Didaskalia De nobili dicto Davidis

your maker, who stretches out the heavens and lays the foundations of the earth, and yet fears daily continually because of the heat of him who causes anguish, as if he were preparing himself to destroy? And where is the heat of him who causes anguish? Item: For the mountains shall remove, and the hills shall be shaken: but my mercy shall not depart from you, neither shall the covenant of my peace be shaken, says your merciful Jehovah. O afflicted one, tossed with the tempest, you do not receive consolation. Behold, I will set your stones in carbuncles, and I will lay your foundations with sapphires (Is. 51:12-13; 54:10-11).

XXX.
In this place, let individual pious persons, who are involved in any temptation, also observe what they have in common with the whole Church suffering the paroxysms of temptations.

Since sometimes even the saving efficacy of prayers that have been heard is deferred: and that sweetest taste of the grace of God is for a time diluted by the wormwood of temptation, it happens that they do not admit consolation, in that they think, through error, that the covenant of grace has been dissolved.

But against this dangerous imagination must be opposed the sentence which warns most gravely that it will sooner come to pass that the mountains be moved, and that the hills be shaken, than that the mercy of God should depart from the pious, or that the covenant of peace should be made void.

XXXI.
But as often as the saints, pressed by a weight of troubles, wonder why it has seemed good to God to exercise the weak nature of men in that manner, then let there come into their mind, among many other things, these which we append kephalaiōdōs summarily/in headings.

1. I was dumb: I opened not my mouth, BECAUSE YOU HAVE DONE THIS (Ps. 39:9).

2. The Lord will not forsake forever. For if He causes pain, yet He will have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies. For He does not afflict from His heart, nor does He cause pain to the sons of man, to crush under His feet all the prisoners of the earth, to turn aside