And that you should visit him every morning, and test him every moment?
All Commentaries on Job 7:18 Go To Job 7
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
48. Which is there of us that does not know that it is called the ‘dawn,’ when the night season is now changing into the brightness of light? so we too are closed in by the darkness of night, when we are dimmed by the practice of wickedness; but the night is turned into light, when the darkness of our erring state is illuminated by knowledge of the Truth. The night is turned into light, when the splendour of righteousness lights up our hearts, which the blindness of sin lay heavy upon. This dawn Paul saw rise in the minds of the disciples, when he said, The night is far spent, the day is at hand. [Rom. 13, 12] And so the Lord ‘visits us at the dawn,’ in that He illumines the darkness of our state of error with the light of the knowledge of Himself, uplifts us with the gift of contemplation, exalts us to the stronghold of virtue. But it is to be observed, that after God ‘visits him at the dawn,’ He ‘tries man suddenly,’ in that both in drawing near He advances our souls to virtuous heights, and in withdrawing Himself He suffers them to be assaulted with temptation. For if after the bestowal of the gifts of virtue, she is never moved by any assault of temptation, the soul boasts that she has these of herself. Therefore that she may at one and the same time enjoy the gifts of a firm state, and humbly acknowledge her own state of infirmity, by the visitation of grace she is lifted up on high, and by the withdrawal of the same, it is proved what she is in herself. Which is well intimated to us in the history of the book of sacred reading, wherein Solomon is recorded both to have received wisdom from on high, and yet directly after that very wisdom was received, to have been assailed by the disputing of the harlots. [1 Kings 3, 16, &c.] For immediately after he had received the grace of that great enlightenment, he was exposed to the strife of base women; for that oftentimes when the visiting of the interior bounty illuminates our mind with virtues vouchsafed it, even filthy imaginations forthwith disorder it, that the soul, which being lifted up exults in the immensity of the gift, being at the same time struck by temptation, may discover what she is. So Elijah both being visited at the dawn, opened the doors of heaven by a word, and yet being ‘tried suddenly,’ fleeing helpless through the desert, was in dread of a single woman. [1 Kings 19, 3] Thus Paul is carried to the third heaven, and penetrating into the secrets of Paradise, he is held in contemplation; and yet when he returns to himself, travails against the assaults of the flesh, and is subject to another law in his members, by whose rebellion within him he grieves to see the law of the Spirit hard bestead. [2 Cor. 12, 2] Therefore God ‘visits at the dawn,’ but, after this visiting, He ‘tries suddenly,’ in that He both lifts up by the gift vouchsafed, and by the same being for a while withdrawn, shews unaided [ipsum] man to himself. Which doubtless we are so long subject to, until the time, when the pollution of sin being clean taken away, we be renewed to the substance of promised incorruption.
