Job 28:2

"For iron is the product of the earth." These different metals must be indistinctly taken in a favorable sense. If iron is here designated, it is immaterial whether it has been higher; though he may be your strong ones. The wisdom is the same in all men; it is there only at different degrees. "The brass is extracted like stone," because it is purified of all mixture with the earth. He wants to show that the good are only mixed with the wicked for a time: they are separated from it, they are even purified by their contact, like the metals necessary for the arts to build. They need to be confused and formed with the earth, from which they must then be separated; then the earth, thus disengaged, occupies the place and rank assigned to it; the ungodly are reprobate also according to the evil of their deeds.

Iron is taken out of the earth. And the stone being melted with heat is turned into brass. Moreover, we are to consider that there are some whom Almighty God by His secret counsel preserving in innocency from their very beginnings promotes to the topmost heights of virtuous attainments, that, as their age increases, both numerousness of years and loftiness of merits should simultaneously advance in them. But others abandoning in their outset He suffers to go with bad habits fermenting by headlong ways. Yet for the most part even these He has regard to, and for the following after Him He kindles them with the fire of holy love, and the itchings of bad propensities engrained in their hearts He converts into a fervour of virtue, and they are the more set on fire to the desire of beseeching the pitifulness of God, in proportion as they are the more ashamed at the recollection of their own wickedness; as it often happens, that in the conflict of the fight the soldier, who is placed before the eyes of his leader, basely yields to the enemy's valour, and that whilst he powerlessly turns his back he is struck; yet nevertheless being ashamed of this very thing that he has done disgracefully before his leader's eyes, from the mere sense of shame he gathers greater force; and afterwards executes deeds of prowess, to so high a degree that he may at once achieve present credit of his valour, and cover past disgrace of weakness. In a like way, these persons are sometimes more actively established in the service of God by consequence of past weakness, and such persons for the keeping of His commandments both the desire of things future draws on, and the remembrance of things past urges forward, that on the one side affection to that which is to come should stimulate, and on the other shame for that which is past spur on. Which same however, while the enemies of the Church see to be endowed with the highest virtues, and in their present life cannot any way find out that whereby they may derogate from their merit, they set themselves to impeach them of the past, as the Manichaean assails our Moses, in whom he endeavours to soil with the sin of a past homicide the grace of subsequent virtuous attainments; in whom he heeds not how patient he was afterwards to endure, but how precipitate he was before to strike. Such adversaries as these blessed Job encountering with the…