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WELL then, though we say that trial is twofold, i.e., in prosperity and
in adversity, yet you must know that all men are tried in three different
ways. Often for their probation, sometimes for their improvement, and m
some cases because their sins deserve it. For their probation indeed, as we
read that the blessed Abraham and Job and many of the saints endured
countless tribulations; or this which is said to the people in Deuteronomy
by Moses: "And thou shalt remember all the way through which the Lord thy
God hath brought thee for forty years through the desert, to afflict thee
and to prove thee, and that the things that were in thy heart might be made
known, whether thou wouldst keep His Commandments or no:" and this which
we find in the Psalms: "I proved thee at the waters of strife." To Job
also: "Thinkest thou that I have spoken for any other cause than that thou
mightest be seen to be righteous?" But for improvement, when God
chastens his righteous ones for some small and venial sins, or to raise
them to a higher state of purity, and delivers them over to various trials,
that He may purge away all their unclean thoughts, and, to use the
prophet's word, the "dross," which he sees to have collected in their
secret parts, and may thus transmit them like pure gold, to the judgment to
come, as He allows nothing to remain in them for the fire of judgment to
discover when hereafter it searches them with penal torments according to
this saying: "Many are the tribulations of the righteous." And: "My son,
neglect not the discipline of the Lord, neither be thou wearied whilst thou
art rebuked by Him. For whom the Lord loveth He chastiseth, and scourgeth
every son whom He receiveth. For what son is there whom the father doth not
correct? But if ye are without chastisement, whereof all are partakers,
then are ye bastards, and not sons." And in the Apocalypse: "Those whom
I love, I reprove and chasten." To whom under the figure of Jerusalem
the following words are spoken by Jeremiah, in the person of God: "For I
will utterly consume all the nations among which I scattered thee: but I
will not utterly consume thee: but I will chastise thee in judgment, that
thou mayest not seem to thyself innocent." And for this life-giving
cleansing David prays when he says: "Prove me, O Lord, and try me; turn my
reins and my heart." Isaiah also, well knowing the value of this trial,
says "O Lord, correct us but with judgment: not in Thine anger." And
again: "I will give thanks to thee, O Lord, for thou wast angry with me:
Thy wrath is turned away, and Thou hast comforted me." But as a
punishment for sins, the blows of trial are inflicted, as where the Lord
threatens that He will send plagues upon the people of Israel: "I will send
the teeth of beasts upon them, with the fury of creatures that trail upon
the ground:" and "In vain have I struck your children: they have not
received correction." In the Psalms also: "Many are the scourges of the
sinners:" and in the gospel: "Behold thou art made whole: now sin no
more, lest a worse thing happen unto thee." We find, it is true, a
fourth way also in which we know on the authority of Scripture that some
sufferings are brought upon us simply for the manifestation of the glory of
God and His works, according to these words of the gospel: "Neither did
this man sin nor his parents, but that the works of God might be manifested
in him:" and again: "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory
of God that the Son of God may be glorified by it." There are also
other sorts of vengeance, with which some who have overpassed the bounds of
wickedness are smitten in this life, as we read that Dathan and Abiram or
Korah were punished, or above all, those of whom the Apostle speaks:
"Wherefore God gave them up to vile passions and a reprobate mind:" and
this must be counted worse than all other punishments. For of these the
Psalmist says: "They are not in the labours of men; neither shall they be
scourged like other men." For they are not worthy of being healed by
the visitation of the Lord which gives life, and by plagues in this world,
as "in despair they have given themselves over to lasciviousness, unto the
working of all error unto uncleanness," and as by hardening their
hearts, and by growing accustomed and used to sin they have got beyond
cleansing in this brief life and punishment in the present world: men, who
are thus reproved by the holy word of the prophet: "I destroyed some of
you, as God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a firebrand
plucked out of the burning: yet you returned not to Me, saith the
Lord," and Jeremiah: "I have killed and destroyed thy people, and yet
they are not returned from their ways." And again: "Thou hast smitten
them and they have not grieved: Thou hast bruised them and they refused to
receive correction: they have made their faces harder than the rock, they
have refused to return." And the prophet seeing that all the remedies
of this life will have been applied in vain for their healing, and already
as it were despairing of their life, declares: "The bellows have failed in
the fire, the founder hath melted in vain: for their wicked deeds are not
consumed. Call them reprobate silver, for the Lord hath rejected them."
And the Lord thus laments that to no purpose has He applied this salutary
cleansing by fire to those who are hardened in their sins, in the person of
Jerusalem crusted all over with the rust of her sins, when He says: "set it
empty upon burning coals, that it may be hot, and the brass thereof may be
melted; and let the filth of it be melted in the midst thereof. Great pains
have been taken, and the great rust thereof is not gone out, no not even by
fire. Thy uncleanness is execrable: because I desired to cleanse thee, and
thou art not cleansed from thy filthiness." Wherefore like a skilful
physician, who has tried all saving cures, and sees there is no remedy left
which can be applied to their disease, the Lord is in a manner overcome by
their iniquities and is obliged to desist from that kindly chastisement of
His, and so denounces them saying: "I will no longer be angry with thee,
and thy jealousy has departed from thee." But of others, whose heart
has not grown hard by continuance in sin, and who do not stand in need of
that most severe and (if I may so call it) caustic remedy, but for whose
salvation the instruction of the life-giving word is sufficient--of them it
is said: "I will improve them by hearing of their suffering." We are
well aware that there are other reasons also of the punishment and
vengeance which is inflicted on those who have sinned grievously--not to
expiate their crimes, nor wipe out the deserts of their sins, but that the
living may be put in fear and amend their lives. And these we plainly see
were inflicted on Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and Baasha the son of Ahiah,
and Ahab and Jezebel, when the Divine reproof thus declares: "Behold, I
will bring evil upon thee, and will cut down thy posterity, and will kill
of Ahab every male, and him that is shut up and the last in Israel. And I
will make thy house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat and like
the house of Baasha the son of Ahiah: for that which thou hast done to
provoke Me to anger, and for making Israel to sin. The dogs also shall eat
Jezebel in the field of Jezreel. If Ahab die in the city, the dogs shall
eat him: but if he die in the field the birds of the air shall eat him,"
and this which is threatened as the greatest threat of all: "Thy dead body
shall not be brought to the sepulchre of thy fathers." It was not that
this short and momentary punishment would suffice to purge away the
blasphemous inventions of him who first made the golden calves and led to
the lasting sin of the people, and their wicked separation from the Lord,--
or the countless and disgraceful profanities of those others, but it was
that by their example the fear of those punishments which they dreaded
might fall on others also, who, as they thought little of the future or
even disbelieved in it altogether, would only be moved by consideration of
things present; and that owing to this proof of His severity they might
acknowledge that there is no lack of care for the affairs of men, and for
their daily doings, in the majesty of God on high, and so through that
which they greatly feared might the more clearly See in God the rewarder of
all their deeds. We find, it is true, that even for lighter faults some men
have received the same sentence of death in this world, as that with which
those men were punished who, as we said before, were the authors of a
blasphemous falling away: as happened in the case of the man who gathered
sticks on the Sabbath, and in that of Ananias and Sapphira, who through
the sin of unbelief kept back some portion of their goods: not that the
guilt of their sins was equal, but because they were the first found out
in a new kind of transgression, and so it was right that as they had given
to others an example of sin, so also they should give them an example of
punishment and of fear, that anyone, who should attempt to copy them, might
know that (even if his punishment were postponed in this life) he would be
punished in the same way that they were at the trial of the judgment
hereafter. And, since in our desire to run through the different kinds of
trials and punishments we seem to have wandered somewhat from our subject,
on which we were saying that the perfect man will always remain steadfast
in either kind of trial, now let us return to it once more.
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