Hexameron

The First Day. Have human beings really taken so much opinion upon themselves that some of them, like Plato and his disciples, have laid down three first principles of all things, God, the model, and matter, and have asserted that these are incorruptible, uncreated, and without beginning? They hold that God made the world not as the creator of matter but as a craftsman looking to a model, that is, to an idea, out of matter, which they call hylē and which is said to have given all things the causes of their coming to be; and they think that the world itself too is incorruptible, neither created nor made. Others again, as Aristotle with his school thought fit to argue, have posited two principles, matter and form, and with them a third, which is called the efficient principle, to which it belongs to bring about effectively whatever it thought fit to undertake.

What, then, is so unfitting as to join the eternity of the work with the eternity of almighty God, or to say that the work itself is God, so that they honour heaven, earth, and sea with divine honours? From this it came about that they believed the parts of the world to be gods, although there is no small dispute among them about the world itself.

For Pythagoras asserts that there is one world; others say there are innumerable worlds, as Democritus writes, to whom antiquity granted the greatest authority on natural philosophy. Aristotle presumes to say that the world always was and always will be; Plato, on the other hand, ventures to maintain that it did not always exist but will always exist; and very many testify in their writings that it neither always existed nor will always exist.

Amid these disagreements of theirs, what judgment of the truth can there be, when some say that the world itself is God, because a divine mind seems, as they think, to be in it, others that its parts are, others both? On this view one can grasp neither what shape the gods have, nor their number, nor their place, life, or care; for if the world is taken as the measure, God would have to be understood as something rolling, round, burning, driven by certain motions, without sensation, carried along by a motion not his own but another's.

Therefore holy Moses, foreseeing by the divine Spirit that these errors of men would come and had perhaps already begun, says at the opening of his account: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” He joins together the beginning of things, the author of the world, and the creation of matter, so that you might know that God was before the beginning of the world, or is himself the beginning of all things, as in the Gospel the Son of God, when they said, “Who are you?”, answered, “The beginning, who also speak to you”; and that he himself gave things the beginning of their coming to be, and is himself the creator of the world, not an imitator of matter led by some idea, shaping his works not by his own will but after a model set before him. Fittingly, too, he says, “In the beginning he made,” to express the incomprehensible speed of the work, since he set out the effect of the completed operation before giving any sign of its being begun.

We must notice who says this. It is Moses, that man learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, whom Pharaoh's daughter took up from the river and loved as a son, and whom, supported by royal resources, she wished to be formed and instructed in all the disciplines of worldly learning. Though he took his name from water, he did not think he should say that all things consist of water, as Thales says; and though he was brought up in the royal palace, he chose for love of justice to undergo voluntary exile rather than to gain the fulfilment of sin through pleasures at the height of tyranny. Then, before he was called to the task of freeing his people, moved by a natural zeal for equity he avenged one of his countrymen who was being wronged, exposed himself to ill will, and tore himself from pleasure; and avoiding all the tumult of the royal house he withdrew to the seclusion of Ethiopia, and there, removed from other affairs, turned his whole mind to the knowledge of God, so as to see the glory of God face to face. Scripture testifies of him that there arose no prophet in Israel like Moses, who knew the Lord face to face, not in a vision or in a dream, but mouth to mouth speaking with the most high God, not in appearance nor in riddles, but granted the clear and open favour of the divine presence.

So he opened his mouth and poured out what the Lord spoke in him, as he had said to him when he sent him to King Pharaoh: “Go, and I will open your mouth and instruct you in what you ought to say.” For if he had received from God what he was to say about letting the people go, how much more what he was to say about heaven! So not in the persuasion of human wisdom, nor in the deceptive arguments of philosophy, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, as a witness of the divine work, he dared to say: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” He did not wait for the late and idle business of a world coming together by the collision of atoms, nor did he think he should present God as a kind of pupil of matter, who could fashion the world by contemplating it; he thought he should present God as its author. For that man full of wisdom saw that the divine mind alone holds the substance and causes of things visible and invisible, and that it is not, as the philosophers argue, a stronger interlocking of atoms that provides the cause of lasting permanence. He judged that those who give heaven and earth such tiny and insubstantial first principles were weaving a spider's web, principles which, as they would have come together by chance, would by chance and at random fall apart, unless they held together by the divine power of their governor. And not without reason do they know no governor who have not known God, by whom all things are ruled and governed. Let us follow, then, the one who knew both the author and the governor, and not be carried off by empty opinions.

“In the beginning,” he says. What good order: first to assert what they had been accustomed to deny, so that they would know that the world has a beginning, and people would not think that the world is without beginning. So David too, speaking of heaven and earth and sea, says: “You have made all things in wisdom.” He gave a beginning to the world, then, and gave the creature its weakness also, so that we would not believe it to be without beginning (anarchon), uncreated, and sharing the divine substance. And fittingly he added “made,” so that no delay would be thought to have occurred in the making, and that people might understand even in this way how incomparable a worker he is who completed so great a work in a brief and tiny moment of his operation, so that the effect of his will outran the perception of time. No one saw him at work, but they recognized that he had worked. Where, then, is delay, when you read: “For he spoke and they were made, he commanded and they were created”? He who completed the majesty of so great an operation in a moment of his will needs no use of art or of strength, so that he made what was not to be, so quickly that neither did his will run ahead of the operation nor the operation of the will.

You marvel at the work and ask for the worker: who gave the beginning to so great a work, who made it so quickly? He added at once: “God made heaven and earth.” You have heard the author; you ought not to doubt. This is he in whom Melchizedek blessed Abraham, father of many nations, saying: “Blessed be Abraham by God most high, who made heaven and earth.” And Abraham believed and said: “I stretch out my hand to God most high, who made heaven and earth.” You see that a man did not discover this, but God announced it. For God is Melchizedek, who is king of peace and righteousness, having neither beginning of days nor end. It is no wonder, then, if God, who is without beginning, gave all things a beginning, so that what was not began to be. It is no wonder if God, who holds all things by his power and embraces the universe in incomprehensible majesty, made these things that are seen, since he also made those that are not seen. And who would deny that the invisible things are greater than those that are seen, since the things that are seen are temporal, but those that are not seen are eternal? Who would doubt that God made these things, who spoke through the prophet, saying: “Who has measured the water in his hand and heaven with his span and the whole earth in his closed hand? Who has set the mountains in a scale and the rocks in a balance and the woods on a yoke? Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor, or who has instructed him?” Of him we read elsewhere too that he holds the circuit of the earth and has made the earth as nothing. And Jeremiah says: “The gods who did not make heaven and earth shall perish from the earth and from under this heaven. The Lord who made the earth in his power and set the world right by his wisdom, and in his understanding stretched out the heaven, and a multitude of water in the heaven.” And he added: “Man has become foolish from his knowledge.” For whoever follows the corruptible things of the world and thinks he can grasp from them the truth of the divine nature, how is he not made foolish by the cunning of crafty argument?

When, therefore, you hear so many oracles in which God testifies that he made the world, do not believe that it is without beginning because the world is said to be like a sphere, so that no beginning of it seems to exist, and because, when it thunders, all things seem to be moved as if in a circle, so that you cannot easily grasp where it begins and where it ends, since it is held impossible to perceive the beginning of a circle. You cannot find the beginning of a sphere, or where the orb of the moon began or where it ends in the moon's monthly waning. But if you do not grasp it, it does not follow that it did not begin or will never end. If you yourself draw a circle with ink or a stylus, or trace it from a centre, you will not easily make out with your eyes or recall with your mind, once some time has passed, where you began or where you stopped; and yet you are your own witness that you began and that you finished. For though it escapes the senses, it does not overturn the truth. Things that have a beginning also have an end, and it is plain that a beginning was given to those to which an end is given. And the Saviour himself teaches in his Gospel that the world will end, saying: “For the form of this world passes away,” and “heaven and earth shall pass away,” and further on:

“Behold, I am with you until the consummation of the world.” How then do they assert that the world is co-eternal with God, associate it with the creator of all things, argue that the creature is his equal, and think that the material body of the world should be joined to that invisible and inaccessible divine nature, especially since by their own reasoning they cannot deny that a whole whose parts are subject to corruption and change must itself be subject to the same passions to which its own parts are liable?

He teaches, then, that there is a beginning who says: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” “Beginning” refers either to time, or to number, or to foundation, as in a house the beginning is the foundation. We know from the authority of the Scriptures that one can also speak of the beginning of conversion and of depravity. The beginning of an art, too, is the art itself, from which the work of the various craftsmen began. The beginning of good works is also the best end, as the beginning of mercy is that what you do pleases God; for it is then that we are most moved to bring help to men. The divine power, too, is expressed by this name. It refers to time if you wish to say at what time God made heaven and earth, that is, at the outset of the world, when it began to be made, as Wisdom says: “When he was preparing the heavens, I was with him.” If we refer it to number, it should be understood thus: first of all he made heaven and earth, then the hills, the regions, the uninhabitable bounds; or thus: before the other visible creatures, day, night, fruit-bearing trees, the various kinds of living things, he made heaven and earth. But if you refer it to foundation, you have read that the beginning of the earth is its foundation, as Wisdom says: “When he made the foundations of the earth strong, I was beside him, setting things in order.” There is also a beginning of good discipline, as in this: “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord,” since whoever fears the Lord turns aside from error and directs his ways to the path of virtue. For unless one fears God, he cannot renounce sin.

We can understand in the same way this saying: “This month shall be for you the beginning of months,” although it is also taken of time, since he was speaking of the Lord's Passover, which is celebrated at the beginning of spring. In this beginning of months, then, he made heaven and earth, because the world had to take its start from that point, when the mild weather of spring suited all things. So the year too has reproduced the image of the world being born, so that after winter's ice and the darkness of winter the brightness of springtime shines out more clearly than usual. The first rising of the world gave a pattern to the courses of the years to come, so that by this law the turns of the years would rise, and at the beginning of each year the earth would bring forth new shoots of seed, as at the first the Lord God had said: “Let the earth bring forth the green herb, sowing seed after its kind and after its likeness, and the fruit-bearing tree bearing fruit.” And at once the earth brought forth the green herb and the fruit-bearing tree; in this both the divine providence of perpetual moderation and the speed of the sprouting earth support the reckoning of the springtime season. For though at any season it was easy for God to command and for earthly nature to obey, so that even amid winter's ice and frosts the earth, sprouting under the warmth of the heavenly command, would bring forth its young, still it did not suit the eternal plan to loosen fields bound with stiff frost suddenly into green fruits and to mix flowers with bristling frost. So, to show that the time of creation was spring, Scripture says: “This month shall be for you the beginning of months, it is the first for you among the months of the year,” calling the spring the first month. For it was fitting that the beginning of the year should be the beginning of coming to be, and that this coming to be should be cherished by gentler breezes. For the tender beginnings of things could not bear the hardship of harsher cold or endure the injury of scorching heat.

We may note at the same time that it rightly coincides that the entrance into this coming to be and into these uses seems to have been given at the same season at which the lawful passage from this birth to rebirth takes place. For in springtime the children of Israel left Egypt and passed through the sea, baptized in the cloud and in the sea, as the apostle said; and at that season every year the Pasch of the Lord Jesus Christ is celebrated, that is, the passage of souls from vices to virtue, from the passions of the flesh to grace and sobriety of mind, from the leaven of malice and wickedness to truth and sincerity. So to those who are reborn it is said: “This month shall be for you the beginning of months, it is the first for you among the months of the year.” For the one who is washed leaves and abandons that spiritual Pharaoh, the prince of this world, saying: “I renounce you, devil, and your works and your commands.” No longer will he serve him, either in the earthly passions of this body or in the errors of a depraved mind; having sunk all malice like lead, and armed on the right and on the left with good works, he strives to cross the straits of this world with untroubled step. In the book called Numbers, too, Scripture says: “Amalek is the beginning of the nations, and his seed shall perish.” Certainly Amalek is not the first of all nations; but since by interpretation Amalek is taken to mean the wicked, and the nations are wicked, consider whether we ought not to take him as the prince of this world, who rules the nations that do his will, whose seed shall perish. His seed are the ungodly and unbelievers, to whom the Lord says: “You are of your father the devil.”

There is also a mystical beginning, as in this: “I am the first and the last, the beginning and the end,” and above all that in the Gospel, when the Lord was asked who he was, he answered: “The beginning, who also speak to you.” He truly is the beginning of all things, because no one is before him, and the end, because no one is beyond him. According to the Gospel he is the beginning of the ways of the Lord for his works, so that through him the human race might learn to follow the ways of the Lord and to work the works of God. In this beginning, then, that is, in Christ, God made heaven and earth, because all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made; in him, because in him all things hold together, and he is the firstborn of all creation, whether because he is before all creation, or because he is holy, since the firstborn are holy, as Israel is firstborn, not because he was before all, but because he was holier than the rest. But the Lord is holy above all creation also as regards the body he took, because he alone is without sin, alone without vanity, while all creation is subject to vanity.

We can also understand: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” that is, before time, as the beginning of a road is not yet the road and the beginning of a house not yet the house. Others, again, have said en kephalaiō, as if “in the head,” by which is meant that the sum of the operation was completed briefly and in a tiny moment. There are some, then, who take “beginning” not of time but as before time, and as kephalaion or “head,” so that we may say “the sum of the work,” because heaven and earth are the sum of visible things, which seem to look not only to the adornment of this world but also to the disclosure of invisible things and a kind of proof of what is not seen, as in that prophetic word: “The heavens tell the glory of God, and the firmament announces the work of his hands.” Following it, the apostle summed up the same thought in other words, saying: “For his invisible things are understood through the things that are made.” For we readily understand that the author of angels, dominions, and powers is he who by a moment of his command made this great beauty of the world to be out of nothing, when it did not exist, and granted substance to what had neither existence nor cause.

For this world is a specimen of the divine operation, since while the work is seen the worker is displayed. Among the arts, some are practical, consisting in the motion of the body or the sound of the voice: when the motion or sound has stopped, nothing is left over or remains for those watching or listening. Others are contemplative, exercising the vigour of the mind. Others are of such a kind that even when the activity of working has ceased the product of the work remains, like building and weaving, which show the craftsman's skill even when he is silent, so that the work bears witness to its maker. In the same way this world too is the emblem of the divine majesty, so that through it the wisdom of God is made manifest. Seeing it, and lifting the eyes of his mind to the invisible things as well, the prophet says: “How magnified are your works, O Lord! You have made all things in wisdom.”

Nor is it without purpose, surely, that we read “he made”: for many of the Gentiles, who want the world to be co-eternal with God as a kind of shadow of the divine power, also assert that it subsists of itself. And though they admit that God is its cause, they want him to be its cause not by his will and ordering, but as a body is the cause of a shadow; for the shadow clings to the body, and brightness to light, by a natural association rather than by a deciding will. Fittingly, then, Moses says that God made heaven and earth. He did not say that he caused it to subsist, nor that he provided the world with a cause of its being, but that he made it, as one who is good making what would be useful, as one who is wise what he judged best, as one who is almighty what he foresaw would be most ample. And how could it be like a shadow when there was no body, since there can be no bodily shadow of a bodiless God?

How, too, could the brightness of a bodiless light be bodily? But if you seek the brightness of God, it is the Son, the image of the invisible God. As God is, so is his image. God is invisible, so the image is invisible; for he is the brightness of the Father's glory and the image of his substance. “In the beginning,” he says, “God made heaven and earth.” So the world was made and began to be when it was not; but the Word of God was in the beginning and was always. Even the angels, dominions, and powers, though they began at some time, already existed when this world was made. For all things were created and founded, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers: “all things,” he says, “were created through him and unto him.” What is “created unto him”? Because he is the Father's heir, since the inheritance passed from the Father to him, as the Father says: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance.” Yet this inheritance passed from the Father to the Son and returns from the Son to the Father. Excellently, then, the apostle in this place called the Son the author of all things, who holds all things together by his majesty, and to the Romans he says of the Father: “For from him and through him and unto him are all things.” “From him” is the beginning and origin of the substance of the universe, that is, from his will and power, for all things began from his will, since there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things; and indeed he made them as from what was his own, since he made them from what he willed. “Through him” is their continuance; “unto him” is their end. From him, then, is the matter; through him the operation which bound and held the universe together; unto him, because all things remain and hold together by his power as long as he wills, and their end returns into God's will, and by his decision they are dissolved.

In the beginning of time, then, God made heaven and earth. For time comes from this world, not before the world; and a day is a portion of time, not its beginning. And although from the order of the reading we could maintain that the Lord first made day and night, which are the alternations of time, and on the second day made the firmament, by which he divided the water that is under heaven from the water that is above heaven, still it is enough for the present argument that in the beginning he made heaven, from which comes the precedence and cause of coming to be, and made the earth, in which the substance of coming to be would lie. For in these the four elements were created, from which are produced all the things that belong to the world. The elements are four: heaven, fire, water, and earth, and they are mixed with one another in all things; for you may find fire even in earth, as it is often struck from stones and iron, and in heaven, though the sky is fiery and sparkling with shining stars, water can be understood to be present, which either is above heaven or is often sent down from that higher place upon the earth in abundant rain. We could gather more of this, if we saw that it profited the building up of the church. But since to be occupied with such things is unprofitable business, let us rather turn our minds to those things in which there is progress toward eternal life.

On the quality and substance of heaven, then, it is enough to bring out what we find in the writings of Isaiah, who expressed the quality of the heavenly nature in moderate and ordinary words, saying that he made heaven firm like smoke, wishing to declare that its nature is fine and not solid. As to its appearance, too, what he himself said about the firmament of heaven is sufficient, that God made heaven like a vault, because all things that take place on sea and land are enclosed within the circuit of heaven. The same is meant when we read that God stretched out the heaven. For it is stretched out either like a skin for tents, the dwellings of the saints, or like a book, so that the names of the many may be written in it who by faith and devotion have deserved the grace of Christ, to whom it is said: “Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”

To discuss the quality or the position of the earth, too, would profit nothing for the prospect of what is to come, since it is enough for knowledge what the text of the divine Scriptures contains, that “he hangs the earth upon nothing.” Why should we debate whether it hangs in the air or upon the water, so that a dispute arises from it: how the thin and softer nature of the air could hold up the mass of earth, or how, if it is upon the waters, the heavy weight of the lands does not sink into the water? Or how the sea's wave does not give way to it and, moved from its place, spill out over its sides? Many have even said that the earth is in the middle of the air and remains unmoved by its own mass, because it extends equally on this side and that in every direction. Of this we think enough was said by the Lord to his servant Job, when, speaking through the cloud, he said: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have knowledge. Who set its measures, if you know? Or who is it that stretched a measure over it? Or upon what are its circles fixed?” And further on: “I shut up the sea with gates and said: Thus far you shall come and you shall not pass, but your waves shall be broken within you.” Does not God show plainly that all things hold together by his majesty, not by number, weight, and measure? For the creature does not give the law, but receives it, or keeps what it has received. The earth, then, is not suspended as if in an even balance because it is in the middle, but because the majesty of God binds it by the law of his will, so that it remains stable above what is unstable and empty, as the prophet David also testifies, saying: “He founded the earth upon its own firmness; it shall not be moved for ever and ever.” Here God is certainly proclaimed not merely as a craftsman but as almighty, who has hung the earth not on some centre but on the firm support of his command, and does not let it be moved. We should understand, then, not the measure of a centre but of the divine judgment, because it is not the measure of art but of power, the measure of justice, the measure of knowledge, since all things do not escape his knowledge as if unmeasured but lie open to his knowledge as measured. When we read, “I have made firm its pillars,” we cannot suppose that it really rests on pillars, but on that power which props up and sustains the substance of the earth. Gather, too, from this how much the establishing of the earth is in God's power, since it is written: “He looks on the earth and makes it tremble,” and elsewhere: “Yet once more I shake the earth.” So it does not remain unmoved by its own balance, but is often moved at God's nod and decision, as Job also says, that the Lord moves it from its foundations, and its pillars are shaken; and elsewhere: “The underworld is naked in his sight, and death has no covering. He stretches out the north over nothing, he hangs the earth upon nothing, he binds up the water in his clouds. The pillars of heaven have fled and trembled at his rebuke. By his power he calmed the sea, by his discipline he laid low the sea monster, and the bars of heaven fear him.” By the will of God, then, the earth remains unmoved and stands for ever, according to the saying of Ecclesiastes, and by the will of God it is moved and shakes. It does not, therefore, subsist resting on its own foundations, nor remain stable on its own props; the Lord set it in place and holds it by the firm support of his will, because in his hand are all the ends of the earth. And this simplicity of faith surpasses all arguments. Let others praise the view that the earth never falls because by nature it holds its own place in the middle, since it must remain in its place and not lean to either side, as it is not moved against nature but according to nature; let them proclaim the excellence of the divine craftsman and eternal worker (for which craftsman has not received his skill from him? Or who gave women wisdom in weaving or skill in embroidery?). But I, who cannot grasp the depth of his majesty and the excellence of his art, do not entrust myself to balances and measures, but think that all things rest in his will, because his will is the foundation of the universe, and on his account this world still remains. This too may be supported by the example of apostolic authority. For it is written that “the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. And the creation itself also shall be set free from the bondage of corruption,” when the grace of the divine reward shines forth.

As for the nature and quality of the substance of heaven, why should I list what the philosophers have argued in their disputations? Some assert that heaven is composed of the four elements; others bring in a kind of fifth nature, a new body, to make it up, and imagine that it is an ethereal body, with which neither fire nor air nor water nor earth is mixed. For, they say, the elements of this world have each their own course, use, and natural motion, so that the heavier sink down and are carried downward, while the empty and light rise up to the higher regions (for each has its proper motion); but in the circuit of a sphere these are confused and lose the force of their course, since a sphere turns in its orbit, and the upper parts are exchanged with the lower and the lower with the upper. And where the motions according to nature have been changed, they say, the qualities of their substances must also usually change. Why then do we maintain that it is an ethereal body? So that it may not seem liable to corruption. For what is composed of corruptible elements must necessarily be dissolved. Since the elements are of different natures, they cannot have a simple and inviolable motion, because the different motions of the elements fight one another. One motion cannot suit all and fit elements that differ; for the motion that suits the light elements is unsuited to the heavier ones. So when the motion of heaven must go upward, it is weighed down by the earthy elements; when a course downward is required, that fiery vigour is dragged by force, since it is compelled downward against the use of its nature. But everything that is forced into its contrary, not by nature but by necessity, is quickly dissolved and split into the things of which it seems to be composed, each returning to its own region. Considering these things, then, others thought that heaven could not be stable, and judged that the body of heaven and the stars is ethereal, introducing a kind of fifth nature of body, so that they might think the substance of heaven would last for a long time.

But this opinion could not stand against the prophetic statement, which the divine majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ, our God, also confirmed in the Gospel. For David said: “In the beginning you, Lord, founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands. They shall perish, but you remain; and they all shall grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you will change them and they shall be changed; but you are the same, and your years shall not fail.” The Lord confirmed this in the Gospel so far as to say: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Those, then, who thought a fifth, ethereal body should be introduced in order to assert the perpetuity of heaven accomplish nothing, since they see just as well that a portion unlike the rest, joined to a single member, usually brings ruin to a body rather than otherwise. Notice at the same time that the prophet David, while naming the earth first and heaven afterward, believed that the work of the Lord should be declared. For when he spoke and they were made, it does not matter which you mention first, since both were made together; and so that heaven might not seem to be awarded the prerogative of the divine substance, as if it were thought superior by the privilege of a first-born creature. So let us leave those people to their own quarrels, who refute one another in their mutual disputes; for us it is enough for salvation to have not a controversy of disputations but the truth of the commandments, not cunning in argument but faith of mind, so that we may serve the creator rather than the creature, who is God blessed for ever.

“But the earth was invisible and unformed.” A good craftsman first lays the foundation; then, when the foundation is laid, he marks out the parts of the building and adds the ornament. So when the foundation of the earth had been laid and the substance of heaven made firm (for these two are, as it were, the hinges of things), he added: “But the earth was invisible and unformed.” What is “was”? Perhaps they might stretch their opinion to infinity and without beginning and say: “See, matter, that is hylē, as the philosophers say, had no beginning even according to the divine Scripture.” But to those who say this you will answer that it is written: “But Cain was a worker of the earth,” and Scripture has of the one called Jubal: “He was the father who showed the psaltery and the harp,” and “There was a man in the land of Ausitis whose name was Job.” Let them stop, then, raising a question from the word, especially since Moses said first that God made the earth. It “was,” then, from the time it was made. For if they say it is without beginning, then, saying that not only the Lord but also hylē is without beginning, let them define where it was. If in a place, then the place too is claimed to have been without beginning in which the matter of things was, which had no beginning. But if that seems absurd to believe about a place, see whether we must perhaps think the earth could fly, and that having no foundation it hung up by the oarage of wings. Where then shall we get wings for it, unless perhaps we draw here the interpretation of the prophetic saying, “From the wings of the earth we have heard wonders,” and that other, “Woe to the land, wings of ships”? But even if we take it so, in what air did the earth fly? Without air it could not fly; yet air could not yet exist, because the distinction of the elements had not been made out of the matter of things, since the elements themselves had not yet been made. Where then was this matter, propped up by the oarage of wings? It was not in the air, because air is a body of the world; and that air is a body is taught by the reading that, when an arrow is shot to the place at which the archer aims, the air is cut and at once closes back on itself. Where then was hylē, unless one should say, by a kind of mad design, that it was in God? Then God, of invisible and inviolable nature, who dwells in light unapproachable, the incomprehensible and most pure Spirit, was the place of the matter of the world, and a portion of the world was in God, though even the mind of his servants is not of this world, as we have it written: “They are not of this world, even as I am not of the world.”

How then were invisible things joined to visible things, and unformed things to him who gave order and beauty to all? Unless perhaps, because he said, “But the earth was invisible,” they believe it was invisible in its substance, and not because, covered by the waters, it could not be visible to bodily eyes, just as many things lying in the depth of the waters escape the sight and keenness of the eyes. For nothing is invisible to God; but a creature of the world is judged by the estimation of a creature. The earth was invisible also because there was not yet the light to illuminate the world, not yet the sun; for the lights of heaven were made afterward. And if the sun's ray often lights up even hidden things and brings to view by the splendour of its light what is sunk in the depth, who would doubt that what lies in the depth cannot be invisible to God? Unless perhaps we take “invisible earth” to mean that it was not yet visited by the word and protection of God, since it did not have man, for whose sake the Lord would look down on the earth, as it is written: “The Lord looked down upon the children of men, to see if there were any who understood or sought God.” And elsewhere he says: “From heaven he hurled judgment; the earth trembled and was still.” And rightly “invisible,” because “unformed,” since it had not yet received a fitting shape and appearance from its own maker.

And perhaps they may say: “Why did God not, as he spoke and they were made, give fitting ornaments to the elements together with their rising? Could heaven not have shone at once, as soon as it was created, adorned with stars, and the earth be clothed with flowers and fruits?” Certainly he could; but things are declared to have been made first and set in order afterward so that they would not be believed to be truly uncreated and without beginning, as they would be if the forms of things seemed to be ungenerated from the beginning and not added afterward. The earth is read to have been unformed, and still those same philosophers honour it with the privileges of eternity with which God is honoured: what would they say if it had come with its preservation from the beginning? It is described as sunk in the waters, as if condemned to a kind of shipwreck of its beginnings, and still some believe it was not made: what if it had laid claim to a first-born beauty? Add to this that God wished us to be imitators of himself, so that we first make something and afterward make it beautiful, lest by attempting both together we be able to complete neither. Our faith, moreover, grows by a kind of step. So God first made, then beautified, so that we would believe that the same one adorned who made, and made who adorned, and would not think that one adorned and another created, but that the same one did both, first making, then setting in order, so that one might be believed by means of the other. You have clear testimony of this in the Gospel. When the Lord was about to raise Lazarus, he ordered the Jews to remove the stone from the tomb, so that seeing the dead man they might afterward believe him raised. Then he called Lazarus, and he rose and came out with his hands and feet bound. Could not he remove the stone who could raise the dead? And could he who was able to give life back to the dead not loosen the knots of the bonds? Could he not restore walking with the bonds broken to one to whom he gave the power to step with his feet bound? But surely we notice that he wished first to show him dead, so that they would believe their own eyes, then to raise him, and third to order them to loosen the grave bands themselves, so that through these things faith would be poured into the unbelieving and belief would be born by certain steps.

God, then, first made heaven and earth, yet he willed them to be subject to the end, not as perpetual, but as a corruptible creature. So he says in the book of Isaiah: “Lift up your eyes to heaven and look upon the earth below, for heaven has been made firm like smoke, and the earth shall grow old like a garment.” This is the earth that before was unformed. For the seas were not yet marked off by their bounds, and so the earth was flooded by wandering waves and a deep whirlpool. Consider that even now the earth usually bristles with marshy ooze and does not bear the plough where moisture poured over the land overflows. It was unformed, then, being unploughed by the tillage of a skilled farmer, because the farmer was still lacking. It was unformed, because it was bare of growing things, not grassy with banks of rivers, not shaded with groves, not glad with crops, not shady with the brows of mountains, not fragrant with flowers, not pleasant with vineyards. Rightly unformed, as it lacked adornment and had no garlands of budding vines. For God wished to show that the world itself would have no grace unless its maker turned it to a varied beauty. Heaven itself, when woven over with clouds, usually stirs dread in the eyes and sadness in the mind; the earth soaked with rain is a weariness; and the seas stirred by storms, whom do they not strike with fear? The form of things is very beautiful; but what would it be without light, without mild weather, without the gathering of the waters, under which the beginnings of this world were formerly held sunk? Take the sun from the lands, take from heaven the orbs of the stars: everything bristles with darkness. So it was before the Lord poured light into this world. And so Scripture says that “darkness was upon the abyss.” There was darkness because the splendour of light was lacking; there was darkness because the air itself is dark. Water itself is dark under a cloud, because the water in the clouds of the air is dark. There was darkness, then, upon the abysses of the waters. For I do not think evil powers are to be understood, as if the Lord had created their malice, since malice is surely not substantial but accidental, having turned aside from the goodness of nature.

So in the establishing of the world let the notion of malice be set aside for the time being, so that we may not seem to mix things that are discoloured with the divine operation and a most beautiful creation, especially since there follows: “And the Spirit of God was borne over the waters.” Although some take this for the air, and some for the breath that we breathe and draw in, the breath of this vital air, we, agreeing with the judgment of the saints and the faithful, take it as the Holy Spirit, so that in the establishing of the world the operation of the Trinity may shine forth. For having first said, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” that is, God made it in Christ, or God the Son of God made it, or God made it through the Son, because all things were made through him and without him nothing was made, there remained the fullness of the operation in the Spirit, as it is written: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and all their power by the Spirit of his mouth.” So as in the psalm we are taught the operation of the Word, who is the Word of God, and the power which the Holy Spirit gave, so here the prophetic oracle has rung out that God spoke and God made. And the Spirit of God was borne over the waters. Fittingly the Spirit was borne over them, when the vault of heaven was to be adorned and the lands were to sprout, because through him the seeds of new births were to germinate, according to the word of the prophet: “Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created, and you will renew the face of the earth.” Indeed, the Syriac, which is close to the Hebrew and agrees with it in sound and sense in very many things, has: “And the Spirit of God was cherishing the waters,” that is, was giving them life, so as to draw them into new creatures and by his warmth to quicken them to life. For we read that the Holy Spirit too is creator, as he says: “The divine Spirit, who made me.” If, then, the Holy Spirit was borne over the waters, the darkness of the opposing powers could not be over them, where so great a grace claimed the place for itself; or if, as some wish, they take it as air, let them answer for what reason he said “Spirit of God,” when it would have been enough to say “spirit.”

These people, then, would have it that four elements were first generated by the Lord our God, heaven, earth, sea, and air, on the ground that fire and air, earth and water are the causes of things, of which the appearance and form of the world consist. Where then could the darkness of the spiritual hosts of wickedness have a place, when the world was putting on the beauty of this august form? Did God create malice along with it? No; it arose from us, not founded by God the creator; it is generated by lightness of conduct, having no prerogative of a creature nor the standing of a natural substance, but the fault of changeableness and the error of a fall. God wills it to be rooted out of the souls of each person: how would he himself generate it? The prophet cries: “Cease from your wickedness,” and above all holy David: “Turn from evil and do good”: how do we ascribe its beginning to the Lord? But this is the deadly opinion of those who thought the church should be thrown into confusion. From here the Marcions, from here the Valentinuses, from here that deadly plague of the Manichaeans have tried to bring infection into the minds of the saints. Why do we ourselves seek the darkness of death in the light of life? The divine Scripture brings salvation, it breathes the fragrance of life, so that as you read you may take in its sweetness and not run into headlong danger. Read simply, O man; do not, a perverse interpreter, dig a pit for yourself. The word is simple: “God made heaven and earth.” He made what was not, not what was. “And the earth was invisible”: from the time it was made, it was, and it was invisible because the water overflowed and covered it, and darkness was spread over it, because there was not yet the light of day, not yet the sun's ray, which usually reveals even what lies hidden under the waters. Why then do they say that God created evil, when things hostile to one another are in no way generated from opposites and contraries? Life does not generate death, nor light darkness. For the progressions of generation are not like the changes of the affections. These turn from contraries into contraries by a swerving of purpose; but the others are not turned from contraries into opposites, but, created from authors or causes of the same kind, are brought back to the likeness of their author.

What then shall we say? If evil is neither without beginning, as if uncreated, nor made by God, from where does nature have malice? For no wise man has denied that there are evils in this world, since the fall into death is so frequent in this age. But from what we have already said we can gather that it is not a living substance, but a depravity of mind and soul straying from the path of virtue, which often creeps into the souls of the careless. The danger to us, then, is not greater from outside than from ourselves. The adversary is within, the author of error is within, within, I say, shut up in our very selves. Look at your purpose, examine the state of your mind, set a watch against the thoughts of your mind and the desires of your soul. You yourself are the cause of your wickedness, you yourself the leader of your shameful deeds and the instigator of your crimes. Why do you summon another nature to excuse your falls? If only you did not drive yourself, if only you did not hurl yourself down, if only you did not entangle yourself in passions, or indignation, or desires, which hold us bound as in nets! And certainly it is in our power to moderate our passions, to check our anger, to restrain our desires; it is also in our power to indulge in luxury, to kindle lusts, to inflame anger or lend an ear to one who inflames it, to be lifted up in pride, to pour ourselves out in cruelty rather than to be held down in humility and to love gentleness. Why do you accuse nature, O man? It has certain hindrances, as it were, old age and weakness. But old age itself is in us sweeter in its ways, more useful in counsel, readier for the steadfast meeting of death, stronger for restraining lusts. Weakness of body, too, is sobriety of mind. So the apostle says: “When I am weak, then I am strong.” So he gloried not in his powers but in his weaknesses. And the divine answer shone forth in a saving oracle, that “power is made perfect in weakness.” What we must guard against are the faults that come from our own will, the sins of youth and the irrational passions of the body. Let us not, then, look outside ourselves for the beginnings of things of which we are masters, nor divert them to others, but let us acknowledge what is our own. What we can refrain from doing if we do not will it, we ought to ascribe the choice of that evil to ourselves rather than to others. That is why even in the courts of this world guilt binds and punishment condemns those who are guilty willingly, not those compelled by necessity. For if someone kills an innocent person in a fit of madness, he is not liable to death. Indeed, by the oracle of the divine law itself, if anyone causes a death unintentionally, he receives the hope of impunity and the means of refuge, so that he can escape. Let this be said about what is properly seen as evil; for nothing is evil except what entangles the mind in crime and binds the conscience. But poverty, low birth, sickness, death, no wise man would call evils or number among evils, since their opposites are not counted among the greatest goods either; some of these seem to befall us by nature, others by circumstance.

Not idly did we make this digression, to prove that “darkness” and “abyss” are to be taken simply. There was darkness from the shadow of heaven, because every body makes a shadow, by which it shades what is next to it or below it, and above all what it seems to cover and enclose. And the vault of heaven encloses, because heaven is stretched out like a vault, as we showed above. The dark substance, then, was not original; but the gloom of darkness followed the body of the world like a shadow. So, at the moment of the divine command, the world as it rose enclosed the shadow within itself. Just as if, in the middle of a field lit by the midday sun, someone suddenly fenced off a place and covered it with dense leafy branches: is it not true that the brighter the outside of that place shines, the darker the inside of its hut becomes under the bristling covering above? Or why have they called a cave closed on all sides a place of that kind, except that it bristles with black mould and an outpouring of darkness? This darkness, then, was upon the abysses of the waters. For that the multitude and depth of waters is called the abyss, the reading of the Gospel teaches, where the demons asked the Saviour not to order them to go into the abyss. But he who taught that the wishes of demons are not to be done commanded them to go into the swine; and the swine threw themselves into the lake, so that the demons did not escape what they refused but were plunged into it by a fitting headlong fall. This, then, was the unformed appearance and shape of the world.

“And the Spirit of God,” he says, “was borne over the waters, and God said: Let there be light.” Rightly, then, the Spirit of God was sent ahead where the divine operation was to begin. “Let there be light,” he says. Where should the voice of God in the divine Scripture begin, if not with light? From where should the adornment of the world take its start, if not from light? It would be in vain if it were not seen. God himself, indeed, was in light, because he dwells in light unapproachable, and there was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world; but he willed that light to be made which could be perceived by bodily eyes. Whoever wishes to build a building worthy to be the dwelling of the head of a household, before he lays the foundation, investigates how he may let light into it. And that is the first grace; if it is lacking, the whole house bristles in ugly neglect. It is light that sets off the other ornaments of a house. “Let there be light,” he says. The full voice of light does not signify the preparation of a plan but shines in the effect of an operation. The maker of nature spoke light and created it. God's word is his will, God's work is nature: he created light, he lit up the darkness. “And God said: Let there be light. And there was light.” He did not speak so that the operation would follow; by the word he completed the task. So David's saying is fitting, “He spoke and they were made,” because the effect fulfilled the word. God, then, is the author of light, while the world is the place and cause of darkness. But the good author spoke light in such a way that he opened the world itself by pouring in light and made its appearance beautiful. Suddenly, then, the air shone, and the darkness took fright at the brightness of the new light; the brilliance of light, poured suddenly through the whole world, drove it back and as it were plunged it into the abysses. Fittingly and properly, then, he said: “There was light.” For as light quickly illuminates heaven and the lands, and in a moment of time, without any grasping of it, when the regions have been uncovered by the splendour of the rising day, spreads itself around our sight, so its rising had to be told quickly. Why do we wonder if God spoke light and light flashed out on the darkened world, when, if someone under water lets oil out of his mouth, he makes clearer what was covered in the hidden places of the depth? God spoke, not so that some sound of speech went out through the organs of the voice, nor so that the motion of a tongue formed a heavenly address and some noise of words struck this air of ours, but so that he made known his will through the effect of his operation.

“And he divided between the light and the darkness, and God saw the light, that it was good.” He spoke, and no one heard the sound of a voice; he divided, and no one perceived the labours of the operation; he saw, and no one beheld the direction of his eyes. “And God saw the light,” he says, “that it was good.” He did not see what he did not know, nor approve what he had not known before or had not seen; but it is proper to good works that they need no outside praise but themselves bear witness to their own grace when they are seen. What is approved by sight is more than what is praised by speech. It uses its own testimony, not another's support. If with us judgment is given by the eyes, by which both the grace of beauty and the nature of things are grasped at once, how much more does God see all that he approves and approve all that he sees, according to what is written: “The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous.” The nature of light is such that its whole grace lies not in number, not in measure, not in weight, as with other things, but in its appearance. So he expressed the nature of light in fitting words: it pleases by being seen, since it provides the very function of seeing. Nor without reason could it find so great a herald for itself. By him it is rightly praised first, since it has made the other members of the world also worthy of praise. God saw the light, then, and lit it up with his countenance, and saw that it was good. This is not a judgment on God's part alone, but a general one. So the grace of light is approved not only in its splendour but in all its usefulness. Hence also the division between light and darkness is made, so that, the nature of light and of darkness being separated, nothing seems to be confused between them.

“And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night,” so as to distinguish day and night by their very name. We notice, then, that the rising of light seems to open the day before that of the sun; for the beginnings of the day close the end of the night, and a fixed end of time and a boundary of state seems to have been prescribed for night and day. The sun makes the day bright; light makes the day. Often the sky is covered with clouds, so that the sun is hidden and none of its rays appears; yet the light shows the day and hides the darkness.

“And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” Some ask why Scripture mentioned evening first and then morning, lest perhaps it seem to signify night before day. They do not notice, first, that it put day first by saying, “And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night”; and then that evening is the end of the day and morning the end of the night. So, to give the day the prerogative and primacy of birth, it first signified the end of the day, after which night was to follow, and then added the end of the night. But Scripture could not so far put night before day as not to include the times of both day and night under the name of day and claim them by the authority of the principal name. And that it is Scripture's custom to give the name to the more important, we prove by frequent examples, since Jacob too said, “The days of my life are few and evil,” and again, “All the days of my life,” and David wrote, “The days of my years”; he did not say “and the nights.” From this we notice that the things now handed down in the form of history established the force of law for the future. The beginning of the day, then, is the voice of God: “Let there be light. And there was light.” The end of the day is evening. Then the following day succeeds from the end of the night. And God's judgment is clear, because first he called the light day and second he called the darkness night.

Excellently, too, he said “one” day, not “first” day. For since a second and third day and the rest in order were to follow, he could have said “first,” and this seemed to fit the order; but he established a law, that the twenty-four hours of day and night should be defined by the name of day alone, as if he said: “The measure of twenty-four hours is the time of one day.” For as when the generations of men are counted the women's are understood too, because what is secondary is bound to what is more important, so days are numbered and the nights are reckoned as joined to them. As there is one circuit, then, so there is one day. Indeed many call even a single week one day, because it returns into itself as into one day and runs back into itself seven times. This is the figure of a circuit, to begin from itself and return into itself. So Scripture sometimes speaks of one age (for though in other places it says “ages,” it seems rather to signify the differences of public conditions or affairs than to define certain successions of ages), because “the day of the Lord is great and glorious,” and elsewhere: “Why do you seek the day of the Lord? It is darkness and not light.” For it is plain that to those with an evil conscience and to the unworthy that day is dark, in which innocence will shine and the guilty mind will be tormented. But Scripture teaches us that that perpetual day of eternal reward will be without the interruption of nights and the succession of darkness.

Beautifully, too, when he was about to call both turns one day, he closed it with the end of morning, to teach that the day begins with light and ends in light. For the time of a day and night is not whole unless it has been completed. So let us too always walk honestly as in the day and cast off the works of darkness. For we know that night was given for the rest of the body, not for the performance of any work, and that it passes in sleep and forgetfulness. Let there not be in us revelling and drunkenness, chambering and impurity; let us not say: “Darkness and walls cover us, and who knows if the Most High will see?” But let there be in us love of light and care for what is honourable, so that, walking as in the day, we may desire our works to shine before God, to whom be honour, praise, glory, and power, with our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, from the ages, now and always, and for all ages of ages. Amen.

The Second Day. The first day, or rather “one” day (for let it keep the prerogative of the prophetic word), we have finished as well as we could. In it we have learned that heaven was founded, the earth created, the waters overflowing, the air poured around, and the division of light and darkness made, by the operation of almighty God and the Lord Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit also. Who, then, would not marvel that a world unequal in its unlike members rises into one body, and that things so far apart come together by an indissoluble law of concord and love into fellowship and union with one another, so that what is separate by nature is bound into the bond of unity and peace as if by an undivided sympathy? Or who, seeing these things, would probe with weak wit the possibility of their reason? The divine power, incomprehensible to human minds and inexpressible in our words, has woven all these things together by the authority of its will.

God, then, made heaven and earth and commanded them to be as their author, not as one who devised a shape, but as the worker of nature. For how could the impassible working power of God and the passible nature of matter suit each other, as if each borrowed from the other what it lacked? For if matter is uncreated, then God seems to have lacked the power to create matter and to have borrowed from it what underlies his operation; and if it was unformed, it is quite remarkable that matter co-eternal with God could not give beauty to itself, though it did not receive its substance from a creator but possessed it without time. The worker of all things, then, found more than he contributed: he found matter on which he could work, and contributed the shape which would bring beauty to the things he found. That is why the day on which the foundations of all things were laid and the causes began to exist on which the substance of this world and of the whole visible creation rests, is to be set apart from the others as “one day,” not compared with the others as “the first day.” So let our discourse go on to the wonderful works of the second day, whose excellence is to be referred to the praise of the creator, not according to the capacity of our treatment but according to Scripture. I ask you, therefore, to be willing to judge what we say naturally,

and to weigh it with a simple mind and diligent attention, not gathering likelihoods according to the traditions of philosophy and the empty seduction of persuasion, but according to the rule of truth, which is expressed in the oracles of the divine word and poured into the hearts of the faithful by the contemplation of so great a majesty; for it is written: “Strengthen me in your words. The unjust have told me their exercises, but not as your law, O Lord. All your commandments are truth.” Let us consider, then, what was made, not according to the natures of the elements, but according to Christ, who made all things he willed, abounding in the fullness of his divinity, and let us not question the capacity of nature. For when in the Gospel he healed the leper and poured sight back into the blind, the people who were present and watching did not recognize a course of medicine, but, marvelling at the Lord's power, gave praise to God, as it is written. Nor did Moses stretch out his hand according to the reckonings of the Egyptians, the conjunctions of the stars, and the measures of the elements, so that the Red Sea was divided, but in obedience to the command of the divine power. So he himself says: “Your right hand, O Lord, is glorified in power; your right hand, O Lord, has shattered the enemies.” To him, then, holy people, lift up your mind, and bring your whole soul to him. God does not see as man does: God sees the heart, man the face. So man does not see as God does. You hear that God saw and praised. Do not, then, judge what was made by your own eyes or gather it by opinions; do not think that what God saw and approved should be revised by you.

“And God said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide between water.” And so it was done. Hear the words of God: “Let there be,” he says. This belongs to one who commands, not to one who calculates; he gives orders to nature, he does not obey its capacity; he does not gather measures or examine weight. His will is the measure of things, his word is the completion of the work. “Let there be,” he says, “a firmament in the midst of the water.” Everything God sets up is firm. And quite fittingly he put “firmament” first, before adding “in the midst of the water,” so that you would believe the firmament was made by God's command before you could doubt because of the flowing nature of the waters. If you consider the nature of the elements, how was the firmament made solid between waters? They flow, it is held fast; they run, it remains. “And let it divide,” he says, “between water.” But water usually mingles, not divides. How does he command what he knows to be contrary to the nature of the elements? But since his word is the origin of nature, he who gave the origin rightly claims the right to give nature its law.

But first let us consider what the firmament is: whether it is the same as what he called heaven above, or something else, and whether there are two heavens or more. For there are some who say that there is one heaven, and that, since there was one substance, as they say, there could not be enough substance to make another heaven, because when all of it had been spent on the upper heaven, nothing was left that could serve to build a second or third heaven. Others again assert that there are innumerable heavens and worlds; and these are mocked by their own people (for their fight is not greater with us than with their own), who strive to prove by geometrical numbers and necessities that there can be no other heaven, and that nature does not allow a second or a third, nor is the power of the worker adequate to make many heavens. And who would not mock this artful eloquence of theirs? Though they do not deny that many things of the same kind can be made by men from one and the same cause, they doubt whether the creator of all could make several heavens, of whom it is written: “But the Lord made the heavens,” and elsewhere: “He has done whatever he willed.” What is difficult for him, for whom to will is to have done? Their reasoning from impossibility, then, wavers when they argue about God, to whom it is truly said: “Nothing is impossible for you.”

We, then, cannot deny that there is not only a second but even a third heaven, since the apostle confirms by the testimony of his writings that he was caught up to the third heaven. David too placed the heavens of heavens in that choir of those praising God. Imitating him, the philosophers introduced the harmonious motion of the spheres of the five planets and of the sun and moon, to whose orbits, or rather spheres, they say all things are connected. These, linked and as it were set into one another, they think turn backward and are carried in a motion contrary to the rest; and by the impulse and motion of these orbits a sweet sound, full of delight, art, and most pleasing melody, is given forth, because the air, cut by so artful a motion, which tempers high notes with low, produces such varied harmonies evenly that it surpasses all the sweetness of musical song.

If you ask for proof of this and demand that it be proved to us by sense and hearing, they hesitate. If it were true, how, when the motion of the spheres resounds so greatly (since that heavenly sphere to which they say the courses of the stars are fixed, turning without pause, has a swifter revolution and produces a high sound, while the lunar sphere produces the deepest), would it not be heard by us, when we usually hear fainter sounds? So if we demand that the truth of their argument be proved by our own testimony and by the gift of hearing, they reply that our ears have been deafened and our sense of hearing dulled by long familiarity with that sound, taken in from the beginning of our birth; and they bring the example of the Nile, the greatest of rivers, which, at the place where it hurls itself from the highest mountains down those cataracts, so stops the ears of those living nearby by the greatness of its roar that they are said to lack the gift of hearing. But truth itself easily answers them. For we who hear the thunder produced by the clash of clouds, would we not hear the revolutions of such great spheres, which, as they are thought to move with a greater motion, would surely produce more violent sounds? They add besides that this sound does not reach the earth so that people, captivated by the sweetness and delight which that very swift motion of the heavens from east to west produces, would not abandon their own business and work, and everything here would be left idle through a kind of transport of the human mind toward the heavenly sounds. But let us leave those things that are foreign to our study and to the course of the divine reading to those who are outside; let us hold fast to the teaching of the heavenly Scriptures.

Our subject, then, is that God said: “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide between water and water.” And here it is discussed whether he calls “firmament” what he had already made before, of which it is written: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” I am aware that some before us have taken it so, on the ground that Scripture stated above that heaven was created and founded by God as its author, and here unfolded the account of the work and the creation, so that there the sum of the work was briefly included, and here the character of the operation was set out through the very forms of the things coming together. But we are moved by the fact that another name is used, a more solid form is described, a cause is distinguished, and the person of a fellow worker is added. For so it is written: “And God divided between the middle of the water which was under the firmament and the middle of the water which was above the firmament.”

And first they want to destroy what has been rooted and impressed in our minds by frequent reading of the Scriptures, that there are waters above the heavens. They say that the sphere of heaven is round, with the earth in its middle, and that water cannot stand on that curved surface, because it must flow down and slip away, since its course is from higher to lower. For how, they say, can water stand on a sphere when the sphere itself revolves? This is the familiar trickery of dialectic: “Grant me something from which I may answer you; if it is not granted, no word is returned.” They ask to be granted that the axis of heaven turns with a swift motion, while the globe of the earth is unmoved, so as to maintain that waters cannot be above the heavens, because the axis would pour them all off as it revolves. As if, granting them what they ask and answering them according to their own opinions, they could deny that in that height and depth there is both length and breadth, which no one can grasp except him who is filled unto all the fullness of God, as the apostle says. For who could easily be a judge of the divine work? There is, then, breadth in the very height of heaven. There are also, to speak of things we can know, many buildings that are round outside and square inside, or square outside and round inside, whose tops are flat, on which water usually lies. We say this so that they may notice that their opinions can be overcome by opinions more likely than theirs, and stop measuring so great a work of God by consideration of human work and our capacity.

We, however, follow the course and order of the Scriptures and judge the work by considering its author: what was said, and who said it, and to whom. “Let there be,” he says, “a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide between waters.” I hear that a firmament was made by command, by which the water was divided and the upper separated from the lower. What is plainer than this? He who ordered the water to be divided by the firmament set between and in the middle foresaw how it could remain divided and separated. The word of God is the power of nature and the permanence of its substance, as long as he who established it wills it to remain, as it is written: “He established them for ever and for ever and ever; he set a command, and it shall not pass away.” And so that you may know that he said this of those waters which you deny can be in the upper parts of heaven, hear what comes before: “Praise him, you heavens of heavens, and let the waters that are above the heavens praise the name of the Lord.” Did he not say, as if to you who oppose him: “For he spoke and they were made, he commanded and they were created; he established them for ever and for ever and ever; he set a command, and it shall not pass away”? Or does he not seem to you an adequate author to give a law to his own work? It is God who speaks, of venerable nature, inestimable in greatness, immeasurable in rewards, incomprehensible in his works; who can easily search out the height of his wisdom? But he speaks to the Son, that is, to his arm; he speaks to his power, to his wisdom, to his justice. And the Son does it as the mighty one, does it as the power of God, does it as the wisdom of God, does it as divine justice. When you hear these things, why do you wonder if by the working of so great a majesty water could be suspended above the firmament of heaven?

Gather these things from others, from those that are seen by human eyes: how the wave divided itself for the crossing of the Jews, if you ask for a reason. It is not usual in nature for water to separate itself from water, and for the waters poured into the depth to be parted by earth in the middle. “The waves,” he says, “froze,” and in the likeness of a firmament reined in their course with an unwonted limit. Could he not have freed the Hebrew people in another way? But he wished to show you, so that by that spectacle you would judge that even what you have not seen is to be believed. The Jordan too turned back its stream toward its source. For water to stop as it flows is unusual, to go back uphill without any barrier is held impossible; but what is impossible for him who gave power to the weak, so that the weak man says: “I can do all things in him who strengthens me”? Let them say, at any rate, how air is compressed into cloud, whether rain is generated by the clouds or gathered in the bosom of the clouds. We often see clouds come out of the mountains. I ask whether water rises from the earth or whether the water that is above the heavens comes down in abundant rain. If it rises, it is surely against nature that water, which is heavier, should rise to the higher regions and be carried by air, since air is finer. Or if water is snatched up by the motion of the whole sphere as it spins, then as it is snatched up at the bottom of the sphere, so it is poured out at the top. If, as they would have it, it does not cease to be poured out, it surely does not cease to be snatched up, because if the axis of heaven always moves, the water too is always drawn up. If it comes down, then it remains continually above the heavens, since it has a place from which to come down. Then what is the obstacle to their admitting that water is suspended above the heavens? For by what word do they say that the earth is suspended in the middle and remains unmoved, though it is certainly heavier than water? By the same reasoning they can say that the water above the heavens is not hurled down by the revolution of that heavenly sphere. For as the earth is suspended in the void, or remains unmoved by its weight balanced on all sides, so the water too is held in balance by weights either heavier than or equal to the earth's. That is why the sea does not easily pour over the lands, unless it is ordered to go out.

Then, since they themselves say that the sphere of heaven revolves, shining with burning stars, did not divine providence necessarily take care that water should abound within the sphere of heaven and above it, to temper the fires of that blazing axis? For this reason, because fire abounds and blazes, water too abounded on the earth, so that the heat of the rising sun and of the twinkling stars would not burn it up and an unwonted heat harm the tender beginnings of things. How many springs, rivers, and lakes water the lands, because a kind of inner fire heats them! For how would trees sprout, or grain and crops break forth, or what has sprung up ripen, unless an inner fire also quickened them? This fire is often struck from rocks, and often leaps out of wood itself when it is cut. So, as the creature fire is necessary, so that things may remain ordered and arranged, and the mildness of heaven may temper the coldness of the waters, so also the abundance of waters is not superfluous, so that one would not be consumed by the other; for unless the measure of each is suitable, as fire dries up water so water puts out fire. That is why he weighed all things by weight and measure; for even the drops of rain are numbered by him, as we read in the book of Job. Knowing that there would be either an easy failing of things or a dissolving of the universe if one were overcome by the other, he so tempered the losses of each that neither fire would scorch too much nor water overflow, but a moderated diminishing of each would take place, which would remove the excess and preserve what is necessary. So, though such streams of the greatest rivers break forth from the earth (the Nile flooding Egypt with its outpoured stream; the Danube from the western regions cutting between the barbarian peoples and the Romans until it is buried in the Black Sea; the Rhine directing its courses from the ridge of the Alps to the depths of the ocean, a memorable wall of the Roman empire against wild nations; the Po, faithful carrier of sea-borne supplies for the support of Italy; the Rhone, driven by a swift course, cuts the straits of the Tyrrhenian sea, where no small danger is said to face sailors while the waves of the sea and the streams of the river fight with each other; and likewise from the north the Phasis, pouring from the Caucasus mountains, with many others hurls itself into the Black Sea; it would take long to list the names of each river that flows into our sea or empties into the ocean), though, then, there is such an abundance of waters, still the land of the southern region is often scorched by heat and, loosened by the burning, crumbles into dust, the labour of the wretched farmer wasted, so that often, when the wells are dried up and the pools parched, the life-giving supply of drink fails. And there will indeed be a time when he will say to the abyss: “You shall be desolate, and I will dry up all the rivers,” as he announced through Isaiah would be. But even before that day comes, fixed by the divine decision, the nature of the elements fights no little among itself. So the world is often shaken by the harshness of floods or troubled by excessive heat and drought.

Do not, then, think the multitude of waters incredible, but look at the force of heat, and you will not be unbelieving. Fire absorbs a great deal, as must be plain to us from this at least: when physicians fasten to the body certain vessels with narrow mouths, flat on top and hollow inside, after lighting a little lamp-flame in them, how that heat draws all the moisture into itself! Who then would doubt that the fiery ether, blazing with great heat, would set everything on fire and burn it up, unless it were restrained by a certain law of its author, so that neither rivers nor lakes nor the seas themselves could quench its force? And so the water from above, coming down with a kind of rush, often bursts into such great rains that rivers and lakes are suddenly filled and the seas themselves overflow. That is why we often see even the sun moist and dewy.

In this it gives clear evidence that it has taken to itself the element of water to temper itself. But they have so great a zeal for attacking the truth that they deny that the sun itself is hot by nature, because it is white and not red or glowing in the appearance of fire. So they say that it is not fiery by nature, and that if it has any heat, it comes from the excessive motion of its revolution. They think they must say this so that it may not seem to consume any moisture, since it does not have by nature the heat by which moisture is diminished or often drained. But they achieve nothing in contriving this, because it makes no difference whether one has heat by nature or from some affection or other cause, since all fire consumes moisture, or matter of the kind that flame usually burns. For whether fire struck from pieces of wood rubbed together is caught on leaves, flame still kindles, as if you lit a torch from a fire; or whether you light a light from the light of a flame, the form and nature of the light is the same, even if it was not natural fire that kindled it but an accidental cause produced it. Let them at least consider the sun's heat from this: God appointed different places and times for its course, so that if it always stayed in the same places, it would not burn them up with daily heat. They themselves say that the sea has salty and bitter water because the water that flows into it from the rivers is absorbed by heat, and as much is consumed by the daily heat as is brought in each day by the various courses of the rivers. This is said to happen by a kind of sifting of the sun, which snatches to itself what is pure and light and leaves what is heavy and earthy, from which that salty and dry part remains, which is useless and unpleasant to drink.

But let us return to our subject. “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water.” Let it not disturb you, as I have already said, that above he says “heaven” and here “firmament,” since David too says: “The heavens tell the glory of God, and the firmament announces the work of his hands,” that is, the work of the world, when it is seen, praises its author; for his invisible majesty is known through the things that are seen. And it seems to me that “heaven” is a common name, since Scripture testifies to many heavens, while “firmament” is a particular name; for here too it says: “And he called the firmament heaven,” so that he seems above to have said generally that heaven was made in the beginning, to include the whole structure of the heavenly creation, but here the particular solidity of this outer firmament, which is called the firmament of heaven, as we read in the prophetic hymn: “Blessed are you in the firmament of heaven.” For heaven, which is called ouranos in Greek, is in Latin called caelum, as if caelatum (“engraved”), because it has the lights of the stars set in it like figures, just as we call silver caelatum when it shines with raised figures. But ouranos is so called from horasthai, because it is seen; in contrast to the earth, which is darker, it is named ouranos because it is bright, as being visible. So I think this too was said: “The birds of heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven,” and “birds about the firmament of heaven,” because the powers that are in that visible place watch all these things and have them under their sight.

So, too, heaven was said to be shut in the time of Elijah, when unbelief reigned in Ahab and Jezebel and the people served the king's sacrilege, because no one lifted his eyes to heaven, no one honoured its author, but they worshipped wood and stones. From where do we gather this? Because in the curses on the people of Israel God said: “The heaven over your head shall be bronze to you, and your earth iron,” when the Jewish people, paying the price of unbelief, is punished by harsh weather from heaven and barrenness of the earth; for from heaven comes the cause of fertility. Moses too gave this in the blessings to Joseph: “from the bounds of heaven and from the dew of the abyss of springs below, and according to the season, from the course of the sun, and from the fitting months, and from the top of the mountains and of the everlasting hills,” because the fruitfulness of the lands is nourished by the moderation of heaven. Heaven, then, is iron when it pours out no moisture, when no rain bursts from the clouds. Heaven is also iron when the air is darkish, heavy and cloudy, of the colour of rust, when the earth is bound by the rigour of cold. Then moisture seems to hang as it were over our head and to threaten at every moment. Often, too, the waters, stiffened by icy blasts of wind, are solidified into snow, and when the air bursts, snow is poured out. For this firmament cannot burst without some crash. So it is called “firmament” because it is not weak or slack. Thus Scripture says of thunder, which, when the wind is caught in the bosom of the clouds and dashes violently to break out, crashes with a great sound: “making the thunder firm.” The firmament, then, is named from firmness, or because it was made firm by divine power, as Scripture also teaches us, saying: “Praise him in the firmament of his power.”

Nor has it escaped me that some have referred the heavens of heavens to the intellectual powers and the firmament to the active ones. And so the heavens praise, or tell the glory of God, and the firmament announces it, not as spiritual beings, but as works of the world they tell it, as we said above. Others again have interpreted the waters above the heavens as purifying powers. We accept these things as an ornament of the treatment; yet it does not seem foreign or absurd to us if we understand real waters, for the reason we gave. For dew and frost and cold and heat, according to the prophetic hymn, bless the Lord; the earth blesses him, and the stars bless him; and we refer the stars not to intellectual natures but to their reality. Even the dragons praise the Lord, because their nature and appearance, when seen, either spreads no little beauty or shows that there is reason in it.

“And God saw that it was good.” The Son does what the Father wills, the Father praises what the Son does. Nothing of a degenerate nature is found in him, whose work does not fall short of the Father's will. He saw, certainly: not that he directed bodily eyes, but he determined that it accorded with the fullness of grace, so that his judgment would be known to me; for we are accustomed to dispute even about divine things. And what wonder if those can revise the work who raise questions about the generation of the worker himself? They call him to judgment, they try to assert that he is unequal and degenerate. That is why you read both “God said” and “God made”: Father and Son are honoured by the same name of majesty. “And God saw that it was good.” He spoke as to one who knew everything the Father willed, and saw as one holding in knowledge everything the Son would do and bringing it about by a shared operation. He saw that it was good.

He did not, of course, learn what he did not know, but approved what pleased him. The work did not please as something unknown, just as the Father, who was well pleased in the Son, was not well pleased as with one unknown, as it is written: “This is my most beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The Son always knows the Father's will and the Father the Son's; the Son always hears the Father and the Father the Son, through the unity of nature, will, and substance. Indeed, the Son testifies to this in his Gospel, saying to the Father: “I knew that you always hear me.” For the Son is the image of the invisible God. As the image he expresses everything of the Father; as the brightness of glory he illuminates and shows us everything of his. The Son sees the Father's work as the Father sees the Son's, as the Lord himself declared: “The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing.” He sees the Father doing, then, and sees through the secret of the invisible nature, and hears likewise. So he says: “As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is true, because I am not alone, but I and the Father who sent me.”

That is the mystical sense; this is the moral. He saw for me, he approved for me. What God has approved, do not call blameworthy, since you remember that it is written for you: “What God has cleansed, do not call common.” Let no one, then, blaspheme God's good. And if the firmament is good, how much more is its creator good, even if the Arians are unwilling and the Eunomians protest, the worse fruit of a degenerate root.

“God saw,” he says, “that it was good.” Craftsmen usually make the single parts first and afterward join them with skilful fitting, like those who carve human faces or bodies from marble, or mould them in bronze or wax; yet they do not know how the single members can fit together and what grace the future joining will bring. So either they do not dare to praise, or they praise in part. But God, as the judge of the whole, foreseeing what is to come, praises as already complete what is still at the first beginning of the work, anticipating the end of the work by his knowledge. Nor is it a wonder in one for whom the perfection of things lies not in the completion of the work but in the predestination of his will. He praises the single parts as fitting what is to come; he praises the fullness made up of the beauty of the single parts. For that is true beauty, that what is fitting be both in the single members and in the whole, so that grace is praised in the parts and in all the fullness of a fitting form.

But now let the second day be closed for us, lest while we build up the work of the firmament we make our hearers weaker from the flow of speaking, as the sermon is drawn out into the night, which, still lacking the light of the moon and stars (for the lights of heaven have not yet been created), could bring darkness to those going home; and at the same time so that bodies may be cared for with food and drink, and while the souls feast the weakness of the flesh may not complain of a night-time fast as well.

The Third Day. Today the third day is born for us in our sermon, as it has dawned in the reading: a glorious day, which freed the earth from shipwreck when God said: “Let the water that is under heaven be gathered into one gathering.” With this I wish to begin my preface. “Let the water be gathered,” it was said, and it was gathered; yet often it is said, “Let the people be gathered,” and they are not gathered. It is no small shame that senseless elements obey the command of God and men do not obey, to whom sense was given by the creator himself. And perhaps this shame has made more of you come together today, so that on the day on which the water was gathered into one gathering the people might not seem today to be by no means gathered into the church of the Lord.

Nor do we have only this example of the obedience of water; for it is written elsewhere too: “The waters saw you, O God, the waters saw you and were afraid.” And it does not seem unlikely that this was said of waters, since elsewhere also the prophet says: “The sea saw and fled; the Jordan was turned back.” Who does not know that this really happened, that the sea fled at the crossing of the Hebrews? When the wave divided itself, the people crossed with dusty footstep, believing that the sea had perished and the waves had fled. The Egyptian believed this too and went in; but the wave that had fled came back upon him. Water, then, knew how to be gathered, to fear, and to flee, when God commanded. Let us imitate this water and know one gathering of the Lord, one church.

Here once the water was gathered from every valley, from every marsh, from every lake. The valley is heresy, the valley is paganism, because God is the God of the mountains, not of the valleys. So in the church there is exultation, in heresy and paganism weeping and grief. Hence he says: “He has set weeping in the valley.” From every valley, then, the catholic people has been gathered. Now there are not many gatherings, but one gathering, one church. Here too it was said: “Let the water be gathered from every valley,” and a spiritual gathering was made, one people was made. The church has been filled from heretics and pagans. The theatre is a valley, the circus is a valley, where the horse runs, a vain thing for safety, where there is cheap and degraded rivalry, where quarrelling is a foul ugliness. From those, then, who used to cling to the circus the faith of the church has grown, the company of the blackbirds is increased.

The marsh is luxury, the marsh is intemperance, the marsh is incontinence, in which are the wallows of lusts, the grunts of beasts, the lurking places of passions, where whoever falls in is plunged down and does not come up, where footsteps slip and each one's walk wavers, where the coots soil themselves as they wash, where the doves mourn tearfully above, where the sluggish tortoise sticks in the muddy pool; the boar, in short, is in the marsh, the deer at the springs. From every marsh, then, where they sang their old complaint like frogs, faith has been gathered, purity of soul and simplicity of mind have been gathered.

The water was gathered from every lake and from every pit, so that no one may prepare a pit for his brother into which he himself falls, but all may love one another, all cherish one another, and like one body the different members may support one another; whom not the deadly songs of stage performers, which soften the mind toward love affairs, but the harmony of the church, the voice of the people singing together in God's praise, and a holy life delight; for whom it is no pleasure to look at purple hangings or costly curtains, but at this most beautiful structure of the world, this union of elements distant from each other, heaven stretched out like a vault to cover those who dwell in this world, the earth given for work, the air poured round, the seas enclosed, this people, the instrument of the divine work, in which the melody of the divine oracle resounds and the Spirit of God works within, this temple, the sanctuary of the Trinity, the home of holiness, the holy church, in which heavenly curtains shine, of which it was said: “Enlarge the place of your tents and of your curtains, fix them, do not spare, make your cords longer and strengthen your stakes; stretch out still to the right and to the left; and your seed shall possess the nations as an inheritance, and you shall inhabit the deserted cities.” It has, then, curtains, by which it lifts up the good life, covers sins, and overshadows guilt.

This is the church that is founded upon the seas and prepared upon the rivers. For it is made firm and prepared upon you, who run down into it like rivers from the pure spring of the world, of whom it was said: “The rivers have lifted up, O Lord, the rivers have lifted up their voices from the voice of many waters.” And he added: “Wonderful are the swellings of the sea; wonderful is the Lord on high.” Good rivers; for you have drawn from that everlasting and full spring, he who says to you: “He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” And this he said of the Spirit, whom those who were to believe in him were beginning to receive. But now, like the streams of the good Jordan, turn back with me to our starting point.

“Let the water that is under heaven,” he says, “be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear. And so it was done.” Perhaps someone believed too little our earlier sermons, in which we argued that the earth was invisible because it was covered by the waters, so that it could not be seen by bodily eyes. For the prophet referred this to himself, that is, to our condition, not to the majesty of the divine nature, which certainly sees all things. But so that you may notice that we undertook this labour of treatment not to show off our wit but for your instruction, we call to witness the course of the reading, which agrees with us and plainly proves that the dry land appeared after the water that was on the earth had been gathered and drawn off into the seas. Let them stop, then, troubling us with dialectical disputes, saying: “How was the earth invisible, since every body naturally has form and colour, and every colour is subject to sight?” The voice of God cries: “Let the water be gathered and let the dry land appear.” And again Scripture says: “The water was gathered into one gathering, and the dry land appeared.” What need was there to repeat it, unless the prophet saw that questions must be met? Does he not seem to say: “I did not say it was invisible by nature, but because the waters were poured over it”? Indeed, he added that when the veil was removed the dry land appeared, which before was not seen.

Again they sow other questions, saying: “If the water was in different gatherings, then, if those gatherings were in higher places, how did the water not flow down to the place to which it was drawn after the Lord's command? (for the nature of waters is to slide down of its own accord to lower places); but if those gatherings were in lower places, how did the water climb to higher places against its nature? So either its natural course needed no command, or against nature a command could achieve nothing.” I will easily answer this question if they first answer me whether before the Lord's command the nature of the waters was to slip and to flow. Water does not have this from the use of the other elements; it is special and its own, not from some order, but rather from the will and operation of the most high God. They hear what God commanded. And the voice of God is productive of nature. The effect of the operation fulfilled that voice. The water began to slip and to flow together into one gathering, which before was spread over the earth and clung in many hollows. I have not read of its course before, I have not learned of its motion before; neither has my eye seen nor my ear heard. The water stood in various places: at the voice of God it was moved. Does it not seem that the voice of God made such a nature for it? The creature followed the command and made a custom out of a law; for the law of the first establishment left a pattern for the future. So he made day and night once: from that time the daily succession and daily renewal of each remains. Water too was ordered to run into a gathering: from that time it runs; springs slide into rivers, rivers run into the straits, lakes are drawn off into the seas; water goes before itself, presses on and follows. There is one channel, one body. And though the depth differs, yet the evenness of its surface is undivided. That is why, I think, it is called aequor (“the level”), because its surface is level.

I have answered according to their premise; now let them answer me, whether they have never seen springs bubble up from below and water rise from the ground. Who forces it? From where does it burst out? How does it not fail? How does it happen that the lowest mouths of the soil vomit out water? These things follow the secrets of hidden nature. But who does not know that water, often descending with a swift rush, raises itself up again and climbs to the brow of a mountain, and often, when drawn off in channels by the hand of a craftsman, rises again as far as it has descended? So if it is either carried by its own impetus or led and lifted against its nature by a craftsman's skill, do you wonder if by the working of the divine command something was added to the use of its nature that was not in its use before? Let them tell me now how he gathered the waters of the sea as into a wineskin, as it is written, and how he brought water out of the rock. Could he who was able to bring out of the rock water that did not exist not lead water that did exist? “He struck the rock, and the waters flowed,” cries David, “and the torrents overflowed”; and elsewhere: “The waters shall stand above the mountains.” You have it in the Gospel that, when there was a severe storm and a great commotion on the sea, so that the apostles feared the danger of shipwreck, they woke the Lord Jesus sleeping in the stern, and rising he commanded the wind and the sea, and the storm was calmed and calm poured back. Could he who was able to calm the whole sea by command not move the waters by command? Moreover, of the flood we have received that the springs of the abyss burst forth and that afterward he brought a wind and dried the water. If they do not want to admit that nature obeyed and that the use of the element was changed by God's command, let them grant at least that the waters could run when a wind was sent, as we see daily on the sea, where the waters run in the direction from which the wind blows. If in the time of Moses the sea was dried when a strong south wind was raised, could not the gathering of waters be dried in the same way and the water flow off into the sea, which was afterward separated from the deep? But let them learn that nature can be changed, when the rock poured out water and iron floated on the water, which the prophet certainly obtained by praying, not by commanding. If, then, Elisha lifted iron against nature, could Christ not move compliant waters? But he moved them who could say, “Lazarus, come out,” and raised the dead; for God made what he commands. So take in the same way the saying: “Let the water be gathered,” and it was gathered. And by saying “Let it be gathered” he not only moved it from its place but also set it in its place, so that it would not flow past but remain.

This, then, is the greater miracle: how all the gatherings flowed down into one gathering, and the one gathering was not filled up. For Scripture puts this among the wonders, saying: “All the torrents go into the sea, and the sea is not filled.” Both, then, come from God's command: that water flows and that it does not overflow. Hemmed in by a fixed boundary, the seas are enclosed, lest, pouring over the lands, they flood everything and, the tilling of the fields abandoned, hinder the gift of the earth's fruitfulness. Let them know, then, that this belongs to the divine command and heavenly operation. For the Lord, speaking through the cloud to Job, said, among other things, also about the barrier of the sea: “I set bounds for it, placing bars and gates; and I said to it: Thus far you shall come and you shall not pass beyond, but your waves shall be broken within yourself.” Do we not ourselves see the sea often so stormy that its waves rise high like a sheer mountain of water, and yet, where it has dashed its force against the shore, it breaks into foam, driven back by certain barriers of low sand, as it is written: “Will you not fear me, says the Lord, who set the sand as a boundary for the sea?” So by the weakest of all things, the dust of cheap sand, the wild force of the sea is restrained, and as if by certain reins of the heavenly command it is called back within its prescribed limit, and the motion of the violent sea is broken upon itself and split into its retreating bays.

Otherwise, unless the force of the heavenly decree held it back, what would prevent the Red Sea from mingling with the Egyptian sea across the plains of Egypt, which is said to be flat country lying in very low valleys? This is shown by those who wished to join these two seas and pour them into each other: Sesostris the Egyptian, who was earlier, and Darius the Mede, who, considering his greater power, wished to carry out what had earlier been attempted by the native king. This shows that the Indian Sea, of which the Red Sea is part, is higher than the Egyptian sea, which washes the lower land. And perhaps both kings called off their works for this reason, lest the sea, rushing from the higher to the lower, spread itself more widely.

I ask now, since he said, “Let the water be collected into one gathering,” how one collection could receive the waters spread through lakes, marshes, and pools, poured over valleys and plains and all the flatter places, and running in springs and rivers; or how is it one collection, when even today there are different seas? For we speak of the sea Ocean, and the Tyrrhenian, the Adriatic, the Indian, the Egyptian, the Pontus, the Propontis, the Hellespont, the Euxine, the Aegean, the Ionian, the Atlantic; many also name a Cretan sea and a northern Caspian sea. So let us consider the words of Scripture, which are weighed in a balanced scale.

“Let the water,” he says, “be collected into one collection.” There is one unbroken and continuous gathering of waters, but different bays of the sea, as one of the secular writers says. For the Pontus is the widest bay of our sea, and rightly there are different names in different places, because names have attached themselves to the waters from the names of the regions; but there is one gathering of waters, because a continuous and unbroken wave, from the Indian Sea to the shore of the coast of Gades, and from there to the furthest Red Sea, encloses the circle of the lands with the ocean poured around it. Within also the Adriatic mingles with the Tyrrhenian, and the other seas with the Adriatic, distinct in names, not in waves. So you have it nicely that God called the gatherings of the waters seas. Thus there is both one general collection, which is called the sea, and many collections, which are named seas after the regions. For just as there are many lands, such as Africa, Spain, Thrace, Macedonia, Egypt, Gaul, and Italy, named after the names of regions, and there is one earth, so there are said to be many seas after the names of places, and there is one sea, as the prophet says: “Yours are the heavens and yours is the earth; you founded the world and its fullness. You created the north and the sea.” And the Lord himself says to Job: “I shut up the sea with gates.”

Now, since we have spoken of one collection, the question occurs whether, when the waters had been spread over almost the whole earth and above the earth, through the valleys of the fields, the hollows of the mountains, and the level of the plains, one gathering poured out in the form of a sea could receive all those waters and empty the lands which before were flooded by a stream poured over everything. If everything was so covered (for he would not say, “The earth was seen,” unless he wished to show it uncovered in every place), and if the flood in Noah's time hid even the mountains, when the separation of the waters above the heavens and below the firmament had already been made, how much less can it be doubted that the tops of the mountains too lay hidden under that flood? Where, then, was all that overflow of waters drawn off? What receptacles could swallow it, so continuous and connected? On this a long discussion could be supplied to us.

First, because the creator of all could also extend the expanses of the lands themselves, which some before us have affirmed in their own opinion. I do not pass over what he could have done; what he did, which I have not learned plainly from the authority of the Scriptures, I pass over as a secret, lest perhaps they seek other questions for themselves from this as well. Yet I assert according to the Scriptures that he could spread out the low places and the open plains, as he himself says: “I will go before you and make the mountains level.” The very force of the waters, too, could have made deeper the places where it had settled, by so great a motion of waves and so great a surging of that more agitated element, which daily churns the bottom of the sea and turns up sand from the deep. Then who knows how far that great sea extends, unventured by sailors and untried by mariners, which encloses the Britains in its wide waters and stretches into further secret places inaccessible even to legends? And who would not reckon how much the sea, poured into Lucrinus and Avernus in Italy, and into Tiberias in Palestine and that lake which stretches out the deserts of Arabia between Palestine and Egypt, and into the various harbours of Augustus and Trajan, and others through the whole world, has added? But there are also lakes and

pools that are not mixed and do not mingle with the waves, like Larius and Benacus, the Alban lake too, and many others: how then is there one gathering of waters? But just as it is said that God made two lights, that is, the sun and the moon, though there are certainly also the lights of the stars, so too it is said to be one gathering, though there are very many; for those that are not comparable are not counted.

But, as it seems, since I was speaking of the sea, we have overflowed somewhat; let us return to our subject and consider what it is that the Lord says: “Let the water be gathered into one gathering and let the dry land appear,” and he did not say “earth.” Who would not notice how excellently this was put? For earth can be mixed with mud and soaked with water, so that its appearance does not show when water is poured over it. But “dry land” refers not only to the kind but also to the appearance of the lands, so that it is useful, dry, handy, and fit for cultivation. At the same time it was foreseen that it should not seem to have been dried by the sun rather than by God's command, because it was made dry before the sun was created. So David too, distinguishing sea and land, says of the Lord God: “For the sea is his, and he made it, and his hands founded the dry land.” For “dry land” expresses its nature; “earth” is a simple name of the thing, which has its property within it. For just as “animal” signifies a genus, to which something proper and excellent belongs, while rational is proper to man, so “earth” can be said in common, whether teeming with waters or “desert, pathless, and without water.” So even to the earth that teems with waters it belongs to have dryness; for when the water is removed it begins to be dry, as you have it written: “He turned rivers into a desert and the springs of waters into thirst,” that is, he made dry land out of watery earth.

The earth, then, has its own proper quality, as the single elements also have; for air has the quality of moisture, water of cold, and fire of heat. And this is the principal property of each element, which we gather by reason. But if we grasp them by the senses and bodily, we find them as it were linked and combined, so that earth is dry and cold, water cold and moist, air warm and moist, fire hot and dry. And so the single elements are mixed with one another by these paired qualities. For since earth is of a dry and cold quality, it is linked to water by the kinship of the cold quality, and through water to air, because air is moist. So water seems to embrace with two arms, as it were, of cold and moisture, earth with the one and air with the other: earth with the cold, air with the moist. Air also, set between two things at war by nature, that is, between water and fire, reconciles both these elements to itself, because it is joined to water by moisture and to fire by heat. Fire too, being hot and dry by nature, is linked to air by heat, and by dryness is poured back into communion and fellowship with earth; and so through this circle and a kind of chorus of concord and fellowship they agree with one another. That is why what we call elementa in Latin are called stoicheia in Greek, because they agree and harmonize with one another.

We have come this far because Scripture says that God called the earth “dry land,” that is, he named it by what is principal in it, the property of its nature. For its natural property is dryness; this prerogative was kept for it. Dryness, then, is principal. It also underlies it to be cold, but secondary things are not put before the first. That it is moist it obtains from its affinity with the waters. So the one is its own, the other foreign: its own, that it is dry; foreign, that it is moist. The author of nature, then, kept what he first gave, because the one is from nature, the other from a cause. The property of the earth, then, had to be defined from what is principal, not from what is accidental, so that our knowledge would be formed according to the prerogative of its quality. “And God saw that it was good.”

We do not pass over the fact that some think that neither in the Hebrew nor in the other translations is there the phrase, “The water was gathered into its collections and the dry land appeared. And God called the dry land earth, and the collections of waters he called seas.” For since God said, “And so it was done,” they think the word of the worker is enough as a sign of the operation carried out. But since in the other creatures too the text has both the statement of the command and the repeated sign or effect of the operation, we do not think it absurd that this is said to be added, even if the other translators are shown to have truth or authority on their side; for we find that many things were not idly added and joined to the Hebrew reading by the Seventy. God saw, then, that the sea was good.

Although the appearance of this element is beautiful, whether when it whitens with rising heaps and crests of waves and sprinkles the rocks with snowy spray, or when, with the surface rippling under gentler breezes and the soft calm of fair weather, it shows the purple colour that is often cast before those who look from afar, when it does not beat the nearby shores with violent waves but encircles and greets them as with peaceful embraces (how sweet the sound, how pleasant the crash, how welcome and harmonious the echo!), yet I do not think that the beauty of the creature was estimated by eyes, but that it was defined as fitting and suitable according to the plan of the operation, by the judgment of the worker.

The sea is good, then, first because it supports the lands with necessary moisture, supplying them secretly through certain veins with a juice that is by no means useless. The sea is good as the host of rivers, the source of rains, the outlet of floods, the carrier of supplies, by which distant peoples are joined together, by which the dangers of battles are removed, by which barbarian fury is shut out; a help in need, a refuge in dangers, a grace in pleasures, a health for the sick, a joining of the separated, a shortening of the journey, an escape for the toiling, a support for revenues, a nourishment in barrenness. From it rain is passed over to the lands, since the water is drawn from the sea by the rays of the sun and its fine part is snatched up; then, the higher it is raised, the more it cools in the shadow of the clouds and becomes rain, which not only tempers the earth's dryness but also makes the hungry fields fruitful.

Why should I list the islands, with which it often decks itself like necklaces, in which those who renounce the intemperance of the world, freed by a faithful resolve of self-control, choose to hide from the world and avoid the doubtful windings of this life? The sea, then, is the secret place of temperance, the exercise of self-control, the retreat of seriousness, the harbour of safety, the calm of the age, the sobriety of this world, and also, for faithful and devout men, an incentive to devotion, so that the singing of those chanting psalms vies with the sound of gently lapping waves, the islands applaud the peaceful chorus of the holy waves and resound with the hymns of the saints. How can I grasp the whole beauty of the sea, which the worker saw? And why say more? What else is that harmony of the waves but a harmony of the people? So the church is often well compared to the sea: first, as the crowd of people enters, it pours out waves through all its doors; then in the prayer of the whole people it hisses like ebbing waves, when, with the responsories of the psalms, the singing of men, women, virgins, and children resounds like the harmonious crash of waves. And what shall I say of this, that the wave washes away sin and the saving breeze of the Holy Spirit blows?

May the Lord grant us these things: to sail with a favourable wind on the swift timber, to come to rest in a safe harbour, not to know temptations of spiritual wickedness heavier than we can bear, to know nothing of shipwrecks of faith, to have deep peace, and, if ever there is something by which the heavy waves of this age revive against us, to have the Lord Jesus watching over us as our helmsman, who commands by his word, calms the storm, and pours back the calm of the sea; to whom be honour and glory, praise and perpetuity, from the ages, and now and always, and for all ages of ages. Amen.

When the water withdrew, it was fitting that form and grace be given to the earth, so that it would cease to be invisible and unformed. For many also say that what has no form is invisible, and so they take it that the earth was invisible, not because it could not be seen by the most high God or his angels (for men had not yet been created, nor even cattle), but because it was without its proper form. And the form of the earth is the sprouting and greenness of the field. So, to make it visible and formed, God says: “Let the earth bring forth the green herb, sowing seed after its kind, and the fruit-bearing tree making fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself.”

Let us hear the words of truth, whose sequence is the salvation of those who hear. For that first voice of God, imparted to each creature that was to be born, is a law of nature that has remained in the lands for all time, to give a rule for the succession to come, how the practice of generating or bearing fruit would grow up for the future. The first stage, then, is germination, when the growing things are seen to break out; then, when the shoot has broken out and advanced, it becomes herb; and the herb, when it has gone on a little, becomes grass. How useful, how forceful the word: “Let the earth bring forth the green herb,” that is, let the earth sprout by itself, let it seek no help from another, let it need no one's service.

For many people say: “Unless the milder heat of the sun warms the lands and cherishes them in some way with its rays, the earth cannot sprout.” And that is why the pagans assign divine honour to the sun, because by the power of its heat it penetrates the bosom of the lands and cherishes the scattered seeds, or loosens the veins of trees stiff with frost. Hear, then, God as it were uttering this voice: “Let the foolish talk of men that is to come be silent, let the empty opinion depart. Before the light of the sun is made, let the herb be born; let its prerogative be older than the sun's. Lest the error of men grow strong, let the earth sprout before it receives the warmth of the sun.” Let all know that the sun is not the author of growing things. The kindness of God loosens the lands, the goodness of God makes the fruits break forth. How does the sun supply the means of living to the things that spring up, when they were brought forth by the quickening of the divine operation before the sun came into these uses of life? It is younger than the herbs, younger than the grass.

And perhaps someone may wonder why fodder for cattle was created before food for man. In this we must first notice the depth of God, that he neglects not even the least things, as the Wisdom of God says in the Gospel: “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them: are you not of more value than they?” For since they are fed by God's grace, no one should flatter himself on his own industry and strength. Then, because he had to put simple fare and natural food before other foods. For this is the food of sobriety, the others of delicacy and luxury; this is the food common to all animals, that of a few. It is, then, an example of frugality, a lesson in thrift, that all ought to be content with the fare of a simple herb and a cheap vegetable or fruit, which nature offered and the generosity of God first gave. That is healthy, that is useful food, which drives off diseases and cuts short indigestion, born by no labour of men but poured out by the divine gift, crops without sowing, fruit without seed, so sweet and pleasant that it is a pleasure and use even to those who are full. Indeed, given at the first course, it has remained for the second.

What wonder of this creation shall I add, and what proof of the working wisdom shall I express? For in this appearance of shoots and that gift of green grass there is an image of human life, and a kind of emblem of our nature and condition is seen, and a mirror shines out. That herb and the flower of the grass is a figure of human flesh, as the good interpreter of the divinity expressed with the instrument of his voice, saying: “Cry. What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass has withered and the flower has fallen, but the word of the Lord abides for ever.” The sentence is God's, the voice human. God says, “Cry,” but speaks in Isaiah himself. He answered: “What shall I cry?” And as if he had heard what to say, he added: “All flesh is grass.” And truly; for the glory of man flourishes in the flesh like grass, and what is thought lofty is slight as a herb. Premature as a flower, perishable as grass, it sprouts greenness in appearance, not solidity in fruit; it holds out as it were the flower of a gayer life to the one who is stiffening, and is to fall in a shorter space like the grass, which withers before it is plucked up. For what firmness is there in the flesh, what health can be lasting?

Today you may see a strong young man, blooming in the freshness of youth, of pleasing appearance and sweet complexion; tomorrow he meets you changed in face and features, and he who the day before seemed to you most splendid in the grace of a comely form appears another day pitiable, undone by the weakness of some illness. Many are broken by toil, or wasted by want, or troubled by indigestion, or ruined by wine, or weakened by old age, or made effeminate by luxuries, or discoloured by excess. Is it not true that “the grass has withered and the flower has fallen”? Another, noble in grandfather and great-grandfather, honoured with the insignia of his ancestors, famous for the distinctions of an ancient line, abounding in friends, surrounded by clients and guarded on both sides, leading out and leading back a very large household, suddenly thrown into confusion by some weight of mishap, is abandoned by all, deserted by his companions, attacked by those nearest him. See, it is true that the life of man, like grass, withers before it is plucked up. There is also one who until lately abounded in wealth, whose fame for generosity flew from mouth to mouth, famous for honours, eminent in power, lofty on the tribunal, exalted on the seat, thought happy by the people while he is escorted by the cry of heralds; by a sudden turn of things he is dragged into the prison into which he himself had thrust others, and among those he had accused he weeps over the misery of the punishment that threatens. How many has a crowd of applauders and the envied procession of a great throng escorted home the day before; and one night has wiped out the splendour of that glorious escort, and a sudden pain in the side has mixed the heavy succession of grief with the outpoured joys. Such, then, is the glory of man, like the flower of grass, which even when it is bestowed adds nothing to one's works, in which no fruit is gained, and which, when it is lost, vanishes, abandoning the whole stage of a man …

And would that we imitated this herb, of which the Lord says: “Let the earth bring forth the green herb, sowing seed after its kind and after its likeness.” Let us sow seed, then, after our kind. Hear what our kind is from him who says that we ought to seek the divine, if in any way we might feel after it or find it, though it is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and are and move, as some of your own have said: “For we are also his offspring.” According to this kind let us sow seed, not in the flesh but in the spirit. For we who wish to come to eternal life ought to sow not carnal but spiritual seeds. And what the likeness is you do not know, you who were made after the image and likeness of God? The herb answers to its kind; you do not answer to your kind. A grain of wheat sown in the earth returns the grace of its kind; and you degenerate. The crops do not adulterate the purity of their seed; you adulterate the purity of your soul, the vigour of your mind, the chastity of your body.

Do you not recognize that you are the work of Christ? He formed you with his own hands, as we read; and you, Manichee, adopt another author for yourself. God the Father says to the Son: “Let us make man after our image and likeness”; and you, Photinian, say that Christ did not yet exist at the founding of the world; and you, Eunomian, say that the Son is unlike the Father. For if he is the image, he is certainly not unlike, but expresses the whole Father, whom the Father sealed with the unity of his substance. The Father says, “Let us make,” and you deny that he is a fellow worker. What the Father said, the Son did; and you deny that he is equal, he in whom the Father was well pleased.

“Let the earth,” he says, “bring forth the green herb after its kind.” In all the things that are called growths of the earth the first stage is the shoot. When it has raised itself a little, it becomes herb, afterward grass, and then fruit. There are growths that sprout from the root, like trees that are not sown but spring from the root of other trees. In the reed we see how at its end a kind of knot forms at the side, and from there another reed sprouts. There is, then, in the root a certain power of seed. Grafted shoots, too, sprout in the upper parts. Some, then, acquire their line of succession from the root, others by a different gift. For in each growing thing there is either seed or some seminal power, and that after its kind, so that what is born from it sprouts like the things that were sown, or from whose root it comes: from wheat, wheat; from millet, millet; from a hedge the pear tree breaks out with its white flower, and the chestnut too rises from the chestnut's root.

“Let the earth,” he says, “bring forth the green herb after its kind.” And at once the earth, in labour, poured itself out in new births, clothed itself in a mantle of green, took on the grace of fruitfulness, and, adorned with various shoots, received its own ornaments. We wonder that it produced so quickly; how much greater are the wonders if you look at each detail: how the seeds thrown into the earth are dissolved and, unless they die, bear no fruit, but if they are dissolved by a kind of death of their own, rise again into more abundant fruit. The crumbling clod, then, receives the grain of wheat, the harrowing holds it once scattered, and the earth cherishes and presses it as in a mother's lap. Then, when that grain has dissolved, it sprouts a blade, and the very appearance of the sprouting green is pleasing, which at once betrays the kind of what was sown by its likeness, so that at the very beginning of its stem you may recognize of what kind the herb is, and the fruit appears in the blade; little by little it grows up like grass and, coming of age on its stalk, is raised and rises up. But when the ear, now jointed, has lifted itself, certain sheaths are prepared for the future grain, in which the grain is formed within, so that its tender beginnings may not be harmed by the cold, or burned by the sun's heat, or shaken off by the harshness of winds or the savage force of rains. There follow rows of the ear formed with wonderful art, pleasing to the eye or, for protection, bound together by a kind of natural linking which divine providence has formed. And lest the support of the stalks give way under the weight of the more numerous grain, the stalk itself is enclosed by certain sheaths, so that with doubled strength it may sustain the manifold grain and not bend to the earth, unequal to its burden. Then above the ear itself a palisade of beards is built, so that it projects as from a kind of citadel, lest the ear be harmed by the bites of the smaller birds, or stripped of its fruits, or trampled underfoot.

What shall I say of how the kindness of God has provided for human advantage? The earth returns at interest what it has received, multiplied by an accumulation of interest. Men often deceive and cheat their lender of the principal; the earth remains faithful, and if at any time it has not paid, if perhaps the harshness of cold or too much drought or an immense force of rain has been against it, it makes up the losses of the previous year in another year. So too, when the yield has disappointed the farmer's hope, the earth is at no fault, and when it smiles, the abundance of the fruitful mother pours itself out in births, so that it never causes any loss to its creditor.

But what a sight a full field is, what a fragrance, what sweetness, what delight for the farmers! What could we explain worthily if we used our own speech? But we have the testimonies of Scripture, by which we notice that the sweetness of a field is compared to the blessing and grace of the saints, as holy Isaac says: “The smell of my son is as the smell of a full field.” Why then should I describe the purple violets, the white lilies, the glowing roses, the countryside painted now with golden, now with many-coloured, now with yellow flowers, in which you would not know whether the beauty of the flowers or the force of their fragrance delights you more? The eyes feed on a pleasing spectacle; far and wide the fragrance spreads, with whose sweetness we are filled. So the Lord rightly says: “And the beauty of the field is with me.” For it is with him who formed it; what other craftsman could express the loveliness of each thing? “Consider the lilies of the field”: how great the whiteness of their petals, how the petals, packed together, seem to rise from the bottom to the top so as to express the form of a cup, how a kind of gold shines within, which, fenced in by the palisade round the flower, lies open to no harm. If anyone plucks this flower and separates it into its petals, what hand of so great a craftsman is there that could restore the form of the lily? Who is so great an imitator of nature as to presume to restore this flower, to which the Lord bore such testimony as to say: “Not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these”? A most wealthy and most wise king is judged inferior to the beauty of this flower.

Why should I list the healthful juices of herbs, the remedies of shrubs and leaves? A sick stag chews little olive twigs and becomes well. Olive leaves gnawed also free locusts from sickness. Bramble leaves laid on a serpent kill it. Gnats will not touch you if you boil the herb … with oil and anoint yourself with it.

But perhaps some may say: “What of the fact that along with useful things deadly and harmful ones are also produced?” With wheat you find among the foods of life something harmful, which, unless it is noticed beforehand, usually injures health. Hellebore too is found among the other nourishments of life. Aconite also often deceives and misleads the one gathering it. But this is as if you were to blame the earth because not all men are good. Indeed, hear something more: not all the angels in heaven are good. The sun itself parches the ears with excessive heat and scorches the first beginnings of growing things. The moon too shows travellers the road and betrays the ambushes of robbers. Is it right, then, that, neglecting to acknowledge the creator's grace in the things that are useful, we should detract from the creator's providence because of some harmful foods, as if everything ought to have been produced for the sake of the gullet, or as if what the divine goodness has supplied for our belly were small? The foods appointed for us are known to all, which produce both pleasure and health of body.

Each of the things produced from the earth has a particular reason, and each according to its share completes the fullness of the whole creation. Some, then, are born for food, others for other use. Nothing is idle, the earth sprouts nothing empty. What you think useless to you is useful to others; indeed, it is often useful to you yourself for another use. What does not help as food provides medicine, and often the very things that are harmful to you supply harmless fodder to birds or wild beasts. Starlings, for example, feed on hemlock and it does them no harm, because by the quality of their body they escape the poison of the deadly juice. For the force of that juice is cold, and they forestall it by early digestion through the fine passages leading to the seat of their heart, before it attacks the vital parts themselves. The experts say that hellebore is food and nourishment for quails, because by a natural tempering of their body they avoid the force of the harmful fodder. For if by the method of medicine it is often tempered even for the health of the human body, to which it seems contrary, how much more, by a property of nature, does what is turned to health by the physician's hand serve as food! By mandrake too sleep is often brought on when the sick are troubled by sleeplessness. Why should I speak of opium, which has become known to us by almost daily use, since by it the most severe pains of the inner organs are often lulled? Nor is it unknown that the furies of lust have often withered under hemlock, and that long-standing ailments of a sick body have been dissolved by hellebore.

So not only is there no blame of the creator in these things, but there is even an increase of thanks, since what seemed to be produced for danger works remedies of health for you. For what is dangerous is avoided by foresight, and what is healthful is not lost through industry. Or have sheep and goats learned to avoid what is harmful to them, and do they recognize, not by smell alone but by a certain mystery of nature, though they lack reason, the reason for escaping danger or keeping safe, and distinguish the harmful from the helpful, so that often, when they have felt weapons armed with poison, they are said to seek known herbs and apply them as a remedy to the wound? For them, then, food is medicine, so that you may see arrows leap back out of the wound and poisons flee rather than spread. Indeed, for deer poison is food: the snake flees the deer, kills the lion; the dragon binds the elephant, whose fall is the death of the victor. And so they fight with all their might on both sides, the one to bind the foot, so that the fall of the bound beast may not harm it, the other not to be caught by the last hind foot or on a narrow path, where it could not turn itself and crush the dragon with its heavy tread, or have the help of an elephant following.

If, then, irrational animals know with what herbs to treat themselves or with what aids to help themselves, does man, in whom a rational sense is inborn, not know? Or is he so far from the truth that he does not detect what is suited to each use, or so ungrateful for the goods of nature that, because a draught of bull's blood is deadly to man, he thinks that hard-working animal either ought not to have been born or ought to have been produced without blood? Its strength is useful for tilling the fields, handy for drawing carts, pleasant for food; with varied service it supports the farmers, to whom God has given all things, if they knew their own goods, saying: “Let the earth bring forth the green herb, sowing seed after its kind.” For he included not only the food that grows of itself, in herbs and roots and the fruits of trees and the rest, but also that which is obtained by industry and acquired by the cultivation of rustic labour.

How fitting it is that he did not order the lands to pour out seed and fruit at once, but decreed that they should first sprout, then the fields grow green, and afterward the seed grow up according to the property of its kind, so that the fields might never lack their grace, first offering the pleasing beauty of calm and afterward the usefulness of fruit.

But perhaps someone may say: “How does the earth bring forth seeds after their kind, when often the seeds sown degenerate, and when good wheat has been sown, its appearance is returned discoloured and of inferior form?” But if this ever happens, it seems to be referred not to a change of kind, but to a kind of sickness and inequality of the seed. For it does not cease to be wheat if it is either scorched by cold or soaked by rain, but it is changed in appearance rather than in kind, in colour also and by decay. Indeed, grain that has been soaked often returns to the appearance of its kind if it is dried by sun or fire, or, entrusted to diligent farmers, is cherished by a mild climate and the richness of fertile lands. So what degenerated in the parent is restored in the offspring. Therefore we run no risk that the command of God, whose use has become ingrained in nature, may be abandoned for the future through a fault in the succession, since even today the purity of their kind is preserved in the seeds.

For darnel and the other spurious seeds that are often mixed with crops we know from the reading of the Gospel are called tares; but these have a proper kind of their own; they have not drawn a degenerate nature by passing from the seed of wheat into another kind of seed through a discoloured change. The Lord teaches this, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares over it among the wheat.” We notice, certainly, that tares and wheat seem to be distinct both in name and in kind. Indeed the servants said to the householder: “Lord, did you not sow good seed in your field? From where then does it have tares?” And he said to them: “An enemy has done this.” For the seed of the devil is one thing, the seed of Christ another, which is sown for righteousness. In fact, the Son of Man sowed one thing, the devil another. So different is the nature of the two seeds that the sower is opposite: what Christ sows is the kingdom of God, what the devil sows is sin. How then can the kingdom and sin be of one kind? “So is the kingdom of God,” he says, “as if a man should cast seed upon the earth.” There is also a man who sows the word, of whom it is written: “He who sows, sows the word.”

This man sowed the word upon the earth when he said, “Let the earth bring forth the green herb”; and at once the shoots of the lands sprang up and the various forms of things shone out. Here the green grace of the meadows supplied abundant fodder; there the yellowing ear of the plains, as the richer crop stirred, expressed the image of a surging sea. The earth brought forth all fruit of its own accord. Though it could not be ploughed without a farmer (for the farmer had not yet been formed), yet unploughed it overflowed with rich harvests, and I do not doubt with a greater yield, since no laziness of a farmer could cheat the fertility of the lands. For now fruitfulness is gained by each according to the merit of his labour, where the cultivation of the fields is regarded, and neglect or offence is punished either by deluges of rain or by droughts of the earth or by the blows of hail or, for whatever cause, by the barrenness of rich soil. But then the earth brought in fruits everywhere with a spontaneous yield, because he had commanded who is the fullness of all things. For the word of God was bearing fruit on the earth, and the earth had not yet been condemned by any curse. For the beginnings of the world being born are older than our sins, and the fault is more recent for which we are condemned to eat bread in the sweat of our face and not to know food without sweat.

Even today the fruitfulness of the earth carries on the old abundance in its practice of spontaneous fertility. How many things are still produced of their own accord! But even in those very things that are sought by hand, the divine benefits remain to us in great part, so that grain itself is brought in to those who are resting. The example of the reading set before us teaches this, as the Lord says: “So is the kingdom of God, as if someone should cast seed upon the earth, and should sleep,” he says, “and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, while he does not know. The earth bears fruit of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when it has produced the fruit, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” While you sleep, then, O man, and do not know, the earth produces its fruits of itself. You sleep and rise and marvel at the growth of the grain through the night.

We have spoken of the green herb; now let us speak of the fruitful tree making fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself. He spoke and they were made, and suddenly, as above with flowers and green herbs, so here the earth was clothed with woods. Trees ran together, forests rose up, the tops of mountains suddenly put forth leaves. Here the pine, there the cypress lifted itself to lofty heights; cedars and spruces came together. The fir too came forth, not content with earthly roots and an airy top, but ready to undergo the hazards of the sea safely as oars and to contend not only with winds but also with waves. The laurel too rose up and gave its fragrance, never to be stripped of its covering. The shady holm oaks also put forth their tops, to keep their bristling foliage even in winter. For nature held this as a bond in each for the future, which it received at the stroke of the world's rising. And so the holm oaks keep their prerogative, they remain green, so that no winds strip them of the garment of their hair.

Before, the rose had risen without thorns, mingled with the flowers of the earth, and the most beautiful flower bloomed without any deceit; afterward the thorn hedged in the grace of the flower, holding up as it were a mirror of human life, which often pricks the sweetness of its enjoyment with the neighbouring goads of cares. For the elegance of our life is fenced in and hedged about by certain anxieties, so that sadness is joined to grace. So whenever anyone rejoices either in the sweetness of reason or in the success of his affairs, he ought to remember the fault through which, in the delight of paradise, while things were flowering, the thorns and briars of mind and soul were assigned to us by right of condemnation. Though you shine, then, O man, with the splendour of nobility or the height of power or the brilliance of virtue, the thorn is always next to you, the briar is always near; always look at what is beneath you. You sprout above a thorn, and the grace does not last long. Each one, the brief flower of his age run out, soon withers.

Surely, as you know that you share what is perishable with the flowers, so you share what is joyful with the vines, from which wine is produced, by which the heart of man is gladdened. And would that you, O man, imitated the example of this kind, so as to bring forth joy and gladness for yourself. In yourself is the sweetness of your grace; it sprouts from you, remains in you, is within you; in yourself must the gladness of your conscience be sought. So it says: “Drink water from your own vessels and from the springs of your own wells.” First of all, nothing is more pleasing than the fragrance of the flowering vine, since a juice pressed from their flower makes a kind of drink that is both for pleasure and for health. Then who would not marvel that from the pip of a grape the vine bursts forth up to the very top of a tree, which it cherishes as with an embrace, binds with arms as it were, surrounds with its limbs, clothes with its tendrils, crowns with garlands of grapes? In imitation of our life, it first fixes a living root; then, because its nature is pliant and frail, it grips with its tendrils, as with arms, whatever it has seized, and by these raises and lifts itself up.

The people of the church is like this, planted as by a root of faith and held down by the layering of humility, of which the prophet says finely: “You brought a vine out of Egypt and planted its roots, and the land was filled. The shadow of it covered the mountains, and its branches the cedars of God. It stretched out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the river.” And through Isaiah the Lord himself spoke, saying: “A vineyard was made for my beloved on a horn in a fertile place. And I surrounded it with a wall and dug about the vineyard of Sorech and built a tower in the midst of it.” For he surrounded it as with a palisade of heavenly commandments and the guard of angels. “For the angel of the Lord will encamp round about those who fear him.” He set in the church as it were a tower of apostles, prophets, and teachers, who are accustomed to stand guard for the peace of the church. He dug about it when he relieved it of the weight of earthly cares; for nothing burdens the mind more than the anxiety of this world and the desire for money or power. This is shown to you in the Gospel, when you read that the woman who had a spirit of infirmity was bent over, so that she could not look up again. For her soul was bent, inclining to earthly gains and not seeing the heavenly grace. Jesus looked at her and called her, and at once the woman laid down her earthly burdens. He shows that those too were burdened with these desires to whom he says: “Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you.” So that woman's soul, as if dug about, breathed again and was made straight. But the same vine too, when it has been dug about, is tied up and raised, so that it may not bend back to the earth.

Some shoots are cut back, others are layered: those are cut back that run riot with empty spreading, those layered that the good farmer has judged fruitful. Why should I describe the grace of the rows of props and the orderly arrangement of the trellis, which truly and plainly teach that equality is to be kept in the church, so that no one rich and honoured exalts himself, no poor or low-born man is cast down and despairs? Let there be in the church one and the same freedom for all; let common justice and grace be shared with all. That is why the tower is in the middle, to carry around the example of those rustics, those fishermen, who were found worthy to hold the citadel of virtues. By their examples let our affection be raised, and not lie on the ground cheap and despicable, but let each one's mind lift itself to higher things, so that it dares to say: “But our citizenship is in heaven.” Therefore, so that it may not be bent back by any storms of the world and carried off by tempest, with those tendrils and rings, as with embraces of love, it embraces all its neighbours and rests in union with them. It is love, then, that binds us to higher things and plants us in heaven. For whoever abides in love, God abides in him. So the Lord too says: “Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.”

He has plainly indicated, then, that the example of the vine is to be drawn on for ordering our life. In the warmth of spring it is said first to bud, then from the very shoots to put forth all its fruit; from these the grape forms as it rises, and growing little by little keeps the sourness of an unripe birth, and cannot become sweet unless it is now ripe and mellowed. Meanwhile the vineyard is clothed with green tendrils, by which it is protected with no small help against cold and every harm, and defended from the heat of the sun. What is more pleasing to see or sweeter to taste than to look at the hanging garlands, like necklaces of a lovely countryside, and to pick grapes shining with golden or purple colour? You would think hyacinths and other gems were glittering, Indian stones flashing, the grace of pearls sparkling; and do you not notice that you are warned by them, O man, lest your last day find your fruits unripe, or the time of full age bring forth only small works? For unripe fruit is usually more bitter, and nothing can be sweet but what has grown to the ripeness of perfection. To this perfect man neither the cold of dreadful death nor the sun of iniquity usually does harm, because spiritual grace overshadows him, puts out all the fires of worldly desire and bodily lust, and wards off their heat. Let all who look on you praise you, and admire the ranks of the church like garlands of branches; let each one look at the beautiful necklaces of the souls of the faithful, and delight in the ripeness of prudence, the splendour of faith, the beauty of confession, the loveliness of justice, the richness of mercy, so that it may be said to you: “Your wife is like an abundant vine on the sides of your house,” because you imitate the abundance of the fruitful vine by the gift of copious generosity. But why do I linger on the vine alone, when all kinds of trees are useful? Some are born for fruit, others given for use.

For even those that have no rich fruit have a more precious use. The cedar is suited to holding up the roofs of houses, because its timber is both tall in length and not burdensome to the walls. The cypress too is handy for coffered ceilings and for adorning gables. So the church says in the Song: “The beams of our houses are cedars, our ceilings cypresses,” declaring that the fair ornaments of its roof are those who, like beams, hold up the top of the church by their virtue and adorn its roof. The laurel and the palm are tokens of victory: the heads of victors are crowned with laurel, the palm is the ornament of the victorious hand. So the church says: “I said, I will climb into the palm tree, I will take hold of its heights.” Seeing the eminence of the Word and hoping that it can climb to its height and to the summit of knowledge, it says, “I will climb into the palm tree,” so as to leave all lower things and strive toward the higher, toward the prize of Christ, so as to pick and taste his sweet fruits; for the fruit of virtue is sweet. The poplar too, a shady tree for victors' crowns, and the pliant willow, handy for tying vines, what else do they declare mystically but that the bonds of Christ are good, that they do no harm, the bonds of grace, of love, so that each may glory in his bonds, as Paul gloried, saying, “Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ”? Bound by these bonds he said, “Who shall separate us from the love of Jesus Christ?”, with bonds of abstinence, bonds of love. Bound by these bonds David too says: “On the willows in the midst of it we hung up our instruments.” The box tree also, useful for forming the strokes of letters, trains the use of a child's hand with its smooth wood, so Scripture says: “Write on box,” so that at the same time the very material may warn you (since it is always green and never stripped of its leaves) never to be stripped of your hope by pretending, but that the hope of salvation may always sprout for you through faith.

Why should I list how great is the variety of trees, how different and beautiful the adornment of each: how spreading the beeches, how tall the firs, how leafy the pines, how shady the holm oaks, how two-coloured the poplars, how bushy and reviving the chestnut, which as soon as it has been cut usually sprouts a whole wood from itself; how in the trees themselves age, whether old or young, is detected, for the younger have slenderer branches, the older stronger and knotty arms, the former smooth and spreading leaves, the latter more shrunken and rough. There are also trees that, with an old and dead root, do not know how to restore their succession if they happen to be cut down; others, which either have youth still green or a more fruitful nature, for which cutting is a gain rather than any loss, so that they are renewed through several heirs by a reviving succession. There is also, what you may marvel at, sex in fruits themselves; there is a distinction of sex in trees.

For you may see the palm that bears dates often bending and lowering its branches and showing the appearance of desire and embrace toward that tree which the country boys call the male palm. That palm, then, is female and confesses its sex by the appearance of submission. So the tenders of the groves throw over its branches the seeds of the dates or of the male shoots, by which a kind of sense of fulfilment is poured into that female tree and the grace of the desired union is presented. Gifted with this, it rises again and lifts its branches and raises its foliage back to its former state. The same is believed of the fig, and so many are said to plant a wild fig tree beside the cultivated and fruit-bearing fig, because the fruits of that fruitful and cultivated fig are said to fall quickly to the ground when tried by some breeze or heat. So those who know this remedy tie the young figs of the wild tree to that fruitful tree and heal its weakness, so that it can keep its own fruits, which were about to fall if the remedies were lacking. By this we are taught, as by a kind of riddle of nature, not to shun those who are separated from our faith and fellowship, because a pagan who has been won, the stronger an asserter of error he was, the more vigorous a defender of the faith he can become; and if one of the heretics is converted, he may strengthen that side to which he has gone over with changed opinion, especially if he has something upright by nature, so that his judgment can be lively, if attention to sobriety and the observance of chastity support him. So pour out your zeal around him, so that, like that fruitful fig, you may strengthen your virtue by the presence and union of that wild tree. For so your purpose will not be loosened, and the fruit of your diligence and grace will be kept.

How many things there are that teach that natural hardness can be tempered by the zeal of diligence, of which rural cultivation gives an example! For pomegranates often flower quickly and cannot bear fruit unless they are tended with the fitting remedies of experts; often the juice inside vanishes, while its beautiful appearance is displayed outside. Not without reason is it compared to the church, as you have it said to the church in the Song: “Your cheeks are like the rind of a pomegranate,” and further on: “If the vine has flowered, the pomegranates will flower.” For the church displays the bright glow of faith and confession, beautiful with the blood of so many martyrs and, what is more, endowed with the blood of Christ, while keeping within itself, as this fruit does, very many fruits under one protection and embracing many works of virtue; for the wise man conceals his works in the spirit. Farmers are said to treat almonds too in this way, so that bitter fruits become sweet: they bore into the root of the tree and insert into the middle a shoot of the tree that the Greeks call peukē and we call picea; when this is done, the bitterness of the juice is laid aside. If, then, agriculture changes the qualities of plants, can the pursuit of teaching and attention to discipline not soften any diseases of the passions? Let no one, then, placed on the slippery ground of youth or intemperance, despair of his conversion. Wood is often turned to better uses:

can human hearts not be changed? We have shown that there are differences of fruit not only between trees of different kinds, but that often in the same species of tree the fruits are at odds with each other. For one form is that of male fruits, another of female, as we have already said above of dates. And who could grasp the variety, appearance, and grace of fruits, and also the usefulness of each fruit and the property of their juices, which seem suited to each thing: how bitterer fruits heal the sick inner organs of men and temper inner swelling and roughness, and how again the harshness of the humours is tempered by sweet fruits? Indeed that medicine is older which used to cure with herbs and juices, and no health is firmer than that which is gained by the rule of foods. So we are taught according to nature that food alone is medicine for us. Certainly open sores are closed by herbs, inner ailments are cured by herbs; and so it is the physicians' work to know the powers of herbs, for from this the practice of healing grew up.

But to call our pen back to simple fruits, some are ripened by the sun, others are completed while enclosed in shells and husks. Apples and pears, and all kinds of grapes too, are exposed bare to the sun; but the fruit of the walnut and hazel and of the pine kernel, though covered with shell and husk, is still nourished by the heat of the sun, and the more the kernel is hidden in the density of the pine cone, the more it is nourished by the sun's heat.

Then how great is the Lord's providence, that where the fruit is softer, there the thickness of the leaf gives a stronger covering to protect the fruit, as we see in the fruit of the fig tree. More delicate things must be protected by stronger ones, as the Lord himself teaches through Jeremiah, saying: “Like these good figs, so will I acknowledge those of Judah carried away, whom I sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans for good, and I will set my eyes upon them for good.” As delicate ones, he hedged them about with the stronger covering of his mercy, lest the tender fruits perish too early. Indeed, of these same he says later: “My delicate ones have walked rough ways,” to whom he says further on: “Be steadfast, children, and cry out to the Lord.” For this alone is an inviolable covering and an impenetrable defence against all storms and injuries. Where the fruits are tender, then, there the coverings and defences of leaves are thicker; on the other hand, where the fruits are stronger, there the leaves are more tender, as the apple tree teaches. For the stronger fruit does not need much help of protection; indeed the very shade of a thicker protection could harm the fruit more.

Then let the vine leaf teach us the grace of nature and the inner mysteries of divine wisdom. For we see it so cut and divided that it seems to show the appearance of three leaves; the middle part is so distinct that, unless it clung to the lower parts, it would seem separate to those looking at it. This plan of nature seems to have been kept so that it may both admit the sun more easily and spread shade. Further, its middle part extends longer and tapers at the very tip, so that it shows more beauty than covering. For it seems to form the likeness of a prize, signifying that the grape holds the first place among the other hanging fruits, to which, by a silent judgment of nature but a clear sign, the appearance and prerogative of victory is inborn. It has its prize with it, then, by which protection is provided for it against injuries or the violence of air and rain alike, and no hindrance is put in the way of its receiving the heat of the sun, by which, warmed, it is nourished, coloured, and increased. The leaf of the fig too is cut, almost like the vine leaf, by a fourfold division, which is the plainer the larger the leaf is, though not, like the vine leaf, with a curled edge all round or at the tip. For as in the fig leaf the thickness is stronger, so in the vine leaf the appearance is more elegant. The thickness of the leaf serves to repel the injury of storms, the cutting to warm the fruit's grace. So this kind of fruit does not soon feel the hail but soon feels ripeness, because it seems both to be hidden against injuries and to lie open to grace.

Why should I describe the differences of leaves, how some are round, others longer, some flexible, others stiffer, some not easily falling in any winds, others shaken off by a light motion of the breezes?

It is impossible to search out the properties of each thing, and either to distinguish their differences by clear testimony or to lay open their hidden and secret causes by unfailing proofs. Water, certainly, is one and the same, and often changes itself into different forms: it runs yellow among sands, foamy among rocks, greener among woods, many-coloured among flowers, brighter among lilies, redder among roses, clearer in the grass, more turbid in the marsh, more transparent in a spring, darker in the sea, taking on the colour of the places into which it flows. By the same reasoning it also changes its coldness, so that it boils among steaming things, grows cold in shady places, seethes when struck by the sun, and grows white with icy moisture when it is watered by snows. And how its very taste is changed, so that it varies, now harsher, now more bitter, now stronger, now sterner, now sweeter, according to the quality of the things into which it has been poured! It is made harsh by unripe juices, by the crushed husk of the walnut and by bruised leaves; it becomes bitter with wormwood, stronger with wine, sterner with garlic; it becomes heavy with poison, sweet with honey. And if mastic, or the fruit of the terebinth, or the kernel of the walnut is mixed with it, it is easily changed into the soft nature of oil. Since it is the nurse of all plants, it supplies different uses to each. Whether it washes the roots or comes down poured from the clouds, it gives distinct strength to all: it fattens the root, carries up the trunk, spreads the branches, makes the leaves grow green, nourishes the fruit and seeds, and usually enlarges the apple. So, though it is the same nurse of all, some kinds of trees bear sourer juices, others sweeter, some late, others early. Even the sweetnesses differ among themselves: one sweetness in the vine, another in the olive, another in cherries, another in the fig, distinct in the apple, unlike in the date.

The very touch of water is in one place gentle, in another rougher, often richer. It often differs in weight as in appearance; for in many places it is thought heavier, in many lighter. No wonder, then, if, since it differs within itself, the juices of trees also differ among themselves, though they are produced by the flowing of the same water. And though there is one cause of all, the use of each is different, the nature different. The tear of the cherry tree has one power, that of the mastic another. The fragrant woods of the East are said to sweat a different drop of balsam, and in Egypt and Libya the shrubs of the giant fennel weep a different kind of tears by some force of a more secret nature. And why should I tell you, to keep my speech light, that amber is the tear of a shrub, and that the tear hardens into the solidity of so great a substance? Nor is this maintained by light evidence, since leaves or the tiniest bits of twigs or certain small kinds of creatures are often found in amber, which it seems to have received while it was still a softer drop and, once solidified, to have held.

But why do I contend with poor speech against the lofty and precious reason of nature, when this speech is fed by human wit, while divine providence formed the nature of all things? So the spreading of words must be checked as with reins, lest we seem to presume to set out what seems to have been granted by God especially to Solomon by the gift of wisdom: the differences of trees and the powers of roots and whatever things are hidden and unforeseen, as it is written. Yet even by him these are not reported as made plain, so that it seems to me that he could discuss the kinds of plants, but could not more fully explain the reasons of all creation.

And if crops are often more luxuriant where there are irrigating waters, and green beans and the manifold grace of gardens is roused and roused again, if the bank of overflowing rivers is adorned with green borders, how at the word of the Lord, which is more abundant than every course of waters, did the whole creation of plants suddenly blossom! The fields hastened to bring forth grain not entrusted to them, kinds of garden vegetables unknown before, wonders of flowers; the banks of rivers hastened to clothe themselves with myrtle groves; the trees hurried to rise quickly, to put on their flowers quickly, to supply food for men and fodder for cattle. The fruit is common to all, the use too is given to all. The trees sprouted both at once: one thing to eat, another by whose cooling shade we might be protected from the sun. Food in the fruit, the use of pleasantness in the leaves; yet, since the creator's providence foreknew that men's greed would claim the fruit chiefly for itself, it provided for the other living things, to give them a special food. So they have no small food in the leaves and bark of the woods; and things that would serve the use of healing, that is, juices, tears, and shoots, were provided likewise. So the things which we afterward came to know as useful by experiment, use, and example, the creator from the beginning, by the majesty of his foreknowledge, ordered to come out of the bosom of the earth, to give them for fitting uses.

And since the Lord ordered the earth to bring forth the green herb and the fruitful tree making fruit after its kind, whose seed is in it, lest perhaps someone should say that in many trees neither fruit nor seed is seen, and think that the divine command wavers in some respect so that its truth is doubtful, let him notice that it is in no way possible that all growing things should not either use seeds or have something that seems to agree with the power of seeds; and if anyone pays careful attention, he will be able to grasp this by clear evidence. Willows seem to have no seed, yet they have in their leaves a certain grain which has the power of seed, so that when it is entrusted to the earth, a tree rises as from a planted cutting and raises itself as from seed. By that grain, then, the first root grows; from the root sprouts a wood, not only of willow but also of other trees of this kind. The generation from the root too has the power of seed, so that many have spread the growth of their grove by that kind of planting.

Great is the power of God in each thing. Let no one wonder that I said there is great power of God in plants, since he said that his great power was in the locust and the caterpillar, because the offence of the divine majesty was paid off by the great control of the barrenness and want of the Jews. For patience is great power, providence is great power. For those were unworthy to enjoy the fruitfulness of the earth who had offended the creator of the lands. And truly great is he who avenges the crime of so great an impiety by wretched famine. So if by the great power of God the earth produced the barren caterpillar, how much more by great power does it produce what is fruitful!

Who, seeing a pine cone, would not be amazed at so great an art implanted and impressed on nature by the divine command: how from the very centre, though at different distances, it rises with equal glue, by which it cherishes its own fruits? So all round the same appearance and order is kept, and in each region the birth of kernels abounds, and the fruit and grace return in a circle. So in this pine cone nature seems to express its own image, which keeps the privileges received from that first divine and heavenly mandate and brings back its births in a certain turn and order of years, until the consummation of time is fulfilled.

But as in this fruit it marks a pleasing image of itself, so too in tamarisks, that is, in low shrubs, it has expressed the figure of wicked cunning. For as double-hearted men are present everywhere, and show grace and simplicity among the good and cling to the most vicious, so too these shrubs grow, with a kind of contrary habit, both in watery and in desert places. So Jeremiah too compared doubtful and insincere character to tamarisks. “Let the earth bring forth,” he says, and at once the whole earth was filled with rising shoots.

And to man it is said, “Love the Lord your God,” and the love of God is not poured into the hearts of all. The hearts of men are deafer than hard rocks. The earth supplies us with fruits it does not owe, while it obeys its author; we refuse the gift we owe, while we do not reverence the author.

See in small things what the providence of God is, and, since you cannot comprehend it, marvel how he has kept some things always flowering and willed others to have changes of stripping and clothing. Amid white snows and frosts of cold the fields keep their greenness, and though they themselves are covered with frost, they still shelter no small show of green in their young shoots. Among the kinds of trees too that are clothed with lasting foliage, there is no small difference. The olive or pine always keeps its covering, yet they often change their leaves and do not display them as lasting but as successive, covering over the change by the wholeness of a perpetual garment for the beauty of their tree. But the palm remains always green outside by the lastingness, not the changing, of its leaves. For the leaves it first sprouted it keeps without any succession of substitutes. Imitate it, then, O man, so that it may be said to you too: “Your stature has become like a palm tree.” Keep the greenness of your childhood and of that natural innocence which you received from the beginning, so that, “planted by the streams of waters,” you may have your fruit ready in your season and your leaf may not fall. Following this greenness of ever-flowering grace in Christ, the church says: “In his shadow I desired and sat down.” This prerogative of a green gift the apostles received, whose leaf could never fall away, so that even their shadow healed the sick; for faith of mind and the flowering merits of virtues overshadowed the weaknesses of the body. Remain, then, planted in the house of the Lord, so that you may flourish like a palm in his courts, and the grace of the church may climb up in you, and the smell of your nostrils may be like apples, as it says, so that you may be inebriated in Christ.

This little verse has rightly reminded us to go back to what we had almost left out: that by the Lord's command the vine too sprouted, which we know was afterward, after the flood, planted by Noah. For so you have it, that Noah was a tiller of the earth and planted a vine and drank of its wine and fell asleep. Noah, then, is not the author of the vine, but of its planting. For he could not have planted it unless he had found it already produced. He is the cultivator, then, not the author, of vines. But God, who knew that wine drunk soberly would give health and increase prudence, while taken immoderately it would give occasions for vices, gave the creature and reserved its abundance to human choice, so that the sparingness of nature would be a lesson in sobriety, and the human condition would ascribe to itself the harm of abundance and the fall of drunkenness. Indeed Noah himself was made drunk and fell asleep, overcome by wine. He who by the flood had grown to glory was through wine exposed to disgrace. But the Lord kept the grace of his creature in this too, so as to turn its fruit to our salvation, and through it the remission of sins comes to us. So Isaac said piously: “The smell of Jacob is the smell of a full field,” that is, a natural smell. For what is sweeter than a full countryside, what more pleasant than the smell of the vine, what more pleasing than the flower of the bean? So although someone before us said ingeniously that the patriarch did not smell of vine or fig or grain, but breathed a spacious grace, I take the very smell of the earth, simple and pure, as the grace of the blessing, which no deceit composed but the truth of heavenly kindness poured in. Indeed it is counted among the most sacred blessings that the Lord grant us from the dew of heaven the strength of wine, oil, and grain; to whom be honour, praise, glory, and perpetuity from the ages, and now and always, and for all ages of ages. Amen.

The Fourth Day. One who gathers the vintage usually first cleans the vessels into which the wine is poured, lest some dirt spoil the grace of the wine. For what profit is it to set the vine in rows, to dig every year or draw furrows with ploughs, to prune, to raise, to join it to the elms and couple it as in a kind of marriage, if the wines sought by such labour turn sour in the vessel? So too, if anyone wishes to watch the morning rising of the sun, he cleans his eyes, so that no dust, no dirt may settle in his eyes to dull the gaze of the viewer, and no cloudy dimness may cover the bodily sight of the one watching. For us, in the reading, the sun is to rise, which did not exist before. We have already passed the first day without the sun, spent the second without the sun, completed the third without the sun; on the fourth day God commands the lights to be made, the sun, the moon, and the stars. The sun begins. Clean the eyes of your mind, O man, and the inner gaze of your soul, lest some mote of sin dazzle the keenness of your wit and trouble the sight of a pure heart. Clean your ear, so as to receive the bright streams of divine Scripture in a pure vessel, lest some contagion enter. The sun comes forth, filling the day with great radiance, the world with great light, warming it with heat. Beware, O man, of weighing only its greatness, lest its excessive brightness blind the sight of your mind, as one who looks straight into its ray loses all sight at once from the reflected light, and unless he turns his face and eyes to other parts, thinks he sees nothing and has been cheated of the gift of seeing; but if he turns his gaze aside, his function remains whole. Beware, then, lest its rising ray confound your sight too. So look first at the firmament of heaven, which was made before the sun; look at the earth, which began to be visible and formed before the sun came forth; look at its shoots, earlier than the light of the sun. The caterpillar is earlier than the sun, the herb older than the moon. Do not, then, believe him to be God to whom you see God's gifts preferred. Three days have passed: no one sought the sun, and the brightness of light abounded. For the day too has its own light, which is the forerunner of the sun.

Do not, then, rashly entrust yourself to so great a splendour of the sun (for it is the eye of the world, the joy of the day, the beauty of heaven, the grace of nature, the excellence of creation); but when you see it, consider its author; when you admire it, praise its creator. If the sun, a partner and sharer in creation, is so pleasing, how good is that Sun of Righteousness! If this one is so swift that in its rapid courses it surveys all things by day and night, how great is he who is everywhere always and fills all things with his majesty! If that which is commanded to go forth is admirable, how far beyond admiration is he who speaks to the sun and it does not rise, as we read! If that is great which daily approaches or withdraws from places by the turns of the hours, what is he who, even when he emptied himself so that we could see him, was the true light that enlightens every man coming into this world! If that is most excellent which often suffers eclipse when the earth is put in its way, of what majesty is he who says, “Yet once more I will shake the earth”! The earth hides the one; it cannot bear the other's motion unless it is upheld by the substance of his will. If it is a loss to the blind not to see the grace of this sun, how great a loss for the sinner, cheated of the gift of the true light, to endure the darkness of perpetual night!

So when you see the sun, pay attention to the earth, which was founded before; pay attention to the green herb, which surpasses it by the privilege of order; pay attention to the trees, which clap their hands because they began to exist before the lights of heaven. Are the merits of grass greater than the sun's, or is the prerogative of wood superior? Far be it from us to prefer senseless things to the minister of so great a gift. What then did the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God foresee, that the trees should begin to exist before those two lights of the world, as it were heavenly eyes of the firmament, unless that all might know from the testimony of the divine reading that the earth can be fruitful without the sun? For the earth that could sprout the first seeds of things without the sun can certainly nourish the seeds it has received and bring forth births by its own warmth without the sun's heat.

With this voice, then, the voice of its gifts as it were, nature cries out: “The sun is good, but in service, not in command; a good helper of my fruitfulness, but not its creator; a good nourisher of my fruits, but not their author. Sometimes it even scorches my offspring; often it is itself a loss to me; in many places it leaves me without dowry. I am not ungrateful to my fellow servant; it was given to me for use, it was bound with me to labour, with me it is subject to vanity, with me made subject to the bondage of corruption. With me it groans, with me it is in travail, that the adoption of sons and the redemption of the human race may come, by which we too may be freed from servitude. Standing with me it praises the author, with me it sings a hymn to the Lord our God. Where its grace is greater, there it shares a common fellowship with me. Where the sun blesses, there the earth blesses, the fruit-bearing trees bless, the cattle bless, the birds bless with me. Placed on the sea, the sailor accuses it and longs for me; in the mountains the shepherd avoids it and hastens to my shoots, to my trees, by which he may be shaded when burning, to my springs, thirsty and weary.”

But lest the testimony of the eyes seem slight to you, clean your ear and bring it near to the heavenly oracles; for every word stands on two or three witnesses. Hear him saying: “Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to give light to the earth.” Who says this? God says it. And to whom does he say it but to the Son? God the Father, then, says, “Let there be a sun,” and the Son made the sun; for it was fitting that the Sun of Righteousness should make the sun of the world. He himself, then, brought it into light, he himself lit it up, he himself gave it the power of pouring out light. The sun, then, was made; and so it too serves, since it was said: “You founded the earth, and it remains; by your ordinance the day continues, for all things serve you.” For since the day serves, how does the sun not serve, which was made to rule the day? How do the moon and stars not serve, which were made to rule the night? Indeed, the greater the grace the creator gave them, so that the air shines more than usual with the sun's brightness, the day shines more clearly, the darkness of night is lit up by the brilliance of moon and stars, and heaven, crowned as with flowers, sparkles with fiery lights, so that you would think it shines, painted as by a paradise in spring, with living necklaces of breathing roses: the more beauty seems to have been bestowed on them, the more they owe; for to whom more is entrusted, more he owes. So it is well called by many the ornament of heaven, because it is a precious necklace of stars.

And so that we may know that the fertility of the lands is not ascribed to the heat of the sun but assigned to divine goodness, the prophet says: “All things wait upon you, to give them food in due season; when you give it to them they will gather it; when you open your hand all things will be filled with goodness”; and further on: “Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created, and you will renew the face of the earth”; and in the Gospel: “Consider the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap, and your heavenly Father feeds them.” The sun and the moon, then, are not the authors of fruitfulness; but God the Father through the Lord Jesus imparts the bounty of fertility to all.

The prophet has finely explained to us what is meant by his saying that God made the sun to rule the day and the moon to rule the night. For in that hundred and third psalm, of which we spoke above, he wrote: “He made the moon for seasons; the sun knew its going down.” For when the day has begun to complete its hours, the sun knows the setting due to it. The sun, then, is under the rule of the day, and the moon under the rule of the night, which is compelled to obey the turns of the seasons and is now filled with light, now emptied. Many, however, seem to take this place mystically of Christ and the church: that Christ knew the passion of his own body, saying, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son,” so that by that setting of his he might give eternal life to all who were pressed by the setting of perpetual death; and that the church has her seasons, namely of persecution and of peace. For she seems to wane like the moon, but does not wane. She can be overshadowed, she cannot wane; she is diminished by the departure of some in persecutions, so that she may be filled by the confessions of martyrs, and, made bright by the victories of blood poured out for Christ, may pour out over the whole world a greater light of her devotion and faith. For the moon has a loss of light, not of body, when by its monthly turns it seems to lay down its light so as to borrow it from the sun; this can easily be gathered in pure and clear air, when no cloud drawn over it makes it dim. For the orb of the moon remains whole, even if all of it does not shine like a part of it; and as it is usually seen when it is full of light, such it is in size, but it appears bereft of its light through a kind of shadow. And so its horns shine, because its body spreads in a circle and is drawn in as it were by the failing light of a portion.

It may trouble someone that he says, “Let there be lights to give light upon the earth, to divide between the day and the night,” since Scripture had said, where he made light: “God divided between the light and the darkness. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” But let us consider that the light of the day is one thing, the light of the sun and moon and the light of the stars another, since the sun with its rays seems to add brilliance to the daylight, as the rising or setting of the day can show. For before the sun the day shines, but it does not blaze, since it shines still more with the midday sun. The prophet shows this, saying: “And he will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday.” For he compared the righteousness of the saint not only to light but also to the noonday light.

Then he willed there to be not only one sign but two for distinguishing day and night: that light makes the distinction and the rising of the sun, and again the failing of light and the rising of the stars mark the distinction between the setting of the day and the beginning of night. For when the sun has set, there still remains something left of the day until darkness covers the earth, and then the moon and the stars rise. Of the night, indeed, it is plain, because the illumination of the moon and stars testifies to the spaces of the night, since during the day the risen sun hides the brilliance of the moon and of all the stars. Of the day, the very blazing of the sun can teach that the nature of daylight and of the sun is different, and that their appearance itself is of different colour. For the form of light is simple, to provide light; but the sun has not only the power of light but also of heating; for it is fiery, and fire both lights and burns. So God, wishing to show Moses the miracle of his operation, by which to rouse Moses to zeal for obedience and inflame his affection to faith, was seen in fire in the bush, and the bush was not burned, but only seemed to shine with the appearance of fire. Fire, then, was performing one of its functions and not the other. The force of burning was idle; that of lighting was at work. So Moses was amazed, because against its nature the fire did not burn the bush, though it usually burns even tougher material. But the Lord's fire is accustomed to give light, not to burn.

And perhaps you will say: “How is it written, ‘I am a consuming fire’?” You have reminded me well: it usually consumes nothing but sins. In the rewarding of merits too we gather the nature of the divine fire, that it lights some and burns others: it lights the righteous, it burns the wicked. It does not burn the same ones it lights, or light those it burns; but its lighting is unquenchable for the enjoyment of the good, its burning fierce for the punishment of sinners. But let us return to the distinction of day and night. When the light of day rises, night is put to flight; when day departs, night is poured out.

For light has no fellowship with darkness, since the Lord established this by a natural law in the working of living things. Indeed, when he made light, he also made the division between light and darkness. So in the day itself, when the sun is poured over the lands, we see the shadow of a man or of some shrub separated from the light, so that in the morning it is directed toward the west, in the evening turned back toward the east, at midday it leans to the north; yet it is not confused and mingled with the light, but yields and flees. In the same way night too seems to yield to the day and to turn away from its light; for, as the more expert, who have gone before us in age or office, have proved, it is the shadow of the earth. For a shadow naturally clings and is joined to a body, so much so that painters too strive to express the shadows of bodies, and assert that it belongs to art not to pass over the force of nature, and a picture that does not also express its shadow is held to fail the judgment of natural law, as it were. So, as in the day, when some body meets the sun face to face, a shadow stands on the side from which the light is reflected, so when, as day departs, the earth is set opposite the light of the sun, the air is overshadowed.

From this it is plain that the shadow of the earth makes the night. He made, then, the sun, the moon, and the stars, and set for them the measures of the times, to the sun those of the day, to the moon and stars those of the night, so that the one may increase the grace of the day, and the others may light up the shadow and darkness, “and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years.” The sun and the moon with the stars have divided times and equal measures according to the turns of the months, and they are for signs. We cannot deny that some signs are gathered from the sun and moon; for the Lord too said, “And there will be signs in the sun and moon and stars,” and when the apostles asked for a sign of his coming he answered: “The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven.” He said these would be signs of the consummation to come; but for our needs they should serve as a fitting measure of time.

Some, indeed, have tried to express the qualities of nativities, what each one born will be, though this is not only refuted but also useless to those who inquire and impossible for those who promise it. For what is so useless as for each person to persuade himself that he is what he was born? No one, then, need change his life, condition, and character and strive to become better, but should remain in that persuasion; nor can you praise the upright or condemn the wicked, who seems to answer to the necessity of his nativity. And how has the Lord set rewards before the good or punishments before the wicked, if necessity produces conduct and the course of the stars shapes behaviour? And what is it but to strip man of man, if nothing is left to character, nothing to training, nothing to effort? How many do we see snatched from crimes and sins and turned to a better state! The apostles were redeemed and gathered from among sinners, not by the working of their own hour, but the coming of Christ sanctified them and the hour of the Lord's passion redeemed them from death. That condemned thief who was crucified with the Lord passed to eternal life not by the favour of his nativity but by the confession of faith. It was not the force of his nativity that hurled Jonah into the sea, but the offence of having evaded the divine prophecy; and the sea monster, receiving him, vomited him up after three days as a sign of the mystery to come and preserved him by the merit of prophetic grace. It was an angel, not the series of the stars, that freed Peter from prison when death was imminent. Blindness converted Paul to grace, and when he was struck by a viper and troubled by shipwreck it was not the remedies of his nativity but the merits of his devotion that saved him. What shall we say of those who, when they had died, rose again at their prayers? Was it their nativity or the grace of the apostles that called them back? What need was there for them to commit themselves to fasts and dangers if they could arrive where they wished by the favour of their nativity? But if they had believed that, while they waited for the necessity of the fates, they would never have come to such grace. That persuasion, then, is useless.

What of the fact that it is also impossible? For, to take something from their own discussion for the sake of refuting, not proving it, they say that the force of the nativity is great, and that it must be gathered from certain minute and exact moments, and unless it is gathered quite truly, the difference is enormous; for by a brief instant and a tiny moment the nativity of the helpless and the powerful, the needy and the rich, the innocent and the guilty differs; and often at the same hour one destined for long life and one who will die in early childhood are born, if the other things are unequal and separated by some point. Let them answer how they can gather this. Suppose a woman giving birth: the midwife first perceives the child at the womb, listens for the cry by which the child's life is gathered, notices whether it is male or female. How many moments have passed during these delays? Suppose the astrologer is ready. Can a man be present at the birth? While the midwife sends word, the Chaldaean hears, sets the horoscope; the fates have already passed to the lot of another newborn; the inquiry is about one, and the nativity of another is set out. Suppose their opinion about the necessities of nativities is true; the gathering of it cannot be true. The points pass, irrecoverable time flees. That time lies in an atom and in the twinkling of an eye I am led to believe, since we are all raised in an atom, in the twinkling of an eye, as the apostle testifies, saying: “Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed, in an atom, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; and the dead shall rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” Between the pouring forth, the taking up, and the laying down of the child, its cry and the message, how many atoms have passed! And this, to put it simply. For they themselves divide that vital circle of the twelve signs into twelve parts, and since the sun goes through the twelfth part of that sphere, which is held to be the zodiac, in thirty days, so that the sun's circuit is completed in the course of a year, they divide each of those twelve portions into thirty little parts, which the Greeks call moirai, and divide that little part again into sixty. Again they cut each of those sixty into sixty. How incomprehensible it is that they fix the moments of a nativity by the sixtieth of the sixtieth of a little part, and what is the motion or appearance of each sign at the birth of the one being born! So, since it is impossible to grasp such fine minutiae of time, and a slight change brings in an error of the whole, the whole business is full of fancy. These disputers do not know what is their own: how then do they know what is another's? They do not know what threatens themselves: can they announce to others what is to come? It is ridiculous to believe it, since, if they could, they would rather provide for themselves.

Now how absurd it is that if someone says he was born under the sign of the Ram, he is thought to be most excellent in counsel from the habit of the beast, because such an animal stands out in the flock; or richer, because the ram has natural clothing and gains the profit of a garment from the earth, and so gains of profit seem to belong to that man. They argue similarly about the signs of the Bull and the Fishes, so that they think the motion of heaven and the powers of the signs are to be interpreted from the nature of cheap animals. Our food, then, sets the decrees of our living, and our nourishment, that is, the ram, the bull, and the fish, impresses on us the discipline of our character. How then do they fetch from heaven for us the causes of things and the substance of this life, when they ascribe to the heavenly signs themselves the causes of their motion from the qualities of cheap food? They say that one born under the sign of the Ram is generous, because the ram lays down its wool not unwillingly, and they prefer to ascribe virtue to the nature of a cheap animal rather than to heaven, from which fair weather shines on us and rain often comes down; that those whom the Bull looked on at birth are hard-working and of gentle servitude, because a hard-working animal submits its neck willingly to servitude to take the yoke; the Ram also …; and one whose nativity the Scorpion embraced with its part will be a murderer and vomit out the poisons of malice, because the animal is poisonous. Why then do you claim to give the authority for living by the dignity of the heavenly signs, and take the proof of your assertion from trifles? For if such properties of character, taken from animals, are impressed on the motions of heaven, heaven itself seems subject to the power of beastly nature, from which it received the causes of vital substance to impart to men. And if this is far from the truth, much more ridiculous is it that, destitute of the support of truth, they fetch the credibility of their argument from this.

Then let us consider that they call planets those signs by whose motions they assert the necessities of our life are formed. Whether, as the name sounds, they are always wandering, or, as they themselves say, they are carried by swift motion, ten thousand times a day, or, if this seems incredible, change their manifold appearance by countless revolutions, it lacks credibility that by so wandering an error and so swift a motion they should decree for us a fixed and unmoved lot of living. Yet they say that the motions of all are not equal, but that some have swifter circuits and others slower, so that in the same hour they often see one another and often hide, while one is passed by another.

They say, moreover, that it matters greatly whether beneficent or maleficent and harmful signs look upon the moment of birth, and that the difference of nativity lies in this, that the aspect of a beneficent sign confers very much, that of a maleficent and harmful one does very much harm. For so they are accustomed to name the very signs they worship; I must use the names of those whose assertions I use, so that they may not claim that their arguments were ignored rather than emptied and destroyed. So, since they cannot grasp that wandering and swift motion, it often happens that, through that incomprehensible fineness of a point and a moment, they set the aspect of a beneficent sign where the clash of a grave and harmful one occurs. And what wonder if men are mocked, where harmless signs are blasphemed? If these are believed to be harmful by their own nature, then the most high God is accused, if he made what is evil and was the worker of wickedness; but if they are thought to have taken on by their own will what harms the innocent and those not yet conscious of any wicked crime, to whom punishment is ascribed before guilt, what is so irrational, exceeding even the savagery of irrational beasts, as that the experience of harm or favour should be ascribed not to the merits of men but to the motions of the signs? “He has done nothing wrong,” they say, “but a harmful star looked on him.” They seek Saturn's star for him: it turned aside a little, and took away the misfortune, acquitted the crime.

But this wisdom of theirs is compared to a spider's web: if a gnat or a fly falls into it, it cannot free itself; but if any kind of stronger creature is seen to have run into it, it has passed through and broken the weak nets and empty snares. Such are the nets of the Chaldaeans, that the weak stick in them while the stronger in sense can suffer no harm. So you who are stronger, when you see astrologers, say: “They are weaving a spider's web,” which can have no use and no bonds, if you do not run into it like a gnat or a fly by the fall of your weakness, but break the weak nets by the speed of swift flight like a sparrow or a dove. For who among the prudent would believe that the motions of the signs, which often change in a day and return upon themselves in many ways, confer the insignia of powers? For if it were so, how many figures of royal nativity would there be in a day! Kings would be born every day, and royal succession would not be passed to sons, but there would always arise from different conditions those who would gain for themselves the right of power. Which king, then, gathers his son's horoscope to see whether rule is owed to him, and does not transfer the succession of the kingdom to his own by his own decision? We read certainly that Abijah begot Asa, Asa begot Jehoshaphat, he begot Joram, Joram begot Uzziah, and all the rest of the succession until the captivity was carried on through kings of both the same family and the same honour. Were they able, because they were kings, to command the heavenly signs to shape their motions? For which man can have dominion over these?

Then, if our acts and deeds are referred to the necessity of birth and not to the habits of character, why have laws been set forth and rights promulgated, by which either punishment is decreed for the wicked or security granted to the innocent? Why is pardon not given to the guilty, since surely, as they themselves say, they sinned not by their own will but from necessity? Why does the farmer toil, and not rather wait to bring unworked fruits into the storage of his barns by the privilege of his nativity? If he was born such that riches flow to him without work, surely let him wait for the earth to bear him spontaneous returns without any seed; let him not press the ploughshare into the fields, not move a curved hand to the sickle, not bear the expense of gathering the vintage, but let wines flow of themselves for him into all his jars, let the berry of the wild olive, grafted on no trunks, sweat oil for him of its own accord. Nor let the anxious merchant, crossing the wide sea, dread danger to his own life, if a treasure of riches can slip into his lap while he is idle by some lot of birth, as they say. But this is not the opinion of all. In fact the farmer, unwearied, cleaves the earth with the pressed-down plough, ploughs naked, sows naked, naked threshes on the floor the grain parched by the blazing sun; and the trader, impatient of the east winds, often furrows the sea in an unsafe ship. So the prophet, condemning their importunity and rashness, says: “Be ashamed, O Sidon, said the sea,” that is: if dangers do not move you, let shame at least restrain you, let modesty confound you. Be ashamed, O Sidon, in which there is no place for virtue, no care for salvation, no youth trained and devoted to war in guarding the fatherland, but all anxiety is about gain, all zeal for trade. “The seed of merchants,” he says, “is like a harvest.” But what reward is there for a Christian if he arranges his cares and works not by will but by necessity?

For where necessity is decreed, industry is without honour. We have said much; we do not wish to say more, lest anyone think that what we have borrowed from their assertions in order to refute them was taken in order to learn them. For how can we, who are old men, recount the things we laughed at as boys? Now let us direct our pen to what remains according to the reading.

“Let the lights be,” he says, “for signs and for seasons and for days and for years.” We have spoken of signs; and what are seasons but the alternations of changes, winter, spring, summer, and autumn? In these seasons, then, the passage of the sun is either swifter or slower; for some places it grazes with its rays, others it sets ablaze with heat. So when the sun lingers in the southern parts, we have winter. For when the sun is farther away, the earth stiffens with frost, is bound with cold, and the long shadow of night covers the lands, so that the spaces of night are much longer than those of day. From this arises the reason why in winter an excessive mass of snows and rains pours down. But when, withdrawing from the southern parts, it returns above the earth, it equalizes the times of night and day, and the more it adds to the length of its courses, the more it gradually brings back the mildness of this air and recalls the gentleness of the breezes, which, cherishing all things, urge them to renew their births, so that the earth sprouts and the seeds loosened in the furrows come to life again, the trees put forth their adornments, and, for the perpetual preservation of the kind of those that are either on land or delight in the waters, succession is propagated by yearly offspring. But when it rises toward the summer solstices in the north, it lengthens the spaces of the day and shortens and narrows the nights. So the more it is joined and mixed with this air by constant use, the more it heats the air itself, dries the moisture of the lands, makes the seeds grow up, and makes the fruits of the woods ripen as into manly juices. Then, because it is more blazing, it makes shorter shadows at midday, since it lights this place from on high. So the synagogue too says in the Song of Songs:

“Tell me, you whom my soul has loved, where you pasture, where you rest at noon, lest I become as one veiled beside the flocks of your companions”; that is: “Tell me, O Christ, whom my soul has loved.” Why not rather “whom it loves”? But the synagogue loved; the church loves and never changes her affection toward her Christ. “Where,” it says, “do you pasture, where do you rest at noon? I desire to follow you as a foster child, whom I formerly held as if joined to you, and to seek your flocks, because I have lost my own.” You pasture in ours, in the place of the church; there the noon shines, where judgment shines like the noonday, where no shadow is seen, where the days are longer, because the Sun of Righteousness lingers longer for them as in the summer months. Indeed the day of the Lord is not short but great, for it is written: “until the great day of the Lord comes.” So Jacob too says: “All the days of my life which I spend are short and evil”; for doubtful light is evil. Short days, then, are of doubtful light and shadowy. Great days are without shadow, as very many have learned by experience and example in certain hotter places. So the synagogue, in short and evil days (Jacob often expresses the type of judgment in his own person or that of this people), had very much shadow; it did not see the Sun of Righteousness, and saw him not from on high above its head, but from the south of judgment, when it was winter for it. But to the church it is said: “The winter is past …; the flowers have appeared on the earth, the time of harvest has come.” Before the coming of Christ it was winter; after the coming of Christ, the flowers of spring and the harvest of summer. Seeing him lighting it from the south and from the conversion of the Gentiles, it is overshadowed. But the people of the Gentiles, who were in confusion, the Gentiles who sat in darkness, saw a great light; to those who sat in the region of the shadow of death a light has risen, the great light of divinity, which no shadow of death interrupts. That is why he lights from on high, because … saying: “in which the dawn from on high has visited us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” There is indeed also a shadow of salvation, not of death, as is this: “Under the shadow of your wings you will protect me”: a shadow, indeed, because it is of the body; a shadow, because of the cross; but a shadow of salvation, because in it was the remission of sins and the raising of the dead.

We can take an example, then: winter days are short but have longer shadows, summer days are longer but have shorter shadows. At midday too the shadow is shorter than at the beginning or end of the day, and this among us in the western part. But there are some who are without shadow on two days of the whole year in the southern parts, because, having the sun over their heads, they are lit up all around; so they are called askioi (“shadowless”) in Greek. They say further that the sun is so directly overhead that through the narrow mouths of wells the water at the bottom shines brightly. And those are said to be in the south who are called amphiskioi, because they cast their shadow on both sides. For the shadow is behind those who walk facing the sun: for instance, if you go toward the east in the morning hours, if you head toward the southern region at midday, if toward the west at the setting of the day. From three parts, then, the sun meets you: from the east, from the south, from the west. Morning and evening the shadow is behind you, at midday also at your side; but the sun is never in the north, and so, if you head toward the north, whether morning, evening, or midday, the shadow cannot be behind you. For in this world which we inhabit, only those placed near the south seem to cast their shadow toward the southern region. And this is said to happen at the height of summer, when the sun directs itself toward the north. Afterward autumn receives us and breaks the greatness of the heat, but, the heat being relaxed little by little and laid aside through the mildness of a middle tempering, it hands us over without deceit or any harm to the winter winds.

“Let them be,” he says, “also for days,” not to make the days, but to have rule in them, so that the sun may light the rising of the day with richer grace, and through the whole day may have the power of marking it by the service of its course. So some take what the prophet says: “the sun to rule the day, the moon and stars to rule the night,” since they carry light around. They are also ordered for years, the sun and the moon: the moon completes its course twelve times in thirty days each; the sun completes the year, according to the Hebrews with some days added, according to the Romans with the addition of one day kept once in four years as the leap day. There is also the solstitial year, when the sun, having completed its circuit through all the signs, returns to the point from which it took the beginning of its course; for the completion of the whole space is said to take it a year.

So God made these two great lights. We can take them as great not so much by comparison with others as by their own function, as heaven is great and the sea is great; for the sun too is great, which fills the world with its heat, as the moon does with its light, and not only the lands but also this air and the sea and the face of heaven. In whatever part of heaven they are, they … all things, and are seen equally by all, so that each people believes they linger only in their own regions and are present and shine only for them, though they shine alike for all, so that no one thinks another nearer to them than himself. There is a clear example of their greatness: the orb of the moon appears the same to all men. For although its light is sometimes increased and diminished, yet on the same night it appears to all just as it appears to me. For if it seemed smaller to those far away and shone larger to those placed nearer, it would betray a sign of narrowness and smallness. For other things we think smaller when we are far away, larger when we look at them nearer. The closer you are, the more the size of the thing grows for you. The sun's ray is nearer to none, farther from none; likewise the orb of the moon is equal for all. The sun is seen alike by the Indians and the Britons at the same moment when it rises, nor when it sinks into its setting does it appear smaller to the easterners than to the westerners, nor when it rises is it judged lower by the westerners than by the easterners. “How far,” he says, “the east is from the west!” These are distant from each other, but the sun is distant from no one.

It is present to no one more, remote from no one more. And let it not trouble you that the orb of the sun seems to you a cubit across when it rises; but consider how great a space lies between the sun and the earth, which the weakness of our sight cannot cross without great loss to itself. Our sight grows dim: does the sun or moon grow dim? Our vision is narrow: does it therefore make narrower the things that are seen? The appearance is diminished, the size is not taken away. For we should not ascribe the weakness of our own affection to an affection of the lights. Our sight deceives; do not, then, think its judgment trustworthy; but the figure of the sight of heavenly things is smaller, not their own form. If from the highest peak of the mountains you wish to look at the plain below your eyes and the herds grazing there, will you not judge their bodies like ants? If you look at the sea from some lookout, do not the largest ships, with white sails shining among the blue waves, seem from afar to cover the sea like doves flying? What of the islands themselves, which spread the fields of land in the sea: within how narrow a boundary are they thought to be enclosed, how round they appear though rugged, how dense though sparse! Weigh, then, these weaknesses of your sight, and as a just judge you will fetch from yourself the proof of what we maintain.

But do you wish to judge the size of the sun not only with the eye of the mind but also with that of the body? Consider how many orbs of stars seem to weave the vault of heaven and mark it with countless lights, yet they cannot wipe away the darkness of night and the clouds of heaven. As soon as the sun has sent before it the signs of its rising, all the fires of the stars vanish under the brilliance of one light; the air is opened and the face of heaven is suffused with a purple blush. While still only breathing its beginning, already with momentary speed the splendour of full light flashes, and the sweet breeze that goes before the rising sun breathes. Tell me, I ask, if its orb were not great, how could it light up the great orb of the lands?

And what shall I say of the great tempering and moderation of the creator, who drew off that measure for the healthful uses of the sun, so that neither its fiery heat, as it seems, poured over the veins of the lands and the forms of things, would burn them up, nor again, cooled by such great spaces of the world, would it implant no seed of heat in the lands, but, leaving them hungry and poor of fruit, warm them to no grace of fertility?

Similar things apply to the account of the moon as we have recalled of its partner and brother, since it has taken on the same ministry as its brother, to light up the darkness, cherish the seeds, increase the fruits. It also has many things distinct from its brother: the moisture of the earth which the heat has dried all day, dew restores in a short space of night; for the moon herself is a generous giver of dew. Indeed, when the night is clearer and the moon shines all night, then a more abundant dew is said to wet the fields. And many who rest in the open air have felt that the more they were under the light of the moon, the more moisture they collected on their heads. So in the Song too Christ says to the church: “For my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.” Then it is diminished and increased, so that it is smaller when it rises new, and when it has been diminished it is filled up. In this there is a great mystery. For the elements suffer with its waning, and with its waxing the things that were emptied are filled up, like the brains of living creatures and the moist parts of sea creatures; for oysters are said to be fuller, and many other things, when the lunar orb grows. Those who have tested it by their own use allege the same of the inner parts of trees. We see, then, that its rising and waning are a matter of reason, not of weakness. For it would never cause so great a change in things unless it had an excellent power and grace bestowed by its creator.

Some men too, even learned and Christian, have alleged that the air is usually changed at the rising of the moon; but if this happened by some violence of the lunar change, heaven would be covered with clouds and rains would pour down at every one of its risings. Indeed, when a day before there was talk about rain, which was said to be needed, someone said: “See, the new moon will give it.” And though we were eager for rain, I did not want such assertions to be true. So I was delighted that no rain fell until, given at the prayers of the church, it showed that it was not to be hoped for from the beginnings of the moon but from the providence and mercy of the creator. Yet the straits, though they overflow on all sides according to the other phases of the moon, and either take waves upon waves or are themselves carried with great force, stand calm at its rising, as long as the moon is without light; but when the increase of days has uncovered it again, they return to their ebbing courses. The tide too, which is said to be in the ocean, though on other days it keeps its order, is said to give clear evidence of its change at the moon's rising, so that the western sea itself, in which the tide is seen, comes in and goes out more than usual and is carried with a greater surge, as if it were drawn back by certain breathings of the moon and, driven and drawn back again by the same, poured back to its proper measure.

So if you wonder how the moon suffers waning, when it has so great a power of change, consider that there is a great mystery in this too: from its example you learn, O man, that there can be nothing in human affairs and in the whole worldly creation that is not at some time dissolved. For if even the moon, to which the Lord entrusted so great a ministry, to light the world, both grows and wanes (for all things wane that, arising from nothing, have come to perfection and, when perfected, are diminished again; for heaven and earth will pass away), why do we not take on this moderation: neither to cast down our spirit in adversity (for he who made all things from nothing is easily able to bring you too to the highest and most perfect things), nor again to be lifted up in prosperity, nor to boast of some power or riches, nor to glory in strength of body or beauty, in which there is easy and frequent change, but to pursue the grace of the soul that remains for the future? If the setting of the moon, which always repairs and re-forms itself, saddens you, much more should it sadden you if the soul, when it has been filled with progress in virtue, afterward, through inconstancy of mind and carelessness, is turned from its purpose and often changes its pursuits, which is a mark of folly and dreadful. So Scripture too says: “The fool changes like the moon.” And so the wise man is not changed with the moon, but will remain in wisdom with the sun. So the moon is not a partner of folly, because the moon does not change like the fool, but the fool like the moon. Indeed, “the seed of the righteous is like the full moon, it remains for ever, and a faithful witness in heaven.” For it is one thing to perform a ministry, another to be carried about by temperament and, through weakness of sense, to have no fixed judgment. The moon labours for you and is subject because of the will of God; for “the creation was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope.” It, then, changes unwillingly; you change willingly. It groans and … its beauty by its change; you do not understand, and rejoice in …. It often waits for your redemption, so as to be freed from the common servitude of the whole creation; you bring a hindrance both to your own redemption and to its freedom. It is due to your folly, then, not its own, that, while you are waited for and are not converted even late, it is still changed.

Do not, then, judge the moon with the eye of your body but with the liveliness of your mind. The moon is diminished so as to fill the elements. This, then, is a great mystery. He gave this to it who gave grace to all. He emptied it so as to fill, he who also emptied himself so as to fill all; for he … himself, so as to come down to us; he came down to us, so as to ascend for all; for, he says, “he ascended above the heavens, that he might fill all things.” So he who had come emptied filled the apostles from his fullness. So one of them says: “For of his fullness we have all received.” The moon, then, has announced the mystery of Christ. Not ordinary is that in which he placed his sign, not ordinary that which bears the type of the beloved church, which the prophet signifies, saying: “In his days shall righteousness arise and abundance of peace, until the moon is taken away.” And in the Song the Lord says of his bride: “Who is this that looks forth like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, chosen as the sun?” And rightly the church is like the moon, which has shone over the whole world and, lighting up the darkness of this age, says: “The night is far spent, the day is at hand.” Fittingly he says “looks forth,” as looking out on her own from above, as you have it: “The Lord looked forth from heaven upon the children of men.” Looking forth, then, the church, like the moon, has frequent waning and risings, but she has grown by her wanings and has merited to be enlarged by them, while she is diminished by persecutions and crowned by the martyrdoms of confessors. This is the true moon, which borrows for itself from the perpetual light of its brother the light of immortality and grace. For the church shines not with her own light but with Christ's, and draws her splendour from the Sun of Righteousness, so as to say: “I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” Truly blessed are you, who have merited so great a distinction! So I would call you blessed not for your new moons but as the type of the church; for in the one you serve, in the other you are loved.

And how ridiculous it is that men often believe that you can be drawn down by magic spells! These are old wives' tales and opinions of the crowd. For who would think that a work of God appointed to so great a ministry could be tampered with by Chaldaean superstitions? He fell who transforms himself into an angel of light, and was drawn down by his own will, not by the power of spells. Indeed in this too, O church, you are thought capable of being drawn down from your place and station. Many tempt the church, but the spells of the witch's art cannot harm her. Enchanters have no power where the song of Christ is sung daily. She has her own enchanter, the Lord Jesus, through whom he made void the spells of enchanting magicians and the poisons of serpents; and she herself, like the serpent lifted up, devours the snakes, and though the Egyptians may murmur their deadly spell, it is dulled in the name of Christ. So too Paul struck down the magician, not only by the weakness of the witch's art but also by the loss of his eyes. So Peter, when Simon was making for the heights of heaven by magic flight, broke the power of his spells, threw him down, and laid him low.

Fittingly, I think, the fourth day has passed. How then have many become accustomed to … the fourth, and think it useless to begin anything on this number, on which the whole world shone with new light? Did the sun begin under unlucky auspices? And how can another sign good things, if at its rising it did not know how to choose a gentle day? Or how do they approve of its signs, whose rising they do not approve? What too do we say of the moon, which both began on the fourth day and on the fourteenth marks the day of salvation? Or does the number displease by which the mystery of redemption is celebrated? That is why the demons persuade men to avoid that number by which their wickedness was destroyed. That is why the pagans assert that nothing should be undertaken on it, because they know that then their arts first began to be idle and the pagan peoples moved over to the church. Certainly they think that the fourth moon, if it is “clear and its horns not blunted,” gives a sign of fair weather for the remaining days until the end of the month. They do not wish, then, to begin with the same beginnings with which fair weather begins. But now we must beware lest the fourth day set on us during our sermon; for greater shadows are falling from the mountains, the light is diminished, the shadow increased.

The Fifth Day. Now the whole earth was green with various shoots, and heaven too shone with sun and moon, the twin lights of its face, and adorned with the beauty of the stars. There remained the third element, namely the sea, so that grace too might come to it by the divine gift. For all the offspring of the lands are nourished by the airy breath, and the earth too, loosening its seeds, quickens them all, and especially then, when first ordered by the word of God to grow green, it sprouted by the gift of its …; the water was idle and seemed to be left on holiday from the benefit of the divine operation. The creator still had something to confer on it, by which it could equal the services of the lands; he was keeping it for it, so that it too might claim for itself something proper and special as the prerogative of the gift bestowed on it. The earth had quickened first, but things that did not have a breathing soul; the water is commanded to produce those that would display the vigour and dignity of a living soul and would receive the sense of guarding their safety and fleeing death.

So God said: “Let the waters bring forth creeping things with living souls after their kind, and birds flying along the firmament of heaven.” The command came, and at once the water was poured out in the births commanded; the rivers began to generate, the lakes to give life, the sea itself to bring forth various kinds of creeping things and to pour out after its kind whatever it had formed. Not the smallest pools, not the muddy marshes were idle, but all took up the power of creating given to them. Fish leapt from the river, dolphins played in the waves, shellfish clung to the rocks, sea urchins grew. Woe is me! Allurement began before man, the mother of our luxury; delicacies before man. Temptation, then, came before the creation of men. But nature did no wrong: it gave nourishment, it did not prescribe vices. It gave these things in common, so that you would not claim any as your own. For you the earth brings forth its fruits, for you the parrot-fish and the sturgeons, and for you the waters generate all their offspring; and not content with these you tasted the food forbidden you. All things are heaped up to your reproach, so that the transgression of your greed may be the heavier.

But we cannot even recount how many species and names there are, all of which were given life in the moment of the divine command. At the same time the form of the body came together and the soul was at work, and the vital vigour too, something of power. The earth had been filled with shoots, the sea was filled with living creatures. There senseless things sprout, here sentient things move about. On land too the waters claim their portions. The fish of the waters lick the earth and seek their prey from it, and the gnats too hum around the marshes that bred them; these too heard the Lord's command, saying: “Let the waters bring forth creeping things with living souls.”

We know that the kinds of serpents are called creeping things because they creep on the earth; but much more does everything that swims have the appearance or … of creeping. For although, when they dive into the depth, they seem to fall into the water, yet when they swim on top, they creep with their whole body, which they drag over certain backs, as it were, of the waters. So David too said: “This great and spacious sea; there are creeping things without number.” Indeed, though many have feet and the use of walking because they are amphibious, living either in the waters or on land, like seals, crocodiles, and river horses, which they call hippopotamuses because they are usually born in the Nile, yet when they are in deep water they do not walk but swim, using the foot not as a step for going but as an oar for creeping; for a ship too glides driven by oars and furrows the water with its keel.

“Let the waters bring forth creeping things,” said the Lord. A short word, but forceful and wide-reaching, pouring a common nature into the smallest and the greatest. The whale is produced in the same moment in which the frog is born by the force of the same operation. God does not labour over the greatest things nor disdain the smallest. Nature felt no pain in bearing dolphins, just as it felt no pain when it produced little murex-shells and snails. Notice, O man, how many more things there are in the sea than on land. Count, if you can, the kinds of all the fish, whether small or very large: polyps, crustaceans, crayfish, crabs, and among these innumerable of their kind. What shall I say of the kinds of sea serpents, the dragons, which Job asserts? Nor will I pass over sea scorpions, sea frogs, turtles, sea weasels too and dogfish, sea calves, huge sea monsters, dolphins, seals, sea lions. What of the sea blackbirds, thrushes, peacocks too, whose colours we see expressed in birds: the blackbirds black, the peacocks with backs and necks painted in changing colour, the thrushes with speckled bellies, and the rest? Whose species and names have the lands claimed for themselves? For these began first in the sea …, since water first, at the divine bidding, produced the creeping things of living souls that were commanded.

Add this grace, that what we fear on land we love in the waters. For things harmful on land are harmless in the water, and even the snakes there are without poison. The lion, terrible on land, is sweet in the waves. The moray, which they say has something harmful, is a more precious food. The frog, bristling in the marshes, is comely in the waters and surpasses almost all foods. If anyone eager wishes to know more, let him ask the fishermen of different places; for no one can grasp everything. Beware, indeed, of dogs in the sea too, which the apostle teaches are troublesome in the church also and to be guarded against, saying: “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers.” The weasel's smell is heavy on land, in the waters it is pleasant. The land one knows how to avenge itself by the punishment of its stench; this one has no less grace when caught than when free. Nor will I dismiss you without honour in our account, grayling, whose name grew from a flower. Whether the water of the river Ticinus or the water of the pleasant Adige has nourished you, you are a flower. Indeed there is a well-known saying, wittily said of one who smelled of a pleasant sweetness: “He smells either of fish or of flower”; so the same smell was declared to be that of fish and of flower. What is more pleasing than your appearance, more delightful than your sweetness, more fragrant than your odour? What honeys breathe, that you breathe from your body. What shall I say of the gentleness of the sea ravens and of the sea wolves? The lamb does not know how to fear these wolves. So great is the grace of the waters that even its lions flee its calves. So that this prophetic saying about the holiness of the church fits them rightly: “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion and the ox shall eat straw together.” Nor is it any wonder, since in the church too the waters do this, so that the wickedness of robbers is washed away and they are matched with the innocent. Why should I mention the purple shellfish, which adorn the banquets of kings and dye their robes? What is honoured in kings belongs to the waters; that appearance which shines belongs to the waters. Add the sea-pigs, acceptable even to the Jews, because there is nothing common that water does not wash, and so they cannot consider them common as if born on land.

Innumerable, then, are the habits, innumerable the kinds of fish. Some produce eggs, like the larger spotted fish which they call trout, and entrust them to the waters to be cherished. Water, then, gives life and creates, and still carries out the service of that first command as of a perpetual law, a kind of gentle mother of living creatures. Others bring forth live young from their own body, like the sea weasels and dogfish and huge sea monsters, dolphins and seals and other sea creatures of this kind. When these have given birth, if they perhaps sense any snare or terror around their young, to protect them or calm the fear of their tender age with maternal affection, they are said to open their mouths and hold their young suspended in a harmless tooth, to take them back into their body too and hide them in their birth-womb. What human affection could imitate this devotion of fish? Kisses are enough for us; for them it is not enough to open their insides and take back their offspring and recall them whole, and again quicken them with a kind of warmth of their own heat and kindle them with their own breath, and for two to live in one body, until they either bring them safety or defend their offspring from dangers by the interposition of their own body. Who, seeing these things, would not yield to so great devotion of fish, even if he could hold out? Who would not be amazed with wonder that nature keeps in fish what it does not keep in men? Many, from suspicion, have killed their own sons, attacked with stepmotherly hatreds; other mothers in famine, as we read, have eaten their own offspring. For human children the mother has become a tomb; for the offspring of fish the parent's womb, like a wall with a kind of rampart of the inmost organs, keeps the young unharmed.

Different kinds of fish, then, have different habits: some produce eggs, others bear live and formed young. And those that produce eggs do not weave nests like birds, do not take on the labour of long brooding, do not nourish them with trouble to themselves. The egg has fallen, and the water, like a gentle nurse, has received it into the lap of its nature and by quick warmth returned it as a living creature. For at once, quickened by the touch of the parent, the egg falls and a fish comes out.

Then how pure and inviolate is their succession! No one mixes with another, but with its own kind: grayling with grayling, sea bass with sea bass. The scorpion fish too keeps the chastity of an unstained union with its own kind. So it has the modesty of its kind, but not the poison of its kind; for the scorpion fish does not sting but refreshes. They do not know, then, adulterous unions with a partner of another kind, like those brought about with great care by men when the kinds of asses and mares are coupled, or again when she-asses are mixed with horses, which are truly of an adulterous nature; for certainly what is committed to the pollution of nature is greater than what is committed to the injury of a person. And you, man, procure these things as the go-between of beastly adultery, and you think that animal more precious which is adulterous than that which is true. You yourself confuse alien kinds and mix different seeds and often force the unwilling to forbidden couplings, and you call this industry. And because you cannot do this with men, so that a mixture of different kinds could bring forth offspring, you take from a man what he was born, strip the man from the man, and by cutting off a part of the body deny his sex; you make a eunuch, so that daring might accomplish in men what nature denied.

And see from this too how good a mother water is. You, O man, have taught fathers to disown their sons, taught separations, hatreds, offences; learn what the bond of parent and children ought to be. Fish cannot live without water, nor be separated from the company of their parent nor parted from the service of their nurse; and this happens by a kind of nature, that when separated they die at once. For they do not live, like all things, by the breath of this air, because the nature of drawing in and giving out breath is not available to them; otherwise they could not always live under water, not taking in the inflow of breath. What breath is to us, water is to them. As breath supplies us, so water supplies them with the substance of living. If the passage of breath is shut off, we die at once, because we cannot be without vital breath even for a short space; so fish too, taken from the water, cannot exist without their substance.

And the reason is plain: in us the lung receives breath through the looser inner chambers of the chest and, since it is penetrable by many pores, cools the inner heat by the inflow of breath. For as the chest receives the food, so it separates the excess of the foods from the healthful juices and blood … the lung has gathered, so that the breathing of air can reach it more easily. But fish have gills, which they now fold and draw together, now unfold and open. In this drawing together and opening, then, while water is taken in, passed through, and penetrates, the function of breathing seems to be fulfilled. Fish have, then, their own proper nature, not shared with others, a special habit and a kind of separate and secret substance of living. That is why they are not tamed and do not delight, like land animals, in the touch of a human hand and some caress, even if they live kept in their ponds.

What shall I say of the closeness of their teeth? For they do not have teeth on one side only, like sheep or cattle, but both jaws are armed with teeth, because they are in the water, and if they turned their food over for long and did not swallow it quickly, the food could be carried off from their teeth by the waters and washed away. So they have close and sharp teeth, to cut quickly, finish their food quickly, and swallow it easily without any delay or postponement. So they do not chew the cud; yet the parrot-fish alone among them is said to chew the cud, as those report who have had the chance, the practice, or the zeal to learn such things.

Indeed they themselves have not escaped the violence of the powerful among them, and, subject to the greed of the stronger, the lesser are everywhere inferior. The weaker each is, the more it lies open as prey. Many, indeed, feed on grasses and tiny worms; yet there are some that devour one another and feed on their own flesh. Among them the smaller is the food of the larger, and the larger in turn is attacked by a stronger, and the plunderer of another becomes another's food. So it happens that when one has devoured another, it is devoured by another, and both come together into one belly, the devoured with its own devourer, and there is in one stomach a partnership of prey and vengeance. And perhaps this wrong grew up among them of their own accord, as with us it did not begin from nature but from greed; or, because they were given for the use of men, they were also made for a sign, so that in them we might see the vices of our own conduct and beware of their examples, lest anyone stronger attack an inferior, being about to give against himself to one more powerful the example of wrong. So he who harms another prepares a snare for himself, into which he himself falls.

And you are a fish, you who invade the insides of others, who sink the weak, who pursue the one who yields even to the depths. Beware lest, while you pursue him, you yourself fall upon a stronger one, and he who avoids your snares lead you into those of another, and he who feared his own misfortune while you pursued him see yours first. What difference is there between a rich man who swallows the patrimonies of the weak with the gluttony of wicked greed and a sheatfish with its belly filled with the insides of smaller fish? The rich man has died and his spoils have profited him nothing; rather the infamy of his robberies has made him more detestable. The sheatfish is caught and its useless prey is uncovered. How many are found in it that had devoured others! And you, rich man, hold in your bosom the plunderer of another. He had the poor man's means, which he had seized; you, crushing him, have added two patrimonies to your means, and still you are not satisfied with so great an increase, and you say you have avenged others, while you commit the same things you punish, more unjust than the unjust, more wicked than the wicked, greedier than the greedy. See that the same end does not find you as found that fish: beware the hook and the nets. But you presume on your power, that no one can resist you; the sheatfish too presumed that no one would cast a hook for it, no one would spread nets, and, if it fell into them, it would break them all; and yet it did not escape the trident, or it ran into the knots of a stronger bond from which it could not free itself. Without doubt the iniquity of men too, the more grievous the things it has committed, the less it can be safe in its crime, so as not at some time to pay what it is agreed can hardly be avoided as the price of crimes.

You are a fish, then, O man. Hear that you are a fish: “The kingdom of heaven is like a net cast into the sea, which gathered of every kind of fish. And when it was filled, they drew it to the shore and, sitting down, chose the best into their vessels, but cast the bad away. So shall it be at the consummation of the age. The angels shall go out and separate the bad from among the righteous and cast them into the furnace of fire.” There are, then, both good and bad fish; the good are kept for their value, the bad burn at once. The nets do not entangle the good fish but lift it up; the hook does not kill and destroy it but drenches it with the blood of a precious wound; in the confession of its mouth a good price is found, by which the apostolic tribute and Christ's own tax is paid. For so it is written, as the Lord says: “From whom do the kings of the earth take tribute or tax? From their own sons or from strangers?” And when Peter answered, “From strangers,” the Lord said: “Go to the sea and cast a hook, and take the fish that comes up first, and when you open its mouth you will find a stater there; take it and give it for me and for you.”

Do not, then, O good fish, fear the hook; it does not kill but consecrates. Do not despise yourself as cheap because you see your body is weak. You have in your mouth what you may offer for Peter and for Christ. Do not fear the nets of Peter, to whom Jesus says: “Put out into the deep and let down your nets”; for he casts not on the left side but on the right, as he was ordered by Christ. Do not fear its folds, because it was said to him: “From now on you will be catching men alive.” So he cast his nets and embraced Stephen, who first came up out of the gospel, having in his mouth the stater of righteousness. With constant confession he cried out, saying: “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” For this fish the Lord Jesus was standing; for he knew that in its mouth was the price of his tax. Indeed by a glorious martyrdom he, a rich defender, fulfilled both the judgment and teaching of Peter and the grace of Christ.

Do not let it trouble you that I have put the gospel in place of the sea. The gospel is the sea on which Christ walked; the gospel is the sea on which, though Peter wavered when he denied, yet through the right hand of Christ he found the defence of faith and the grace of standing firm; the gospel is the sea from which the martyr came up; the gospel is the sea in which the apostles fish, into which the net is cast that is like the kingdom of heaven; the gospel is the sea in which the mysteries of Christ are figured; the gospel is the sea in which the Hebrew escaped and the Egyptian was destroyed; the gospel is the sea, because the bride of Christ is the church and the fullness of divine grace, which is founded upon the seas, as the prophet said: “He has founded it upon the seas.” Leap over the waves, O man, because you are a fish. Do not let the waves of this world overwhelm you. If there is a storm, seek the deep and the depth; if fair weather, play in the waves; if a tempest, beware of the rocky shore, lest the raging surf dash you against a rock; for it is written: “Be wise as serpents.”

And since the example of wise serpents has been set before us, let us be wise in seeking and keeping marriages; let us love the partnerships granted us. And if those who were born far apart, separated by times and regions, have come together, and if one has set out to foreign parts, let no distance, no abstinence diminish the love once agreed. The same law binds those present and absent; the same bond of nature has bound the rights of love between those far apart and those near together; the necks of both are joined under the same yoke of blessing, even if one undergoes long separations in distant regions, because they have received the yoke of grace not on the neck of the body but of the mind. The viper, the most wicked kind of beast and more cunning than all of the serpent kind, when it feels the desire to mate, seeks out the lamprey of the sea as its familiar partner or prepares a new one, and, going to the shore, signals its presence with a hiss and calls her out to the conjugal embrace; and the lamprey, invited, does not fail, and grants the poisonous serpent the desired enjoyment of her union. What does such a story mean, but that the ways of spouses are to be borne, and if one is absent, his presence is to be awaited? Let him be harsh, deceitful, rough, slippery, drunken: what is worse than poison, which the lamprey does not shun in her spouse? Called, she does not fail, and embraces the slippery one with diligent love. He bears your faults and the frivolity of feminine levity; can you, woman, not bear your husband? Adam was deceived by Eve, not Eve by Adam. It is just that the woman take as her guide the one whom she called to sin, lest she fall again through feminine frivolity. “But he is rough and uncultivated.” He pleased you once. Is a husband to be chosen often? The ox too seeks its partner, and the horse loves its own, and if another is substituted, the partner does not know how to draw the yoke with another and does not think itself whole; you repudiate your yoke-fellow and think he should often be changed, and if he is absent for one day, you bring in a rival, and at once, as if the case were known when it is unknown, you avenge an injury to your chastity. The viper seeks the absent one, calls the absent one, cries out with a coaxing hiss, and when she senses that her partner is approaching, vomits out her poison, showing reverence to her husband, respecting the grace of the marriage; you, woman, drive back with insults your husband coming home from far away. The viper looks out to sea, scouts the path of her spouse; you block your husband's way with injuries, you stir up the poisons of quarrels and do not cast them out, at the time of the conjugal embrace you boil with dire venom, and you neither blush at your marriage nor reverence your husband.

But you too, husband (for we can also take it so), lay aside the swelling of your heart and the harshness of your ways when a diligent wife defers to you; drive away indignation when your coaxing spouse calls you to love. You are not a master but a husband; you have not obtained a maidservant but a wife. God willed you to be the guide of the weaker sex, not its overlord. Return her zeal, repay love with gratitude. The viper pours out its poison; can you not lay aside the hardness of your mind? But you have a natural sternness: you ought to temper it in consideration of marriage, and out of reverence for the union lay aside the fierceness of your spirit. It can also be taken this way: husbands, do not seek another's bed, do not lay snares for another's union. Adultery is grievous, it is an injury to nature. God first made two, Adam and Eve, that is, man and wife, and the wife from the man, that is, from Adam's rib, and he commanded both to be in one body and to live in one spirit. Why do you separate one body, why do you divide one spirit? It is adultery against nature. The embrace of the lamprey and the viper, sought not by right of kind but by the heat of lust, teaches this. Learn, husbands: whoever seeks to … another's wife, whose cohabitation he desires to claim for himself, is to be compared to a serpent. He hastens to a viper, which comes into the bosom of a man not by the straight path of truth but by the slippery way of straying love. He hastens to one who, like the viper, takes back her poison, for the viper is said, after the act of union is done, to suck back the poison she had vomited; for the adulteress is a viper. So Solomon too says that he who has been drunk, when lust is accustomed to boil through wine, is stretched out as if by the bite of a snake, and poison is spread through him as by a horned serpent. And so that you may know he said this of the adulteress, he added: “When your eyes see a strange woman, your mouth will speak perverse things.”

And let no one think that we have set down contradictory things, using the example of this viper both for good and for bad, since both profit for instruction: if we are ashamed either not to show to our beloved the faithfulness which a serpent shows, or, abandoning holy marriages, to prefer slippery and harmful things to healthful ones, as he does who mixes with a serpent.

And since we have begun to weave a discourse on cunning, by which each one strives to get round and deceive his brother and contrives new frauds, so as to entrap by trickery the one he cannot overcome by force and cover him with a kind of disguise of art, I will not pass over that fraudulent cleverness of the octopus. Having found a rock on a shallow shore, it fastens itself to it and, by its shadowy cleverness, takes on its colour; and with its back covered in a similar appearance, it encloses in the nets of its stealthy art the fish that glide up to it without any suspicion of fraud, while they think it was not there and is a rock, and catches them in a kind of fold of its flesh. So the prey comes of its own accord. And they are caught by tricks like those of people who often change their temper and set in motion different arts of harming, so as to probe the minds and feelings of each: placed among the continent they preach continence; in a gathering of the intemperate they are as if strayed from the pursuit of chastity and sunk in the wallows of intemperance, so that those who hear or see them believe them with careless ease and fall the more quickly, since they do not know how to turn aside or beware of what harms, since wickedness is heavier and more harmful when shadowed by a covering. So we must beware of those who spread the tentacles and arms of their fraud far and wide or put on a many-shaped appearance. For they are octopuses, having many coils and the traces of crafty wits, by which they may ensnare whatever has fallen onto the rocks of their fraud.

And what tricks the crab too contrives for the sake of food! For it too delights in the oyster and seeks a feast of its flesh. But since … to contrive the food, because the hunt is both difficult and dangerous (difficult, because the food inside is enclosed by stronger shells; for nature, the interpreter of the imperial command, has fortified the softness of the flesh as with walls, nourishing and cherishing it in a hollow fold in the middle of the shells and spreading it as in a valley; and so all the attempts of the crab are vain, because it can open the closed oyster by no force; and dangerous, if the oyster shuts in its claw), it takes refuge in arguments and contrives snares by a new fraud. So, since all kinds are soothed by pleasure, it watches whether at some time the oyster, in remote places, now away from everything and facing the rays of the sun, opens that double-leaved shell of its own and unbars the bolts of its shells, so as to take some pleasure for its insides in the free air; and then, secretly inserting a pebble, it prevents the oyster from closing, and so, finding the bolts open, it safely inserts its claws and feeds on the inner organs.

There are, then, men who, in the manner of the crab, creep into the practice of cheating others and prop up the weakness of their own strength by a kind of cunning, weave a trick against a brother and feed on another's misery. But you, be content with your own, and do not feed on another's losses. Simplicity of innocence is good food. Content with its own goods, it does not know how to lay snares for others' goods, nor is it set on fire by the torches of greed; for to it every gain is a loss toward virtue and a burning toward desire. And so poverty with truth is blessed, if it knows its own goods, and is to be preferred to all treasures, because a little given with the fear of God is better than great treasures without fear. For how much is it that feeds a man? Or if you seek what may also abound for others as a kindness, that too is not much; for “better is hospitality with herbs, with grace, than the preparation of fatted calves with discord.” Let us use our wit, then, to seek grace and guard salvation, not to cheat another. We may use the examples of the sea for the progress of our own salvation, not for the danger of another's.

The sea urchin, a tiny animal, cheap and despised (I mean the marine one), is often the sign of a coming storm, or a herald of fair weather to sailors. Indeed, when it senses beforehand a gale of winds, it seizes a sturdy pebble and carries it like ballast and drags it like an anchor, so as not to be dashed about and thrown down. So it does not balance itself by its own strength, but steadies and steers itself by another weight. From this sign sailors take as it were the signal of coming disturbance and rouse themselves, lest an unforeseen whirlwind find them unprepared. What mathematician, what astrologer or Chaldaean can so understand the courses of the stars, the motions and signs of heaven? By what wit has it gathered this, from what teacher has it learned it? Who was its interpreter of so great an omen? Men see the confusion of the air and are often deceived, because it often scatters without a storm; the urchin is not deceived, the urchin's own signs never escape it.

From where does so small an animal have such knowledge that it foretells the future? The more there is nothing in it by which it could have such …, believe that by the goodness of the Lord of all things it too has received this foreknowledge. For if God so clothes the grass that we wonder at it; if he feeds the birds; if he has prepared food for each, for the raven (for its young cry to the Lord); if he gave women skill in weaving; if he did not leave the spider, which so finely and skilfully hangs its loose nets in doorways, without wisdom; if he himself gave strength to the horse and loosed fear from its neck, so that it exults in the plain and, meeting kings …, smells the battle from afar and is roused by the sound of the trumpet; if he has filled these many irrational things, and other senseless ones like the grass, like the lilies, with the ordering of his wisdom: why do we doubt that he has also conferred on the urchin the grace of this foreknowledge? For he has left nothing unexamined, nothing overlooked. He who feeds all sees all; he who made all things in wisdom fills all things with wisdom, as it is written. And so, if he has not passed over the urchin as lacking his visitation, if he considers it and informs it by signs of the future, does he not consider yours? Yes, he certainly considers them, as his divine Wisdom testifies, saying: “If he regards the birds, if he feeds them, are you not of more value than they? For if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is today and tomorrow is cast into the fire, how much more you, O you of little faith?”

Or do we think that this grace too remains to fish without some endowment of nature, that each kind of fish has dwellings prescribed for it, which no one of its kind leaves and no stranger invades? What geometer divided their dwellings for them, never to be broken in any times? We have heard of a geometer, but we have never heard of a sea-measurer; and yet fish know their measure, not prescribed by city walls and gates, not limited by the buildings of houses or the boundaries of fields, but the measure of what is fitting, so that as much is enough for each as abounds for use, not as much as some immoderate greed claims for itself. It is a kind of law of nature to seek only as much as suffices for living, and to reckon the size of one's patrimony by the measure of nourishment. This kind of fish is fed and born in that bay of the sea, that one in another. Indeed you will not find the kinds of fish mixed, but what abounds here is lacking elsewhere in turn. That bay of the sea feeds mullets, that one sea bass, that one …, another crayfish. There is no free power of wandering, and yet the supply is not shut in by mountains nor the passage blocked by rivers flowing between, but a habit impressed by nature keeps each one within the bounds of its homeland, as it were, and makes going beyond the inhabitants suspect.

But with us the view is far different: to change homes by exile, to be held by distaste for our neighbours, to court the favour of newcomers, to move the everlasting boundaries which our fathers set, to join field to field, house to house. The earth is not enough for men; the seas too are built over; again, according to each one's whim, the land is cut, the sea poured in, so that they may make islands and possess straits. They claim stretches of sea for themselves by right of ownership and speak of the rights over fish as subject to them like slaves in the condition of servitude. “This bay of the sea,” he says, “is mine, that one another's”: the powerful divide the elements among themselves. For them oysters are reared in the waves, for them fish are shut up in ponds. The sea is not enough for luxury unless they have storehouses of oysters. So they count their ages and build receptacles for fish, lest the seas cannot fill a banquet from the sea. For with what ears do they hear the name of neighbour, with what eyes do they look at their possessions! How they devise day and night to take something from those nearest them! “Will you alone dwell upon the earth?” cries the prophet. The Lord knows these things and reserves them for vengeance.

How foreign to fish is the plunder of greed! They seize their natural secret places and know the sea beyond the bounds of the world, which no islands interrupt, nor does any land lie between or lie beyond. There, then, where the widely spread sea shuts off all use of looking and the daring of sailing for profit, the whales are said to hide themselves, those immense kinds of fish, with bodies equal to mountains, as those who were able to see them have handed down to us. There they spend a quiet life, separated from the islands and set apart from all contact with seaside cities; they have their regions and dwellings distributed. They remain in them without offending the boundary of their neighbours, and they do not seek changes of place by wandering passage, but love them as their native soil and think it sweet to linger in them. They chose these so that they could spend a solitary life far from the interference of witnesses.

There are, however, some kinds of fish that change places not from fickleness of temper but from the necessity of cherishing their offspring. Providing for it at a fitting and lawful time, they come together from very many places and different bays of the sea as if by common counsel, and in a united column make for the seas of the north and strive toward that sea for the bringing forth of young by a kind of law of nature. You would say, if you saw them going up, that it was some current; so they rush forward and cut through the waves, streaming with violent force through the Propontis into the Euxine. Who announces these places to the fish and prescribes the times? Who gave them the arrangement of their journey, the order of their company, the goals and times of their return? Men, of course, have an emperor whose command is awaited; the order goes forth, edicts are posted for the provincials to assemble, letters are sent to the military tribunes, the day is fixed; and many cannot arrive on the appointed days. What emperor gave the fish their command, what teacher gave them this discipline, what surveyors lay out the routes, what leaders direct the march, so that no one fails to arrive? But I recognize who that emperor is, who by divine ordinance pours his command into the senses of all, who silently gives to dumb animals the order of natural discipline, who not only penetrates great things but pours himself through all the smallest. The fish obeys the divine law, and men contradict it. The fish solemnly hears the heavenly commands, and men make void the precepts of God. Or does it seem contemptible to you because it is dumb and without reason? But see that you do not begin to be more contemptible to yourself if you are found more irrational than it. And what is more rational than this passage of the fish, whose reason they do not explain in words but speak in deeds? For they go in the summer season to the strait of the Pontus, because this bay is sweeter than the rest of the sea. For the sun does not linger as long on its waves as on the others, and that is the reason it does not drain all the water that is sweet and drinkable. And who does not know that even sea creatures often delight in fresh waters? Indeed, while they follow the rivers and go upstream, fish of a different kind are often caught in the sea. Since, then, this reason makes the Pontus more pleasing to them, or because the regular blowing of the north wind there tempers the heat, they judge it more suitable than the others for breeding and bringing forth their young and rearing them all, since tender offspring can hardly bear the toil of a strange region, while there the soft mildness of the air cherishes them. So, their task done, they all return together in the same column to where they came from.

Let us consider what reason this is. The bay of the Pontus is exposed to the north wind and the most violent blasts of the other winds, so that if a severe storm rages there, tempests are stirred up, so that the sand is turned up from the depths; the sandy wave is a sign of this, which, rising higher by the motion of the winds, and then heavier by its weight, is held without doubt to be intolerable not only to sailors but also to the sea creatures themselves. Add that, since very many and very great rivers mingle with the Pontus, the bay itself is colder in the winter season and stiffens all the torrents. So the fish, like judges of the streams, seize in summer the mildness of the northern breeze there, and having enjoyed its pleasantness, strive in turn to avoid the harshness of winter, and, fleeing the savagery of the northern region, betake themselves to the other bays, in which either the calm of the winds is softer or the mildness of the sun is wont to be spring-like. The fish, then, knows the time of bringing forth, which the wisdom of Solomon spoke of as a great mystery; it knows the time of going and returning, the time of enjoyment and of being tossed, and it knows it so that it cannot be deceived, because it uses not the estimate of reason and the argument of disputation but the inspiration of nature, which is the true teacher of piety. Indeed, all living creatures have times for reserving and for giving birth; man alone has them undistinguished and confused. The other kinds seek the mildness of the season; women alone pour out their offspring without regard to season, for a wandering and intemperate lust for generating produces a wandering age of giving birth. The fish crosses so far there so as to seek some advantage for its kind; we too cross the wide seas; but how much more honourable is what is undertaken for love of succession than for greed of money! In short, for them the crossing is reckoned to devotion, for us to gain. They bring back offspring, worth all merchandise; we, in wretched desire for profit, bring back merchandise far from equal to the risk run. So they seek their homeland again, we abandon ours; they gain an increase of their kind by swimming, we lose ours by sailing.

Who then would deny that a cleverness and power of this kind has been poured into them by God, when he sees these fish arrange with lively wit so solemn a pilgrimage to the north for the fulfilment of fruitfulness, and others take on such strength in a small body that they stop the greatest ships running here with full sails in the midst of the waves? So the little fish echeneis is recorded to stop a huge ship with such ease that you would see it stick to the sea as if rooted and not be moved; for it keeps it unmoved for some time. Or do you think that such power could be supplied to it too without the gift of the creator? What shall I say of the swordfish, or the sawfish, or the dogfish, or the whales, or the hammerhead sharks, or even the sting of the stingray, and that of a dead one? For as, if anyone treads on the bones of a viper, while they are fresh, it is said to harm more seriously than poison and the wound to spread incurably, so the stingray, dead, is said to bring more danger with its sting than alive. The sea hare too, a timid animal on land, in the sea is formidable, bringing a swift corruption which cannot easily be cured. For your creator willed that you should not be quite safe from those who lie in wait even in the sea, so that, because of the few things that harm, placed as on watch, you should always hope for the protection of salvation from your Lord through the arms of faith and the shield of devotion.

Let us come to the Atlantic Sea. How huge are the sea monsters there, of infinite size, which, if ever they swim on the surface of the waves, you would think were islands walking, very high mountains rising with their peaks to heaven! These are said to be seen not on beaches or shores but in the depth of the Atlantic Sea, so that at the sight of them sailors are called back from the presumption of sailing in those places and do not dare to approach the secrets of the elements without the utmost terror of death.

But now let us rise up ourselves from the depth of the sea, and let our discourse emerge somewhat and lift itself to higher things. Only these things, familiar to many and full of grace: how water is turned into the solidity of salt, so that it is often cut with iron, which is no wonder in the British salts, which shine with the snowy whiteness of the same metal in the appearance of hard marble, healthful as food for the body and very pleasing to drink; how coral too, a not unlovely stone, is a plant in the sea, but if it is transferred to the air is solidified with the firmness of stone; whence nature has set in oysters the most precious pearl, how the water of the sea hardens it in such soft flesh. Things that are hard to find among kings lie commonly on the shores as at noon and are gathered on rough rocks and crags. Water also nourishes a golden fleece, and the shores produce wool in the appearance of the metal mentioned, whose colour no one of those who dye fleeces with various dyes has yet been able to imitate. So human industry does not know how to fulfil the grace of sea nature. We know with what care even the less precious fleeces of sheep are tended; though they be the best, yet no dye is born in them. Here is a natural colour, which no dye has yet equalled. This fleece too belongs to a fish. And the murex shells themselves, which give the royal insignia, are of the sea.

And what grace of meadows or pleasantness of gardens can equal the picture of the blue sea? Though flowers shine in the meadows, wool too shines with the brilliance of gold …; and those soon wither, these last long. … in gardens shine from afar, sails on ships; here fragrance breathes, there wind. What use is there in a leaf? How much commerce in ships! Lilies bring sweetness to the nostrils, sails bring salvation to men. Add the leaping fish and the playing dolphins, add the waves sounding with a hoarse murmur, add the ships running to shore or going out from the shores. And when the four-horse chariots are let out of the starting gates, with what zeal and love of the spectators is the contest waged! Yet the horse runs in vain, the ships do not: it in vain, because it is empty, these to some purpose, as being full of grain. What is more pleasing to sing than ships, which are driven not by the whip but by the breath of the winds, where no one is an opponent but all are supporters, where no one who arrives is defeated, but all the sterns that have reached port are crowned, where the palm is the reward of safety, victory the price of return? For how great is the difference between straight courses and circling ones! These go on and on, those …. Add the shores woven with oars, for which the banner of departure is a breeze from heaven. So the charioteers bring back empty applause, these pay their vows as men saved.

What shall I say worthily of Jonah, whom the sea monster received to life and returned to the grace of prophesying? The water corrected the one whom earthly things had turned aside; he sang psalms in the belly of the monster who mourned on land; and so that the redemption of both elements may not be passed over, the salvation of the lands went before in the sea, because the sign of the Son of Man is a sign to be feared. As he was in the belly of the monster, so Jesus was in the heart of the earth. In both is a remedy; yet the greater example of devotion is in the sea, since fish received the one whom men rejected, and fish preserved the one … whom men crucified. Peter too wavers on the sea but does not fall, and having confessed on the waves, yet he denied on land. So there he is grasped by the hand as one devoted, here, as one forgetful, he is reproved by a censuring look. But now let us ask the Lord that our discourse, like Jonah, may be cast out onto the land, lest it toss any longer on the deep. And well too has the gourd come forth to shade us from our evils. But it too, withered as the sun rose, warns us to rest, lest on land we begin to boil over in our wit and words fail us. Certainly more remission of sins has been given to us in the waters than to the Ninevites.

And when he had been silent a little while, he began his discourse again and said: The necessary discussion of the nature of birds had escaped us, dearly beloved brothers, and our discourse of this kind had flown away from us with the birds themselves. For it happens by a kind of nature that those who look at something or wish to express it in speech take on the quality of what they are looking at or speaking of, so that with the slower ones we are roused and with the swift we are carried along by a swift gaze, and we use a pen either slower or swift. So, while I was taking care that the things sunk in the sea should not pass by and the things covered by the waters should not escape me, every winged creature escaped me, because, while bent over I was searching the lowest depths of the waters, I did not look back at the flights in the air, nor did even the shadow of a swift wing, which could have shone in the waters, draw me away. But when I thought the whole task done and believed myself finished and judged the fifth day complete, the birds came to my mind, which, when they go to roost, as if glad that their task is done, usually soothe the sky with song. This they usually renew solemnly at the rising and setting of the day, so as to return to their creator the praises of the night or the day that is past or about to begin. I had lost, then, a great incentive for rousing our devotion. For who that has the sense of a man would not blush to end the day without the celebration of psalms, when even the tiniest birds attend the risings of days and nights with solemn devotion and sweet song?

Let our winged discourse return to us, then, which had almost slipped from our eyes and, like the eagle seeking the heights, had hidden its weight in the clouds; but while we lifted our eyes, washed with water, from the deep to heaven, observing the air empty of flights, we thought it must be called back to the needs of the pen. You will be the judges, you who are fowlers of the word, whether it flies away … or has usefully fallen back into your nets. Nor do I fear that weariness may creep upon us in searching out flights, since it did not creep upon us in probing the depths, or that any of us may fall asleep in the discussion, when he can be roused by the songs of the birds. But surely one who has stayed awake among the dumb fish, I do not doubt, cannot feel sleep among the singing birds, when he is called to wakefulness by such a grace. Nor let it be thought cheap, because it could have been passed over, since it is the third part of the creation among living things. For there is no doubt that there are three kinds of living creatures: those of land, of air, and of water. Indeed it is written thus: “Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls after their kind, and birds flying above the earth along the firmament of heaven after their kind.”

We are called back to what we passed, like forgetful travellers who, having passed by without thought, retrace their steps and take on a great deal of labour of the road repeated because of their carelessness. Yet there is also a good traveller, who makes up the loss of going back by the quick speed of the rest of the journey, as I think I must do, especially since the discourse is about birds, which usually dazzle men's eyes with their swift flight. For why should we linger over those in whom speed usually pleases? Let our discourse, then, out of the way and unusual in this kind of writing, resound and echo with singing birds.

But where shall I find swan songs, which delight even under the heavy terror of imminent death? Where shall I find those natural melodies of song, by which even the marshes, made tuneful, give forth songs most sweet in their charm? Where shall I find the voices of the parrot and the sweetness of the blackbirds? Would that the nightingale sang here, to rouse the sleeper from sleep; for that bird usually signals the rising of the day and brings a more abundant joy at dawn. Yet if their sweetness is lacking, there are the moaning turtledoves and the hoarse doves, and the crow too calls the rain with full voice. So, in a rustic style, as we can, let us follow up the knowledge that country people have taught us.

And since we have spoken of the creeping things of the waters, it is hard for our discourse to rise suddenly to the birds of heaven. So let us speak first of those birds that frequent the waters of the sea and the rivers, with which we can emerge. Let us begin our discourse, then, with the halcyon. It is a sea bird that usually brings forth its young on the shores, laying its eggs in the sand at about midwinter. For it has assigned that time to cherishing its young, when the sea rises most and is dashed more violently against the shores, so that the grace of this bird may shine out the more through the solemn occurrence of a sudden calm. For when the sea has been stormy, as soon as the eggs are laid it suddenly grows gentle, and all the gales of winds drop, and the blasts of breezes are still, and the sea stands calm with the winds, while the halcyon cherishes her eggs. The brooding lasts seven days; when they have passed she brings out her chicks and completes her young. At once she adds another seven days, in which to nourish her offspring until they begin to grow up. Nor should you wonder at so short a time of nourishing, since the completion of the young takes so few days. So great a grace, divinely granted, does the little bird have that sailors look to these fourteen days with confidence of fair weather, and call them halcyon days, in which they dread no motion of a stormy tempest. “Are you not of more value than sparrows?” says the Lord.

If, then, out of regard for a tiny bird, the sea that has risen … and suddenly, amid the heavy gales and tempests of winds of harsh winter, tranquillity poured over all the elements wipes the clouds from the sky and calms the waves, you know how much you ought to presume, O man, made in the image of God, if only you imitate the faith of this little bird with zeal of devotion. When she sees storms rising and winds raging amid the savagery of winter, she is not called back or turned aside, but driven on. Indeed she places her eggs on the shore, where the sand still wet from the ebbing wave may receive them, and she does not fear the rising waves, which she sees murmur and glide up.

And lest you think that she seems to have contempt for the eggs, at once, when she has laid the eggs, she builds a nest and cherishes her young with her body, and does not fear for her own safety from the washing of the shore, but, secure in the grace of God, entrusts herself to the winds and the waves. This is not enough. She adds as many other days for nourishing, and does not fear that the calm of the faithless sea will be broken in so many days, and tests her trust, now founded by the solemn custom of nature. She does not hide her tender young in any hiding places or under roofs, nor shut them in caves, but entrusts them to the bare and appointed ground; she does not defend them from the cold, but thinks they will be safer by the divine cherishing, the more she despises other things. Which of us does not cover our little ones with clothes, hide them under roofs, shut them in the enclosures of bedrooms, so carefully block the windows on all sides that no breeze can penetrate even lightly? Justly, those whom we clothe and cherish so anxiously we strip of the covering of heavenly kindness; but those whom she casts out naked, he clothes with divine clothing.

Nor will I pass you by, divers, to whom the name has stuck from your constant diving. How, always diving, you gather the signs of the breezes, and, foreseeing a coming storm, fly back quickly from mid-sea and withdraw with a cry to the safety of the shores! How you too, coots, who delight in the depths of the sea, fleeing the commotion of the sea which you foresee, play in the shallows! The heron itself, which usually keeps to the marshes, leaving its familiar haunts and fearing the rains, flies above the clouds so as not to feel the storms of the clouds. Let us consider the different birds of the sea, how, when a motion of the winds threatens, they betake themselves to safer pools, sweeter to them at that time, and search out in a hidden fold of the land the food known to them.

And who would not marvel at the night watches of the geese, who attest their vigils by the persistence of their cackling? Indeed by it they even saved the Roman Capitol from the Gallic enemy. Rightly you owe them, Rome, that you reign. Your gods were sleeping, and the geese were awake. That is why on those days you sacrifice to the goose and not to Jupiter; for your gods give way to the geese, by whom they know they were defended, lest they too should be captured by the enemy.

Fittingly, after the description of fish, our discourse has passed to those birds that are accustomed to the waters, because they too delight in the habit and gift of swimming. So there seems to be a first kinship of these birds with fish, since a certain common sharing in swimming seems to belong to both kinds. There is a second kinship of birds and fish in that the habit of flying is a form of swimming. For as the fish cuts the water by swimming, so the bird cuts the air by swift flight. And both kinds alike have a tail and the oarage of wings, so that fish lift themselves forward with a rein, as it were, and go further, and with the rudder of the tail either turn easily wherever they wish or direct their way straight ahead with a kind of rush. Birds too swim through the air in their flights as through waters, and stretch out their arms, as it were, and with the tail either raise themselves upward or plunge downward. So, since in some the same habit and form exist, the birth of both kinds came forth from the waters by divine command. For God said: “Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls after their kind, and birds flying along the firmament of heaven after their kind.” Not without reason, then, since both kinds are produced from the waters, the property of swimming belongs to both.

Indeed, while the slippery snake … serpents (for the name serpent was given because they cannot walk but creep), and dragons too, in the same way as most fish, are without feet, no kind of bird lacks the service of feet, because all get their food from the land. And so they are supported by the gift of feet, because they need such service to seek food. So some birds are armed with talons for seizing, like hawks and eagles, which practise the plunder of hunting; others use a fitting habit and service either for walking or for getting their food.

One name, “birds,” but different kinds: who could grasp them in memory or knowledge? There are, then, birds that eat flesh. So they have sharp talons, a curved and pointed beak, swift flight, since they live by seizing, so that they can easily catch the prey they pursue and quickly disembowel it with beak or talons. There are also birds that feed on seed they find, others on varied and chance food. There is also a difference in companionship, whose grace those lack that are bent on plunder. For because of their greed for preying, or because of the snares they lay, they do not agree even among themselves, and so they avoid company (for greed flees the partnership of many), and then a gathering of many would easily betray itself. For these birds, then, there is no companionship except that of the mated pair. This is the way of life of eagles and hawks; but on the contrary doves, cranes, starlings, ravens and crows, and thrushes too delight very much in fellowship.

Some kinds of birds are native, which always remain in their places; others are visitors, which go off to other regions and return when the winter is over. There are others that return in winter and travel away from us in summer, either because some betake themselves in wintertime to warmer places, or because many in turn spend the summer in these places, which they know to be pleasanter. Thrushes, for instance, come back at the end of autumn, at the border of winter, as if summer were over. Against them we contrive snares with inhospitable cruelty, and in various ways we strive now to deceive them with a treacherous perch, now to trick them with a whistle, now to catch them with nooses. The return of the stork raises the banner of spring. Cranes, because they seek the heights, often love to travel.

Some birds submit to the hand, become used to the table, and are soothed by touch; others are afraid. Some delight in the same dwellings as men, others love a secret life in the wilderness, making up for the difficulty of seeking their food by the love of freedom. Some only utter cries, others delight with a tuneful and sweet melody. Some by nature, others by training, utter the differences of various voices, so that you would think a man had spoken when a bird has spoken. How sweet the voice of the blackbird, how distinct that of the parrot! There are also some simple ones like doves, others cunning like partridges; the cock is boastful, the peacock showy. There are also differences of life and work in birds, so that some love to take counsel in common and, joining forces, look after a kind of commonwealth and live as under a king, while each of the others looks out for itself, refuses rule, and, if caught, wishes to escape an unworthy servitude.

Let us begin, then, with those that have given themselves to our use as a model. For in them there is a kind of natural polity and military service; in us it is forced and servile. How, with unbidden and voluntary practice, cranes keep anxious watch at night! You may see sentries posted, and while the others of their kind rest, some go round and scout, lest snares be attempted from any side, and with untiring vigour provide protection. Then, when the time of the watch is completed, the one that has done her duty settles herself to sleep, giving a cry first, so as to wake the sleeper to whom she is to hand over her turn of duty. And that one willingly takes up her lot, not, as is our habit, unwilling and lazier in giving up sleep, but shakes herself briskly from her bed, takes her turn, and repays the favour she received with equal care and duty. So there is no desertion, because the devotion is natural; so the guard is safe, because the will is free.

They keep this order in flying too, and by this arrangement lighten all their labour, taking turns in the duty of leading. For one goes before the others for a time appointed to it and runs ahead as it were before the standards; then it turns aside and yields the lot of leading the column to the one following. What is more beautiful than this, that both the labour and the honour are common to all, and power is not claimed by a few but passed on to all by a kind of voluntary lot?

This is the office of the ancient commonwealth and the image of a free city. So at the beginning men had begun to practise the polity received from nature after the example of the birds, so that labour was common, dignity common; each learned to share cares by turns, to divide obedience and command; no one was without a share of honour, no one exempt from labour. This was the most beautiful state of things, and no one grew insolent from perpetual power or was broken by long servitude, because promotion was granted without envy, by the order of service and the measure of time, and the lot that shared the guard seemed more tolerable. No one dared to oppress another with servitude, since he would have to bear in turn the disdain of the one who was to succeed to the honour; no labour was heavy, since the dignity to follow would relieve it. But after the lust of domination began to claim powers once gained and to be unwilling to lay aside those taken up; after military service began to be not a common right but a servitude; after there was no order in taking up power but ambition, the very performance of labour began to be borne more hardly, and what is not voluntary soon gives way to carelessness. How unwillingly men undertake the duties of watches, how grudgingly each one in camp, allotted his danger, stands guard over what is entrusted to him by royal command! A penalty for sloth is set; and yet often carelessness creeps in and the watches are not kept. For necessity, which imposes obedience on the unwilling, usually brings disgust; nothing is so easy that it is not hard when you do it unwillingly. So unceasing labour turns away affection, and continuous and long-lasting power breeds insolence. Which man would you find who would lay down command of his own accord and give up the insignia of his leadership and willingly become last instead of first? We, however, often strive not only for the first place but even for the middle, and claim the first couches at a banquet, and if it is once granted, we want it to be perpetual. So among cranes there is equanimity in labours and humility in power. They are reminded to perform their turns of watch; they are not reminded to give up power, because there the natural rest of sleep must be interrupted, here the grace of voluntary diligence is shown.

They say that storks set out in a gathered column if they think they must go anywhere, and many are carried together to places in the east and move all at once as at a military password. You would think an army was marching with its standards: so all keep the order of travelling, accompanying, and going before. Crows lead and direct them and escort them as with a kind of bodyguard, so much so that they are believed to bring help to them as they fight against hostile birds and to take up others' wars at their own risk. A sign of this is that none are found remaining in those places after any interval of time, and that, returning with wounds, they tell with a clear voice of blood and other signs that they have undergone the clash of heavy battles. Who, then, imposed on them a penalty for desertion, who prescribed fearful punishments for abandoning military service, that none tries to withdraw from the hospitable squadrons, but all eagerly perform the service and duty of escort?

Let men learn to keep the laws of hospitality and know from the birds what reverence is to be shown to guests and what services rendered, since crows do not usually refuse them even their own dangers. We shut our doors to those to whom birds give even their lives; those whom they escort in sharing danger, we keep from the hospitality of our roof; and those whose wars they take up, we often make war on. I lie if this was not the cause of punishment for the Sodomites, and if the madness of Egypt, while it tried to make war on a guest nation, did not pay the penalty of inhospitality by the shipwreck of a faithless people.

Consider how the kindness of this bird does not fall short of the devotion and prudence of rational beings, a kindness which no one of us could imitate even after the example. For when the father's limbs, through long old age, have been stripped of the covering of feathers and the oarage of wings, the offspring, standing round, cherish them with their own feathers and (what shall I say?) feed him with food brought by all, when they also repair the losses of nature, so that, lifting the old one on this side and that with the support of their wings, they train him to fly and call back to their former use the limbs of their devoted father, now unaccustomed. Which of us would not disdain to raise up a sick father? Who would put a weary old man on his shoulders, a thing held scarcely credible even in history? Who, though devoted, would not hand this service over to slaves? But for birds what is full of devotion is not heavy, what is paid as nature's debt is not burdensome. Birds do not refuse to feed a father, which many men have refused even when it was prescribed as a necessity under fear of penalties. Not a written but an inborn law binds birds; no precepts summon birds to this duty, but the offices of natural grace. Birds do not blush to carry the limbs of a revered old man. For it is the conveyance of devotion, which has become so widely known by frequent testimony that it receives the reward of a fitting recompense; for by the usage of the Romans it is called the dutiful bird, and what is said to have been granted scarcely to one emperor by decree of the senate these birds have earned in common. These birds, then, have decrees of the fathers as a token of their kindness; for dutiful sons ought first to be proclaimed by the judgment of fathers. They also have the votes of all; for the return of benefits is named antipelargōsis, since the stork is called pelargos. So the virtue took its name from them, since the repaying of gratitude is named by the word for stork.

We have an example of the devotion of bird offspring toward the honour of their parents; let us now take a great proof of a mother's diligence toward her children. The swallow is tiny in body but outstanding in devoted affection; though in need of everything, she builds nests more precious than gold, because she builds wisely; for a nest of wisdom is better than gold. For what is wiser than both to enjoy the wandering freedom of flying and to entrust her little ones and her house to the dwellings of men, where no one attacks her young? For this too is beautiful, that from their first birth she accustoms her chicks to the habit of human company and makes them safer from the snares of enemies. Then this is remarkable, with what grace she builds herself houses without any helper, as if skilled in the art. For she gathers straws in her beak and smears them with mud so as to glue them together. But since she cannot carry the mud with her feet, she dips the tips of her feathers in water, so that the dust easily sticks to them and becomes mud, with which she gradually gathers the straws or small twigs and makes them stick. With this kind of work she builds the structure of the whole nest, so that her first young move about inside their house as on the floor of a pavement without harm, and no one thrusts a foot through the chinks of the weaving, nor does cold creep in on the tender ones.

But this office of industry is common to many birds; that one, however, is unique, in which there is a remarkable care of devotion and a mark of prudent understanding and knowledge, and also a kind of skill in the art of medicine: if her chicks' eyes have been gouged out by blindness or pierced, she has a kind of healing by which their sight, its use cut off, can be restored. Let no one, then, complain of want because he has left his own house empty of money. The swallow is first, who, empty of money, abounds in industry; she builds and does not spend, raises a roof and takes nothing from her neighbour, nor is she driven by need and poverty to harm another, nor does she despair in the grave weakness of her children. But poverty affects us and the necessity of want troubles us, and need drives many to shameful deeds and impels them to crime; from love of gain too we turn our wit to frauds, adapt our affection, and in the gravest sufferings lay down our hope, and, broken in spirit, …, improvident and inert we lie down, when hope in the divine mercy is all the greater when human defences have failed.

Let men learn to love their children from the habit and devotion of crows, which follow their children with diligent company even in … and, anxious lest the tender ones fail, supply them with food and do not leave off the duties of nourishing for a very long time. But women of the human kind quickly wean even those they love, or, if they are richer, disdain to suckle them; the poorer ones cast away their little ones and expose them, and when discovered disown them. The rich themselves, too, lest their patrimony be divided among more, destroy their offspring in the womb, and with parricidal potions extinguish the pledges of their own belly in the very womb of birth, and life is taken away before it is given. Who taught children to be disinherited except man? Who devised such pitiless laws of fathers? Who made brothers unequal amid the brotherly partnership of nature? The sons of one rich man are cut off by different lots. One is flooded with the assignments of the whole paternal estate; another bewails the drained and poor portion of his father's rich inheritance. Did nature divide the merits of sons? The midwife … equally to all, so that they may have the substance of being born and living. Let her teach you not to distinguish by patrimony those whom you have made equal by the title of brotherhood. For to those to whom you gave in common that they were born, you ought not to begrudge that they have in common that to which nature appointed them.

Hawks are said to show a harsh unkindness toward their own young in that, when they notice them trying the first beginnings of flight, they throw them out of their nests and drive them out at once, and if they linger, push them with their feathers and hurl them down, beat them with their wings, and force them to dare what they fear, and afterward give them no gift of nourishment. Yet what wonder if those accustomed to seize disdain to feed? Let us consider that they were born for this, that fear may exercise even the birds in singing, lest they relax their cares at random, but foresee dangers to be avoided from the plunderers. Then, since the business of preying has grown into them by a kind of nature, they seem rather to train their chicks from tender age for prey than to disown them out of thrift in feeding. They beware lest they grow sluggish at a tender age, lest they be loosened by delights, lest they wither in idleness, lest they learn to wait for food rather than seek it, lest they lay aside the vigour of their nature. They stop the work of feeding so as to force them to dare the practice of seizing.

The eagle too is spoken of in much talk as disowning its young, not both but one of two chicks. Some have thought this happens from distaste for double feeding. But I do not think this should easily be believed, especially since Moses gave this bird such testimony of devotion to its young as to say: “As an eagle protects its nest and is confident over its young, it spread out its wings and took them and received them on its shoulders. The Lord alone led them.” How then does it spread out its wings if it kills one? So I think it becomes harsh not from stinginess in feeding but from weighing in judgment. For it is said always to test those it has begotten, lest the deformity of a degenerate offspring tarnish the kind of royal eminence of its race among all birds. So it is asserted that it exposes its chicks to the rays of the sun and holds the little ones suspended in mid-air in its talons. And if any … the gaze of its eyes, unflinching at the reflected light of the sun, with unharmed vigour of looking, it is approved, because it has shown the truth of its nature by the steadiness of a pure gaze; but one that has its eyes dazzled by the sun's ray is rejected as degenerate and unworthy of so great a parent, nor is it thought worthy of rearing that was unworthy of acceptance. So it condemns it not from harshness of nature but by the integrity of its judgment, and does not disown it as its own but refuses it as a stranger's.

Yet the kindness of a common bird excuses this … of the royal bird, as some report. For the bird whose name is fulica, called phēnē in Greek, joins that eaglet, whether taken up or disowned or not recognized, to its own brood, and mixing it with its own, feeds and nourishes it with the same duty of motherly care and equal supply of food as its own young. So the phēnē nourishes strangers' young, while we cast out our own with pitiless cruelty. The eagle, if it casts one out, does not cast it out as its own but does not recognize it as degenerate; we, what is worse, disown those whom we recognize as our own.

But let us come to the turtledove, which the law of God chose as the gift of a chaste offering. Indeed, when the Lord was circumcised, it was offered, because it is written in the law of the Lord that they should give as an offering a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons. For this is the true sacrifice of Christ: chastity of body and grace of spirit. Chastity is referred to the turtledove, grace to the dove. For it is said that the turtledove, when she has been widowed by the loss of her mate, is weary of the marriage chamber and of the very name of marriage, since her first love deceived her by death, since he was both unfaithful to permanence and bitter to love, having produced more grief by death than sweetness by love. So she refuses to repeat the union, and does not dissolve the rights of modesty or the covenant with her deceased husband; for him alone she keeps her love, for him she keeps the name of wife. Learn, women, how great is the grace of widowhood, which is proclaimed even in birds.

Who then gave these laws to the turtledove? If I look for a man, I do not find one. For no man has dared, since not even Paul dared to prescribe laws for keeping widowhood. Indeed he says: “I want, then, the younger women to marry, bear children, be mistresses of households, give no occasion to the adversary”; and elsewhere: “It is good for them if they remain so; but if they do not contain themselves, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn.” Paul desires in women what persists in turtledoves. And elsewhere he urges the younger women to marry, because our women can hardly fulfil the chastity of turtledoves. So God poured this affection into turtledoves, gave them this virtue of continence, he who alone can prescribe what all may follow. The turtledove is not inflamed by the flower of youth, is not tempted by the allurement of opportunity; the turtledove does not know how to make void her first faith, because she knows how to keep the chastity promised to the lot of marriage.

We have spoken of the widowhood of birds, and that this virtue first arose from them; now let us speak of virginity, which is asserted to exist in several birds, so that it can be found even in vultures. For vultures are said not to indulge in intercourse or to be joined by any conjugal practice or the lot of nuptial union, and so to conceive without any seed of males and to beget without union; and the young born of them go on to great age in long life, so that the course of their life is drawn out up to a hundred years, and the end of a narrow lifespan does not easily overtake them.

What do those say who are accustomed to laugh at our mysteries when they hear that a virgin gave birth, and who judge the birth of an unmarried woman, whose modesty no intercourse with a man had violated, impossible? Is what is not denied to be possible in vultures thought impossible in the Mother of God? A bird gives birth without a male and no one refutes it; and because Mary, though betrothed, gave birth, they raise a question about her modesty. Do we not notice that the Lord sent ahead many examples from nature itself, by which to prove the fittingness of the incarnation he took up and to establish its truth?

Now come, let me set out which birds seem to look after a kind of commonwealth and to spend the time of this life under laws. Here it occurs that the practice of a commonwealth is that laws are common to all and are observed with common devotion; that all are held by one bond, so that it is not lawful for one what another understands is not lawful for himself, but what is lawful is lawful for all and what is not lawful is not lawful for all; that there is also a common reverence for the fathers, by whose counsel the commonwealth is governed, a common dwelling of the city for all, a common duty of conduct; it occurs that one counsel is prescribed for all.

These things are great, but how much more excellent are they in bees, which alone among all kinds of living creatures have offspring common to all, all dwell in one home, are enclosed within the threshold of one fatherland. Labour is common to all, food common, common to all the work, common the use and the fruit, common the flight (why say more?), common to all the generation; you may find the integrity of virginal body common to all too, since they neither mingle with one another in any intercourse nor are their bodies loosened in lust nor shaken by the pains of childbirth, and suddenly they send forth a huge swarm of children, gathering their offspring with their mouths from leaves and herbs.

They appoint a king for themselves, they create peoples themselves, and though placed under a king they are free. For they hold the prerogative of the king and the affection of faithful devotion, because they love him as appointed by themselves and honour him with so great a swarm. The king is not chosen by lot, because in a lot there is chance, not judgment, and often by the irrational chance of the lot the lowest is preferred to the better; nor is he marked out by the vulgar clamour of an unskilled multitude, which does not weigh the merits of virtue or search out the profits of public advantage, but sways in the uncertainty of fickleness; nor does he sit on the royal throne by privilege of succession and birth, since one ignorant of public life could not be prudent and learned. Add the flatteries and pleasures that, ingrained in tender years, usually weaken even a keen wit, and then the instructions of eunuchs, many of whom incline the king's mind more to their own gain than to public use. But among the bees the king is formed by the clear marks of nature, so as to excel in size of body and appearance, and then in what is chief in a king, gentleness of character. For though he has a sting, he does not use it to punish. For there are laws of nature, not written in letters but impressed on character, that those who hold the greatest power should be gentler in punishing. And those that have not obeyed the king's laws punish themselves by a penitent condemnation, so that they die of the wound of their own sting. The peoples of the Persians are said to keep this even today, so that they themselves carry out on themselves the sentence of their own death as the price of what they have done. So none, not the Persians, who have the severest laws over their subjects, not the Indians, not the peoples of the Sarmatians, observe their king with such reverence of devotion as the bees, so that none dare go out of their houses or go forth to any pasture unless the king has gone out first and claimed for himself the leadership of the flight.

Their going forth is through fragrant fields, where the gardens breathe with flowers, where a brook runs through the grass, where the pleasant banks are: there the play of eager youth, there exercise in the field, there relief from cares. The work itself is sweet. From flowers, from sweet herbs, the first foundations of the camp are laid. For what else is the honeycomb but a kind of camp? Indeed the drone is kept away from these stalls of bees. What square camp can have as much art and grace as the frames of the combs have, in which tiny round cells hold one another up? What architect taught them to build hexagonal cells with the undistinguished equality of their sides, to hang thin waxen walls between the houses, to pack the honey, and to swell their storehouses, woven with flowers, with a kind of nectar? You may see them all compete in their duty: some watch in seeking food, others keep anxious guard, others look out for coming rains and watch the gathering of clouds, others shape wax from flowers, others gather with their mouths the dew poured on flowers; none, however, lays snares for others' labours and seeks a living by plunder. And would that they did not fear the snares of plunderers! Yet they have their stings, and pour poison among the honey if they are provoked, and lay down their lives in the wound in the heat of vengeance. So the moisture of the dew is poured into the middle of the camp's valleys, and little by little, in the course of time, is thickened into honey, though it was liquid at the beginning, and by the union of the wax and the fragrance of flowers begins to breathe the sweetness of honey.

Rightly Scripture praises the bee as a good worker, saying: “Go to the bee and see how she is a worker, and how honourable a work she carries on, whose labour kings and common people use for their health; for she is desired by all and renowned.” Do you hear what the prophet says? He certainly sends you to follow the example of that little bee and to imitate its work. You see how laborious, how pleasing it is. Its fruit is desired and sought by all, and is not distinguished according to difference of persons, but with impartial grace is sweet with equal sweetness to kings and common people alike. Nor is it only for pleasure, but also for health. It sweetens the throat and heals wounds, and pours medicine into inner ulcers too. So, though the bee is weak in strength, it is strong in the vigour of wisdom and the love of virtue.

Indeed they defend their king with the utmost protection and think it beautiful to die for him. While the king is safe they do not know how to change their purpose; when he is lost they abandon their faithfulness to their work, and themselves tear apart the honey, because he who held the leadership of their duty has been killed.

So, while other birds scarcely produce one brood a year, bees produce two and outweigh the rest by double fruitfulness.

Let us now consider what it means when he says: “Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls, and birds flying above the earth after their kind and along the firmament of heaven.” Why he said “above the earth” is certain, because they get their food from the earth; but how “along the firmament of heaven,” when eagles fly beyond the other birds and yet they themselves are not along the firmament of heaven? But since what we call caelum in Latin is called ouranos in Greek, and ouranos is from horasthai, that is, from seeing, because the air is transparent and purer for seeing, he spoke of the kinds of living creatures flying in the air. Nor let it trouble you that he says “along the firmament of heaven.” He did not put “firmament” here in its proper sense, but loosely, because in comparison with that ethereal body even this air, which we can grasp with our eyes, takes the place of a firmament, as being thick and denser.

Now, since we have said what the birds are, what nature or grace they have, and that only a few things out of many (for there is no time to describe them all, since they are similar and of the same …), let us nevertheless consider what difference the birds themselves have among them. For we find the crow's feet separated and divided as with distinct toes, the feet of the raven and of chickens also formed otherwise by nature, and those of birds that eat flesh hooked, as it were, and ready for prey. More elegant are those that have the use and habit of swimming: they have broad feet, with the toes joined and linked together by a kind of membrane. In this the admirable reason of nature lies open, that the former are supported by a fitting use for flying or seizing food, and the latter have suitable aids for swimming, so that they can float better on the waters and master the streams of the waters with their feet, broadened by the extension of that membrane, as with oars.

It is obvious too why the swan has a longer neck: since it is somewhat sluggish in body and cannot easily penetrate the lower parts of the waters, it stretches out its neck for prey, so that the neck, going ahead of the rest of the body as it were, may seize the food it has found and dig it out of the depth. Add this, that a sweeter and more tuneful melody is articulated through a long neck, and by longer exercise rings out far purer.

How sweet, too, is the song in the tiny throat of the cicadas, by whose songs the groves are split in midsummer, because they are more tuneful in the midday heat: the purer the air they draw in with their breath at that time, the clearer their songs resound. Nor do the bees themselves sing something unpleasant; for they have a pleasing sweetness in that hoarse murmur of their voice, which we seem first to have imitated, more slowly, in the broken sound of trumpets, a din than which nothing is thought more fitting for rousing spirits to vigour. And this grace too remains to them, that many are reported to have no lung or function and use of breathing at all, but to feed on airy breath. Indeed, if anyone pours oil over them, they are quickly killed, because with their pores blocked they cannot draw in that airy breath; and at once, if anyone pours vinegar on them, they recover immediately, because the force of the vinegar is said to open quickly by its moisture those pores which are blocked by the congealing of the oil.

And since we are speaking of winged creatures, we do not think it out of place to include what history reports of the Indian worm, or the account of those who were able to see it. This horned worm is said first to be changed into the form of a cabbage stalk and to take on the same nature, and from there by a certain progression to become a bombylius. Nor does it keep that form and shape, but seems to take on wings with loose and broader leaves. From these leaves the Seres comb those soft fleeces which the rich have claimed for their own uses. So the Lord says: “What did you go out into the desert to see? A man clothed in soft garments? Behold, those who wear soft garments are in the houses of kings.” The chameleon too is said to feign different appearances with varied colour. Hares certainly, as we have easily learned close at hand, grow white in winter and in summer return to their own colour; there is no doubt of it.

I have touched on these things so that these examples too may move us toward faith in the change which will be in the resurrection, but in such a way that we speak of that change which the apostle clearly expressed, saying: “We shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed.” And further on he says: “And the dead shall rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” For many, interpreting a kind of change and forms which they did not receive, have by no means avoided the unfitting usurpation of undue presumption.

The phoenix too, a bird, is said to live in the regions of Arabia and to draw out its long life up to five hundred years. When it notices that the end of its life is near, it makes itself a coffin of frankincense and myrrh and other fragrances, into which, when the time of its life is filled up, it enters and dies. From the moisture of its flesh a worm arises and gradually grows up, and in the course of the appointed time puts on the oarage of wings and is restored to the appearance and form of the former bird. Let this bird, then, teach us by its example to believe in the resurrection, which, without an example and without the perception of reason, itself renews for itself the tokens of resurrection. And certainly birds exist for man's sake, not man for the bird's. Let it be an example to us, then, that the author and creator of birds does not suffer his saints to perish for ever, since he who did not suffer the one bird to perish willed it to be propagated rising again from its own seed. Who, then, announces to it the day of its death, so that it makes itself a coffin and fills it with good fragrances and enters it and dies there, where the stench of death can be done away with by pleasing fragrances?

You too, O man, make yourself a coffin: stripping off the old man with his deeds, put on the new. Your coffin, your sheath, is Christ, who protects you and hides you in the evil day. Do you want to know that a coffin is a means of protection? “In my quiver,” he says, “I have protected him.” Your coffin, then, is faith; fill it with the good fragrances of your virtues, that is, of chastity, mercy, and justice, and enter wholly into the very inner chambers of faith, fragrant with the sweet odour of excellent deeds. Let the end of this life find you clothed in that faith, so that your bones may grow fat and be like a well-watered garden, whose green things quickly spring up. Know, then, the day of your death, as Paul knew it, who says: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. There is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.” So he entered his coffin like a good phoenix, which he filled with the good odour of martyrdom.

I will ask you, and you answer me: how are vultures accustomed to announce the death of men by certain signs, by what token have they been taught and instructed that, when hostile lines draw up a tearful war against each other, these birds follow in a great column and by this signify that a multitude of men will fall in war as prey for the vultures? They seem to gather this by a kind of reasoning from the appearance of human battle array.

Divine grace has reached even to the locust, which, when it has occupied the breadth of each region in a dense column, first takes holiday in a harmless dwelling and does not feed on the fruits by an inhospitable invasion unless it has received the signal of the divine command. For, as we read in Exodus, it too carries out the vengeance of heavenly offence, as the minister of a holy punishment.

The bird seleucis also devours it (for by this Greek name the bird is called), given as a remedy for the evils which the locust usually brings. To it the creator gave an insatiable nature of devouring, so that by its insatiable feeding it can put out the plague we mentioned above.

But what is this? While we draw out our discourse, see, already the night birds are flying around you, and by the very fact that they warn us to end the discourse, they put forward that mention of them too must be taken up. The various birds seek their nests again, which evening forces to yield to night, and hide themselves in their hiding places, escorting the setting of the day with tuneful song, so that it may not go away without the thanks with which all creation praises its creator.

Night too has its songs, with which it usually soothes the watches of men; the owl too has its songs. And what shall I say of the nightingale, an ever-wakeful guardian, which, while she cherishes her eggs in a kind of fold and lap of her body, comforts the sleepless labour of the long night with the sweetness of her song, so that it seems to me her chief aim is that she can quicken the eggs she cherishes no less by sweet melodies than by the warmth of her body? Imitating her, that poor but modest woman, drawing the millstone … with her arm so that her little ones may not lack the nourishment of bread, soothes the sad feeling of poverty with a night song, and though she cannot imitate the nightingale's sweetness, she imitates her in the diligence of devotion.

The owl itself, with the large grey pupils of its eyes, does not feel the gloomy horror of the night's darkness, and the darker the night has been, the more, against the habit of other birds, it makes its flights unhindered; but when the day has risen and the splendour of the sun is poured around, its sight is dulled, as if it wandered in some darkness. By this sign of itself it declares that there are some who, though they have eyes to see, are not accustomed to see, and perform the function of their sight only in the darkness. I speak of the eyes of the heart, which the wise of this world have and do not see; they discern nothing in the light, they walk in darkness, while they search out the dark things of demons and believe they see the heights of heaven, describing the world with a rod, gathering the measure of the air itself; but, straying from the faith, they are wrapped in the darkness of perpetual blindness, having close at hand the day of Christ and the light of the church and seeing nothing; they open their mouths as if knowing everything, sharp for vain things, dull for eternal ones, and in the winding of long disputation betray the blindness of their own knowledge. So, while they long to flit about in subtle speeches, like owls in the light they have vanished.

The bat, an ignoble animal, took its name from evening (uesper). It is a bird and at the same time four-footed, and it uses teeth, which you would not usually find in other birds. Like four-footed animals it bears not eggs but living young. It flies in the air in the manner of birds, but usually spreads itself out in the evening twilight. It flies not with any oarage of feathers but supported by its membrane, by which, suspended, it is carried about and kept up as by the flight of feathers. This cheap animal has this too, that they cling to one another and hang from some place in the form of a cluster of grapes, and if the last one lets go, they all fall apart. This happens by a kind of gift of love, which is hard to find among the men of this world.

The cock's crow too is sweet in the night, not only sweet but useful: like a good housemate, it wakes the sleeper, warns the anxious, and comforts the traveller, testifying to the passing of the night with its tuneful signal. When it sings, the robber leaves his ambush; at it the morning star itself is roused and rises and lights up the sky; when it sings, the frightened sailor lays aside his sorrow, and every tempest and storm, often stirred up by the evening winds, grows gentle; when it sings, the devout heart leaps up to pray and also renews the duty of reading; when it sings, finally, the very rock of the church washed away his guilt, which he had incurred by denying before the cock crowed. At its song hope returns to all, the sick man's distress is relieved, the pain of wounds is lessened, the burning of fevers is soothed, faith returns to the fallen, Jesus looks on those who waver and corrects those who stray. Indeed he looked on Peter, and at once the error departed, the denial was driven out, confession followed. That this did not happen by chance but by the Lord's decree the reading teaches. For so it is written, that Jesus said to Simon: “The cock shall not crow before you deny me three times.” Peter, brave by day, is troubled at night, and before the cock crows he falls, and falls a third time, so that you may know that he did not slip by a thoughtless outpouring of speech but was troubled also by a wavering of mind. Yet the same Peter, after the cock crowed, becomes stronger, and worthy for Christ to look upon; for the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous. He recognized that the remedy had come, after which he could no longer err, and, changed from error to virtue, he wept most bitterly, so as to wash away his error with his tears.

Look on us too, Lord Jesus, so that we too may recognize our own errors, may wash away our guilt with holy weeping, may merit the forgiveness of sins. That is why I deliberately prolonged the discourse, so that the cock might sing for us too and come to the help of those speaking, so that if any fault had crept into a word, you, O Christ, might forgive the guilt. Give me, I pray, the tears of Peter; I do not want the joy of the sinner. The Hebrews wept and were freed through the sea as the waves parted. Pharaoh rejoiced that he held the Hebrews shut in, and, plunged in the sea, he perished with his people. Judas too exulted in the reward of his betrayal, but strangled himself with the noose of his own reward. Peter wept for his error and merited to wipe out the errors of others.

But now it is time for us to end and close our discourse; it is time when it is better to be silent or to weep; it is time when the forgiveness of sins is celebrated. May that mystic cock also sing for us in the sacred rites, since Peter's cock has sung in our discourse. May Peter, who wept well for himself, weep for us, and turn the gracious face of Christ toward us. May the passion of the Lord Jesus hasten, which daily forgives our sins and works the gift of remission.

The good Lord does not want to send people away fasting, lest anyone faint on the way. If he says, “I have compassion on this crowd, because for three days they have stayed with me and have nothing to eat, and I do not want to send them away fasting, lest they faint on the way,” he for whose word Mary, intent on it, refused the preparation of the meal, how much more ought we to consider that there are not many who live on the word of God, and so refreshment of the body is desired! Certainly this “day after” of ours is more laborious than those three days.

And so, we who have played with the birds and sung with the cock, let us now sing the mysteries of the Lord, and let the eagles, renewed by the washing away of sins, gather to the body of Jesus; for now that great sea monster has given back to us the true Jonah. And let us rejoice that evening has come for us, and let the sixth day be morning.

The Sixth Day. This is the sixth day, on which the origin of the world's creation is concluded, and so too the end of our discourse is being prepared, which we took up with more difficulty than the beginnings of things. And though it has gone on for five days now with no small labour on our part, yet on this day it grows with a greater interest of cares, because in it lies both the risk of the previous days and the sum of the whole contest. For if in contests of lyre-playing or singing, and in the contests of athletes, many and very great as the games may be, the earlier days pass without any loss of the crown, while the last day holds the lot of the crown, in which there is the risk of decision, the disgrace of yielding, and the prize of victory, how much more in this great contest of wisdom, so great, not of a few but of all, on which we are dwelling: when today a kind of crown of the contest comes forward for us, a greater anxiety presses on us, lest we both pour away the labour of the previous days and incur the shame of the present one. For the condition of speaking is not the same as that of singing and wrestling: in those a slip is a game, in this a fall is death. There, if you err, it is the spectators' disgust; here the loss is the hearers' coldness.

Stand by me, then, as judges of the crown, and enter with me into this great and wonderful theatre of the whole visible creation. For if one who welcomes the arrival of guests, while he leads them around the whole circuit of a city showing all its finer works, confers no small favour, how much more ought you to receive without disdain that I lead you, as by a hand of speech, through this common homeland, and show the forms and kinds of each thing, wishing to gather from all of them how much richer a grace the creator of all has bestowed on you than on all. For you, then, this crown is set out; you I wish to crown today with your own judgment. For we do not ask, like athletes, for withering garlands, but for the green verdict of your holiness, by which you may judge that divine providence penetrates through all creatures, but that, while you share with the rest the partnership of bodily frailty, you surpass the rest in the virtue of the soul, which alone has nothing in common with the rest.

Now come, let us speak of the natures of beasts and the generation of man. For I have heard for some time now some whispering and saying: “How long are we to learn about others and not know ourselves, how long are we taught knowledge of the other animals and are ignorant of ourselves? Let him say what will profit me, so that I may know myself.” And the complaint is just; but the order must be kept which … has woven together, and at the same time because we cannot know ourselves more fully unless we first know what the nature of all animals is.

“Let the earth,” he says, “bring forth the living soul after its kind, four-footed creatures and serpents and beasts of the earth and cattle after their kind, and all creeping things after their kind. And God made the beasts of the earth and all the cattle after their kind and all the creeping things of the earth after their kind. And God saw that they were good, and God said: Let us make man.” In this place I am aware that some have referred the kinds of beasts and cattle and creeping things of the earth to this, so as to refer them to the savagery of crimes, the folly of sins, the wickedness of thoughts; but I take the simple natures of each kind.

Nor do I fear that anyone will think I should be compared to the presumption of a poor host, who out of zeal for kindness invites many and sets before them nothing but cheap and common foods, so that by the thin furnishing of a poor man's table he incurs more blame from the guests' disgust than he gains thanks from the offer of hospitality; for his friends did not reject Elisha as a bad host when he set wild herbs before them. Like empty stories is that refined and elaborate lavish banquet in which the appearance of a pheasant or turtledove is served and inside a chicken is eaten, or a chicken is brought in stuffed with oysters or mussels, or a drink is drunk that changes into other flavours by different colour and smell; sea things mixed with land things, land things with sea things alike. This is to find fault with the creator, who gave us everything for food, because he did not mix them. But these things seem sweet at first and afterward become bitter. For the more abundant luxury has been, the more ruinous is intemperance. Elisha, however, served bitter things, but afterward they became sweet. Indeed those who before thought there was death in that food afterward obtained in it the grace of sweetness and life.

Nor again do I fear that I may seem to have invited more than I can feed, and that the loaves of my words may fail you, because Elisha too, though rightly inimitable for us yet to be imitated in faith, did not consider how many loaves he had, but wished to divide what he had among all and judged that it would suffice for all. So he ordered his servant to divide ten barley loaves among the people. And the servant said: “What shall I give this before a hundred men?” And he answered: “Give, and let them eat, for thus says the Lord: They shall eat and leave over.” Your faith, then, will make the banquet of a poor tongue abound. Nor do I fear that fasts may make you hungrier, so that you go back less filled and hungry and empty, because it is written: “The Lord upholds the righteous, and in days of famine they shall be satisfied.” It is much finer not to blush at barley loaves and to set out what you have than to refuse. Elisha, who left nothing for himself, gave abundantly to the peoples. Elisha, then, did not blush to set out barley loaves; we blush to understand simply … things which are declared in simple words and by their own names. We read “heaven”: let us take it as heaven; we read “earth”: let us understand the fruitful earth.

Why should I ask what the measure of its circumference is, which the geometers have estimated at one hundred and eighty thousand stades? I gladly confess that I do not know what I do not know, or rather that I know what it would profit nothing to know. It is better to know the kinds of lands than their extents; how could we grasp these, with the sea poured round, barbarian regions lying between, and ground flooded and impassable with marshes? Scripture shows that this is impossible for men, as God says: “Who has measured the water in his hand and heaven with his span and the whole earth in his closed hand? Who has set the mountains in a scale and the rocks in a balance and the woods on a yoke?” And further on: “He who holds the circle of the earth and those who dwell in it like locusts, who set up heaven like a vault.” Who, then, dares to claim for himself knowledge equal to God's, so that a man presumes that what God has marked by his own oracle as belonging to his majesty can be available to himself for knowledge?

Certainly Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians; but because he received the Spirit of God, as a minister of God he put that empty and usurping teaching of philosophy after the reason of truth, and described for me the things he judged suited to our hope: that God made the earth, that the earth, at the command of almighty God and by the operation of the Lord Jesus, brought forth shrubs from the lands and every living soul after its kind. But he did not think he should say how much of the space of the air the shadow of the earth occupies when the sun withdraws from us and takes the day away, lighting the lower parts of the axis, and how the orb of the moon, falling into the region of this world, makes eclipses; because he passed over the things that concern us not at all, as being of no profit. For he saw in the Holy Spirit that we should not follow those vanities of an already withering wisdom, which occupy our mind with inexplicable things and waste effort, but should rather describe the things that look to progress in virtue.

Let us hold fast, then, to the prophetic words, and not despise as cheap the addresses of the Holy Spirit. “Let the earth,” he says, “bring forth the living soul of cattle and beasts and creeping things.” Why do we argue about other things, where the nature of earthly creatures is plainly formed? For the word of God runs in the depths of the world through every creature, so that suddenly … all the kinds of living creatures which God established are produced, and for the future, by the prescribed law, all succeed after their kind and likeness, so that the lion begets the lion, the tiger the tiger, the ox the ox, the swan the swan, the eagle the eagle. The command once given became ingrained in nature for ever, and so the earth does not cease to offer the obedience of its service, so that the species of the first establishment are renewed by succession into new ages.

But do you wish to divert what was born to the use of man? Do not deny to each kind the truth of its own nature, and you will much more adapt them to human advantage: first, because nature laid all kinds of cattle, beasts, and fish …, so that some creep on their belly, and those supported by feet you see rather sunk by the four-footed gait of their body and as if fastened to the earth than free; since, not having the ability to raise themselves, they seek their food from the earth and follow only the pleasures of the belly toward which they are bent. Beware, O man, of being bent like cattle; beware of bending yourself toward your belly not so much in body as in desire. Look at the form of your body and take up the appearance fitting to a lofty vigour; let only the animals feed bent down. Why do you … in eating, you whom nature did not lay down? Why do you delight in what is an injury to nature? Why, intent on food night and day, do you graze on earthly things like cattle? Why, given to bodily allurements, do you dishonour yourself while you serve the belly and its passions? Why do you take away from yourself the understanding which the creator gave you? Why do you compare yourself to beasts of burden, from whom God wished to separate you, saying: “Do not become like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding”? Or if the gluttony of the horse delights you as intemperate, and neighing after women is a pleasure, let it delight you to have your jaws bound with bit and bridle. If cruelty feeds you (this is the madness of wild beasts, which are slaughtered for their savagery), see that the savagery of your cruelty is not turned against you too.

The lazy ass, exposed to prey and slower in sense, what else does it teach but that we ought to be livelier, not grow sluggish in sloth of body and soul, and take refuge in faith, which is accustomed to lighten heavy burdens?

The fraudulent fox, plunging into pits and hiding places, is it not a sign that it is a useless animal, worthy of hatred for its plunder, of contempt for its weakness, and so careless of its own safety while it lays snares for others?

… the partridge, which steals the eggs of another, that is, of another partridge, and cherishes them with its own body, but cannot have the fruit of its fraud, because when it has hatched its chicks it loses them; for when they hear the voice of the one that laid the eggs, they leave this one and betake themselves by a natural gift and love to the one they recognize as their true mother by the laying of the eggs, showing that this one performed the office of nurse, that one of parent. So it pours out its labours in vain and is punished by the price of its fraud. So Jeremiah too says: “The partridge cried out and gathered what it did not bring forth,” that is, it gathered eggs and cried out as if exulting in the effect of its fraud, but it wastes its effort, because with labour spent it hatches for another those whom it … with the warmth of long diligence. The devil is its imitator, who strives to snatch the offspring of the eternal creator, and if he has been able to gather some foolish ones lacking the vigour of their own sense, cherishing them with bodily allurements, as soon as the voice of Christ has been poured into the little ones, they depart and betake themselves to that mother who embraces her chicks with motherly love like a bird. For the devil gathered the Gentiles, whom he had not created; but when … sent forth his voice in his Gospel, they betook themselves above all to him who received them under the shadow of his wings and gave them to mother church to be nourished.

The lion, proud in the ferocity of its nature, does not know how to mix with other kinds of wild beasts, but like a king disdains the company of the many. It even disdains yesterday's food and turns away from the very remains of its meal. What wild beast would dare join itself to it, whose voice naturally holds such terror that many animals, which could escape its attack by speed, fail at the sound of its roar as if struck by a kind of force?

For of the leopard's appearance Scripture too has not been silent, that by the variety of its colour it betrays the varied motions of its soul. For Jeremiah says: “If the Ethiopian will change his skin and the leopard its spots.” This is taken not only of its appearance but also of the changeableness of its fury, in that the Jewish people, through the dark, restless, and changeable shifts of a faithless mind and spirit, can no longer keep the grace of a good purpose nor return to any amendment and correction, having once put on the savagery of a wild beast.

Yet there is also in the nature of four-footed animals something which the prophetic word urges us to imitate, by whose example we may beware of sloth and not be turned aside from the pursuit of virtue by smallness or weakness of body, nor called back from the greatness of that purpose. For the ant is small, yet it dares things greater than its strength, and is not forced to work by servitude, but by a spontaneous purpose of foresight prepares for itself the future supply of food. Scripture warns you to imitate its industry, saying: “Go to the ant, O sluggard, and imitate its ways, and be wiser than it.” For it possesses no cultivated land; having no one to force it and not acting under a master, how it prepares food, storing up for itself a harvest from your labours! And while you are often in need, it does not lack. No barns are closed to it, no guards impenetrable, no heaps inviolable. The guard watches and does not dare prevent the thefts; the owner sees his losses and does not punish them. The plunder is carried across the fields in a black column, the paths seethe with the company of travellers, and the great grains that cannot be gripped by the narrow mouth are pushed along with the shoulders. The lord of the harvest watches these things and blushes to deny so sparing gains to such dutiful industry.

And what shall I say of dogs, in whom it is implanted by a kind of nature to return gratitude and to keep anxious watch for their masters' safety? So Scripture cries to those unmindful of kindness, slothful and idle: “Dumb dogs, not knowing how to bark.” They are dogs, then, who know how to bark for their masters, know how to defend their own houses. So you too, learn to use your voice for Christ when grievous wolves attack Christ's fold; learn to hold the word in your mouth, lest, like a dumb dog, you seem by a silence of betrayal to have deserted the guard of faith entrusted to you. Such a dog is the travelling companion of an angel, which Raphael in the prophetic book thought should not idly be joined to himself and the son of Tobit, when he set out to drive away Asmodeus and to confirm a marriage; for by the grace of a mindful … the demon is driven out, the marriage is made firm. So by the appearance of a dumb beast the holy angel Raphael trained the affection of the young Tobias, whom he had taken under his protection, to return gratitude. For who would not blush not to return gratitude to those who deserve well of him, when he sees that even beasts flee the crime of ingratitude? They keep the memory of nourishment given; do you not keep the memory of salvation received?

The bear, though lying in wait, as Scripture says (for it is a beast full of fraud), is yet said to bring forth shapeless offspring from its womb, but to shape its young with its tongue and form them into its own appearance and likeness. Do you not marvel at such dutiful offices of the mouth in a wild beast, whose devotion expresses nature? The bear, then, shapes its offspring to its own likeness; can you not train your children to be like you?

What of the fact that it has not neglected the skill of healing either? For when it has been gravely injured and wounded, it knows how to heal itself with a herb whose name is phlomos, as the Greeks call it, laying its sores on it so that they are cured by its mere touch. The serpent too drives away blindness it has contracted by feeding on fennel. So when it feels its eyes clouding over, it seeks the known remedy and is not cheated of the effect. The tortoise, having fed on the entrails of a serpent, when it notices the poison creeping through it, practises the medicine of its own safety with marjoram, and though it is sunk in marshy wallows, it still knows how to cure itself with its own antidote, and by a sure help of health proves that it too knows the powers of herbs. You may also see the fox healing itself with the tear of the pine and prolonging by such a remedy the space of imminent death.

The Lord himself cries in the book of Jeremiah: “The turtledove and the swallow, the sparrows of the field, have kept the times of their coming, but my people has not known the judgments of the Lord.” The swallow knows when it should come and when it should go back; the dutiful bird knows how to announce the sign of spring by the testimony of its arrival. The ant too knows how to search out times of fair weather; for when it notices that its fruits, soaked by rain, are getting damp, having examined the air more carefully as to when it can keep a lasting mildness, it opens its heaps and carries them out of its holes on its shoulders, so that its own grain may be dried by the continuing sun. Indeed, on none of those days does rain burst from the clouds, until the ant has called its store back into its hole. Oxen, when rain is threatening, know to keep to their stalls. The same, when by natural sense they have gathered a change in the weather, look out and stretch their necks beyond the stalls, all with one appearance, to show they want to go out. The sheep, insatiable for food at the coming of winter, snatches grass insatiably, because it foresees that it will be lacking in the harshness of winter, so as to stuff itself with grass fodder before all grass fails under the scorching frost. This land urchin, which is commonly called the hedgehog, if it senses any snare, closes itself in its spines and gathers itself into its own weapons, so that whoever thinks to touch it is wounded. And the same urchin, foreseeing the future, provides itself two breathing holes, so that when it knows the north wind is going to blow, it blocks the northern one, and when it knows the clouds of the air are being wiped away by the south wind, it betakes itself to the northern one, so as to avoid the blasts that meet it head on and would harm it.

Hence the prophet offered worthy praise to the Lord, saying: “How magnified are your works, O Lord! You have made all things in wisdom.” The divine wisdom penetrates all things, fills all things, and this is gathered more richly from the senses of irrational beings than from the disputation of rational ones; for the testimony of nature is stronger than the argument of teaching. To what animal is it unknown how to guard its safety: if strength is available, by resisting; if speed, by fleeing; if cunning, by taking precautions? Who taught them the practice of healing and to have knowledge of herbs? We are men, and we are often deceived by the appearance of herbs, and often find harmful those we thought healthy. How often has a deadly food crept in among sweet dishes, and a fatal food penetrated the vitals of kings amid the very watches of court servants! Wild beasts know by smell alone how to tell the harmful from the helpful; with no one going ahead, no taster, the herb is plucked and does no harm; for nature is a better teacher of truth. Without anyone's teaching it pours the sweetness of health into our senses; it also teaches that the bitterness of pain is to be avoided. From this life is sweeter, from this death more bitter. It commends her cubs to the lioness and softens the cruel beast with motherly affection. It interrupts the ferocity of the tigress and turns her back when she is about to fall on her prey. For when she has found her lair empty, her offspring stolen, she at once follows the tracks of the robber. But he, though carried on a swift horse, seeing that he can be overtaken by the speed of the beast and that no help for escape is available to him, contrives a trick of this kind. When he sees he is about to be reached, he throws down a glass ball; and then she is deceived by her own image and thinks it is her young. She checks her onrush, wishing to gather up her cub. Again, delayed by the empty appearance, she pours herself out with all her strength to catch the rider, and, swifter with the goad of anger, presses on the fleeing man. Again he slows the pursuer by throwing down a ball, and yet the memory of the fraud does not shut out the mother's diligence. She turns over the empty image and sits down as if to suckle her cub. So, deceived by the zeal of her devotion, she loses both her revenge and her offspring. This Scripture brings before us, which says:

“Children, love your parents; parents, do not provoke your children to anger.” Nature pours this into beasts, that they love their own cubs and cherish their own young. They do not know stepmotherly hatreds, nor are parents turned against their offspring by a changed bed, nor do they know how to prefer the children of a later union and neglect those of the earlier. They know their own young; they do not know differences of love, incitements of hatred, distinctions of offence. The nature of beasts is simple; it does not know the perversion of truth. For the Lord so tempered all things that to those to whom he gave less reason he granted more affection. What wild beast does not offer herself first of all to death for her cubs? What wild beast, though besieged by countless wedges of armed men, does not cover her young with her own body? Though a crop of spears press on, she keeps her little ones, fenced by the wall of her body, safe from danger. What does man say, who neglects the commandment and blots out nature? The son despises his father, the father disinherits his son; and they think this is right, where fruitfulness is condemned. Rather the father condemns himself, who makes void what he begot; and this is thought to be authority, where nature is punished with barrenness.

No one will doubt that the dog lacks reason; yet if you consider the vigour of its sense, you would judge that by the keenness of its perception it takes to itself the force of reason. Indeed, what the few in the world who have worn out the whole length of their life in study have scarcely been able to learn, how to weave together the connections of syllogisms, the dog can easily be judged to grasp by natural training. For when it has found the track of a hare by day and come to a turning of the path and a kind of crossroads, which is split into several parts, going round the beginnings of each path it silently weighs within itself, as if uttering the voice of … by the keenness of gathering the scent: “Either,” it says, “it turned this way, or that way, or certainly betook itself into this bend; but it entered neither this way nor that. It remains, then, that it betook itself this way without doubt.” What men scarcely put together by long meditation on a composed art, this is available to dogs by nature, so that first they detect the falsehood and then, the falsity rejected, find the truth. Do not philosophers spend whole days dividing propositions for themselves in the dust, who draw each one with a rod, and out of three, when one of them must be true, first kill off two as agreeing with falsehood, and so determine that the force of truth clings to the one that is left? Who can be so tenacious of a kindness and so mindful of gratitude? For they know how to leap even on robbers for their master, to keep off the night approaches of strangers, and are ready to die for their masters and to die with their masters. Often, too, dogs have given evidence of a murder committed so as to convict the guilty, so that their mute testimony has often been believed.

They say that at Antioch, in a more remote part of the city, a man was killed at dusk who had a dog with him. A certain soldier, out of zeal for plunder, had been the agent of the murder. Hidden by the still dark beginning of the day, he had gone off to other parts; the body lay unburied, a crowd of onlookers stood about, and the dog with tearful lament bewailed its master's misfortune. As it happened, the one who had done the murder, as is the way of human cunning, so as to gain credit for innocence by the confidence of moving about in public, came up to that ring of the onlooking people and, as if pitying, approached the body. Then the dog, setting aside its lament of grief for a moment, took up the weapons of vengeance, seized him and held him, and, murmuring as if a sad song by way of epilogue, turned everyone to tears and gave credit to the proof, because it held him alone of many and did not let go. In the end the man, confused, because he could not empty so manifest an informer of the charge by the objection of any hatred, enmity, envy, or wrong, could not deny the crime any longer. So the dog did what was harder: it carried out vengeance, since it could not offer protection. What worthy return do we make to our creator, whose food we eat? We hide our wrongs and often serve the meals we receive from God to the enemies of God.

What is simpler than little lambs, which we compare to the tiny infancy of little children? Often among them, in a large flock, a little lamb wandering through all the folds strays from its mother, and when it cannot find her, calls the absent one with frequent bleating, so as to rouse the voice of the one who will answer, so that at its sound it may retrace its wandering steps. Though it moves among many thousands of sheep, it recognizes its parent's voice, hastens to its mother, and seeks the springs of its mother's milk known to it. Though it is held by desire of food and drink, it runs past other udders, heavy as they are and overflowing with the moisture of milk; it seeks its mother alone, and signals that the poor juices of its mother's udder alone abound for it. She too, among many thousands of lambs, knows her son alone. The bleating of many is one, the appearance the same; yet she distinguishes her offspring from the rest and recognizes her son alone by the silent testimony of devotion. The shepherd errs in distinguishing the sheep; the little lamb does not know how to err in recognizing its mother. The shepherd is deceived by appearance, but the ewe is not deceived by devotion. The smell is one for all, but nature has its own smell, which the dear offspring seems to breathe by a kind of special property.

Nature has its own practices and domestic senses. Scarcely have the teeth begun to break through in a little infant, and already it knows how to try its weapons. The puppy has no teeth yet, and yet it seeks to avenge itself with its mouth as if it had them. The stag has no horns yet, and yet it practises with its forehead and threatens with the weapons it has not yet tried. If the wolf sees a man first, it takes away his voice and despises him as the victor over his voice taken away; but if it feels it has been seen first, it lays aside its ferocity and cannot run. The lion fears the cock, and especially the white one. The wounded goat seeks dittany and drives the arrows out of the wound. Beasts too know their own remedies. The sick lion seeks a monkey to devour so that it may be healed. The leopard drinks the blood of the wild roe and avoids the force of its weakness. Every sick wild beast is cured by drinking a dog's blood; the sick bear devours ants; the stag chews little olive twigs.

So wild beasts know how to seek what is good for them; do you, O man, not know your remedies? You do not know how to snatch strength from your adversary, so that, like the wolf seen first, he cannot escape you; so that with the eye of your mind you detect his treachery and first hinder the course of his words, blunting his shamelessness and the sharpness of his disputing. But if he forestalls you, he will take away your voice. And if you have been struck dumb, loosen your cloak so that you may loosen your speech; and if the wolf has risen against you, take up a rock, and he flees. Your rock is Christ. If you take refuge in Christ, the wolf flees and cannot frighten you. Peter sought this rock when he wavered on the waves, and found it, because he grasped the right hand of Christ.

What shall I say of the fact that men delight in garlic and take as food what the leopard flees? Indeed, wherever anyone has thought to rub garlic, the leopard leaps away from there and does not stay. The smell which a poisonous wild beast cannot bear, you take for food and pour into your inner organs! But it sometimes heals pains: let it be taken as medicine, not as food; let it be taken by the sick, not by those feasting. You seek medicine and flee fasting, as if you could find some greater remedy. If a serpent tastes the spittle of a fasting man, it dies. You see how great is the power of fasting, that with his spittle a man kills an earthly serpent, and rightly the spiritual one too.

How great a prudence the Lord has poured even into the smallest creatures! The turtledove lays leaves of squill over her nest, lest the wolf attack her chicks; for she knows that wolves are accustomed to flee leaves of this kind. The little fox knows how to cherish its offspring; and do you not know, do you neglect, how to make the offspring of this life safer against the wolves of spiritual wickedness?

But let us return to the order of creation and consider for what reason some have shorter necks, like lions and tigers, and bears too, others longer, like elephants and camels. Is not the reason plain, that those wild beasts which feed on flesh had no need of a long neck? For they do not lower their necks and mouths to the ground for the sake of grazing, but either attack a stag or tear apart an ox or a sheep. But the camel, being taller, how would it feed on the smallest grasses unless it stretched its longer neck down to the ground for the use of grazing? So the camel received a longer neck in proportion to its legs, the horse in proportion, and the ox likewise; for these feed on grass.

The elephant, moreover, has a projecting trunk, because, being taller than all, it cannot bend down to graze. So it uses the trunk's service for gathering food. It pours into the huge beast an abundant draught of moisture, and so it is hollow, so that to quench the thirst of so great a beast it may draw up full lakes, so that with the water gathered it can flood the drinker. The neck, indeed, is shorter than the mass of so great a body demands, lest it too be more of a burden than a use. And so it does not bend its knees, because there was need of stiffer legs, so that the great machine of its limbs could be supported as by columns. It bends the heel slightly; the rest of the feet are stiff from top to bottom. Nor can so great a beast bend itself as we often lie down, and rightly it cannot share the practice of rolling or bending with the other animals. It is propped up on this side and that by very large beams, so that in sleep it may sway a little without danger, because its foot is not divided by any joining of limbs. For tame ones, then, props of this kind are prepared by the skill of those who have this use; but for wild and untamed ones, since no one lays props beneath them by which they can be supported, hence comes the occasion of danger.

For leaning on a tree they either rub their sides or relax in sleep. Sometimes the tree, overcome and bent by so great a body, breaks, and the one who had poured himself onto it falls and cannot raise and lift himself, and lying there dies, or, betrayed by his groaning, is struck down while he lies open to wounds in the belly and the other softer parts nearby; for weapons do not easily penetrate its back and the other outer parts. There are, moreover, those who lay these snares for them for the sake of ivory: they cut through the trees they are accustomed to lean on, on the other side, where they make less use of them, so that the trees cannot sustain the weight of their limbs and bring about their fall.

But if anyone finds fault with these things, let him also find fault with the height of buildings, because they threaten a heavy fall more quickly and are repaired with more difficulty when they have fallen. But if we often raise those either for beauty or for a lookout, we ought to approve these qualities in elephants too, because they render great service in warfare. Hence the Persian army, fierce in wars, strong with arrows and every throwing of weapons, because weapons are hurled downward with greater force from above. Their battle line advances fenced as with walking towers. In the middle of the plains they fight as from a wall, and, placed as in a citadel and lookout, they watch wars rather than undergo them, and so, removed from danger, they seem safe through the bulk of the beasts. For who would dare approach them, when from above he is easily pierced by javelins and below crushed by the charge of elephants? In short, battle lines give way to them, and wedges of armed men, and those square camps of the standards. For they rush on the enemy with an unbearable onset, so that they are checked by no column of warriors, no packing of soldiers, no barrier of shields; they move in battles like moving mountains, and like hills stand out with lofty top, and with the crash of their trumpeting disturb the confidence of all. What can a foot soldier do against them, though strong in arm and ready of hand, when a wall surrounded by peoples of armed men comes against him with walking motion? What can a horseman do, when his horse, terrified by the hugeness of so great a beast, flees? What can an archer do, when the iron-clad bodies of the men above cannot feel the blow of a javelin, and the beast, even unarmoured, is not easily pierced by iron, and, protected by breastplates, cuts through opposing lines without danger to itself and crushes the squadrons?

So, like huge buildings, elephants are supported on stronger foundations; otherwise, propped on unequal feet, they would collapse within a short life. But now they prolong their life to three hundred years, because all their limbs suit their size. And so their joints are not separate, as ours are, but compacted, so that they may be stronger. How quickly men's knees and soles are troubled if they have stood long, or run too fast, or walked continuously! For what is joined and jointed admits the feeling of pain or the cause of injury more easily than what is solid and compact.

And why do you wonder if they are feared when clothed in armour, since they are always armed with their tusks as with natural spears? With the trunk they break whatever they have wrapped round; with the foot they kill whatever they have pressed down, as by the fall of a huge ruin. They wrap their trunks round trees for their food, and like very tall serpents they lash what they have caught with snaky coils. Often they gather them into a circle, especially when food is picked from the ground or drink is drawn. So they are a proof to us that nothing has been created superfluous. And yet this beast of so great a bulk is subject to us and serves human commands.

For since we are about to speak of the creation of man, we ought to prepare and give a foretaste of his praise. Nothing seemed to have a stronger nature than the elephant, nothing so terrible or tall; nothing so wild as lions or tigers are. And these serve man and lay aside their nature through human training. They forget what they were born; they put on what they are commanded. Why say more? They are taught like children, they serve like the weak, they are beaten like the timid, they are corrected like subjects; they pass into our ways, since they have lost their own impulses.

Nature, then, is wonderful in the greatest things (for the Lord is wonderful on high), wonderful also in the smallest. For as we marvel no less at the levels of the plains than at the heights of the mountains, and are not more amazed at the height of the cedar than at the fruitfulness of the short vine or olive, so I do not marvel more at the elephant, because it is tall, than at the mouse, because it is terrible to the elephant. For this is the power of nature, that some things are terrible to some and fearful to others. For a kind of prerogative has been given to each creature, so that they are supported by certain privileges of their own. The elephant, formidable to bulls, fears the mouse. The lion, indeed, king of beasts, is driven wild by the tiny sting of a scorpion and killed by the poison of a serpent. The lion's beauty is remarkable: it shakes the muscles on its maned neck or lifts its face with raised chest; but who would not marvel that death comes out of huge bodies from so short a sting of a scorpion, that you would think it incorporeal?

Nor let anyone find fault with this, that the creator mixed among his creatures serpents and other poisonous kinds of animals or plants. For these were born for our correction, not for our deformation. For things that are often an offence and a terror to the lazy, the weak, or the wicked, are for others a use, as tutors are to children. They seem bitter, harsh, and troublesome, formidable with the rod; they deny the freedom of wantonness, demand the necessity of discipline, constrain childish minds by fear lest they slip away into luxury; and so by their severity the children turn out frugal, sober, continent, given more to praise than to play. You see what those fearsome rods accomplish? So too serpents are rods for those whose age of soul is weak and whose virtue of mind is childish; but they cannot harm the stronger. Indeed, to the one who trusts in the Lord it is said: “You shall walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and you shall trample the lion and the dragon.” A viper bit Paul, and they thought that he, as a sinner barely saved from shipwreck, would die of the poison; but after he remained unharmed, the viper shaken off into the fire, he found more veneration among the onlookers. And the Lord himself says to all: “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he who does not believe shall be condemned.” And he said these would be the signs of believers, that they would stroke serpents with their hands, and that poisons and every deadly thing could not harm them even if they drank them. So your own unbelief, O man, is more to be feared by you than the poisons of serpents. Fear them, then, so that at least while they are feared they may call you to faith. But if you do not fear God, at least fear the poisons that avenge unbelief.

Now, since you see elephants subject to you and lions subjected, know yourself, O man, a saying which belongs not, as they say, to Pythian Apollo, but to holy Solomon, who says: “Unless you know yourself, O fairest among women”; though long before Moses wrote in Deuteronomy: “Attend to yourself.” “Man, attend to yourself,” says the law; and the prophet says: “Unless you know yourself.” To whom does he say this? “O fairest,” he says, “among women.” Who is fair among women but the soul, which possesses excellence of beauty in either sex? And rightly it is comely, since it desires not earthly but heavenly things, not corruptible but incorrupt, in which beauty does not usually perish; for all bodily things wither with the advance of age or the unevenness of sickness. “Attend to this,” says Moses, in which you are whole, in which the better portion of you is. Indeed the Lord has interpreted who you are, saying: “Beware of false prophets”; for these weaken the soul and undermine the mind. You, then, are not flesh. For what is flesh without the helm of the soul, the vigour of the mind? Flesh is taken up today, laid aside tomorrow. Flesh is temporal, the soul lasting. Flesh is the garment of the soul, which clothes itself with a kind of garment of the body. You, then, are not the garment, but the one who uses the garment. So it is said … that, stripping off the old man with his deeds, you should put on the new, which is renewed not in the quality of the body but in the spirit … and in knowledge. You are not, I say, flesh; for it is not said to flesh: “For the temple of God is holy, which you are,” and elsewhere: “You are the temple of God, and the Holy Spirit of God dwells in you”; but it is said to the renewed and faithful, in whom the Spirit of God remains. But in the carnal he does not remain, because it is written: “My Spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh.”

But let us consider the … of our very creation. “Let us make man,” he says, “after our image and likeness.” Who says this? Is it not God, who made you? What is God? Flesh or spirit? Certainly not flesh, but spirit, to whom flesh cannot be like, because he is incorporeal and invisible, while flesh is both grasped and seen. To whom does he say it? Certainly not to himself, because he does not say “I will make” but “Let us make”; not to the angels, because they are ministers, and servants cannot have a share of the operation with the master, nor works with the author; but he says it to the Son, even if the Jews do not want it, even if the Arians fight against it. But let both the Jews be silent and the Arians with their parents …, who, while they exclude One from the partnership of the divine operation, bring in many, and give to slaves the prerogative they deny to the Son.

But suppose God seemed to you to have needed the help of servants for working: if the operation is common to God with the angels, is the image common to God and the angels? Would he say to angels, “Let us make man after our image and likeness”? But hear who the image of God is, from him who says: “who rescued us,” he says, “from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his glory, in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins, who is the image of the invisible God and the firstborn of all creation.” He is the image of the Father, who always is and was in the beginning. Indeed, he is the image who says: “Philip, he who sees me sees the Father also. And how do you, when you see the living image of the living Father, say: Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” The image of God is power, not weakness; the image of God is wisdom, the image of God is justice. But wisdom is divine and justice is everlasting. He alone is the image of God who said, “I and the Father are one,” so having the likeness of the Father as to have the unity of divinity and fullness. Where he says “Let us make,” how is there inequality? When again he says “after our likeness,” where is unlikeness? So too in the Gospel, where he says “I and the Father,” there is certainly not one person; but where he says “are one,” there is no difference of divinity or of work. So in both there is not one person but one substance. And he rightly added “are,” because to be always is divine, so that you may believe co-eternal the one whom you deny to be like. For he is eternal of whom Moses says: “He who is has sent me.” Fittingly too he put first “I.” For if he had put the Father first, you would judge the Son lesser; but he put first the Son, whom it is not right to believe superior to the Father, and added the Father, so that you may notice that God the Father and his Son are not bound by a prejudgment of order.

“Attend,” he says, “to yourself alone.” For we ourselves are one thing, what is ours another, and what is around us another. We are the soul and the mind; ours are the limbs of the body and its senses; around us are money, slaves, and the furnishings of this life. Attend, then, to yourself, know yourself, that is, not what arms you have, not how great a strength of body, not how many possessions, how much power, but what kind of soul and mind, from which all counsels proceed, to which the fruit of your works is referred. For it is full of wisdom, full of piety and justice, since all virtue is from God. To it God says: “Behold, Jerusalem, I have painted your walls.” That soul is painted by God which has in itself the shining grace of virtues and the splendour of piety. That soul is well painted in which the likeness of the divine operation shines out; that soul is well painted in which is the brightness of glory and the image of the Father's substance. According to this image, which shines out, the painting is precious. According to this image was Adam before sin; but when he fell, he laid aside the image of the heavenly and took on the likeness of the earthly. But let us flee this image, which cannot enter the city of God, because it is written: “Lord, in your city you will bring their image to nothing.” And the unworthy image does not enter, and what has entered is shut out, because “there shall not enter into it,” he says, “anything common, or he who makes abomination and a lie,” but he shall enter it on whose forehead is the name of the Lamb.

Our soul, then, is after the image of God. In this you are whole, O man, because without it you are nothing, but are earth and will be dissolved into earth. Indeed, so that you may know that without the soul the flesh is nothing, he says: “Do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” Why then do you put confidence in the flesh, you who lose nothing if you lose the flesh? But fear this, lest you be cheated of the help of your soul. For what will a man give in exchange for his soul, in which is not a slight portion of himself but the substance of the whole of humanity? It is this by which you rule over the other animals, wild beasts and birds; this is after the image of God, while the body is after the appearance of beasts. In the one is the holy mark of divine imitation; in the other a cheap partnership with wild beasts and monsters.

But let us discuss more finely what “after the image of God” is. Is the flesh after the image of God? Then there is earth in God, because flesh is earth; then God is bodily, then weak like flesh and subject to passions? And perhaps the head seems to you to be after the likeness of God, because it stands out, or the eyes, because they look, or the ears, because they hear. If you look at height, do we seem tall to buildings because we stand out a little with our heads from the earth? But are we not ashamed to be called like God on that account, because we are taller than serpents and other creeping things, or than young deer and sheep or wolves? And how much taller than we are camels and elephants in that respect! Sight, indeed, is an excellent thing, to look at the elements of the world, to know what no one announces but your own gaze detects; but how much is it that we see, that because of it we should say we are after the likeness of God, who sees all things, observes all things, detects hidden feelings, searches the secrets of the heart? Are we not ashamed to say this, when I cannot see the whole of myself? I see what is before my feet; I cannot see what is behind. I do not know my neck, I do not know the back of my head, I cannot see my loins. Likewise, how much is it that we hear, when I cannot see and hear what is a little distant? If walls are in between, sight is hindered, hearing is hindered. Then our body clings to one place, is enclosed in a narrow space; all wild beasts are broader than man, all also swifter.

The flesh, then, cannot be after the image of God, but our soul is, which is free and wanders this way and that with outspread thoughts and counsels, which by considering looks at all things. See, now we are in Italy and we think of what seems to belong to the eastern or western parts, and we seem to be with those who are settled in Persia, and we see those who live in Africa, if that land has received any known to us; we follow those who set out, we cling to their charms, we are joined to the absent, we speak to the separated, we even raise the dead to conversation, and embrace and hold them as living and pay them the duties and practice of life. That, then, is after the image of God which is judged not by bodily vigour but by the vigour of the mind, which sees the absent, travels by sight over the seas, runs through with its gaze, searches hidden things, carries its senses this way and that in one moment through the bounds of the whole world and the secrets of the universe; which is joined to God, clings to Christ, descends into the underworld and ascends, moves freely in heaven. Indeed, hear one who says: “But our citizenship is in heaven.” Is not that, then, after the image of God, in which God always is? But hear that it is after the image of God. For the apostle says: “So we all, with unveiled face beholding the glory of God, are re-formed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

Since, then, we have learned that the soul is after the image of God, let us now consider whether the privilege “Let us make man” could be said of the soul. But hear this too, that the soul is called by the name of man. For it is written in Genesis: “And the sons of Joseph who were born to him in Egypt were nine souls. All the souls, then, that entered Egypt with Jacob were seventy-five.” And much more fittingly the soul is called homo (“man”) in Latin or anthrōpos in Greek, the one taking its name from humanity, the other from the liveliness of looking, which without doubt belongs to the soul more than to the body. That saying in the Lamentations of Jeremiah rightly agrees with this: “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.” He spoke of men and thought “soul” should be added; for it seeks better if it is alone, withdrawing itself from the mud of the body and from carnal desire. It is after the image of God, conformed to the Lord Jesus; and the saints are conformed to the Son of God. For so we read, as Paul says: “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called saints according to his purpose; whom he foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” Whether, then, justification seems to you to be conferred according to the body or according to the soul, I ask you to answer. But you cannot doubt, since justice, from which justification comes, certainly belongs to the mind, not to the body.

You are painted, then, O man, painted by the Lord your God. You have a good artist and painter. Do not destroy the good painting, shining not with paint but with truth, expressed not in wax but in grace. You destroy the painting, woman, if you smear your face with artificial white, if you suffuse it with acquired red. That painting is of vice, not of beauty; that painting is of fraud, not of simplicity; that painting is temporary (it is wiped off by rain or sweat); that painting deceives and misleads, so that you neither please the one you wish to please, who understands that what pleases is not yours but another's, and you displease your author, who sees his work destroyed. Tell me, if over some artist you were to bring in another, who should cover the work of the former with new works, would not the one who knew his work had been adulterated be grieved? Do not take away the painting of God and assume the painting of a harlot, for it is written: “Shall I take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Far from it!” But if anyone adulterates the work of God, he commits a grave offence against the one above. For it is a grave crime to think that a man paints you better than God. It is grave that God should say of you: “I do not recognize my colours, I do not recognize my image, I do not recognize the face which I myself formed. I reject what is not mine. Seek him who painted you; have fellowship with him; take grace from him to whom you gave a fee.” What will you answer?

And if it is grave to adulterate the work of God, what shall we say of those who destroy the work of God, who shed human blood, who wrest away the life God has given, who say: “Let us take away the righteous man, because he is useless to us”? So it was well read today: “Foxes have holes and the birds of the air nests where they may rest, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” The fox hides itself in a hole, the birds protect themselves in a nest; man does not hide in a hole but is deceived. The hole is a man's mouth; the deep hole is a man's breast, where harmful and fraudulent counsels and evil thoughts are. You walk, and another prepares a pit for you. You walk in the midst of snares which your enemies have hidden for you on the way. So look around at everything, so that you may escape like a young deer from the nets and like a bird from the snare. The young deer avoids the nets by the liveliness of its sight; the bird escapes snares if it betakes itself to the heights and flies over earthly things; for in the heights no one spreads nets, no one hides a snare. So the one whose citizenship is above is not usually caught as prey. But why do you wonder if man is deceived by man, when the Son of Man had nowhere to rest? And he indeed made man such that he might lay his head in him; but after there began to be in our breast not rest for the neighbour but a pit, after one began to weave snares for another whom he ought to help, Christ turned his head away from us, but afterward he preferred to offer it to death for us. Do not, then, be fraudulent, cruel, pitiless, so that Christ may lay his head in you.

And when he had made the monsters of the fish, when he had made the kinds of wild beasts and animals, he did not rest; but he rested after he made man after his own image. Hear in whom he rests, from him who says: “Or upon whom shall I rest but upon the humble and quiet and the one who trembles at my words?” Be humble, then, and quiet, so that God may rest in your affection. He who did not rest in beasts much more does not rest in a beastly breast. For there are beastly souls, there are wild beasts clothed in the form of men, of whom the Lord says: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” In these God does not rest, but he rests in human character, which God made after his image and likeness, when he made the man, who ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God. To this man's soul he says: “Behold, Jerusalem, I have painted your walls.” He did not say: “I have painted your belly”; he did not say: “I have painted your lower parts”; but he says: “I have painted your walls,” asserting that he has given man the strong defence of walls, so that if a wakeful watchman is on the walls, he can drive off the danger of a siege. So he says: “I did not give you pleasures, not the allurements of desires, not the incitements of luxury, not the coveting of another's beauty; but I gave you the foundations of walls, I gave you the lofty tops of towers, placed in which you need not fear to be stormed by the enemy, nor dread the terrible attempts of attacking legions.” Indeed you have it in Isaiah that the soul of the righteous, or the church, says: “I am a fortified city, I am a besieged city,” fortified by Christ, besieged by the devil. But one who has Christ as helper ought not to fear a siege; for it is fortified by spiritual grace and besieged by worldly dangers. So you have it said in the Song too: “I am a wall, and my breasts are towers.” The church is a wall; its towers are its priests, who abound both in the word on natural things and in the discipline of moral things.

Know yourself, then, beautiful soul, that you are the image of God. Know yourself, man, that you are the glory of God. Hear how you are glory. The prophet says: “Your knowledge has been made wonderful from me,” that is: in my work your majesty is more wonderful; in the making of man your wisdom is proclaimed. While I look at myself, whom you detect even in hidden thoughts and inner feelings, I recognize the mysteries of your knowledge. Know yourself, then, man, how great you are, and attend to yourself, lest at some time, entangled in the snares of the devil, you become the hunter's prey, lest you run into the jaws of that foul lion who roars and goes about seeking whom he may devour. Attend to yourself, so as to consider what enters into you and what goes out of you. I do not speak of food, which is swallowed and expelled, but I speak of thought, I mean speech. Let not the coveting of another's bed enter into you; let it not creep into your mind; let your eye not snatch the beauty of a passing woman, let your mind not shut it in; let your speech not weave the machines of temptations, not betray in deceit, not spatter your neighbour with slanderous reproach. God made you a hunter, not an attacker, he who said: “Behold, I send many hunters,” hunters not of crime but of absolution, hunters not of guilt but of grace. You are Christ's fisherman, to whom it is said: “From now on you will catch men alive.” So cast your nets, so cast your eyes, so cast your words, that you crush no one but raise up the one who is tossed about. “Attend,” he says, “to yourself.” So stand that you do not fall; so run that you reach the prize; so contend that you often win, because the crown is owed to the lawful contest. You are a soldier: scout the enemy carefully, lest he creep up on you by night. You are an athlete: keep your hands nearer to your adversary than your face, lest he strike your eye. Let your gaze be free, your step quick, so that you may throw down the one rushing on you, seize the one who yields, avoid the wound with a watchful look, drive it off with a strong encounter. But if you have been wounded, attend to yourself, run to the physician, seek the remedy of repentance. Attend to yourself, because you have flesh, which quickly slips. Let the divine word, the good physician of souls, come to you; let it sprinkle on you the oracles of the Lord as healing medicines. Attend to yourself, lest a hidden wicked word come into your heart; for it creeps like poison and brings deadly infections. Attend to yourself, lest you forget God, who made you, and lest you take his name in vain.

Attend to yourself, says the law, lest when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built houses and begun to dwell in them, and have been filled with your flocks, and have abounded in gold and silver and in all things that you have in abundance, you be lifted up in heart and forget the Lord your God. For what do you have, man, that you have not received? Do not all these things pass away like a shadow? Is not this house of yours dust and ruin? Are not all these things false? Is not the treasure of the world vanity? Are you not yourself ashes? Look at the tombs of men and see what will remain of you but ashes and bones, that is, of your body; look, I say, and tell me which there is the rich man and which the poor. Distinguish the needy and the powerful. Naked we are all born, naked we die. There is no distinction among the bodies of the dead, except perhaps that the bodies of the rich, swollen with luxury, stink more fully. What poor man have you heard of dying of indigestion? His want profits him; it exercises his body and does not burden it. Yet we have not heard of the righteous forsaken and his seed seeking bread, since he who works well on his land abounds in food. Attend, then, to yourself, rich man, because you too bear flesh like the poor man.

Attend to yourself, poor man: your soul is precious. Though the flesh is mortal, the soul is lasting; though you lack money, you do not lack grace; though your house is not large, your estate not wide, heaven lies open, the earth is free. The elements were given to all in common; the ornaments of the world lie open equally to rich and poor. Are the gilded ceilings of the most precious houses more beautiful than the face of heaven adorned with shining stars? Are the estates of the rich wider than the expanses of the lands? So to those who join house to house, villa to villa, it was said: “Will you alone dwell upon the earth?” You have a greater house, poor man, in which you cry out and are heard. “O Israel,” says the prophet, “how great is the house of God and how vast the place of his possession! It is great and has no end, high and immeasurable.” The house of God is common to the rich and the poor; yet it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. But perhaps you grieve that no light of gilded lamps shines for you; yet the moon shines for you with a light much brighter. Perhaps you complain of the winter, because no … heated floors are warmed for you with fires; but you have the heat of the sun, which tempers the world for you and defends you from the winter cold. Or do you think those happy who are surrounded by crowds of following servants? But those who need other people's feet do not know how to use their own; in short, they are preceded by few and carried by many. Unless perhaps you marvel at this, that they abound in gold, silver, money: you see how much they abound in, you do not see how much they lack. You think it precious to recline on ivory couches, and do not consider that the earth is more precious, which spreads beds of grass for the poor man, on which rest is sweet and sleep pleasant, which the other, laid on a golden couch, seeks all night awake and does not find. Oh, how much happier than he, awake, are you at rest! Besides this, which is far more excellent: the righteous man who has been in need here will abound there, and he who has toil here will have consolation there; but he who has received good things here will not be able to hope for their reward there; for poverty keeps its reward, wealth uses it up.

Attend, then, to yourself, poor man; attend, rich man, because there are temptations both in poverty and in riches. So the wise man says: “Give me neither riches nor poverty.” And for what reason he asked this, he says: it is enough for a man to have what suffices him; for riches distend the mind with cares and anxieties as feasts distend the belly. So he asks that what is necessary and sufficient be appointed for him, “lest,” he says, “being filled I become a liar and say: Who sees me? Or, made poor, I steal and swear by the name of the Lord.” The temptations of the world, then, whether of the lowly or the lifted up, are to be fled, lest the poor man despair, lest the rich man grow insolent. For it is written: “When you have driven out the nations and begun to use their lands, do not say: My strength and …” So it is with the one who ascribes his wealth to his own merit, and so, as if approved, does not recognize his own error, but drags sin along with a long rope. For if he believed that the increase of money came either from chance events or from base cunning, there would be no room for insolence in things in which there is either no praise and empty labour, or a shameless greed that does not know how to set a limit to pleasure.

But now some things must be said about the very body of man, which who would deny excels the others in beauty and grace? For although the substance of all earthly bodies seems to be one and the same, and strength and size are greater in some beasts, yet the form of the human body is …, its stance upright and lofty, so that there is neither monstrous size nor a mean and abject smallness. Then the very build of the body is sweet and pleasing, so that there is neither a beastly vastness to cause horror nor a thin slenderness nor ….

And first of all let us recognize that the structure of the human body is like the world. For as heaven stands above air, lands, and sea, which are as it were the members of the world, so we see the head stand out above the other limbs of our body and be the most excellent of all, like heaven among the elements, like a citadel among the other walls of a city. In this citadel a kind of royal wisdom dwells, according to the prophetic saying that “the eyes of the wise man are in his head”; this is safer than the rest, and from it vigour and providence go out to all the members. For what would the strength and power of the arms, what the speed of the feet profit, unless the imperial power of the head, as of their prince, supported them? From this all things are either abandoned or upheld. What would bravery do unless it used the eye as guide to battle, what flight if sight were lacking? The whole body is a prison of dark squalor unless it is lit by the sight of the eyes. What the sun and moon are in heaven, the eyes are in man. The sun and moon are the two lights of the world; the eyes are like stars in the head, shining from above and lighting the lower parts with clear light, and they do not let us be wrapped in a kind of darkness of night. They are like sentries who keep watch by day and by night. For they are roused from sleep more quickly than the other limbs, and when awake look all around; for they are nearer the brain, from which all use of seeing flows. Nor let anyone think I have come down here too hastily in praising the eyes having left the top of the head, since it is not foreign to praise the whole in a part; for it is certain the eyes are a portion of the head. So the head explores all things with the eyes; with the ears it searches out hidden things, learns secrets, hears what is done in other lands.

And the very top of the head, how sweet and pleasing it is, how beautiful the hair, how venerable in old men, how revered in priests, how terrible in warriors, how comely in youths, how well-dressed in women, how soft in boys! One sex is becomingly long-haired, the other is not becomingly shorn. From trees one may judge what grace there is in the human head. In the head of the tree is all the fruit, there is all the beauty; its foliage either covers us from the rains or defends us from the sun. Take away the tree's foliage, and the whole tree is unpleasing. How great, then, is the adornment of the human head, which protects and clothes our brain, that is, the seat and origin of our senses, with the hair of the head, lest it be troubled by cold or heat! For there is the fountain of all things, and so where injury harms, there grace stands out.

What is a man without his head, since he is wholly in his head? When you see the head, you recognize the man; if the head is missing, no recognition can be present; the trunk lies ignoble, without honour, without name. Only the heads of rulers cast in bronze and faces modelled in bronze or marble are worshipped by men. Not without reason, then, do the other members serve it as their counsellor and carry it about as a servile burden, like a divinity, and bear it placed on high. From there, with a censor's power, it directs the obedience of certain servants where it wishes and decrees the commands each is to carry out. You may see each one serve its commander with unpaid service. Some carry, others feed, others defend or show their service; they obey as a prince, they wait on it as a master. From there a kind of watchword goes out: what region the feet must go to, what duties of service the hands are to carry out in completing works, what form of imposed discipline the belly is to keep in abstaining or eating.

It has a free forehead, open with bare temples, which by its appearance betrays the state of the mind, now glad, now sadder, now raised to severity, now relaxed to gentleness, which expresses the inner will by outward signs. A kind of image of the soul speaks in the face, the base of faith, on which daily the name of the Lord is written and held. Twin hedges of eyebrows follow it, which hold up defences for the eyes and weave grace about them, so that both the charm of beauty smiles and the care of protection stands by. For if anything falls from the head, dirt or the dust of sand or the dew of mist or the sweat of the moist crown, it is caught by the eyebrow, so that it does not trouble the tender sight of the soft eyes by injuring their keenness.

The eyes cling as it were to brows of mountains, so that they may be safer under the protecting peak of the mountain, and, placed as at the top, may look out over everything from a kind of higher stage. For they ought not to be low like the ears or the mouth and the inner recesses of the nostrils. For a lookout is always on high, so that the arrival of hostile troops coming can be scouted, lest they take by surprise the idle people of a city or an emperor's army. So too they forestall the incursions of robbers if scouts are placed on walls or towers or the brow of a high mountain, so that they may look down on the plains of the regions, in which the ambushes of robbers cannot lie hidden. On the sea too, if anyone guesses that he is approaching land, a scout climbs to the very top of the mast and the high horns of the yards and greets the land from afar while it is still invisible to the other sailors.

And perhaps you will say: if a higher lookout was necessary, why were the eyes not placed above the very top of the head, as they are at the top in crabs or beetles, in which, though no head appears, the necks and backs are higher than the rest of the body? But they have a strong shell, not so thin a membrane as we have, which can easily be injured and torn by brambles and other thorns. Other animals too have such a form that they can bring their eyes either to the neck, like horses or oxen and nearly all wild beasts, or to their wings, like birds, so as to enjoy safe rest. But for us the eyes had to be placed in the highest part of the body as in a citadel, and defended from every injury, even the smallest, two things which seemed to fight with each other. For if they were low for safety, their function would be hindered; if on the top, they would lie open to injury. So, lest anything be taken from the use of their function, or anything be lacking for repelling injury, he placed the eyes in that position where the eyebrows above give them no small protection, the cheeks, a little raised, add no small defence below, the nostrils hedge the inner part, and the swelling humps of the forehead and cheeks the outer part, and though joined by a compact framework of bones and made level, they seem to wall in the boundaries. Between these are the orbs of the eyes, both safe for caution and free for looking, and comely for grace, as shining like crystal. In their middle are the pupils, which perform the function of seeing. Lest these be harmed by the injury of anything falling on them, they are protected all round by hairs set close on this side and that, as by a palisade. So the prophet, asking safe help for himself, says: “Keep me, O Lord, as the apple of the eye,” so that the protection of God might be as anxious and safe for him as that with which he deigned to fortify the pupil of the eye by a very safe palisade of nature; and at the same time because innocence and integrity are violated when sprinkled with slight dirt and lose the gift of their grace, and so we must take care that no dust coming upon it besmears it and no mote of sin troubles it, because it is written: “First cast the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see to cast the mote out of your brother's eye.”

So, the experts in medicine say, the brain of man was placed in the head for the sake of the eyes, and the other senses of our body were set in a neighbouring dwelling for the sake of the brain. For the brain is the beginning of the nerves and of all the senses of voluntary motion, and from there flows the whole cause of the things we have mentioned. But many think that the heart is the beginning of the arteries and of the inborn heat by which the vital parts are animated and warmed. Of the senses the nerves are like the instrument, which, proceeding from the brain like cords and strings, are drawn off through the parts of the body to each of their functions. And so the brain is softer than the others, because it receives every sense. Hence too the nerves, which report everything the eye has seen, or the ear heard, or the nose smelled, or the tongue sounded, or the mouth tasted. For what is soft is fitter for sympathy, while what is hard, by some stiffness of the nerves, is more effective for action.

The function of hearing is also most excellent, and nearly equal in grace to sight. So the ears stand out more, so that they both display the beauty of ornament and catch whatever dirt or moisture flows down from the top of the head, and at the same time so that the voice, echoing in their folds, may enter the inner windings without harm. For if it were not so, who would not be stunned at every sound of a stronger voice, when even amid these aids we often feel ourselves struck by an unexpected shout? Then you may see them hold out like bulwarks against the harshness of cold and the blaze of heat, so that neither the cold penetrates the open passages nor too much heat burns them. The winding of the inner ears supplies a certain rhythm and discipline of modulation, since through the windings of the ears a kind of rhythm is produced, and the sound of the voice, having entered, is expressed with certain melodies. That the very windings of the ears hold fast the speech received, experience itself teaches us, since in the retreats of mountains, or in the recesses of rocks, or in the windings of rivers, the voice is heard sweeter and the echo resounds, returning pleasant answers. Even the wax of the ears is not useless, which binds the voice so that both its memory and its grace may be more lasting in us.

And what shall I say of the nostrils, which with a double and long opening provide a kind of cave for receiving smells, so that the smell does not pass through quickly but clings longer in the nostrils and through their passage feeds the brain and the senses? So a smell received breathes longer than speech resounds or sight appears. Often what you have smelled for a brief moment breathes in your nostrils all day. Through them too the waste of the head flows down and is drawn off without deceit or any offence to the body.

There is also no slight sense in touch, and in it a most pleasing pleasure and a sure judgment; for often we test by touch what we cannot test with the eyes.

The last function too is that of the mouth or tongue, which, however, supplies strength to all. For neither would the eyes have vigour for seeing, unless they received the strength of bodily substance, which is brought by food and drink, nor the ears for hearing, nor the nostrils for smelling, nor the hands for touching, unless the whole body were strengthened by nourishment. For we fail in strength unless we restore it by the constant use of suitable food. Indeed, those worn out by hunger are delighted by no pleasures of the senses, but, as if deprived of them, do not feel their charms.

Why should I describe the wall of the teeth, by which food is chewed and full expression of the voice is produced? What nourishment would delight without teeth? Indeed we often see the aged grow old more quickly for this very reason, that, having lost their teeth, they can take in no strength of solid food. So infancy is dumb, because it does not yet have the instrument of the voice.

The function of the tongue, too, is most precious not only in speaking but also in eating. For it is like the plectrum of one speaking and a kind of hand of one eating, which pushes the slipping food to the teeth and serves it. The voice, too, is carried by a kind of oarage of the air and borne through the void, and by its own force strikes the air, now stirs, now soothes the feeling of the hearer, calms the angry, raises the broken, comforts the grieving. Let us share song in common with birds; but with whom it uses a sound of voice, and what is rational, cannot be common with all animals, that is, the irrational. For the senses themselves are common to us with the other animals; yet the other animals do not use them with the same industry. The heifer too lifts her eyes to heaven, but does not know what she looks at; the wild beasts lift them, the birds lift them; sight is free to all; but to man alone belongs the interpreting understanding of what he sees. He looks with his eyes at the risings and settings of the constellations, sees the ornament of heaven, marvels at the orbs of the stars, understands also the different brightness of each, when the evening star rises, when the morning star, why the one shines in the evening, the other in the morning, what motions Orion has, what eclipses the moon, how the sun knows its settings and keeps the circuits of its course by solemn rule. The other animals also hear, but who besides man understands by hearing? Man alone, of all the kinds on earth, gathers the secrets of wisdom by hearing, meditation, and prudence; he can say: “I will hear what the Lord God will speak in me.” This is most precious, that man becomes the instrument of the divine voice and expresses with bodily lips the heavenly oracle, as in this: “Cry. What shall I cry? All flesh is grass.” He received what to say and cried out. Let those keep their prudence to themselves who describe the spaces of heaven and earth with a rod; let them keep their understanding to themselves, of which the Lord says: “And I will reject the understanding of the prudent.” Nor will I place here the rhythms of oratory … and the measures of music as wisdom. But I define that wisdom of which the prophet says: “The uncertain and hidden things of your wisdom you have made plain to me.”

And what shall I say of the kiss of the mouth, which is the sign of devotion and love? Doves too kiss, but what is that compared with the loveliness of the human kiss, in which the token of friendship and humanity shines out, in which the faithful affection of full love is expressed? So the Lord, condemning in the betrayer a kind of portent, says: “Judas, do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” That is: turning the token of love into a sign of betrayal and a mark of faithlessness, do you use this pledge of peace for the workshop of cruelty? With the oracle of the divine voice he rebukes the one who by a beastly service of the mouth brings death rather than offering the covenants of love. This too is chief, that men alone express with the mouth what we feel in the heart, and so we signify the thoughts of the silent mind by the speech of the mouth. What, then, is the mouth of man but a kind of sanctuary of speech, a fountain of discussion, a hall of words, a storehouse of the will? We have now finished with what is, as it were, the royal palace of the human body, which, though it is only one portion, yet gives form to the rest.

Next follows the throat, through which vital commerce and the passage of this breath are poured into the whole body. Then come the arms and the strong muscles of the upper arms, the hands strong for working and, with longer fingers, handy for holding. From these comes a fitter practice of working, from these the elegance of writing and that pen of the swiftly writing scribe, by which the oracles of the divine voice are expressed. It is the hand that serves food to the mouth, the hand that stands out in illustrious deeds, which, as reconciler of divine grace, is brought to the holy altars, through which we offer and receive the heavenly sacraments; it is the hand that both performs and dispenses the divine mysteries, by whose name the Son of God did not disdain to declare himself, as David says: “The right hand of the Lord has wrought strength, the right hand of the Lord has exalted me.” It is the hand that made all things, as almighty God said: “Has not my hand made all these things?” The hand is the bulwark of the whole body, the defender of the head. Though it is lower in place, it adorns the whole head and beautifies it with honourable ornament.

Who could worthily explain the framework of the chest and the softness of the belly? For otherwise the softer inner organs could not be cherished, and the folds of the intestines would without doubt be harmed by hard bones. What so healthful as that the lung should be joined to the heart by a neighbouring boundary, so that, when the heart has blazed with anger and indignation, it may be quickly tempered by the blood and moisture of the lung? And so the lung is soft, because it is always moist, at the same time so as to soften the stiffness of indignation. We run through these things briefly, so that we may seem, as untrained men, to touch on what lies at hand, not, as physicians, to search out more fully and pursue what is hidden in the recesses of nature.

The spleen too has a fruitful neighbourhood with the liver: while it takes what it feeds on, it wipes off whatever dirt it finds, so that the fine and subtle remains of foods can pass through the smaller fibres of the liver, to be turned into blood and serve the strength, not be expelled with the dirt of dung. And the encircling coils of the intestines, linked to one another though without any knot, what else do they show but the divine foresight of the creator, so that food does not pass through quickly and at once run down from the stomach? If that happened, constant hunger and continual lust for devouring would be produced in men. For when the inner organs were emptied and drained, being emptied by momentary outpouring, an insatiable and unquenchable desire for food and drink would necessarily arise, which early death would without doubt follow. So, providently, food is first worked up in the upper belly, then cooked in the liver, and, digested by its heat, its juice is poured into the remaining parts of the body, and by that substance human limbs are nourished, which the young receive for growth, the old for endurance; the rest, as superfluous, is drawn through the intestines and passed out through that door set crosswise.

Indeed, in Genesis too Noah's ark is ordered after the structure of the human body, of which God said: “Make yourself an ark of squared timbers; and you shall make nests in it, and you shall pitch it inside and outside with pitch. And so you shall make the ark,” and: “You shall make the door crosswise; and the lower parts of the ark you shall make with two and three storeys.” This, then, is what the Lord signifies: that the door is in the back part, through which the superfluities of foods are expelled. For our creator, with decency, turned the channels of the remains away from man's face, lest, when we bend, we should defile our sight. Consider at the same time that the things full of shame have been placed where, covered by clothes, they cannot be unseemly.

The pulse of the veins is the messenger either of weakness or of health. Though these are spread through the whole body, they are neither bare and uncovered, and they are covered with light flesh, so that there is opportunity for examining and speed in feeling, since there is no thickness of flesh that can cover the pulse. All the bones too are covered with thin flesh and bound with sinews, but especially those of the head are covered with a light skin and, so that they may have some defence against rains and cold, are clothed with thicker hair. What shall I say of the genitals, which, by veins drawn from the region of the neck through the kidneys and loins, receive the generative seed for the function and grace of procreating?

What of the service of the feet, which bear the whole body without any injury of burden? The knee is flexible, by which above all the Lord's offence is softened, anger soothed, grace called forth. For this is the gift of the supreme Father toward the Son: that in the name of the Lord every knee should bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father. For there are two things that above all soothe God, humility and faith. The foot, then, expresses the affection of humility and the obedience of diligent service; faith makes the Son equal to the Father and confesses the same glory of both. And rightly man has not more but two feet; for wild beasts and monsters have four feet, birds two; and so man is as it were one of the winged creatures, who seeks the heights with his sight and flies with a kind of oarage by the keenness of his lofty senses. And so it is said of him: “Your youth shall be renewed like the eagle's,” because he is nearer to heavenly things and higher than eagles, he who can say: “But our citizenship is in heaven.”

But now let there be an end to our discourse, since the sixth day is completed and the sum of the world's work is concluded, that is, with man made perfect, in whom is the rule over all animals and a kind of summing up of the universe and the grace of every worldly creature. Certainly let us offer silence, since God rested from all the works of the world. And he rested in the inner recess of man, he rested in his mind and purpose; for he had made man capable of reason, an imitator of himself, an emulator of virtues, eager for heavenly graces. In these God rests, who says: “Or upon whom shall I rest but upon the humble and quiet and the one who trembles at my words?”

I give thanks to the Lord our God, who made a work of such a kind that he might rest in it. He made heaven; I do not read that he rested. He made the earth; I do not read that he rested. He made the sun and moon and stars; there too I do not read that he rested. But I read that he made man and then rested, having one whose sins he might forgive. Or perhaps already then the mystery of the Lord's future passion went before, by which it was revealed that Christ would rest in man, who was predestining for himself rest in the body for man's redemption, according to what he himself said: “I slept and rested and rose, because the Lord upheld me.” For he himself rested who made. To him be honour, glory, and perpetuity from the ages, and now and always, and for all ages of ages. Amen.