Verse 5. And when the days of the feasting were gone about, Job sent and sanctified them. 47. In good works the intention is to be purified. — For when the round of the days of feasting was accomplished, to send to the sons and to sanctify them is, after the exercise of the virtues, to direct the intention of the heart, and to cleanse everything that is done by a strict scrutiny of reconsideration; lest things that are evil be esteemed good; lest at least the things truly good be thought sufficient when they are not perfect. For thus is the mind for the most part deceived, so as to be misled either by the quality of the evil or by the quantity of the good. [Old numbering XXXV.] But these workings of the virtues prayers find out better than scrutinies;
for the things which we strive to search out more fully in ourselves, we often penetrate more truly by praying than by investigating. For when the mind is lifted up to other things by a certain engine of compunction, whatever occurs to it concerning itself, it contemplates more surely by judging it beneath itself. Whence it is rightly added: