Verse 5. — That I may know the words which He shall answer me, and understand what He shall say unto me. 36. The elect, while they fear God's hidden judgments, escape them. — For then do we bewail our faults, when we begin to weigh them. But we weigh them the more subtly, the more solicitously we bewail them; and out of the laments in our heart is more fully born the knowledge of what the divine strictness threatens against sinners: what shall be those reproaches of the reprobate, what the terror, what the implacable turning-away of the Majesty. For so much shall the Lord, angered, then say to the reprobate as He shall in equity have permitted them to suffer. Which words of that reproof the righteous, while they now solicitously fear them, escape.
But who could be found righteous in that examination, if God should scrutinize the life of men according to the Majesty of His might? Fittingly therefore it is subjoined: