Ibid.—The indignation whereof drinketh up my spirit (Job 6:4). 5. The just are amended by the punishments they endure.—For what is the spirit of man but the spirit of elation? Now the arrows of the Lord drink up the spirit of man, when the sentences of the chastisement from on high restrain the afflicted mind from elation. The arrows of the Lord drink up the spirit of man, because they draw inward the one intent on outward things. For the spirit of David had been drunk up, when he said: 'When my spirit failed within me, then thou knewest my paths' (Ps. 141:4). And again: 'I refused to be comforted in my soul; I remembered God, and was delighted; I was exercised, and my spirit fainted a little' (Ps. 76:4).
The indignation of the arrows therefore drinks up the spirit of the just man, because the sentences from on high, while they wound the elect whom they find in sins, transform them; that the pierced mind may forsake its hardness, and from the salutary wound the blood of confession may flow. For they weigh whence and whither they have fallen, they weigh from how great a blessedness they have fallen into the torments of their own corruption; and they not only groan in the things they endure, but moreover they dread that which the strict Judge threatens to sinners from the fires of hell. Whence it is rightly subjoined: