45. Holy Scripture is to be borne upon the shoulder through action, that it may, like a crown, be set round through recompense. — For to bear the book upon the shoulder is to fulfil Holy Scripture by working. And it is to be noted how orderly it is described—first to be borne upon the shoulder, and afterward to be set round like a crown—because, namely, the commandments of the sacred word, if now they are well borne in work, afterward display to us a crown of victory in reward. But why does blessed Job ask that the book be written by the judge, he who could not reach to the times of the New Testament? Yet, as has often already been said, he uses the voices of the elect, and from their significance asks what he foresaw would profit them in all things. For he himself, through
the Spirit, already long held this book with him, which he had received through the grace of inspiration, both to know it by living and to announce it by foreseeing. But amid these things it must be known that when we ponder the precepts of that same sacred word, and when we turn our mind away from the love of corruptible life, we hasten as it were toward the inner things by certain steps of the heart. But no one, forsaking the lowest things, suddenly becomes highest, because, in order to obtain the merit of perfection, while the mind is daily led on high, this is reached without doubt as it were by certain grades of ascent. Whence here too it is fitly subjoined: