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| Chapter XI. Of the two kinds of trials, which come upon us in a three-fold way.
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Chapter XI.
Of the two kinds of trials, which come upon us in a
three-fold way.
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 in 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:”1398
and this
which we find in the Psalms: “I proved thee at the waters of
strife.”1399
To Job also:
“Thinkest thou that I have spoken for any other cause than that
thou mightest be seen to be righteous?”1400
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.”1401
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.”1402
And in the Apocalypse: “Those whom I love, I reprove and
chasten.”1403
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.”1404
And for this
life-giving cleansing David prays when he says: “Prove me, O
Lord, and try me; turn my reins and my heart.”1405
Isaiah also, well knowing the value of this
trial, says “O Lord, correct us but with judgment: not in Thine
anger.”1406
| 1406 The passage is not
from Isaiah, but from Jer. x.
24. | 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.”1407
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:”1408
and “In
vain have I struck your children: they have not received
correction.”1409
In the Psalms
also: “Many are the scourges of the sinners:”1410
and in the gospel: “Behold thou art
made whole: now sin no more, lest a worse thing happen unto
thee.”1411
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:”1412
and again: “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of
God that the Son of God may be glorified by it.”1413
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:”1414
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.”1415
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,”1416
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,”1417
and Jeremiah: “I have killed and destroyed thy people, and yet
they are not returned from their ways.”1418
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.”1419
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.”1420
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.”1421
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.”1422
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.”1423
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,”1424
and this which is threatened
as the greatest threat of all: “Thy dead body shall not be brought
to the sepulchre of thy fathers.”1425
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,1426
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. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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