“He stretches out his hand to the flint; he overturns mountains by the roots.” “He stretches out his hand to the flint” means he presented the arm of his preaching to the hardness of the Gentiles. Hence the same blessed Job, forewarned of the history of his suffering being destined to be made known to the Gentiles, says, “Let these things be engraved with an iron pen in a plate of lead or hewn in the flint.” However, whom in this place do we understand by the “mountains” except the powerful ones of this world, who because of earthly substance puff themselves up? Concerning them the psalmist says, “Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke”; but the mountains are overturned from the roots, because holy church, preaching the highest powers of this world, fell from their inmost thinking into the adoring of almighty God. For “the roots” of the mountains are the inmost thoughts of the proud. And “the mountains fall from the roots,” because for the worshiping of God, the powers of the world ...
58. i.e. in the hard hearts of the Gentiles he opened the rivers of preaching; as it is likewise spoken by the Prophet of watering the dryness of the Gentiles; He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground into water springs. [Ps. 107, 35] And in the Gospel the Lord promises, saying, He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. [John 7, 38] What we then heard promised, we now see fulfilled. For see how in the holy preachers, not sprung from Judaea, through the universal Church spread over the whole world, streams of heavenly precepts flow forth in abundance from the mouths of the Gentiles. Thus because in the rocks He opened streams, from hard hearts too there flowed forth the river of holy preaching. It goes on;
And his eye hath seen every precious thing.
59. It is a thing to be especially borne in mind, that each individual soul is rendered the more precious in the sight of God, by bow much it is f...
