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| Chapter VI. How it is sometimes to our advantage to be left by God.
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Chapter VI.
How it is sometimes to our advantage to be left by
God.
But the blessed David
recognizes that sometimes this departure of which we have spoken, and
(as it were) desertion by God may be to some extent to our advantage,
so that he was unwilling to pray, not that he might not be absolutely
forsaken by God in anything (for he was aware that this would have been
disadvantageous both to himself and to human nature in its course
towards perfection) but he rather entreated that it might be in measure
and degree, saying “Forsake me not utterly”1288
as if to say in other words: I know
that thou dost forsake thy saints to their advantage, in order to prove
them, for in no other way could they be tempted by the devil, unless
they were for a little forsaken by Thee. And therefore I ask not that
Thou shouldest never forsake me, for it would not be well for me not to
feel my weakness and say “It is good for me that Thou hast
brought me low”1289
nor to have no
opportunity of fighting. And this I certainly should not have, if the
Divine protection shielded me incessantly and unbrokenly. For the devil
will not dare to attack me while supported by Thy defence, as he brings
both against me and Thee this objection and complaint, which he ever
slanderously brings against Thy champions, “Does Job serve God
for nought? Hast not Thou made a fence for him and his house and all
his substance round about?”1290
But I rather
entreat that Thou forsake me not utterly—what the Greeks
call ἕως
σφόδρα, i.e., too much.
For, first, as it is advantageous to me for Thee to forsake me a
little, that the steadfastness of my love may be tried, so it is
dangerous if Thou suffer me to be forsaken excessively in proportion to
my faults and what I deserve, since no power of man, if in temptation
it is forsaken for too long a time by Thine aid, can endure by its own
steadfastness, and not forthwith give in to the power of the
enemy’s side, unless Thou Thyself, as Thou knowest the strength
of man, and moderatest his struggles, “Suffer us not to be
tempted above that we are able, but makest with the temptation a way of
escape that we may be able to bear it.”1291
And something of this sort we read in the book of Judges was mystically
designed in the matter of the extermination of the spiritual nations
which were opposed to Israel: “These are the nations, which the
Lord left that by them He might instruct Israel, that they might learn
to fight with their enemies,” and again shortly after: “And
the Lord left them that He might try Israel by them, whether they would
hear the commandments of the Lord, which He had commanded their fathers
by the hand of Moses, or not.”1292
And this
conflict God reserved for Israel, not from envy of their peace, or from
a wish to hurt them, but because He knew that it would be good for them
that while they were always oppressed by the attacks of those nations
they might not cease to feel themselves in need of the aid of the Lord,
and for this reason might ever continue to meditate on Him and invoke
His aid, and not grow careless through lazy ease, and lose the habit of
resisting, and the practice of virtue. For again and again, men whom
adversity could not overcome, have been cast down by freedom from care
and by prosperity.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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