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such; that therefore where a man suffers, the reason of it is not to be sought in any secondary purpose on the part of God, but solely and absolutely in the purpose of God to punish the sins of the man. The fallacy of the conclusion is this, that the possibility of any other purpose, which is just as far removed from self-interest, in connection with God's purpose of punishing the sins of the man, is excluded. It is now manifest how near theoretical error and practical falsehood border on one another, so that dogmatical error is really in the rule at the same time ἀδικία. For after Eliphaz, in order to defend the justice of divine retribution against Job, has again indissolubly connected suffering and the punishment of sin, without acknowledging any other form of divine rule but His justice, any other purpose in decreeing suffering than the infliction of punishment (from the recognition of which the right and true comfort for Job would have sprung up), he is obliged in the present instance, against his better knowledge and conscience, to distort an established fact, to play the hypocrite to himself, and persuade himself of the existence of sins in Job, of which the confirmation fails him, and to become false and unjust towards Job even in favour of the false dogma. For the dogma demands wickedness in an equal degree to correspond to a great evil, unlimited sins to unlimited sufferings. Therefore the former wealth of Job must furnish him with the ground of heavy accusations, which he now expresses directly and unconditionally to Job. He whose conscience, however, does not accuse him of mammon-worship, Job 31:24, is suffering the punishment of a covetous and compassionless rich man. Thus is the dogma of the justice of God rescued by the unjust abandonment of Job.
Further, how true is Eliphaz' condemnatory judgment against the free-thinking, which, if it does not deny the existence of God, still regards God as shut up in the heavens,