Chapter 16, Verse 2. — I have often heard such things. 2. Job a type of the Church oppressed by feigned friends who pretend to console. Job's friends had burst from words of consolation into words of rebuke. — For the elect frequently hear alien evils as though they were their own, and a charge is thrust upon them by those by whom the very charges thus thrust are actually committed. By this response blessed Job signifies that time of the Church in which, oppressed by adversaries, she is believed to be as it were cast down in respect of temporal power. Whence it follows: — Ibid. — You are all burdensome comforters. For whether heretics, or any of the depraved, when they behold the good laboring under adversity, in the very thing wherein they seek to console them, they endeavor to persuade them of evils.
Whence not without reason does their consolation become burdensome to the minds of the good, because amid their words they desire to administer the poison of error's sweetness; and while by gentle words they as it were soothe the sorrows, they hasten to lay upon them the burden of sin. But the elect, even when they are deprived of temporal glory, do not lose the vigor of inward judgment. For they know both to endure adversities outwardly, and yet, unbroken within, to defend what is right without fear. Whence it is added: