoughts spring
up in the mind.  So it is well added,

XXX.58.  He was scraping his oozings with a potsherd. (2.8)

What is the potsherd but harsh punishment?  What is the oozing
flesh but the effusion of unlawful thoughts?  Stricken, we scrape
our oozing flesh with a shard when we judge ourselves harshly and
thus purify ourselves from the pollution of unlawful thought. 
The shard can also stand for the vulnerability of mortality. 
Then to clean the flesh with a shard is to consider the
vulnerability of mortality and where it leads, and to clean away
the foulness of delight in wretched things.  To consider how
quickly flesh comes to dust is to defeat swiftly the shameful
inner motions of the flesh.  When temptation pours wicked thought
into the mind, it is as if pus is oozing from a wound.  But the
wound is quickly cleaned if we hold in our hands the shard that
brings us to consider our vulnerable mortality.  

59.  Nor should we underestimate the importance of the things we
turn over idly in our mind, even if they do not stir us to
action.  In this way the Redeemer came to clean our wounds with a
shard when he said, "You have heard that it was said to the
ancients, Thou shalt not commit adultery.  But I say to you that
if anyone look at a woman to lust after her, he has already
committed adultery with her in his heart." The wound is 
cleaned, therefore, when guilt is cut away not only from our 
deeds but even from our thoughts.  

This is why Jerobaal saw an angel while he was winnowing grain
from chaff.  At the angel's command he cooked a goat, placed it
upon a rock, and poured the juice of the flesh over it.  The
angel touched it with his staff and fire came from the rock and
consumed it.  What does it mean to flail the grain but to use

right judgment in separating the grains of virtue from the chaff
of vice?  An angel appears to those who do this, because the Lord
more openhandedly reveals inner secrets, when we cleanse
ourselves from outer things.  The angel commands that a goat be
killed (that is, that all the desires of our flesh be sacrificed) 
and its flesh placed upon a rock and the broth poured over it. 
What else is the rock if not the one of whom it was said through
Paul, "but the rock was Christ"?  We place the flesh upon a
rock when we crucify our body in imitation of Christ.  We pour
broth over the offering when we empty ourselves of the thoughts
of the flesh in following Christ's manner of life.  For we pour
the juice of the flesh over a rock when the mind is emptied from
the torrents of the thoughts of the flesh.  The angel soon
touches the offering with a rod, because the power of divine
assistance cannot be far away from our thoughts at such a time. 
Fire comes from the rock and consumes flesh and broth because the
spirit breathed forth by our Redeemer fires our heart with such a
flame of compunction that every illicit thought and deed within
it is burned up completely.  Pouring the juice over the rock is
the same as to clean the wound with a shard.  

The perfected mind watches carefully therefore, that it might not
only abstain from wrongful action but even clean away the dregs
of foul thoughts in itself.  Often enough in the hour of victory
the battle begins again, and when impurity of thought is
vanquished, the mind of the victor swells with pride.  So the
mind must be raised up through purification and still kept low in
humility.  So when it is said of the holy man, "he was scraping
his oozings with a shard," it is immediately and fittingly added:

XXI.60.  Sitting on a dung heap. (2.8)

To sit on a dungheap is to be conscious of our worthlessness and
lowliness.  We sit on a dungheap when we bring back to mind in
repentance the things we have done wrong.  Then when we look upon
the offal of our sins, we can restrain all the pride that stirs
in our heart.  That man is truly sitting on a dungheap who looks
upon his own weakness with care and refuses to take pride in the
goodness that has come to him through grace.  Was not Abraham
sitting on his own dungheap when he said, "Shall I speak to my
Lord, when I am dust and ashes?"  We can clearly see where he
places himself, when he thinks himself to be dust and ashes, even
when he is speaking with God.  If a man who was lifted up to
speak with God could so despise his own worth, we must think
carefully about the punishment that will strike us if we do not
reach such heights, yet boast of little things.

There are those who think great thoughts about themselves when
they are busied with little deeds.  They lift up their minds on
high and think that the excel all others by their merits and
virtues.  These are surely leaving behind the dunghill of
humility within themselves and climbing the heights of pride,
imitating the one who was first to lift himself up (and overthrew
himself in the process)--imitating the one who was not content

with the marks of high favor that he had received, and said, "I
shall rise to heaven, I shall exalt my throne above the stars of
heaven."  And in his evil, Babylon is joined to him, she who is
the jumbled mass of sinners and who says, "I sit here as a queen
and I am not a widow."  Whoever swells up within is placing
himself on a high place in his own eyes, but he really presses
himself down to the depths by refusing to think truthfully about
his weakness.

Then there are those who do not seek to do good themselves, but
when they see others sin they get the idea that they themselves
are just in comparison to the rest.  There is indeed no one
single fault that pierces the hearts of all.  One man is snared
by pride, another is tripped by wrath, another is tormented by
greed, another is inflamed with lust.  Very often it happens that
someone weighed down by pride can see how anger enrages someone
else, and because anger is not his own vice he considers himself
better than the angry one and boasts within of his own calm
fairness, because he fails to see the vice that by which he is
himself more tenaciously held.  Often as well a man wounded with
greed sees another plunge in the whirlpool of lust.  Because he
sees himself free of the defilement of the flesh, he pays no heed
to the defiling stains of spiritual vice within.  While he judges
in another the evil he is free from, he does not see the evil
that is his.  So it happens that while the mind is distracted
judging another, it is deprived of the light of self-judgment. 
He is all the more proudly hostile towards another's vices for
the way he neglects his own.

61.  On the other hand, people who truly strive for the heights
of virtue quickly take their own vices to heart when they hear of
another's sins.  They understand the other's sins better for
regretting their own more truly.  Because every one of the elect
restrains himself with thought of his own weakness, it can
rightly be said that the holy man sits on a dungheap in sorrow. 
The one who truly humbles himself makes progress by looking
unflinchingly upon the stains of sin by which he is covered.  We
must know that often the mind is touched by eager temptation in
time of prosperity, but still sometimes we suffer adversity
without and at the same time are wearied by the press of
temptation within, so that the whip tortures the flesh and still
the flesh pours its suggestions into the mind.  So it is well
that after so many wounds inflicted on Job, there should then be
attached the words of his wife trying to lead him to evil,
saying:

XXXII.62.  'Do you still persist with your simplicity?  Curse
God, and die.'  (2.9)

This wife full of wicked persuasion represents the thoughts of
the flesh harassing the mind.  For as it has often been said we
are worn down by the lash on the outside and worn out by the
suggestions of the flesh within.  This is what Jeremiah laments,

saying, "The sword is abroad killing, and at home a like death
waits."  For the sword is abroad killing when punishment
strikes us from without and brings us to a halt.  A like death
waits at home because the one who bears these lashes is still not
free of the stain of temptation in his conscience within.  Hence
David says, "Let them be like dust in the face of the wind, and
the angel of the Lord assailing them."81 The one who is swept
away by the gust of temptation in his heart is the one taken up
like dust before the wind.  When divine punishment strikes at
such a time, who will doubt that this is the assailing angel of
the Lord?

63.  But it is one way with the reprobate, another with the
elect.  The hearts of the reprobate are tempted, and they give
in; the hearts of the just face temptation but fend it off.  The
reprobate are taken by a delight in temptation, and even if what
is wickedly suggested is displeasing for the moment, there comes
a time when it becomes pleasing after deliberation.  But the
elect face the arrows of temptation, resist them dauntlessly, and
are wearied in the process; if the mind in temptation is then
sometimes taken a little with delight, nevertheless the elect
blush at the surreptitious entry of this delight and rebuke with
bold censure whatever fleshly desire they see rise up within
them.

XXXIII.64.  'You have spoken like a foolish woman.  If we have
taken good things from the hand of the Lord, how shall we refuse
the bad?' (2.10)

It is right that the holy mind should reject with spiritual
discipline whatever impudent whisperings of the flesh it hears,
lest the flesh might speak harshly and provoke anger or speak
softly and lead to lust and dissipation.  Manly censure, rebuking
illicit hints and thoughts, restrains the dissolute weakness of
turpitude, saying, "You have spoken like a foolish woman."  And
again reflection on God's gifts restrains the exasperation of
harsh thoughts, saying, "if we have taken good things from the
hand of the Lord, how shall we refuse the bad?"  Whoever tries to
subdue the vices and strive to reach the eternal heights of inner
reward with long strides of true intentions, seeing himself
surrounded on all sides in the war of the vices, girds himself up
staunchly with the arms of virtue.  He fears oncoming arrows less
for having fortified his breast against them.

65.  Often when we try to protect ourselves with the armor of
virtue in the war against temptation, there are vices that lurk
under the guise of virtue and come to us with smiling face, but
we recognize and understand their hostility.  So the friends of
blessed Job come together as if to console him, but they break
out in insults, because the lurking vices take on the appearance
of virtue but attack us like enemies.  So often unrestrained
wrath masks as justice, and weak laxity wants to be taken for
mercy.  Often heedless fear passes as humility, while unchecked
pride claims to be freedom of spirit.  The friends therefore come
to console but slip into hostile criticism, because the vices,

whitewashed with the appearance of virtue, begin with a smiling
appearance but soon trouble us with their harsh opposition.  

XXIV.66.  For they had agreed that they would come jointly to see
Job and console him. (2.10)  

The vices agree together under the guise of virtue because there
are vices which are joined in league among themselves against us,
like pride and anger, laxity and fear.  Anger is close to pride,
laxity to fear.  So they come towards us in agreement, these
vices joined together by a kinship of depravity against us.  But
if we have come to know the misery of our captivity here, and if
in our inmost hearts we are sorrowing out of love for our eternal
homeland, the vices that ambush the wickedly happy cannot prevail
against the sadly good.

XXXV.67.  And when they looked upon him from afar, they did not
recognize him. (2.12)

The vices do not recognize us in time of affliction, for as soon
as they strike a saddened heart, they are repelled and denied. 
When we were happy they knew us, inasmuch as they penetrated our
defenses, now they cannot recognize us in our grief, because they
are defeated by our strength.  But the ancient enemy sees that he
has been discovered in them, and hides himself all the more under
a show of virtue.

XXXVI.68.  Crying out, they wept, rent their garments, and
scattered dust to the heavens upon their heads.  They sat with
him on the ground seven days and seven nights.  (2.12)

Pity is indicated by their weeping, discernment by their torn
garments, energy for good works by the dust of the head, humility
by their sitting down.  For sometimes the insidious enemy
masquerades at pity in order to lead us to the limits of cruelty,
as when he prevents the present punishment of guilt, so that what
is not checked here will be greeted later by the fire of gehenna. 
Sometimes he places the appearance of discernment before our eyes
and leads us into the snares of indiscretion, as when at his
instigation we prudently let ourselves have more to eat as a
concession to illness, thus uncautiously stirring up the war of
the flesh against us.  Sometimes he creates the illusion of
energy for good works but through this introduces restlessness in
the face of toil, as when someone is unable to relax at all and
fears to be thought lazy.  Sometimes he displays a show of
humility in order to remove our usefulness, as when he tells some 
that they are more feeble and useless than they in fact are, so
that by thinking themselves too unworthy, they will come to fear
to be involved in matters in which they could be of use to their
neighbors.

69.  But the hand of compunction, working subtly, discerns these
virtues hidden by the ancient enemy under a pretense of virtue. 
The one who is truly sorrowful within is boldly provident in
seeing what is to be done, and what not to be done, in the world

outside.  For if the power of compunction touches us deep within,
all the clamor of wicked temptation falls silent.

XXXVII.70.  No one said a word to him, for they saw his grief was
overwhelming.  (2.13)  

For if the heart is truly sorrowful, the vices will not find
their tongue against us.  For when the life of righteousness is
sought wholeheartedly, the useless suggestion of evil is blocked
out.  Indeed, if we are in the habit of girding ourselves
energetically against the enticements of vice, we turn those
vices to the service of virtue.  Anger may possess some people,
but if they subject it to rational control they turn it to the
beneficial service of holy zeal.  Pride lifts some people, but if
they bow their soul in fear of God, they turn their pride to
serve in the defense of justice with a voice of freedom and
authority.  The power of the flesh entices some people, but if
they subdue the body in the performance of works of mercy they
can win the rewards of pity where they had suffered the goad of
wickedness.  So it is well that blessed Job made a burnt offering
for his friends after all their quarrels.  He had borne them as
enemies through their long conflict, but made them his fellow
citizens again through sacrifice; for when we subdue all our
vicious thoughts and turn them into virtues, it is as if we are
changing the hostility of our temptations through the offering of
our good intentions into friendly hearts.

Let it be enough for us to have treated this material triply in
three volumes.  We have planted a root strong here at the outset
of the work as if to provide support for the tree that is to be
born, so that we may later bring out the branches of our
discussion as the ... ... may require. 

(One footnote left over:  Psalm 34.5.  Sequence messed up
someplace.)