16. As though he expressed himself in plain words; ‘He only truly terrifies the hearts of mortals, who by the power of His Divine nature truly possesses these.’ For what terror does the power of man infuse, which knows not when it may lack the light of that power? Now it is rightly said, He maketh peace in His high places. Because there are many things at variance with themselves below, but they run answerably to the harmonious fulness of things above, and by the causing of the interior peace it is brought to pass, that oftentimes the things that are without are ordered without peace. Thus the good, Almighty God is advancing to merit, when He permits the bad to rage against their life; and things above are made to fit together in harmony, whilst those below are thrown into confusion; because in the heavenly world He joins His Elect to the choirs of the Angels by the same means, whereby in the earthly and lowest scene of things, He bears the practices of lost sinners opposing His b...
Bildad realizes that Eliphaz’s argument, which claimed holy Job was guilty because of his passions, had evidently been refuted by Job’s retort demonstrating that there were many impious persons who were not exposed to any hardship. Therefore he abandons this line of debate in order to say that he who now appears to have fallen into the harshness of life is guilty. And so he insists on this argument, in order to accuse Job by declaring divine power and in order to say that he sinned, because he had dared call God to judgment. “Dominion and fear are with him.” Since he is pressed by the force of the argument, he is obliged to agree with holy Job’s words, so that he may, after omitting the equity of judgment for the present, declare the power of God. And since he cannot demonstrate that Job is guilty, he tries to discount him through comparison; but in this way, without noticing what this situation causes, he actually greatly praises him. Indeed it is a thing of the highest merit when man...
