9. It is indeed a greater fight of patience, when it is not a visible enemy that by persecution and rage would urge us into crime which enemy may openly and in broad day be by not consenting overcome; but the devil himself, (he who doth likewise by means of the children of infidelity, as by his vessels, persecute the children of light) doth by himself hiddenly attack us, by his rage putting us on to do or say something against God. As such had holy Job experience of him, by both temptations vexed, but in both through steadfast strength of patience and arms of piety unconquered. For first, his body being left unhurt, he lost all that he had, in order that the mind, before excruciation of the flesh, might through withdrawal of the things which men are wont to prize highly, be broken, and he might say something against God upon loss of the things for the sake of which he was thought to worship Him. He was smitten also with sudden bereavement of all his sons so that whom he had begotten one by one he should lose all at once, as though their numerousness had been not for the adorning of his felicity, but for the increasing of his calamity. But where, having endured these things, he remained immovable in his God, he cleaved to His will, Whom it was not possible to lose but by his own will; and in place of the things he had lost he held Him who took them away, in Whom he should find what should never be lost. For He that took them away was not that enemy who had will of hurting, but He who had given to that enemy the power of hurting. The enemy next attacked also the body, and now not those things which were in the man from without, but the man himself, in whatever part he could, he smote. From the head to the feet were burning pains, were crawling worms, were running sores; still in the rotting body the mind remained entire, and horrid as were the tortures of the consuming flesh, with inviolate piety and uncorrupted patience it endured them all. There stood the wife, and instead of giving her husband any help, was suggesting blasphemy against God. For we are not to think that the devil, in leaving her when he took away the sons, went to work as one unskilled in mischief: rather, how necessary she was to the tempter, he had already learned in Eve. But now he had not found a second Adam whom he might take by means of a woman. More cautious was Job in his hours of sadness, than Adam in his bowers of gladness, the one was overcome in the midst of pleasant things, the other overcame in the midst of pains; the one consented to that which seemed delightsome, this other quailed not in torments most affrightsome. There stood his friends too, not to console him in his evils, but to suspect evil in him. For while he suffered so great sorrows, they believed him not innocent, nor did their tongue forbear to say that which his conscience had not to say; that so amid ruthless tortures of the body, his mind also might be beaten with truthless reproaches. But he, bearing in his flesh his own pains, in his heart others’ errors, reproved his wife for her folly, taught his friends wisdom, preserved patience in each and all.

9. Majus sane patientiae certamen est, quando non visibilis inimicus persequendo atque saeviendo urget in nefas, qui palam et aperte a non consentiente vincatur; sed ipse diabolus, qui etiam per filios infidelitatis, tanquam per sua vasa, filios lucis insequitur, per se ipsum occultus impugnat, saeviendo instans ut contra Deum fiat aliquid vel dicatur.

CAPUT XI.

Patientia sancti Job. Talem illum Job sanctus expertus est, utraque tentatione vexatus, sed in utraque stabili patientiae robore et armis pietatis invictus. Nam prius illaeso corpore cuncta quae habebat amisit, ut animus ante suae carnis cruciatum, 0616 subtractis rebus quas magni pendere homines solent, frangeretur, et adversus Deum loqueretur aliquid, nis amissis propter quae illum colere putabatur. Percussus est etiam omnium subita orbitate filiorum, ut quos singillatim susceperat, simul perderet, tanquam eorum numerositas, non unde felicitas ornaretur exstiterit, sed unde calamitas augeretur. Ubi autem ista perpessus in Deo suo mansit immobilis, ejus affixus est voluntati, quem non posset amittere nisi propria voluntate; et pro iis quae perdidit eum qui abstulit tenuit, in quo inveniret quod nunquam periret. Neque enim ille abstulerat qui nocendi habuit voluntatem, sed ille qui dederat potestatem.

CAPUT XII.

Job cautior Adamo. Aggressus est inimicus et corpus, nec ea quae homini extrinsecus inerant, sed ipsum jam hominem in qua potuit parte percussit. A capite usque ad pedes ardebant dolores, scatebant vermes, sanies defluebat: manebat in putri corpore animus integer, horrendosque cruciatus carnis contabescentis inviolata pietate et incorrupta patientia perferebat. Aderat uxor, nec ferebat opem aliquam viro, sed in Deum blasphemiam suggerebat. Non enim eam diabolus, cum etiam filios abstulisset, tanquam nocendi imperitus reliquerat; quae quantum esset necessaria tentatori, jam in Eva didicerat (Gen. III, 1-6). Sed modo alterum Adam, quem per mulierem caperet, non invenerat. Cautior fuit iste in doloribus, quam ille in nemoribus: ille victus est in deliciis, iste vicit in poenis; consensit ille oblectamentis, non cessit iste tormentis. Aderant et amici, non ut in malis consolarentur, sed ut malum suspicarentur. Neque enim eum qui tanta patiebatur, innocentem esse credebant, nec tacebat eorum lingua quod illius conscientia non habebat; ut inter immanes cruciatus corporis, etiam falsis animus caederetur opprobriis. At ille sustinens in carne dolores suos, in corde errores alienos, conjugis corripiebat insipientiam, amicos docebat sapientiam, servabat ubique patientiam.