Hexameron 3.55–4.8

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.