Chapter I.
In this life, there are many disturbances, many consolations, but the latter far surpass the former; which is confirmed by the examples of the saints: that David and Job interceded for our weaknesses, hence the subject of this work.
The divine scripture demonstrates to us in frequent passages that many disturbances must be endured in this life; and it provides many consolations by which the soul, capable of strength and conscious of rectitude, should absorb what are the inconveniences of the present and look upon what has perpetual delight. Consolations outweigh disturbances because they bring about the calming of present troubles and the hope of future ones. Hence the Apostle Paul says, 'The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come' (Rom. VIII, 18). Certainly unfitting for the comparison of consolation, not for the benefit of redemption.
For what life on earth is so illustrious that it can equal that heavenly glory? What is more sublime than Paul, who endured so many dangers, so much pain and weakness? In the sufferings he underwent in the name of Christ every day, as he himself says (1 Cor. 15:31), he was dying, and he considered nothing unworthy to endure in this time for the hope and expectation of such great glory. Elijah endured hunger, traps, and the terrors of death, and the bitter hardships of labours: and yet he, alone, hiding all the merits of this warfare, having been taken from the earth by fiery chariots and horses of fire, and being brought back from the earth to heaven, raised the grace of the pious ascender above all human things. But what can I say about Peter, who considered his cross unworthy of future reward, and demanded to be crucified upside down, so that he could add something to his own suffering, of which he himself did not fear to make more severe?
3. Hence not undeservedly does the holy David hasten to that glory, when in his other work, but especially in the forty-first psalm, he testifies, saying: When shall I come and appear before the face of God (Psalm 41:3)? In this psalm he clearly expresses both the disturbances of human frailty and the consolations from the Lord. In this psalm he also intercedes for us to God, because forgetting his own work and forgetting the kindness and grace bestowed upon man, which he had undertaken to protect and adorn, he abandoned him and rejected him, weak and shipwrecked, to be crushed by various afflictions. What the holy Job had done earlier, this person does it morally, while the former does it more vehemently. Therefore, it is advisable for us to consider the interjections of both; what is expressed in these is the form of human life, the cause at stake, and the prerogative being shaped. Therefore, we must observe them in their respective order.