15. For because a parable is a name for a likeness, it plainly appears that through a form of exterior words he speaks mysteries, who with reference to speaking is recorded to have ‘taken up a parable.’
For when he relates his own circumstances, he is telling all the things that are to come to Holy Church, and through the thing that he himself undergoes he points out what she should undergo. But sometimes he so mixes the words of his own history, that he sounds not of any thing allegorical, while sometimes he so utters his own sorrows as though he were giving utterance in the voice of the sorrowing Church. But in the last part of his discourse, he designates the last time of the Church, when her adversaries, i.e. carnal persons, or heretics and pagans, whom she now busies herself to repress by the authority of wisdom, being set up with unbridled boastfulness, she is obliged to put up with, while derided. Whence in this discourse likewise it is said; But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to put with the dogs of my flock. [Job 30, 1] And the very principle of the arrangement requires that by the last words of blessed Job, the last days of Holy Church should be denoted, when, persecution increasing, she is forced to bear the undisguised voices of heretics, when those motions of their hearts, which they now cover up within the depths of their thoughts, they then disclose in the utterance of error made manifest. For now, as it is said by John, the dragon is imprisoned and held fast in the bottomless pit [Rev. 20, 3], because the wickedness of the devil is hidden from sight in their crafty hearts. But, as is there said, the dragon shall be brought forth out of the bottomless pit, because whatsoever is now covered over from fear, then against the Church openly out of the hearts of the wicked is all that serpent’s venom brought to light. For now the envenomed feeling hides itself from sight under a flattering tongue, and malevolence of craft as it were covers itself with a kind of bottomless pit of dissembling. Now the Lord, as it is expressed by the voice of the Psalmist, gathereth the waters of the sea as in a skin. [Ps. 33, 7] For the ‘skin’ is carnal thinking. So ‘the waters of the sea are gathered in a skin,’ when the bitterness of a froward mind does not burst forth outwardly into the voice of unhallowed liberty. Surely the time shall come, when the froward and the carnal speak forth against her with unreserved voice that which they now go about with secret thought. The time shall come when they shall oppress the Catholic Church not only with unjust words, but with cruel wounds.
16. For from her adversaries the Church suffers persecution in two ways, viz. either by words or by swords. Now when she bears persecution by words, her wisdom is put in exercise, when by swords, her patience. Now persecutions of words we do now too as well daily undergo at the hands of heretics, when heretics themselves flatter us with crafty tongues and with feigned humility, but the persecutions of swords are destined to follow towards the end of the world, that the grains to be stored up in the heavenly granaries may be the more genuinely cleared of the chaff of sins, the more straitly they are bruised with affliction. Then all the Elect, that may be caught in that tribulation, call to mind these times when now the Church secures the peace of the faith, when she holds under the proud necks of heretics, not by the potency of her highness, but by the yoke of reason. They call to mind ourselves, who are passing quiet times of faith, who, though we be straitened in the wars [Alluding to the hostilities of the Lombards especially.] of the nations, yet are not driven to extremity in the sayings of Fathers. Thus blessed Job bearing a type of Holy Church, which is then found in these straits, and yet remembers herself of our tranquillity, as I said, describes the particulars of himself past, and tells the particulars destined to come to others.
