The princes refrained from talking, and laid their hand on their mouth.
All Commentaries on Job 29:9 Go To Job 29
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
27. Who else in this place can be understood as leaders or princes, but the framers of heretical evil? Concerning whom it is said by the Psalmist, Strife was poured out upon their princes, and they led them aside in the pathless place, and not in the way. [Ps. 107, 40] For these identical persons, while they are not afraid to interpret the dispensation of God in a wrong sense, assuredly draw the common herds subject to them not into that way which is ‘Christ,’ but into ‘a pathless place:’ over whom ‘strife also is lightly said to be poured out,’ because by their statements they contradict mutually themselves. For Arius in receiving three Persons in the Divine Nature believed three Gods as well. Contrary to whom Sabellius taking up one God believed there was one Person. Between whom Holy Church unswervingly holding the right pathway of her preaching both in proclaiming one God, asserts against Sabellius three Persons, and in asserting three Persons, confesses against Arius one God. Again, because in sacred Revelation Manichaeus found virginity to be commended, he condemned marriage. But on the other hand Jovinian, because he knew marriages to be allowed, despised the pureness of virginity. Whence it takes place that, heretics being always at cross purposes by a wrong apprehension, reciprocally their wickedness is at once in accordance with itself in sin, and at variance with itself in opinion. But on the other hand Holy Church midway between the disputes of either side moves with composed peace, and knows so to receive the higher good, that she also knows to venerate [note: He probably uses this strong word on account of the sanctity of marriage] the lower, so that she should neither equal the highest to the lowest, nor again despise the lowest whilst she venerates the highest. And so now the rulers of heretical multitudes considering well the authority of Holy Church cease to speak, and as it were ‘put the finger on their mouth,’ whilst with false complaints they signify that they are restrained not by the reasoning of the voice but by the hand of power. ‘The rulers hold their peace,’ because those same persons who endeavour to draw after them the people going wrong, that they should not now dare to utter what is wrong, are checked at once by the weight of authority and the efficacy of reason. Whose ‘tongue cleaveth to their throat,’ because though they dare not to speak what is bad with an unrestrained utterance, yet they inwardly cover up in themselves all the things which they go to work to propound untrue against the true faith; therefore these times, the Church, being seized by the tribulation ensuing, calls to mind and laments, saying, When I went out to the gate through the city, and when they prepared me a seat in the street; the young men saw me and hid themselves; and the aged arose and stood up; the princes refrained talking, and laid their hand on their mouths. The leaders held their peace, and their tongue cleaved to their throat. As though she said in plain speech; ‘When there was an opportunity given me to preach with a voice publicly raised, everyone who was not in subjection to the truth dreaded me.’ For at that time, when Holy Church is weighed down by adversity, license of speech is afforded to all the bad preachers severally. Which Jeremiah beholding long while beforehand, saith, Even the sea-monsters bare the breasts; they give suck to their young ones. For what else does he designate ‘monsters,’ [lamiae] saving heretics bearing the face indeed of a human being, but the hearts of brute creatures through impiety? Which same then ‘bare the breast,’ when they freely preach their error. Then they ‘give suck to their young’ in that the misattached souls of the young ones, while they insinuate therein what is wrong, by nourishing they confirm in impiety.
