That you turn your spirit against God, and let such words go out of your mouth?
Read Chapter 15
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
It is as if Eliphaz said to Job in plain words, “If you would amend your profession of faith, you might long ago have possessed consolation in your scourges.” “Why does your heart puff you up? Have your eyes astonished you as though you were thinking of great things?” Often the mind of the righteous is so suspended in contemplating things on high that outwardly their face seems to have been struck with astonishment. Because heretics are not taught to enforce the power of contemplation in secret, they think that when the just and those that are imbued with right understanding do so, it is more out of hypocrisy than truth. They believe that whatever they themselves cannot obtain possession of must not exist in others in any genuine way either. “Why does your spirit swell against God, that you let such words go out of your mouth?” Very often when the righteous are afflicted with any woes, they are forced to confess their works, as blessed Job had done, who after living righteously was bea...
36. Very often when the righteous are afflicted with any woes, they are forced to confess their works, as blessed Job had done, who after just living was pressed down by the strokes of the rod; but when the unrighteous hear their sayings, they think that they are uttered in self-exaltation rather than in truth. For they weigh the words of the righteous by their own feelings, and do not think that good words can be said in a humble spirit. For as it is a great sin, for a man to ascribe to himself what there is not, so it is commonly no sin at all if he speaks with humility the good that there is. Hence it often happens that the just and unjust have words that are like, but always a heart that is widely unlike, and the same sayings for which the Lord is offended by the unrighteous, He is even propitiated by the righteous. Thus the Pharisee when he entered the temple said, I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I possess. [Luke 18, 12] But the publican went out justifie...
