Will ye accept his person? will ye contend for God?
Ver. 8. Will ye accept his person?] While you think to gratify him, and to ingratiate with him by oppressing me? Can you find no other way of justifying God's proceedings than by condemning me for wicked, because by him so afflicted? The truth is, these friends of Job, out of a perverse zeal of advancing God's righteousness, unrighteously suspected poor Job of wickedness, and so rejected his person to accept God's. See the like done Isa 66:5 Jer 50:7 John 16:2. O sancta simplicitas! said John Huss, when, at the stake, he observed a plain country fellow busier than the rest in fetching faggots to burn the heretics.
Will ye contend for God?] Why not? Good blood will not belie itself; the love of God constraineth his people to stand to him and to stickle for him; Non amat, qui non zelat, saith a Father. But then it must be a zeal according to knowledge; for else it will appear to be but base and reprobate metal, such as though it seemeth to be all for God, yet it never received the image and impress of God's Holy Spirit, and therefore is not current in heaven. But that I believe and know (said that fiery friar, Brusierd, in a conference with Bilney) that God and all his saints, whom thou hast so greatly dishonoured, will take revenge everlastingly on thee, I would surely with these nails of mine be thy death (Acts and Mon. 914). Another friar, preaching at Antwerp, wished that Luther were there, that he might bite out his throat with his teeth, and with the same teeth receive the Eucharist by Luther so dishonoured (Erasm. Epist. lib. 16).