Hexameron 4.9–4.29

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.