21. Let those who are set over others ever heed that they themselves are under God. — He who thinks upon the Judge who is to come, unceasingly, day by day, prepares the causes of his own reckonings for the better; he who beholds the eternal Lord with trembling of heart is constrained to temper the rights of temporal lordship over those subject to him. For he well perceives that it is nothing to be temporally set over others, when he himself is subject, to render an account, to Him who reigns without end. For often transitory power snatches the mind through the precipices of elation. And because each one is exalted to the degree that he sees himself to be above others, it behoves him always to look upon Him who is above himself, so that by the fear of Him who is above all things he may press down the swelling of mind growing within.
For let him behold those who are under himself, but let him consider under whom he himself is, so that from the consideration of the true Lord the swelling of false lordship may decrease. Whence blessed Job, because he feared the judgement of Him who is above all things, here came, equal to his servants, to a temporal judgement, saying: 'If I have despised to abide judgement with my man-servant and my maid-servant, when they contended against me. For what shall I do when God shall rise up to judge? And when He shall question, what shall I answer Him?' He who, that he may ever keep his heart low in humility, by no means beholds in those same servants that his estate is unequal to theirs, but that their nature is common. Whence also he adds: