Verse 10. — And let this be my consolation, that afflicting me with pain, He spare not. 22. The saints fear prosperity, they long for scourges. The elect, who, though they know they have committed unlawful things, yet, searching, find that they have suffered no adversities for those unlawful things, waste away with the corruption of an immense dread, burn with fear, labor troubled by sinister suspicions, lest grace should have forsaken them for eternity — those whom in the present life no retribution of their evil keeps in check; they fear lest the vengeance which is suspended should be kept the more grievous in the end; they desire to be smitten with fatherly correction, and reckon the pain of the wound to be the remedies of salvation. Rightly, therefore, it is now said: Let this be my consolation, that afflicting me with pain, He spare not.
As if it were plainly said: He who here spares certain ones, that He may strike them in perpetuity — let Him therefore here strike me, that by not sparing, He may spare in perpetuity. For out of affliction I am consoled, because, knowing the putrefaction of human corruption, I am made certain of the hope of salvation out of the wound. And because he uttered this not with a swelling but with a humble mind, by subjoining, as we have said before, he makes it plain, saying: