67. The weak, that desire to thrive in this world’s fortune, and as evils of great magnitude so dread scourges, in the case of those, whom they see smitten, measure offence by the punishment; for those, whom they see struck with the rod, they suppose have displeased God. Hence blessed Job’s friends were persuaded that he, whom they be held under the rod, had been ungodly, i.e. as reckoning that if he had not been ungodly, his ‘dwelling-places would have remained:’ but no man thinks so, saving he who still travails with the weariness of infirmity, who sets fast the footstep of his thoughts in the gratification of the present life, who is not taught to pass on with perfect desires to the eternal land.
