29. How great was Bildad's folly, in preferring his own wisdom to the divine.—By breath we live, by prudence we are wise. But it is ours first to live, afterwards to be wise, because in order that we may be able to be wise, it is first brought about that we exist. He therefore who gave life, he without doubt also conferred prudence. But Bildad, because he believed blessed Job to be scourged for a fault, strove by proud rashness to penetrate the hidden judgment of God, which he ought humbly to have venerated. He therefore preferred himself, through prudence, to him whose judgment he judged by not understanding it. He preferred himself, through prudence, to him from whom he received the breath of living; as if he were more wise than the one from whom he had it that he existed.
But because blessed Job, keeping the type of the holy Church, brought forth few things in the correction of the proud, whom he did not fail to recognize as keeping the appearance of heretics, as he said above: 'I desire to dispute with God, first showing you to be fabricators of a lie, and cultivators of perverse doctrines' (Job XIII, 5); he suddenly raises himself to doctrine, and against the ignorance of the arrogant expands the breadth of his knowledge through sentences, saying: