For all this I considered in my heart even to declare all this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God: no man knows either love or hatred by all that is before them.
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Evagrius Ponticus
AD 399
One acquaints the heart with what one has decided to investigate. The heart in turn longs to know more about these things, which is why it is said, “I turned my heart to know.” Those “spheres” are the matters [of inquiry]. The one who directs the heart by meditating on these spheres causes the heart to know them. However, one should note that those spheres that encircle human beings and those that the heart knows are not the same, because we may look into a lot of things, yet only know a very few of them. .
Of God. He seems to treat both alike, so that the just themselves cannot say whether their sufferings be a punishment or a trial. (St. Jerome) (Calmet)
Knoweth not certainly, and in an ordinary manner. (Worthington)
Hatred. Hebrew and Septuagint, "yet love and hatred man knoweth not. "(Haydock)
Prosperity or adversity proves nothing. (Calmet)
Mortals cannot tell whether their afflictions tend to their greater improvement, like Job's, or they are in punishment of sin, like those of Pharao, and of the Egyptians. This they shall know after death. (Worthington)
Yet the wicked know already that they are displeasing to God. (Salmeron in 2 Corinthians xii.) "The just and.their works are in the hand of God, even love and hatred; men know not "(De Dieu; Amama)
Now I thought at that time that all men were judged worthy of the same things. And if any wise man practised righteousness, and withdrew himself from unrighteousness, and as being sagacious avoided hatred with all (which, indeed, is a thing well pleasing to God), this man seemed to me to labour in vain. For there seemed to be one end for the righteous and for the impious, for the good and for the evil, for the pure and for the impure, for him that worshipped God, and for him that worshipped not. For as the unrighteous man and the good, the man who swears a false oath, and the man who avoids swearing altogether, were suspected by me to be driving toward the same end, a certain sinister opinion stole secretly into my mind, that all men come to their end in a similar way. But now I know that these are the reflections of fools, and errors and deceits. And they assert largely, that he who is dead has perished utterly, and that the living is to be preferred to the dead, even though he may li...
