Did I say, Bring unto me? or, Give a reward for me of your substance?
Read Chapter 6
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
50. If these words are referred to the person of Holy Church, as we have said that blessed Job's friends bear the likeness of heretics, he rightly declares that he does not ‘want their substance.’ For the ‘substance’ of heretics is not unsuitably taken for carnal wisdom, by which whilst they are wickedly sustained, they as it were shew themselves rich in words, which Holy Church does not go after, in proportion as she goes beyond it by spiritual understanding. But oftentimes, while heretics maintain wrong things concerning the Faith, they utter various refined sayings against our old Enemy concerning the temptations of the flesh. For sometimes they as it were shew in themselves healthy limbs of practice, in the same degree that as wounded in faith they are held in the head by the fangs of the envenomed serpent. But Holy Church is not minded to hear refined sayings concerning temptation from those, who, whilst they deliver some truths that relate to practice, are leading men onward into the falsities of misbelief. Whence it is rightly said in this place, Did I say, Bring unto me? or, Give me aught of your substance? or, Deliver me from the enemy's hand? or, Redeem me from the hand of the mighty? For he calls the strength of Satan, ‘the enemy's hand,’ and the powers of evil spirits, ‘the hand of the mighty.’ Whom he in this respect calls mighty, in that whereas they were created void of fleshly infirmity, no impotency being mixed therewith obstructs their wicked efforts.
