CHAPTER V
THE FIFTH IMAGE
THE BLESSING ON OUR LEFT HAND
Here are our adversaries who are yet in this life; for in the foregoing image we considered those who are already damned and given over to devils. These we must regard with other feelings, and find in them a twofold blessing. The first is this, that they abound in temporal goods, so that even the prophets were well nigh moved to envy thereby; as we read in Psalm lxxii, "But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked";[1] and again, "Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches."[2] And Jeremiah says, "Righteous art Thou, O Lord, when I plead with Thee: yet let me talk with Thee of Thy judgments: wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? Wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?"[3] Why does He lavish and waste so many blessings upon them except to comfort us thereby, and make us to know how good He is to "such as are of a clean heart"?[4] as it is said in that same Psalm lxxii. If He is so good to the wicked, how good will He not be to the good? Except that He does not vex the wicked with any evil, yet afflicts the good with many evils, in order that they may acknowledge His goodness to them not only in the present blessings, but even in those that are hidden and yet to come, and that they may say, with the same Psalmist, "But it is good for me to draw near to God; I have put my trust in the Lord God."[5] Which is as though he said, Even though I suffer
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