Homilies on the Hexaemeron

A fitting beginning for one who is about to narrate the formation of the world is to set the beginning of the ordering of visible things at the head of his discourse. For the making of heaven and earth is about to be related: a making not brought together spontaneously, as some have imagined, but one that took its cause from God. What hearing is worthy of the greatness of the things being told? How prepared ought the soul to be for hearing such great matters? Pure of the passions of the flesh, unclouded by the cares of life, fond of labor, searching, looking around on every side for some notion of God worthy of him. But before examining the precision of the words, and searching out how great are the things signified by these small phrases, let us consider who it is that speaks to us. For even if, through the weakness of our understanding, we do not reach the depth of the writer's heart, yet by attending to the trustworthiness of the speaker we shall be led of our own accord to assent to what is said. It is Moses, then, who composed this writing: that Moses who was attested to be beautiful in the sight of God while still at the breast; whom Pharaoh's daughter adopted and brought up royally, appointing the wise men of the Egyptians as the teachers of his education; who, hating the pomp of tyranny and running back to the lowliness of his kinsmen, chose to suffer affliction with the people of God rather than to have the passing enjoyment of sin; who possessed the love of justice from his very nature, since even before the leadership of the people was entrusted to him he is seen, through the hatred of evil in his nature, avenging himself on the wicked even to death; who, banished by those he had benefited, gladly left the tumults of Egypt behind and reached Ethiopia, and there, withdrawing all his leisure from other pursuits, gave forty whole years to the contemplation of the things that are; who, when he was already eighty years old, saw God as far as it is possible for a man to see him, or rather as was granted to no one else, according to the testimony of God himself: "If a prophet of yours arises for the Lord, I will be made known to him in a vision, and in sleep I will speak to him. Not so my servant Moses: he is faithful in all my house; mouth to mouth I will speak to him, in visible form, and not through riddles." This man, then, who was counted worthy of the face-to-face vision of God equally with the angels, speaks to us of what he heard from God. Let us hear, then …

"In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth." The wonder of the thought brings my speech to a halt. What shall I say first? Where shall I begin the explanation? Shall I refute the vanity of those outside? Or shall I sing the praises of our truth? The wise men of the Greeks labored much over nature, and not one account among them has stood unmoved and unshaken, the second always overthrowing the one before it, so that we have no need to refute their views: they suffice for one another's overthrow. For those who did not know God did not allow that an intelligent cause presided over the coming into being of the universe, but drew the conclusions that followed from their original ignorance. Therefore some took refuge in material hypotheses, ascribing the cause of the universe to the elements of the world; others imagined that atoms and indivisible bodies, masses and pores, hold together the nature of visible things. For, they say, when the indivisible bodies now come together with one another and now are separated again, comings-to-be and perishings follow; and in the more durable bodies the stronger interlocking of the atoms provides the cause of their permanence. Truly those who write these things weave a spider's web, positing such slight and insubstantial beginnings for heaven and earth and sea. For they did not know how to say, "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth." Therefore, deceived by the godlessness that dwelt in them, they thought that all things are ungoverned and unadministered, carried along as chance may have it. So that we may not suffer the same, the writer of the account of the world's making at once, in his very first words, enlightened our understanding with the name of God, saying: "In the beginning God made." How fine the order is! He put "beginning" first, so that no one might think the world without beginning; then he added "made," to show that what was made is the smallest part of the Creator's power. For as the potter, having shaped countless vessels by the same art, has exhausted neither his art nor his power, so too the Creator of this universe, whose creative power is not merely commensurate with one world but exceeds it infinitely, brought into being the vast bodies of the visible world by the sole inclination of his will. If, then, the world both has a beginning and has been made, ask who gave it its beginning, and who is its maker. Or rather, lest by seeking with human reasonings you be turned aside somewhere from the truth, he anticipated you with his teaching, implanting in our souls, as a seal and a safeguard, the precious name of God, saying, "In the beginning God made." The blessed nature, the unstinting goodness, the object of love for all who share in reason, the much-desired beauty, the beginning of the things that are, the source of life, the intellectual light, the unapproachable wisdom: he "made in the beginning the heaven and the earth."

Do not, then, O man, imagine that the visible things are without beginning. And because the bodies that move in the sky run round in a circle, and the beginning of the circle is not easily grasped by our ready perception, do not think that the nature of the circling bodies is without beginning. For not even this circle, I mean the plane figure enclosed by one line, must we suppose to be without beginning just because it escapes our perception, so that we can find neither where it began nor where it ended. Even if it escapes perception, in truth it certainly began from some point, where the one who drew it round with a center and a certain radius began. So you too: because things moving in a circle return upon themselves, do not let the evenness of their motion, interrupted by no middle point, leave in you the error that the world is without beginning and without end. For "the form of this world is passing away," and "heaven and earth will pass away." The doctrines of the consummation and of the transformation of the world are announced in advance in what is now handed down briefly in the elementary teaching of the God-inspired instruction: "In the beginning God made." Things that began from time must of necessity also be brought to completion in time. If it has a beginning in time, do not be in doubt about the end. For geometry, and the methods of arithmetic, and the studies of solids, and much-celebrated astronomy, that laborious vanity: to what end do they lead, if those who have spent their time on them have supposed that this visible world too is coeternal with God, the Creator of all, raising to the same glory what is circumscribed and has a material body and the incomprehensible and invisible nature, and not able to conceive even this much: that a whole whose parts are subject to corruption and change must itself also at some time undergo the same things as its own parts? But they "became futile in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened, and claiming to be wise they became fools," to such a degree that some declared that heaven coexists with God from eternity, and others that it is itself God, without beginning and without end, and the cause of the ordering of particular things.

Surely the abundance of this world's wisdom will one day bring them an increase of their grievous condemnation, because, seeing so sharply into vain things, they willingly blinded themselves to the understanding of the truth. Those who measure the distances of the stars, and record those that are always visible and northern, and those lying around the south pole that are visible to some but unknown to us; who divide the northern latitude and the zodiac into countless intervals; who have observed with precision the risings of the stars, their stations and declinations, and the forward motion of them all, and in how much time each of the planets completes its own period: these did not find one device among them all for conceiving of God as the maker of the universe and a just judge, who brings the fitting recompense upon the lives men have lived. Nor did they recognize, from the doctrine of judgment, the consequent notion of the consummation: that the world must of necessity be transformed, if the condition of souls is also to change to another form of life. For as the present life has a nature akin to this world, so too the future way of life of our souls will receive a lot suited to its condition. But they are so far from attending to these truths that they even pour out loud laughter on us when we announce the consummation of this world and the regeneration of the age. Since the beginning by nature is ranked before what comes from it, he necessarily, in speaking of the things that have their being from time, placed this word before all: "In the beginning he made."

For there was, it seems, something even before this world, which our understanding can contemplate, but which was left unrecorded because it was unsuitable for those still being introduced and still infants in knowledge. There was a condition older than the coming into being of the world, befitting the powers above the world: beyond time, everlasting, eternal. In it the Creator and Fashioner of all things accomplished works: intelligible light befitting the blessedness of those who love the Lord, the rational and invisible natures, and the whole ordered array of intelligible beings, all that surpasses our understanding, whose very names it is not possible to find out. These fill up the being of the invisible world, as Paul teaches us, saying: "For in him were created all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities," or powers, or hosts of angels, or the presidencies of archangels. But when at last this world too had to be brought in among the things that are, first of all as a school and training ground for human souls, and then also as a fitting dwelling, in general, for all things subject to coming-to-be and perishing, the passage of time came into existence, akin to the world and to the animals and plants in it, always hastening and flowing past and never ceasing from its course. Or is time not such a thing: its past has vanished, its future is not yet present, and its present escapes perception before it is known? Such too is the nature of things that come to be: either growing or decaying, and having nothing manifestly settled and stable. It was fitting, then, that the bodies of animals and plants, bound by necessity as it were to a kind of current, and held fast in the movement that leads to coming-to-be or perishing, should be encompassed by the nature of time, which has a character akin to things that change. Hence the one who wisely teaches us the coming into being of the world fittingly applied to his account the words "In the beginning he made," that is, in this beginning according to time. For when he testifies that it came into being in the beginning, he does not mean that it takes precedence in seniority over all things that have come to be; rather, after the invisible and intelligible things, he narrates the beginning of the existence of these visible things that are grasped by sense. The first movement is also called a beginning, as in "The beginning of a good way is to do righteous things"; for it is by righteous actions that we are first moved toward the blessed life. "Beginning" is also said of that from which something comes to be, when something else is built upon it, as the foundation in a house and the keel in a ship; in this sense it is said, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom"; for piety is like a base and pedestal for perfection. Art too is the beginning of works of art, as the wisdom of Bezalel was of the adornment of the tabernacle. And often the useful end of things done is the beginning of actions, as acceptance by God is of almsgiving, and as the end laid up in the promises is of every activity according to virtue.

Since "beginning" is said in so many ways, consider whether the present word does not fit all the meanings. For you can learn from what time the constitution of this world began, if, going back step by step from the present to what lies behind, you strive to find the first day of the world's coming into being. In this way you will find where the first movement of time was; next, that heaven and earth were laid down first, like foundations and bases; then, that there is a skilled reason which led the way in the ordering of visible things, as the word "beginning" indicates to you; and that the world was not devised at random or in vain, but for some useful end and as a great service contributed to the things that are, if indeed it is truly a school for rational souls and a training ground for the knowledge of God, providing the mind with guidance by the hand, through visible and perceptible things, toward the contemplation of the invisible, as the apostle says: "His invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made." Or perhaps "In the beginning he made" is said because of the instantaneous and timeless character of the creation, since the beginning is something without parts and without extension. For as the beginning of the road is not yet road, and the beginning of the house is not a house, so too the beginning of time is not yet time, nor even its least part. And if anyone contentiously says that the beginning is time, let him know that he will divide it into the parts of time; and these are beginning, middle, and end. But to imagine a beginning of a beginning is altogether ridiculous. And whoever cuts the beginning in two will make two instead of one, or rather many and infinite, since what is divided is always cut into further parts. In order, then, that we may be taught that the world came into existence together with the will of God, timelessly, it is said, "In the beginning he made." Other interpreters, rendering the sense more clearly, have said this: "In summary God made," that is, all at once and in a short moment. So much, then, about the beginning, to say a few things out of many.

Of the arts, moreover, some are called productive, some practical, and some theoretical. The end of the theoretical is the activity of the mind; that of the practical is the very movement of the body, which, when it ceases, leaves nothing standing or remaining for those who watch: dancing and flute-playing have no end product, but the activity ends in itself. In the productive arts, however, even when the activity has ceased, the work lies before us, as in building, carpentry, metalwork, weaving, and all such arts, which, even if the craftsman is not present, sufficiently display the principles of the art in themselves, and you may admire the builder from his work, and the smith, and the weaver. In order, then, to show that the world is a work of art, set before all for contemplation, so that through it the wisdom of the one who made it may be recognized, the wise Moses used no other word about it but said, "In the beginning he made": not "he activated," nor "he gave subsistence," but "he made." And since many of those who imagined that the world coexists with God from eternity did not grant that it was made by him, but held that, being as it were a shadow of his power, it came into subsistence alongside him spontaneously, and they confess God as its cause, but an involuntary cause, as the body is of the shadow and the shining thing of its brightness: correcting such a deception, the prophet used this precision of words, saying, "In the beginning God made." He did not merely provide the cause of its being, but made it: as good, what is useful; as wise, what is most beautiful; as powerful, what is greatest. For he all but shows you a craftsman who has entered into the being of all things, fitting the individual parts to one another, and making the whole consistent with itself, concordant, and harmonious. "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth." By the two extremes he hinted at the existence of the whole, giving heaven precedence in coming into being and saying that earth was second in existence. Certainly whatever lies between them also came into being together with the extremes. So even if he says nothing about the elements, fire, water, and air, understand them by your own intelligence: first, that all things are mixed in all, and in earth you will find water and air and fire, since fire leaps out of stones, and from iron, which itself has its origin from the earth, abundant fire naturally flashes out when it is struck. And this too is worth wondering at: how fire, while it is in bodies, lurks there harmlessly, but when called forth outside it consumes what had been guarding it until then. Well-diggers show that the nature of water is present in the earth, and the vapors sent up from it when it is moist and warmed by the sun show the nature of air. Then, too, since by nature heaven occupies the upper place and earth is the lowest, because light things are carried up toward heaven and heavy things naturally sink down to earth, and up and down are most opposite to each other, by mentioning the things most widely separated by nature he also indicated, by synecdoche, what fills the middle space between them. So do not seek an explanation of each thing individually, but understand what is passed over in silence through what has been made plain.

"In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth." The investigation of the being of each of the things that are, whether of those that fall under our contemplation or of those set before our senses, would bring a long and far-fetched discussion into the explanation, so that more words would be spent on the examination of this one problem than on all the rest that might be said about each of the questions; besides, to busy ourselves with these matters contributes nothing to the building up of the church. About the being of heaven we are content with what Isaiah said, who in plain words gave us a sufficient understanding of its nature, saying: "He who established the heaven like smoke," that is, he gave a fine nature, not solid or dense, as the substance of heaven's constitution. And about its shape, what the same prophet said in glorifying God is enough for us: "He who set up the heaven like a vault." Let us give ourselves the same counsel about the earth too: not to busy ourselves with what its being may be, nor to wear ourselves out with reasonings in search of the bare substrate itself, nor to seek some nature void of qualities, existing without quality by its own definition, but to know well that all the things observed in it are ranked within the account of its being, as completing its being. For you will end in nothing if you try to remove by reasoning each of the qualities present in it. If you take away the black, the cold, the heavy, the dense, the qualities of taste present in it, or any others observed in it, the substrate will be nothing. Leaving these things aside, then, I urge you not to seek that either: on what it stands. For the mind will grow dizzy even so, as the reasoning runs on toward no agreed limit. If you say that air is spread beneath the breadth of the earth, you will be at a loss how a soft and porous nature holds out, crushed under so great a weight, and does not slip away on every side, escaping the pressure and always overflowing upward over what presses on it. Again, if you suppose that water lies beneath the earth, you will in the same way ask how something heavy and dense does not sink through the water, but, though so much heavier, is held up by a weaker nature; and besides, you will seek a seat for the water itself, and be at a loss again on what firm and resisting thing its lowest part rests.

If he supposes that another body, heavier than the earth, keeps the earth from going downward, let him consider that this too needs something similar to hold it together and not let it fall. And if we are able to invent something and place it beneath that, our mind will again seek the support of that, and so we shall fall into infinity, always devising further bases for the bases we have found. And the further we advance in the argument, the greater the sustaining power we are compelled to bring in, one able to resist the whole mass lying above it all at once. Therefore set limits to your thought, lest the word of Job ever lay hold of your curiosity as you pry into incomprehensible things, and you too be asked by him: "On what are its rings fastened?" And if you ever hear in the Psalms, "I have made firm its pillars," consider that its sustaining power is called pillars. For "He founded it upon the seas": what does this show, but that the nature of water is poured around the earth on every side? How then does water, which is fluid and naturally falls down a slope, remain suspended and nowhere flow away? And do you not reckon that the earth, suspended by itself, gives the argument the same difficulty, or an even greater one, since it is heavier by nature? But whether we grant that the earth rests upon itself or say that it rides upon water, we must never depart from the pious way of thinking, but confess that all things together are held together by the power of the Creator. This, then, is what we must say to ourselves and to those who ask us on what this immense and unbearable weight of the earth is supported: "In the hand of God are the ends of the earth." This is safest for our own understanding and profitable for those who hear.

Some of the natural philosophers argue ingeniously, with reasons like these, that the earth remains unmoved. Because it has taken the middle place of the universe, they say, and because of its equal distance on every side from the extremity, having nowhere to incline more than elsewhere, it necessarily rests upon itself, since the likeness surrounding it on every side makes any tilt in any direction altogether impossible for it. And the earth did not obtain the middle place by lot or by chance; this position is natural and necessary to it. For since the heavenly body holds the outermost place above, whatever weights, he says, we suppose to fall from above will be carried together from every side toward the middle. And wherever the parts are carried, the whole too will clearly be pressed together there. If stones and wood and all earthy things are carried downward, this would be the proper and fitting position for the whole earth too; and if anything light is carried away from the middle, it will clearly move toward the uppermost region. So the motion proper to the heaviest things is downward, and the argument has shown that down is the middle. Do not wonder, then, if the earth nowhere falls, since it holds the middle, its natural place. For it must by all necessity either remain in its place or, moving contrary to nature, depart from its proper seat. If any of these statements seems plausible to you, transfer your wonder to the wisdom of God that so arranged them. For amazement at the greatest things is not lessened when the manner in which some marvel comes about is discovered; and if not, at least let the simplicity of faith be stronger than logical demonstrations.

We might say the same things about heaven too: that the wise men of the world have composed treatises of every opinion about the heavenly nature. Some have said that it is composed of the four elements, as being tangible and visible, and sharing in earth because of its resistance, in fire because it is seen, and in the others because of the mixture. Others, rejecting this account as implausible, improvised out of their own heads a fifth nature of body for the constitution of heaven and brought it in. They have a certain ethereal body which, they say, is neither fire nor air nor earth nor water, nor at all any one of the simple bodies; because the motion proper to the simple bodies is in a straight line, light things being carried upward and heavy things downward; but up and down are not the same as circular revolution, and in general the straight line stands at the greatest distance from movement in a circle. And of things whose natural motions differ, they say, the substances must also differ. Nor, they say, is it possible for us to suppose that heaven is composed of the first bodies, which we call elements, because things composed of different elements cannot have an even and unforced motion, since each of the simple bodies present in the composites has from nature its own different impulse. Therefore, first, composite things are held back by weariness in continuous motion, because one motion cannot be well suited and congenial to all the opposites, but the motion proper to the light is hostile to the heaviest. For when we move upward we are weighed down by the earthy element; and when we are carried downward we do violence to the fiery, dragging it downward contrary to nature. And the pulling of the elements toward opposite directions is a cause of their falling apart. For what is constrained and contrary to nature holds out for a little while, and that by force and with difficulty, and is quickly dissolved into the things from which it was composed, each of the components returning to its own place. Because of these necessities of their reasoning, as they say, those who posit a fifth nature of body for the generation of heaven and the stars in it rejected the arguments of their predecessors and needed a hypothesis of their own. And yet another of those who are vigorous in plausible argument rose up again against them, scattered and dissolved their views, and brought in an opinion of his own in their place. If we now undertook to speak about these, we would fall into the same idle talk as they. But let us leave them to be overthrown by one another, and, ourselves setting aside the question of substance, being persuaded by Moses that "God made the heaven and the earth," let us glorify the supreme Artist of the things that were made wisely and skillfully; from the beauty of the things that are seen let us conceive of him who is beyond beauty, and from the greatness of these perceptible and circumscribed bodies let us infer him who is infinite and supremely great, and who surpasses every understanding by the abundance of his power. For even if we do not know the nature of the things that have come to be, yet what falls in a general way under our perception holds such wonder that even the keenest mind proves inferior to the least of the things in the world, unable either to treat it worthily or to render the praise owed to the Creator; to whom be all glory, honor, and might, to the ages of ages. Amen.

Having spent the morning on a few words, we found the depth of their meaning so hidden that we altogether despair of what follows. For if the forecourts of the sanctuary are such, and the porch of the temple so majestic and magnificent, dazzling the eyes of our mind with the surpassing greatness of its beauty, what must the Holy of Holies be like? Who is competent to venture into the inner shrine? Or who will look upon its secrets? For the very sight of them is unapproachable, and the account of what is understood is altogether hard to put into words. Nevertheless, since with the just Judge the rewards set apart even for merely choosing what is right are not to be despised, let us not shrink from the inquiry. For even if we fall short of what is worthy, yet if with the help of the Spirit we do not fall away from the intent of Scripture, we too shall not be judged altogether rejected, and with the cooperation of grace we shall provide some building up for the church of God. "And the earth," he says, "was invisible and unformed." How is it that, though both heaven and earth came into being with equal honor, heaven was completed, while the earth is still imperfect and unfinished? Or, in general, what is the unformed state of the earth, and for what reason was it invisible? The perfect furnishing of the earth is the abundance that comes from it: the sprouting of plants of every kind, the shooting up of very tall trees, fruitful and unfruitful, the fair colors and fragrances of flowers, and all that a little later, at God's command, was to spring up from the earth and adorn her who bore them. Since none of these yet existed, Scripture fittingly called it unformed. We might say the same about heaven too: that it was not yet finished either, nor had received its proper adornment, since it was not yet shining with moon and sun, nor crowned with the choirs of the stars; for these had not yet come into being. So you will not miss the truth if you call heaven too unformed. He called the earth invisible for two reasons: either because man, its beholder, did not yet exist, or because, being under water, it could not be seen because of the water lying over its surface. For the waters had not yet been gathered into their proper reservoirs, which God later gathered and called seas. What, then, is invisible? On the one hand, what by nature cannot be seen by eyes of flesh, like our mind; on the other, what is visible by nature but is hidden by the interposition of a body lying over it, like iron in the depths. In this sense we think the earth is now called invisible, being covered by the water. Then too, since light had not yet come into being, it was no wonder that the earth, lying in darkness because the air above it was unlit, should for this reason too be called invisible by Scripture.

But the counterfeiters of the truth, who teach not that their own mind should follow Scripture, but twist the meaning of the Scriptures to their own purpose, say that matter is indicated by these words. For this, they say, is both invisible by nature and unformed, being without quality by its own definition and separated from every form and shape; the Craftsman took it, gave it form by his wisdom, and brought it into order, and so through it gave being to the things that are seen. Now if this matter is unbegotten, then first of all it is of equal honor with God, deemed worthy of the same prerogatives. And what could be more impious than that the qualityless, the formless, the uttermost shapelessness, the unfashioned ugliness (I am using the very terms they use) should be deemed worthy of the same seat of honor as the wise and powerful and all-beautiful Fashioner and Creator of all things? Then, if it is so great as to receive the whole knowledge of God, they set its subsistence in a manner side by side with the unsearchable power of God, if it is able by itself to measure out the whole understanding of God. And if matter is less than God's activity, then too their argument will turn round into a still more absurd blasphemy, since for lack of matter they keep God idle and unable to carry out his own works. But the poverty of human nature has deceived them. Since among us each art is occupied with some definite matter, as metalworking with iron and carpentry with wood, and in these one thing is the substrate, another the form, and another what is completed from the form, and the matter is received from outside, the form is fitted to it by the art, and the finished work is what is composed of both, form and matter: so they think it is in the divine creation too, that the shape of the world was imposed by the wisdom of the Maker of all, while the matter was supplied to the Creator from outside, and the world came into being as a composite, having its substrate and substance from elsewhere and receiving its shape and form from God. From this it follows for them that they deny that the great God presided over the constitution of the things that are, and make him contribute from himself only some small share toward the coming into being of things, like one who fills up a share in a common fund. Through the lowliness of their reasonings they were unable to look up to the height of the truth: that here below the arts come after their materials, introduced into life by the necessity of need. The wool existed beforehand, and weaving came after it, filling up from itself what nature lacked. The wood existed, and carpentry took it and, shaping the material for whatever need was sought at the time, showed us the usefulness of wood: an oar for sailors, a winnowing shovel for farmers, a spear for soldiers. But God, before any of the things now seen came to be, having resolved in his mind and set out to bring into being things that were not, conceived at one and the same time what kind of thing the world should be and brought forth together with its form the matter suited to it. To heaven he assigned the nature befitting heaven; to the shape of the earth he supplied the substance proper and due to it. Fire and water and air he shaped as he willed, and brought each into being as the principle of each thing that came to be required. And the whole world, made up of unlike parts, he bound together into one fellowship and harmony by an unbreakable bond of love, so that even the things most widely separated from one another in position seem to be united through sympathy. Let them cease, then, from mythical fictions, who measure by the weakness of their own reasonings the power that is incomprehensible to understanding and altogether unutterable by human voice.

God made the heaven and the earth, not each by halves, but the whole heaven and the whole earth, its very substance taken together with its form. For he is not an inventor of shapes, but the Fashioner of the very nature of the things that are. Otherwise let them answer us how the active power of God and the passive nature of matter happened to meet: the one supplying the substrate without form, the other having the knowledge of shapes without the matter, so that each might obtain from the other what it lacked: the Fashioner a place to display his art, and matter a way to put off its shapelessness and its privation of form. But enough about these things; let us return to where we began. "And the earth was invisible and unformed." Having said, "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth," he passed over many things in silence: water, air, fire, and the properties produced from them. All of these clearly came into existence together with the universe, as completing the world; but the narrative left them out, training our mind to quickness by giving it a few starting points from which to infer the rest. Since, then, it is not said of water that God made it, but it is said that the earth was invisible, consider for yourself by what veil it was covered so that it did not appear. Fire could not cover it, for fire is illuminating and gives clearness, rather than darkness, to whatever it comes near. Nor was air then a covering of the earth; for the nature of air is thin and transparent, receiving all the forms of visible things and conveying them to the eyes of those who see. It remains, then, for us to understand that water lay on the surface of the earth, since the moist substance had not yet been separated off to its proper station. Because of this the earth was not only invisible but also unformed. For excess of moisture is even now an obstacle to the earth's bearing fruit. So the same cause accounts both for its not being seen and for its being unformed, if indeed the furnishing of the earth is its proper and natural adornment: cornfields swelling in the hollows, meadows green and teeming with flowers of every color, flourishing glens, and mountain peaks shaded with forests. Of these it had nothing as yet: it was in labor with the birth of them all, through the power deposited in it by the Creator, but it was waiting for the appointed times, so that at the divine command it might bring its offspring into the open.

"And darkness," he says, "was over the abyss." Again, other starting points for myths, and beginnings of still more impious fictions, from those who twist the words to their own notions. For they do not explain darkness as what it is by nature, some unlit air, or a place shadowed by the interposition of a body, or in general a place deprived of light for whatever cause; but they explain the darkness as an evil power, or rather as evil itself, having its beginning from itself, opposed and contrary to the goodness of God. For if God is light, then clearly, they say, following the logic of the thought, the power warring against him would be darkness: darkness that does not have its being from another, but is self-begotten evil; darkness, the enemy of souls, the producer of death, the opposite of virtue. They are deceived into thinking that the prophet's words indicate that it subsists and was not made by God. From this, what wicked and godless doctrine was not fabricated? What grievous wolves, tearing the flock of God, did not take their start from this small phrase and overrun souls? Did not the Marcionites? Did not the Valentinians come from here? Did not the loathsome heresy of the Manichees, which one would not miss the mark in calling the rot of the churches? Why do you run so far from the truth, O man, devising for yourself occasions of destruction? The word is simple and easily grasped by all. "The earth was invisible," he says. What is the reason? Because it had the abyss lying over it. And what is meant by abyss? A great water whose bottom is hard to reach. But we know that many bodies are often seen through water when it is shallower and clear. How then was no part of the earth shown through the waters? Because the air poured over it was still unlit and darkened. A ray of the sun, passing through the waters, often shows the pebbles at the bottom; but in deep night no one could by any means see what is under the water. So what follows is meant to establish that the earth was invisible: the abyss lay over it, and the abyss itself was darkened. So the abyss is not a multitude of hostile powers, as some have imagined, nor is darkness some sovereign and wicked power set up against the good. For two things equal to each other in opposition will certainly destroy each other's existence, and will continually have trouble and give it without ceasing, locked with one another in war. And if one of the opposites surpasses in power, it becomes the utter destroyer of the one overcome. So if they say that the opposition of evil to good is evenly balanced, they introduce unceasing war and continual destruction, each side conquering and being conquered in turn; and if the good surpasses in power, what is the reason that the nature of evil has not been utterly destroyed? And if the other, which it is not right even to say, I wonder how they do not flee from themselves, carried away into such lawless blasphemies. Nor, on the other hand, is it pious to say that evil has its origin from God, because no contrary comes into being from its contrary. Life does not beget death, nor is darkness the beginning of light, nor is sickness the maker of health; but in the changes of conditions the transitions are from contraries to contraries, while in comings-to-be each thing that comes to be proceeds not from contraries but from things of the same kind. If, then, he says, evil is neither unbegotten nor made by God, whence does it have its nature? For that evils exist, no one who shares in life will deny. What do we say, then? That evil is not a living and animate substance, but a condition in the soul opposed to virtue, arising in the careless through their falling away from the good.

Do not, then, look for evil outside, nor imagine some primordial nature of wickedness, but let each one recognize himself as the author of the vice within him. For of the things that happen, some come upon us by nature, like old age and weakness; others by chance, like unexpected occurrences arising from causes outside us, sometimes gloomy and sometimes more cheerful, as the finding of a treasure by one digging a well, or meeting a mad dog by one who has set out for the marketplace; and others are in our power, such as mastering desires or not curbing pleasures, holding back anger or laying hands on one who has provoked us, telling the truth or lying, being reasonable and moderate in character or overbearing and puffed up with boasting. Do not, then, seek elsewhere the beginnings of the things of which you yourself are master, but recognize that evil in the proper sense took its beginning from voluntary lapses. For if it were involuntary and not in our power, such fear of the laws would not hang over wrongdoers, nor would the punishments of the courts be so inexorable, measuring out to evildoers what they deserve. Let this be said by me about evil in the proper sense. For sickness, poverty, obscurity, death, and whatever is painful to men are not yet worthy to be counted in the class of evils, since we do not count their opposites among the greatest goods either; some of them come by nature, and others are seen to have turned out to the advantage of many. So, keeping silence for the present about figurative and allegorical interpretation, let us take the notion of the darkness simply and without elaboration, following the intent of Scripture. Reason asks whether darkness was created along with the world, and whether it is older than light, and why the worse is the elder. We say, then, that this darkness too does not subsist as a substance, but is a condition of the air arising through the privation of light. Of what light, then, was the place in the world suddenly found deprived, so that the darkness was over the water? We reason as follows: if anything existed before the constitution of this perceptible and perishable world, it was clearly in light. For neither the ranks of angels, nor all the heavenly hosts, nor at all any of the rational natures and ministering spirits, named or unnamed, lived in darkness; they had the condition befitting them in light and all spiritual joy. And no one will contradict this, at least no one who expects the light beyond the heavens among the promised good things, about which Solomon says, "Light is always for the righteous," and the apostle: "Giving thanks to God the Father, who has made us fit for the share of the inheritance of the saints in the light." For if the condemned are sent into the outer darkness, clearly those who have done what is worthy of acceptance have their rest in the light beyond the world. When, then, heaven came into being at the command of God, stretched all at once around what was enclosed within its circumference, having a continuous body able to separate what is within from what is outside, it necessarily left the space cut off within it without light, having cut off the brightness from outside. For three things must come together for a shadow: the light, the body, and the unlit place. So the darkness within the world arose from the shadow of the heavenly body. Understand what I mean from a clear example: think of someone who at steady noon sets up around himself a tent of thick and close material and shuts himself up in an improvised darkness. Suppose that darkness too to have been of this kind: not subsisting in its own right, but following upon other things. And this darkness is said to lie upon the abyss, since the outermost parts of the air naturally adjoin the surfaces of bodies; and at that time water lay over everything. Therefore it is necessarily said that the darkness was over the abyss.

"And the Spirit of God," he says, "was borne above the water." If by this spirit he means the diffusion of the air, take it that the writer is enumerating for you the parts of the world: that God made heaven, earth, water, and air, and this last already diffused and flowing. Or else, which is truer and has been approved by those before us, the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of God, because Scripture has observed that he in particular, and above all, is deemed worthy of such mention, and that no other is named Spirit of God except the Holy Spirit, who completes the divine and blessed Trinity. And if you accept this understanding, you will find greater benefit from it. How, then, was he borne above the water? I will tell you an account that is not my own, but that of a Syrian man, as far removed from worldly wisdom as he was near to the knowledge of the truth. He said that the language of the Syrians is more expressive and, through its nearness to Hebrew, comes somehow closer to the meaning of the Scriptures. The sense of the saying, then, is this. "Was borne," he says, they interpret as "warmed and gave life to the nature of the waters," after the image of a bird brooding on its eggs and imparting some vital power to what is being warmed. Something of this kind, they say, is the meaning indicated by this word: the Spirit was borne, that is, he was preparing the nature of water for the bringing forth of life. So from this it is sufficiently shown, in answer to the question some raise, that the Holy Spirit too is not absent from the work of creation.

"And God said, Let there be light." The first word of God created the nature of light, made the darkness vanish, dispelled the gloom, brightened the world, and brought upon all things at once a graceful and pleasant appearance. For heaven appeared, hidden until then by the darkness, and its beauty was as great as eyes still testify even now. The air was lit all around, or rather it held the light mixed with itself wholly through and through, swiftly sending the spreading of the radiance everywhere to its own boundaries. Upward it reached as far as the ether itself and heaven; and in breadth it lit up in a moment all the parts of the world, north and south, east and west. For such is its nature, fine and transparent, that the light passing through it needs no stretch of time. For as it conveys our sight to the things seen without lapse of time, so too it receives the rays of light at once, in a moment smaller than anyone could conceive, to all its limits. After the light the ether became more delightful and the waters brighter, not only receiving the radiance but also sending it back from themselves by the reflection of the light, with sparkles leaping off from the water on every side. The divine word transformed everything to what is most pleasing and most precious. For as those who pour oil into the deep make the place clear, so the Maker of all, by speaking, placed in the world at once the grace of light: "Let there be light." And the command was a work, and a nature came into being than which human reasonings cannot even conceive anything more delightful to enjoy. And when we speak of a voice, a word, and a command in the case of God, we do not mean by the divine word a sound sent out through vocal organs, nor air struck by a tongue; we think that the inclination of his will is given the shape of a command for the sake of those being taught, so that it may be easily grasped. "And God saw the light, that it was good." What praise worthy of light could we give, which has already received from its Creator the testimony that it is good? Among us too, reason refers the judgment to the eyes, unable to say as much as the senses have already testified. And if beauty in a body has its being from the proportion of the parts to one another and from the fair color that appears on it, how is the notion of beauty preserved in the case of light, which is simple in nature and uniform? Is it not because the proportion of light is attested not in its own parts but in its being painless and pleasant to the sight? So too gold is beautiful, possessing its attractiveness and delight to the sight not from the proportion of its parts but from its fair color alone. And the evening star is the most beautiful of the stars, not because the parts of which it is composed are proportioned, but because its radiance falls upon the eyes painless and sweet. Then too, God's judgment about the good was made at this point not looking simply to what is pleasant to the eye, but also foreseeing the benefit that would come from it later; for there were not yet eyes to judge the beauty of light. "And God divided between the light and between the darkness." That is, God made their natures unmixed and set opposite each other in contrariety; for he separated and divided them by the widest interval between them.

"And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night." Now, since the sun came into being, day is the air lit by the sun as it shines in the hemisphere above the earth, and night is the shadow of the earth that comes about when the sun is hidden. But then it was not by the motion of the sun, but by the pouring out of that firstborn light and its drawing in again according to the measure fixed by God, that day came about and night followed in its turn. "And there was evening and there was morning, one day." Evening is the common boundary of day and night, and morning likewise the borderland of night toward day. So, to give the day the precedence in coming into being, he spoke first of the end of the day and then of that of the night, since night follows day. For the condition of the world before the coming into being of light was not night but darkness; what was set in contrast to the day was named night; this is why it received its name later, after the day. "There was evening, then, and there was morning": he means the day-and-night. And he no longer called them "day and night," but assigned the whole name to the more important. You would find this usage throughout Scripture: in the measuring of time days are counted, but not nights along with the days. "The days of our years," says the Psalmist; and again Jacob: "The days of my life are few … of my life." And what is now handed down in the form of history is legislation for what follows. "And there was evening and there was morning, one day." Why did he not say "first" but "one"? Yet it would have been more consistent, for one about to introduce a second, a third, and a fourth day, to call "first" the day that begins the series. But he said "one," either defining the measure of day and night, and joining together the time of the day-and-night, since the twenty-four hours fill up the span of one day, the night clearly being understood together with the day, so that even if at the solstices one of them happens to exceed the other, the spans of both are still certainly contained within the fixed time; as if he said: the measure of twenty-four hours is the span of one day; or that the return of the heaven from the same point to the same point again takes place in one day, so that as often as evening and morning overtake the world through the sun's revolution, the circuit is completed not in a longer time but in the span of one day. Or the more authoritative account is the one handed down in the mysteries: that God, who made the nature of time, laid on it the intervals of days as its measures and marks, and, measuring it out by a week, commands the week always to come round upon itself, numbering the movement of time, and the week in turn to complete one day, returning seven times upon itself. And this is the figure of a circle: to begin from itself and to end in itself. And this is also proper to the age: to turn back upon itself and never come to an end. Therefore he named the head of time not "first day" but "one," so that from its very name it might have kinship with the age. For the day that shows the character of singleness and of having nothing in common with another was properly and fittingly called "one." And if Scripture presents many ages to us, saying in many places "age of age" and "ages of ages," yet even there no first or second or third age is enumerated for us, so that what is shown by this is rather differences of conditions and of various affairs, not limits and ends and successions of ages. "The day of the Lord," it says, "is great and manifest"; and again: "Why do you seek the day of the Lord? And it is darkness, and not light." Darkness, clearly, for those worthy of darkness. For Scripture knows that day as without evening, without succession, and without end, the day which the Psalmist also called the eighth, because it lies outside this time of weeks. So whether you say day or age, you will express the same notion. Whether, then, that state is called a day, it is one and not many; or whether it is called an age, it would be single and not one of many. In order, then, to lead our thought toward the future life, he named "one" the image of the age, the firstfruits of days, the coeval of light, the holy Lord's day, honored by the resurrection of the Lord. "There was evening, then," he says, "and there was morning, one day." But our words about that evening, overtaken by the present evening, here set a limit to our discourse. May the Father of the true light, who adorned the day with the heavenly light, who brightened the night with the rays of fire, who prepared the rest of the age to come with spiritual and unceasing light, enlighten your hearts in the knowledge of the truth and keep your life without stumbling, granting you to walk decently as in the day, so that you may shine as the …

The works of the first day, or rather of the one day (for let us not take from it the dignity it has by nature, given out by the Creator as a day by itself and not numbered in rank with the others): since yesterday our discourse went through the things that came to be in it, dividing the explanation for the hearers and making one part the morning food of souls and the other their evening delight, it now passes on to the wonders of the second day. I say this not with reference to the power of the one who explains, but to the grace of what is written, which by nature is easy to receive, and gentle and dear to every heart that prefers the true to the plausible. So too the Psalmist, presenting most expressively the sweetness that comes from truth, says: "How sweet are your words to my throat, more than honey to my mouth!" Yesterday, then, having gladdened your souls as far as we could by dwelling on the words of God, we have met again today on the second day, to look at the wonders of the works of the second day. But it has not escaped me that many craftsmen of the manual trades, content to provide their food from their daily work, stand around us and cut our discourse short, so as not to be drawn away from their work for long. What do I say to them? That the part of your time lent to God is not lost, but is paid back by him with great interest. For whatever circumstances cause hindrances, the Lord will send them away, giving strength to the body, eagerness to the soul, ease in business dealings, and prosperity in the whole of life to those who put spiritual things first. And even if in the present our efforts do not turn out as we hope, yet for the age to come the teaching of the Spirit is a good treasure. Take away, then, from your heart every care of this life, and gather your whole self here for me. For the presence of the body is no use while your heart toils over earthly treasure.

"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide between water and water." Yesterday too we heard words of God, "Let there be light," and today, "Let there be a firmament." What is before us seems to contain something more, because the word did not stop at the bare command, but also specified the reason for which the making of the firmament is required: "that it may divide," he says, "between water and water." First, then, let us take the matter up again and ask how God speaks. Is it in our way? Does an impression from things first arise in his mind; then, after it has been imagined, does he announce it, choosing from the subjects the proper and fitting signs for each; then, handing over what he has thought to the service of the vocal organs, does he so make the hidden thought plain by the striking of the air, according to the articulate movement of the voice? And how is it not mythical to say that God needs such a roundabout way to make his thoughts known? Or is it more pious to say that the divine will and the first impulse of his intellectual movement, this is the Word of God? Scripture presents him in narrative form in order to show that God not only willed creation to come into being, but that it was brought into being through some fellow worker. For it could have told of all things as it said at the beginning, "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth"; then, "He made the light"; then, "He made the firmament." But now, by introducing God giving commands and speaking, it hints in silence at the one to whom he gives the command and with whom he speaks. It does not grudge us the knowledge, but kindles us to longing, by putting before us certain traces and glimpses of the mystery. For what is gained by toil is received with great joy and guarded with diligence, whereas things that are easily acquired are lightly regarded once possessed. That is why it leads us by a certain path and order to the thought of the Only-begotten. And yet even so the incorporeal nature had no need of a spoken word, since the thoughts themselves could be shared with the fellow worker. For what need of speech have those who can share their counsels with one another from the very thought? Voice exists for the sake of hearing, and hearing for the sake of voice; but where there is no air, no tongue, no ear, no winding passage carrying sounds to perception in the head, there is no need of words either; the communication of the will comes, as one might say, from the very thoughts in the heart. As I said, then, it is in order to rouse our mind to search for the person to whom the words are addressed that this form of speech has been adopted, wisely and skillfully.

The second thing to examine is whether this firmament, which was itself also called heaven, is something other than the heaven made in the beginning, and whether there are two heavens at all, which those who have philosophized about heaven would rather lose their tongues than accept as true. For they posit one heaven, and say that it is not in its nature for a second, or a third, or many to come into being, since the whole substance of the heavenly body has been used up in the constitution of the one, as this too is limited; so that, once it was completed together with the first heaven, nothing was left over for the coming into being of a second or a third. This is what those imagine who bring in an unbegotten matter beside the Creator, carried along from their first mythmaking to the falsehood that follows from it. But we ask the wise men among the Greeks not to mock us before they have settled matters among themselves. For there are among them some who say that there are infinite heavens and worlds. When those who use weightier demonstrations refute the implausibility of these men's view and establish by geometrical necessities that it is not in nature for another heaven to come into being, then we laugh all the more at their linear and technical nonsense, if, seeing that bubbles are formed both one and many from the same cause, they then doubt about more heavens, whether the creative power suffices to bring them into being. Their strength and size, we think, differ in no way from the hollow drop that is puffed up in the fountains, when we look to the surpassing greatness of the power of God. So their talk of impossibility is laughable. But we are so far from disbelieving in a second heaven that we even inquire about the third, the sight of which the blessed Paul was counted worthy. And the psalm, by naming "heavens of heavens," has given us the idea of still more. Surely these things are no more incredible than the seven circles along which, almost all agree, the seven stars are carried, which they say are fitted one within another, after the image of jars set one inside another. And these, they say, carried in the direction opposite to the universe and cleaving the ether, give out a melodious and harmonious sound, so as to surpass all the pleasure of melodies. Then, when those who say this are asked for the evidence of the senses, what do they say? That, being accustomed to the sound from the beginning and used to it from our first birth, we have lost the perception of it through long practice in hearing, like those in smithies whose ears are continually struck. To refute what is so sophistical and rotten, so plainly exposed to everyone at the first hearing, is not the part of a man who knows how to spare time or who has regard for the understanding of his hearers. But leaving the things of outsiders to outsiders, let us return to the teaching of the church. It has been said by some before us that this is not the coming into being of a second heaven, but a fuller explanation of the first, because there the making of heaven and earth was handed down in summary, while here Scripture hands down to us in more detail the manner in which each came into being. But we say that, since both a different name and a special function of the second heaven are handed down, this is another heaven besides the one made in the beginning, of a more solid nature, and providing a special service to the universe.

"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide between water and water. And God made the firmament; and God divided between the water that was under the firmament and between the water that was above the firmament." Before touching the meaning of what is written, let us try to resolve the objection raised by others. They ask us: if the body of the firmament is spherical, as sight shows, and water is fluid and slides off high places, how could the water have been settled on the convex circumference of the firmament? What shall we say to this? First, that if something appears circular to us on its inner, concave side, it does not necessarily follow that its outer surface too is finished as a sphere and that the whole is exactly turned and smoothly rounded; for we see the stone ceilings of baths and the structures of cave-like buildings, which, though curved to a semicircular shape when seen from inside, often have a flat surface on the upper parts of the roof. So on this account let them neither have trouble themselves nor make trouble for us, as though we could not hold water in the upper regions. Next we must say what the nature of the firmament is, and for what reason it was appointed to stand between the waters. It is Scripture's custom to apply the name firmament to things surpassing in strength, as when it says, "The Lord is my firmament and my refuge"; and, "I have made firm its pillars"; and, "Praise him in the firmament of his power." The outside writers call that a solid body which is, as it were, compact and full; it is so called in contrast to the mathematical. The mathematical is what has its being in the dimensions alone, in breadth, I mean, and depth and height, while the solid is what has resistance in addition to the dimensions. But it is Scripture's custom to call firmament what is strong and unyielding, so that it often uses this word even of condensed air, as when it says, "He who makes the thunder firm." For the firmness and resistance of the wind shut up in the hollows of the clouds, which produces the noises of thunder by violently bursting out, Scripture called the making firm of the thunder. So now too we think this word is applied to some firm nature able to hold in the slipperiness and easy dissolution of water. And surely, though in common understanding it seems to have had its origin from water, we should not think it is like frozen water, or some such substance taking its origin from the filtering of moisture, such as that of the crystal stone, which they say is transformed by an extreme congealing of water, or the nature of mica that forms in mines. This is a transparent stone with a peculiar and very pure transparency; if it is found perfect in its own nature, neither eaten away by any decay nor broken through in its depth by cracks, it is almost like the air in its clearness. To none of these do we liken the firmament. For it truly belongs to a childish and simple mind to hold such notions about heavenly things. Nor, even if all things are in all, fire in earth and air in water, and likewise the others one in another, and none of the elements that fall under the senses is pure and unmixed, without a share either in the intermediate element or in its opposite, do we on this account allow ourselves to declare that the firmament is made of one of the simple bodies or of a mixture of them, having been taught by Scripture to allow our mind to imagine nothing beyond what has been granted. And let this not pass us by unnoticed either: after God commanded, "Let there be a firmament," it is not said simply, "and a firmament came to be," but, "And God made the firmament," and again, "God divided." Hear, you deaf, and you blind, look up! And who is deaf, but the one who does not hear the Spirit crying out so loudly? And who is blind? The one who does not see such clear proofs about the Only-begotten. "Let there be a firmament": this is the voice of the primary cause. "God made the firmament": this is a testimony to the making and creative power.

But let us bring the discourse back to the continuation of the explanation. "Let it divide," he says, "between water and water." The outpouring of the waters was boundless, it seems, surging over the earth on every side and suspended around it, so that it seemed to exceed its due proportion to the other elements. That is why, earlier, the abyss was said to be cast around the earth on every side. We will give the reason for its abundance in what follows. But certainly none of you, not even those highly trained in mind and sharp-sighted about this perishing and flowing nature, will attack our view as positing impossible or fictitious things in the account, nor will demand an account from us of what the nature of the waters was settled upon. For by the same reasoning by which they suspend the earth, though it is heavier than water, bringing it away from the extremities to the middle, they will surely grant that that immense water too stays at rest around the earth, both because of its natural downward motion and because of the balance on all sides. So an immeasurable mass of water was poured around the earth, not in proportion to it, but exceeding it many times over, since the great Craftsman foresaw from the beginning what was to come and arranged the first things for the need that would follow. What need was there, then, for the water to exceed beyond telling? Because the substance of fire is necessary to the universe, not only for the management of things on the earth but also for the completion of the universe; for the whole would have been mutilated if it lacked the one element that is greatest and most vital of all. But these are opposed to each other, and each is destructive of the other: fire of water, when it prevails in power, and water of fire, when it exceeds in quantity. Yet there was to be neither strife between them, nor, through the total failure of one, an occasion given for the dissolution of the universe. So the one who governs the universe stored up beforehand so great a quantity of the moist nature that, consumed little by little by the power of fire, it could hold out until the appointed limits of the world's existence. He, then, who arranged all things by weight and measure (for "the drops of rain are numbered by him," according to Job) knew how much time he had set for the world to endure, and how much consumption he must store up beforehand for the fire. This is the reason for the abundance of water at the creation. And that fire is necessary to the world, no one is so entirely a stranger to life as to need instruction by argument: not only because all the arts that hold our life together need the work of fire, weaving, I mean, and shoemaking, building, and farming, but because neither the sprouting of trees, nor the ripening of fruits, nor the generation of land or water animals, nor their nourishment would have come about in the beginning or lasted for any time if heat were not present. So the creation of heat is necessary for the formation and permanence of the things that come to be, and the abundance of moisture is necessary because the consumption by fire is unceasing and inexorable.

Look around the whole creation, and you will see the power of heat holding sway over everything subject to coming-to-be and perishing. That is why much water is poured over the earth, and carried away beyond what we can see, and also sown throughout the whole depth of the earth. Hence the abundance of springs, the gatherings of wells, the streams of rivers, both torrents and ever-flowing ones, so that moisture may be kept in many and various storehouses. From the east, from the winter solstice, flows the river Indus, the greatest volume of all river waters, as those who write descriptions of the earth have recorded; from the middle of the east, the Bactrus, the Choaspes, and the Araxes, from which the Tanais branches off and flows out into Lake Maeotis; and besides these the Phasis, flowing down from the Caucasus mountains, and countless others are carried from the northern regions into the Euxine Sea. From the summer west, below the Pyrenees mountain, the Tartessus and the Ister: one of these empties into the sea outside the Pillars, while the Ister, flowing through Europe, discharges into the Pontus. And why need I list the others, which the Rhipaean mountains beyond inner Scythia give birth to? Among them is the Rhodanus, with countless other rivers, also navigable, which pass by the western Galatians and Celts and the barbarians who border them, and all pour into the western sea. Others from the south flow down through Ethiopia, some coming into our sea, others emptying into the sea outside the navigable one: the Aegon, the Nyses, the one called Chremetes, and besides these the Nile, which does not even resemble rivers in nature when it floods Egypt like a sea. So the region of the inhabited world we live in is encompassed by water, bound in by immeasurable seas and watered by countless ever-flowing rivers, through the unspeakable wisdom of the one who arranged that the nature opposed to fire should be hard to consume. Yet there will be a time when all things will be burned up by fire, as Isaiah says when he speaks to the God of all: "He who says to the abyss, You will be laid waste, and I will dry up all your rivers." So cast away the wisdom that has been made foolish, and accept with us the teaching of the truth, plain in its wording but unerring in its knowledge.

That is why: "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide between water and water." It has been said what the name firmament signifies in Scripture: that it does not call firmament the resistant and solid nature that has weight and offers support; otherwise the earth would more properly have been deemed worthy of this name. But because the nature of the things lying above is fine and thin and not perceptible to any sense, it named this a firmament by comparison with things very fine and imperceptible to sense. Picture, then, some place that separates the moisture, letting what is fine and filtered pass upward, and sending what is thickest and earthy down below, so that from the beginning to the end the same good balance may be preserved, as the moisture is taken away little by little. You disbelieve the great quantity of water, but you do not look to the quantity of heat, which, even if it is small in size, is able to consume a great deal of moisture because of its power. For it draws in the moisture near it, as the cupping glass shows, and it consumes what it has drawn, after the manner of the fire of a lamp, which draws up through the wick the fuel beside it and quickly turns it to ash by changing it. And who doubts that the ether is fiery and burning hot? If it were not held back by the necessary limit set by its maker, what would prevent it from setting everything ablaze and burning up all that adjoins it, consuming at once all the moisture in existing things? This is why there is airy water, as the upper region is clouded by the rising of vapors which rivers and springs and marshes and lakes and all the seas send up, so that the ether may not seize and set all things on fire. For we see even this sun of ours, in summertime, often leave a soaked and marshy country completely without moisture and dry in a very short time. Where, then, is that water? Let those who are clever at everything show us. Is it not plain to all that it has been turned to vapor and consumed by the heat of the sun? And yet they say that the sun is not even hot: such a surplus of talk do they have! And see what kind of proof they lean on in resisting what is evident. Because it is white in color, they say, and not reddish or yellow, therefore it is not fiery in nature either; but its heat too, they say, comes from its rapid revolution. What do they gain for themselves by this? That the sun should not seem to consume any moisture. But I, even if what they say is not true, do not reject it, since it helps to build up my argument. For it was said that the quantity of the waters is necessary because of the consumption caused by heat. And it makes no difference whether a thing is hot by nature or has its burning from being acted upon, so far as producing the same effects on the same materials is concerned. For whether pieces of wood rubbed against each other kindle fire and flame, or are burned by a flame set to them, the result of both is equal and alike. And besides, we see the great wisdom of the one who steers all things moving the sun from one region to another, so that by lingering always in the same places it may not ruin the order of things by an excess of heat; but now leading it to the southern part at the winter solstice, now moving it to the equinoctial signs, and from there bringing it back to the northern regions at the summer solstice, so that by its gradual passage the good balance of the region around the earth is preserved. Let them consider whether they are not contradicting themselves, who say that the sea does not overflow from the rivers because of the sun's consumption, and further that it is left salty and bitter because what is fine and drinkable has been consumed by the heat; which happens chiefly through the sun's power of separation, which carries off what is light and leaves behind what is thick and earthy, like a kind of mud and sediment; from which comes the bitterness, saltiness, and drying quality of the sea. Those who say these things about the sea change their ground again and say that no diminution of moisture comes about from the sun.

"And God called the firmament heaven." The name belongs properly to another, and this one shares in the title by likeness. We have observed that in many places the visible region is called heaven, because of the density and continuity of the air that falls clearly under our sight, and that it is deemed worthy of the name heaven from its being seen, as where it says, "The birds of heaven," and again, "The things that fly along the firmament of heaven." Of this kind too is the saying, "They go up to the heavens." And Moses, blessing the tribe of Joseph, gives the blessings from the seasons of heaven and from dew, and from the turnings of the sun and the conjunctions of the months, and from the top of the mountains and the everlasting hills, since the region around the earth flourishes through the good order of these things. And in the curses upon Israel too: "The heaven over your head," he says, "will be bronze for you." What does he mean by this? Complete drought and failure of the airy waters, through which the fruitfulness of crops is present in the earth. So when it says that dew or rain comes from heaven, we understand it of the waters that have been appointed to occupy the upper region. For when the exhalations are gathered on high and the air is condensed by the pressing of the winds, then, when the moisture that was until then scattered through the cloud in a thin, vaporous form comes together, drops are formed, carried downward by the weight of what has been compacted; and this is the coming into being of rain. And when the moisture is whipped into foam, beaten back by the force of the winds, and then, chilled to the extreme, freezes through and through, the cloud breaks and snow falls. And in general, by the same reasoning, you can see the whole nature of moisture forming in the air above our heads. And let no one compare the simple and unadorned style of the words of the Spirit with the elaborate inquiries of those who have philosophized about heaven. For as much as the beauty of chaste women is preferable to that of a harlot, so great is the difference between our words and those of outsiders. They bring a forced plausibility to their arguments; here the truth lies before us naked of artifice. And why need we trouble ourselves refuting their falsehood, when it is enough for us to set their own books against one another and sit in great quiet as spectators of their war? For neither fewer in number nor lower in reputation, but far surpassing them in noise, those who say that the universe is set on fire and comes to life again from the seminal principles that remain in what has been burned set themselves against the opposite view; whence they also introduce infinite destructions and rebirths of the world. But they, splitting off from the truth on either side, find for themselves on this side and on that the byways that lead to error.

We also have something to say, about the waters that were divided, to some from within the church who, on the pretext of a higher sense and loftier thoughts, have taken refuge in allegories, saying that spiritual, incorporeal powers are figuratively signified by the waters; that the better ones remained above, over the firmament, while the wicked ones were left below in the earthly and material regions. This is why, they say, the waters above the heavens also praise God: that is, the good powers, being worthy because of the purity of their ruling mind, render fitting praise to the Creator; while the waters below the heavens are the spirits of wickedness, which have fallen from their natural height into the depth of evil; and these, being turbulent and rebellious and tossed by the tumults of the passions, have been named sea because of the changeableness and instability of their voluntary movements. Let us dismiss such accounts as interpretations of dreams and old wives' tales, and let us understand water as water, and accept the division made by the firmament according to the reason that has been given. And indeed, even if the waters above the heavens are sometimes called upon to glorify the common Master of all, we do not on that account posit that they have a rational nature. For the heavens are not ensouled because they "tell the glory of God," nor is the firmament a perceiving living being because it "proclaims the work of his hands." And if anyone says that the heavens are the contemplative powers, and the firmament the active powers that produce what is fitting, we accept the account as clever, but we will not at all grant that it is true. For in that way dew and frost and cold and heat, since in Daniel they are commanded to sing the praises of the Creator of all, would be some intelligent and invisible nature. But the meaning in these passages, understood thoughtfully by those who have sense, is that they fill out the glorification of the Creator. For it is not only the water above the heavens, as though leading in honors because of a superiority belonging to it by virtue, that renders praise to God; but, "Praise him," he says, "you things of the earth, dragons and all abysses." So the abyss too, which the allegorizers cast away to the worse portion, was not judged rejected by the psalmist either, being taken into the common chorus of creation; but it too, according to the principles within it, harmoniously completes the hymn to the Maker.

"And God saw that it was good." The things that come into being from God do not give delight to the eyes of God, nor is his approval of beautiful things the same as ours; but that is beautiful which has been completed according to the principle of the art and tends to the usefulness of its end. So he who had set before himself the clear purpose of what was being made went over the individual works and approved them, as completing the end according to his own principles of art. For a hand by itself, and an eye on its own, and each of the members of a statue lying separately, would not appear beautiful to an ordinary person; but when they are set in their proper order, the beauty of proportion, barely evident before, becomes recognizable even to the layman. The craftsman, however, knows the beauty of each even before they are put together, and praises each individually, referring his thought to their end. Such, then, is how God is now described: as a skilled praiser of the individual works; and he is about to give fitting praise also to the whole world together when it has been completed. But here let our words about the second day come to an end, so as to give the industrious hearers time to examine what they have heard, so that, if there was anything useful in it, they may hold it in memory and, by industrious meditation, as by a kind of digestion, await the distribution of what is beneficial; and to give those busy with their livelihood leisure during the interval, so that, having settled their concerns, they may come with a soul pure of cares to the evening feast of words. May God, who created great things and arranged that these small things should be spoken, give you understanding in everything of his own truth, so that from the things that are seen you may come to know the invisible one, and from the greatness and beauty of created things may take up a fitting thought of the one who created us. For "his invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, both his eternal power and divinity." So in earth and in air and in heaven, in water, in night and in day, and in all things that are seen, we may receive clear reminders of our Benefactor. For we will give no occasion to sins, nor leave room for the enemy in our hearts, if by continual remembrance we have God dwelling in us; to whom be all glory and worship, now and always, and to the ages of ages. Amen.

There are some cities that feast their eyes from early dawn until evening itself on all kinds of shows put on by wonder-workers. And indeed they listen at great length to certain effeminate and corrupt songs that breed much licentiousness in souls, and never have their fill. Many call such peoples blessed, because they leave aside the business of the marketplace and the means of livelihood that come from the trades, and pass the time of life allotted to them in idleness and pleasure, not knowing that a theater abounding in licentious shows is a common and public school of lewdness for those who sit in it, and that the elaborate melodies of the flutes and the harlots' songs, settling in the souls of those who hear them, persuade all of them to nothing else than shameful conduct, as they imitate the strumming of the lyre-players or the piping of the flute-players. Some who are mad about horses even fight over horses in their dreams, unyoking chariots and changing charioteers, and in general do not leave off the day's folly even in the visions of their sleep. And shall we, whom the Lord, the great wonder-worker and craftsman, has called together to the display of his own works, grow weary of the spectacle, or shrink from hearing the words of the Spirit? Shall we not rather stand around this great and varied workshop of divine creation, and, each of us going back in thought to the earliest times, behold the ordering of the universe? Heaven set up, according to the prophetic word, like a vault; the earth, immense in size and weight, settled upon itself; the air poured out, soft and moist by nature, providing a proper and continual food to all who breathe, yielding and parting for those who move through it because of its softness, so that it is no obstacle to those who press forward, always easily giving way behind those who cut through it and flowing around them; the nature of water, both nourishing and made ready for our other needs, and its orderly gathering into its appointed places: you will see these from what has just been read to us.

"And God said, Let the water under the heaven be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear. And it was so; and the water under the heaven was gathered into their gatherings, and the dry land appeared. And God called the dry land earth, and the bodies of the waters he called seas." How much trouble you gave me in the earlier discourses, demanding the reason why the earth was invisible, since every body naturally has color, and every color is perceptible to sight! And perhaps what was said did not seem sufficient to you: that "invisible" was said in relation to us, not to its nature, because of the interposition of the water that then covered the whole earth. Now listen to Scripture explaining itself: "Let the waters be gathered, and let the dry land appear." The curtains are drawn aside, so that what was until then not seen may become visible. But perhaps someone might also ask this besides. First, why does the word refer to the Creator's command what belongs to water by nature, to flow downhill? For as long as water happens to lie on level ground, it stays still, having nowhere to flow off to; but when it takes hold of some slope, as soon as the leading part rushes on, what follows takes the place of what has moved, and the next part takes the place of that; and so the leading part always slips away and the following part presses on; and the motion becomes the faster, the greater the weight of what is carried down and the deeper the place into which it flows. If, then, water is by nature like this, the command bidding it be gathered into one gathering would be superfluous. For because of its natural downward tendency it was certainly going to settle of its own accord into the lowest place of all, and not stop until its surface was leveled; for no place is so level as the surface of water. Then, he says, how were the waters commanded to run together into one gathering, when there are evidently many seas, very widely separated from one another in position? To the first of the questions we say this: you came to know the movements of water after the Master's command: that it is unstable and unsettled and is carried by nature toward slopes and hollows. But what power it had before the running given to it by this command came about, you neither saw yourself nor heard from anyone who saw. For understand that the voice of God makes nature, and that the command given then to creation provided created things with their order of succession from then on. Day and night were made once, and from then until now they succeed one another and do not cease dividing time into equal shares.

"Let the waters be gathered." The nature of the waters was commanded to run, and it never grows weary, being continually hastened on by that command. I say this with an eye to the flowing part of the waters. For some flow of themselves, like springs and rivers, while others are collected and do not flow. But my discourse now concerns waters in motion. "Let the waters be gathered into one gathering." If ever, standing by a spring that pours out abundant water, you have had the thought, who is it that drives this water out of the flanks of the earth? Who urges it forward? What are the storehouses from which it comes? What is the place toward which it hastens? How is it that these are not exhausted and those are not filled up? These things hang on that first word. From there the water received its signal to run. In every account of waters, remember the first word: "Let the waters be gathered." They had to run, so as to reach their proper place; then, having arrived in the appointed places, to stay by themselves and go no further. That is why, according to the word of Ecclesiastes, "All the torrents go to the sea, and the sea is not filled"; since both the flowing of the waters by the divine command and the sea's being enclosed within its bounds come from the first legislation: "Let the waters be gathered into one gathering." So that the water flowing in, overflowing the places that received it and always passing on and filling one place after another, should not continuously flood the whole land, it was commanded to be gathered into one gathering. That is why the sea, often raging under the winds and rising with its waves to the greatest height, as soon as it touches the shores, dissolves its rush into foam and goes back. "Will you not fear me, says the Lord, who set the sand as a boundary for the sea?" By sand, the weakest of all things, the sea, unbearable in its violence, is bridled. For what prevented the Red Sea from coming upon the whole of Egypt, which lies lower than it, and joining with the sea adjacent to Egypt, if it had not been fettered by the command of the Creator? That Egypt is lower than the Red Sea, those who wished to join the seas to each other, the Egyptian and the Indian, in which the Red Sea lies, have convinced us by experience. That is why they gave up the attempt: both Sesostris the Egyptian, who first began it, and Darius the Mede, who later wished to complete it. I have said this so that we may understand the power of the command "Let the waters be gathered into one gathering": that is, let no other gathering come to be apart from this one, but let what is gathered remain in the first collection.

Next, by saying that the waters should be gathered into one gathering, he showed you that the waters were many, divided among many places. For the hollows of the mountains, broken open by deep ravines, held collections of water; and besides, many level plains, falling in no way short of the greatest seas in size, and countless glens, and valleys hollowed out in shapes of every kind, all filled with water at that time, were emptied by the divine command, as the water from every side was driven together into one gathering. And let no one say: if there was water over the earth, then certainly all the hollows that now receive the sea were already full; where, then, were the collections of the waters to be made, if the hollows had been taken up beforehand? To this we will say that the receptacles too were made at the same time, when the water had to be separated off into one body. For the sea outside Gadeira did not yet exist, nor that great ocean, not to be ventured by sailors, which embraces the island of Britain and the western Iberians; but then, when the wide space had been created by the command of God, the masses of the waters were brought together into it. As for the objection that our account of the world's making is contrary to experience (for, they say, not all the water appears to have run together into one gathering), there is much one could say, and all of it obvious at once; but perhaps it is even ridiculous to contend with such people. Surely they ought not to bring forward to us marsh waters and the collections formed by rains, and think they refute our account by means of these? But he named the greatest and most complete confluence of the waters "one gathering." For wells too are man-made gatherings of water, as the moisture sown in the earth flows into the hollowed-out part of the ground. So the name "gathering" does not indicate just any collections of water, but the outstanding and greatest one, in which the whole element is displayed together. For as fire is broken up into small portions for our use here and is also poured out all together in the ether, and air is divided into small portions and yet all together encompasses the region around the earth, so also with water: even if there are some small, separate bodies of it, there is still one gathering that separates the whole element from the rest. For the lakes in the northern parts, and those around the region of Greece, occupying Macedonia and the land of the Bithynians and that of the Palestinians, are clearly gatherings; but the discourse now concerns the greatest of all, equal in extent to the earth. That they hold a great quantity of water no one will deny; but no one would reasonably call them seas, not even if some of them very much resemble the great sea in their saltiness and earthiness, like the Asphalt Lake in Judea and the Serbonian Lake, which stretches along the Arabian desert between Egypt and Palestine. For these are lakes, but the sea is one, as those who have traveled around the earth report. Even if some think that the Hyrcanian and the Caspian are enclosed by themselves, yet if one is to pay any attention to the geographies of those who have investigated these things, they are connected with each other and all open together into the greatest sea; as they also say that the Red Sea joins the sea beyond Gadeira. How then, he says, did God call the bodies of the waters seas? Because the waters ran together into one gathering, but the bodies of water, that is, the gulfs cut off separately by the surrounding land, the Lord called seas: a northern sea, a southern sea, an eastern sea, and a western one besides. And the seas have names of their own: the Euxine Pontus, the Propontis, the Hellespont, the Aegean and the Ionian, the Sardinian sea, the Sicilian, and the Tyrrhenian besides. And there are countless names of seas, which it would take long now, and would be in very poor taste, to enumerate precisely. That is why God named the bodies of the waters seas. But the sequence of the argument has carried us off to this; let us return to where we began.

"And God said, Let the waters be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear." He did not say, "and let the earth appear," so as not to show it again unformed, muddy and mixed with water, not yet having received its proper form and power. At the same time, so that we might not ascribe to the sun the cause of the earth's drying, the Creator made the dryness of the earth older than the sun's coming into being. And notice in the sense of what is written that not only did the surplus water run off the earth, but also whatever had been mixed with it in its depth withdrew, obeying the inexorable command of the Master. "And it was so." This addition is enough to show that the Creator's voice came to fulfillment. In many copies there is added, "And the water under the heaven was gathered into its gatherings, and the dry land appeared"; which some of the other translators have not given, and which the usage of the Hebrews does not appear to have. And truly, after the testimony "It was so," the retelling of the same things again is superfluous. So in the accurate copies these words are marked with an obelus; and the obelus is the sign of rejection. "And God called the dry land earth, and the bodies of the waters he called seas." Why was it said earlier, "Let the waters be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear," and not the earth; and here again, "the dry land appeared," and "God called the dry land earth"? Because dryness is the property, the mark, as it were, that characterizes the nature of the subject, while "earth" is a bare name of the thing. For as rationality is the property of man, while the word "man" signifies the living being to which the property belongs, so too dryness is the property of earth, peculiar to it. That, then, to which dryness properly belongs has been named earth, just as that to which neighing properly belongs has been named horse. And this holds not only for earth: each of the other elements too has a peculiar quality allotted to it, by which it is distinguished from the rest and each is recognized for what it is. Water has coldness as its own quality, air moisture, fire heat. But these are contemplated by reason in the manner described, as the first elements of composite things; those already set in a body and falling under the senses have their qualities paired. And none of the things that are seen and perceived is absolutely single, or simple and pure; but earth is dry and cold, water moist and cold, air hot and moist, fire hot and dry. For it is through the paired quality that the power arises for each to be mixed with each: each is blended with its neighboring element through the quality they share, and through its fellowship with what is next to it is joined to its opposite. For example, earth, being dry and cold, is united with water by the kinship of coldness, and through water it is united with air; since water, set between the two, takes hold of each of the qualities of its neighbors as if with two hands, of the coldness of earth and the moisture of air. Again, air by its own mediation becomes the reconciler of the warring natures of water and fire, being joined to water by moisture and to fire by heat. And fire, being hot and dry by nature, is bound to air by heat, and by dryness comes back again into fellowship with earth. And so there is a circle and a harmonious dance, all of them agreeing and keeping rank with one another; whence the name "elements" has properly been applied to them. I have said this in setting out the reason why God called the dry land earth, and did not call the earth dry. For dryness is not one of the things that came to the earth later, but one of the things that from the beginning complete its being. And what provides the cause of a thing's being is prior in nature to what comes afterward, and more honored. So it was fitting that the marks by which the earth is known were taken from what was there first and older.

"And God saw that it was good." The word does not indicate precisely this, that some delightful sight of the sea appeared to God. For the Maker does not see the beauties of creation with eyes, but contemplates what comes to be by his unspeakable wisdom. A pleasant sight indeed is the sea growing white when a clear calm holds it; pleasant too when, its surface ruffled by gentle breezes, it presents a purple or dark-blue color to those who look on it, when it does not beat violently on the neighboring land but greets it, as it were, with peaceful embraces. Yet we must not think that Scripture said that the sea appeared good and pleasant to God in this way; there the good is judged by the principle of creation. First, because the water of the sea is the source of all the moisture around the earth: it is distributed through hidden passages, as the spongy and cavernous parts of the mainland show, under which the sea runs through channels; when it is shut up in winding passages that do not lead straight upward, it is driven by the wind that moves it and is carried outward, bursting through the surface, and becomes drinkable, its bitterness cured by the filtering. And when on its passage it has taken on a hotter quality from metals, by the same cause that moves it it often becomes boiling and fiery; which may be observed in many places on the islands and in many places on the coasts. Even inland some places near river waters, to compare small things with great, undergo similar things. For what purpose have I said this? Because the whole earth is undermined with passages, the water returning underground through hidden pathways from the sources of the sea.

The sea, then, is good in God's sight also because of the underground course of moisture in the depth; good too because, being the receptacle of rivers, it receives into itself the streams from every side and stays within its own bounds; good too because it is a kind of beginning and source of the waters in the air: warmed by the ray of the sun, it gives off the fine part of the water as vapor; this is drawn up into the upper region, and then, cooled because it has risen higher than the rays reflected from the ground, while the shade of the cloud at the same time increases the cold, it becomes rain and fattens the earth. And no one will doubt this at all who thinks of cauldrons heated from below, which, though full of liquid, are often left empty, all that was being boiled having been dispersed into vapor. One may also see sea water itself being boiled by sailors, who catch the vapors in sponges and so moderately relieve their need in emergencies. The sea is good in God's sight in other ways too: because it girds the islands round about, giving them by itself both adornment and safety; and then because it joins together the mainlands that lie farthest apart, providing unhindered intercourse to those who sail; through this it grants knowledge of things unknown, becomes for merchants the agent of wealth, and easily supplies the needs of life, giving those who have abundance an outlet for their surplus and granting the needy the making-up of what they lack. But how can I see with precision the whole beauty of the sea, as it appeared to the eye of the one who made it? And if the sea is good and praiseworthy to God, how is not the assembly of such a church far more beautiful, in which a mingled sound, like a wave borne against the shore, of men and women and children, is sent forth in our prayers to God? And a deep calm keeps it unshaken, since the spirits of wickedness have not been able to trouble it with heretical words. May you, then, be worthy of the Lord's approval, preserving this good order in the most seemly way, in Christ Jesus our Lord …

"And God said, Let the earth put forth the plant of grass, sowing seed according to its kind, and the fruit-bearing tree producing fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in it." Fittingly, after the earth had rested, having put off the weight of the water, the command came to it to put forth first the plant, then the tree; which we still see happening even now. For the voice of that time and that first command became, as it were, a law of nature, and remained in the earth, providing it from then on with the power to bear and to bring forth fruit. "Let the earth put forth." In the generation of growing things the first stage is sprouting; then, when the shoots have peeped out a little, it becomes plant; then, when it has grown, it is grass, the growing things gradually becoming articulated and advancing to their completion in seed. For the green and grassy stage is alike in all of them. "Let the earth put forth the plant of grass." Let the earth bring forth its growth by itself, needing no cooperation from anywhere else. Since some think that the sun is the cause of what grows from the earth, drawing up the power from the depth to the surface by the pull of its heat, for this reason the adornment of the earth is older than the sun, so that those who have gone astray may stop worshiping the sun as the one who provides the cause of life. If, then, they are persuaded that everything around the earth had been set in order before its coming into being, they will also abate their boundless wonder at it, considering that it is younger in its coming into being than grass and plants. Was food, then, laid up beforehand for the cattle, while our own kind appeared worthy of no providence? On the contrary: above all, he who laid up fodder beforehand for oxen and horses is preparing wealth and enjoyment for you; for he who feeds your cattle increases the means of your life. Then too, what else is the generation of seeds but …

"Let the earth put forth the plant of grass, sowing seed," he says, "according to its kind." So that even if some kind of plant differs from the rest, the profit from those too returns to us, and the use of the seeds has been set apart for us; so the sense of what is said is this: "Let the earth put forth the plant of grass, and seed sowing according to its kind." For in this way both the sequence of the wording, whose construction now seems awkward, can be restored, and the necessary order of the things arranged by nature will be preserved. For first comes sprouting, then the green shoot, then the growth of the grass, then the completion of what grows, through the seed. How then, they say, does the word show all things that grow from the earth as bearing seed, when neither the reed, nor dog's-tooth grass, nor mint, nor crocus, nor garlic, nor flowering rush, nor countless other kinds appear to bear seed? To this we say that many of the things that grow from the earth have the power of seeds in their base and root. For example, the reed, after its yearly growth, sends out from its root a shoot that serves as a seed for the future. Countless others do the same, which, spreading through the earth, have their succession in their roots. So nothing is truer than that every growing thing either has seed or has some seminal power present in it. And this is what "according to its kind" means. For the shoot of a reed does not produce an olive tree; but from a reed comes another reed, and from seeds spring up plants akin to those that were sown. And thus what was put forth by the earth at the first coming into being is preserved until now, the kind being kept by the sequence of succession. "Let the earth put forth." Picture for me how, from a small word and so brief a command, the earth, chilled and barren, was suddenly in labor and stirred to bring forth fruit, as if, putting off a sad and mournful garment, it put on a brighter one, rejoiced in its own adornments, and brought forth the countless kinds of growing things. I want the wonder of creation to be planted in you more firmly, so that wherever you are, and by whatever kind of plant you stand, you may receive a clear reminder of the Creator. … come to the thought of human nature, remembering the image of the wise Isaiah: "All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass." For the shortness of life, and the gladness and cheer of human prosperity that lasts a little while, … found in the prophet a most fitting image. Today a man flourishes in body, fattened by luxury, with a fair complexion blooming from the vigor of his age, robust and strong, irresistible in his impetus; tomorrow this same man is pitiable, withered by time or broken down by disease. So-and-so is admired for the abundance of his wealth; around him is a crowd of flatterers, a bodyguard of pretended friends hunting the favor he gives; a crowd of relatives, and these too putting on a show; a countless swarm of attendants, both those who wait on him for their meals and those who serve his needs, whom he drags along with him going out and coming back, so that he is envied by those who meet him. Add to his wealth some political power too, or honors from emperors, or the government of nations, or the command of armies; the herald shouting loudly before him; the rod-bearers on this side and that striking the deepest terror into the governed; the beatings, the confiscations, the arrests, the prisons, from which an unbearable fear of him gathers among his subjects. And then what? One night, or one fever, or a pleurisy, or a pneumonia snatches the man away from among men and is gone, suddenly stripping off all his stage, and that glory has been exposed as a dream. So the prophet has hit the mark in likening human glory to the frailest flower.

"Let the earth put forth the plant of grass, sowing seed according to its kind and according to its likeness." Even now the order of growing things bears witness to the first arrangement. For sprouting leads the way for every plant and every herb. Whether something comes up from a root, from a shoot below, like the crocus and dog's-tooth grass, it must sprout again and peep out above ground; or whether from a seed, in this case too there must first be sprouting, then a plant, then green grass, then the fruit ripening on a stalk already dry and stout. "Let the earth put forth the plant of grass." When the seed falls into earth that has moisture and warmth in due measure, it becomes loose and porous, takes hold of the earth around it, and draws to itself what is proper and akin to it. The finest particles of earth, falling into its pores and slipping in around them, widen its bulk still further, so that it puts down roots below and peeps out above, the stalks put forth being equal in number to the roots. And as the shoot is continually warmed, the moisture drawn up through the roots brings along with it, by the pull of the heat, a moderate portion of the earth's nourishment, and distributes this to the stalk and the husk, to the sheaths of the grain, to the grain itself, and to the beards; and so, the growth taking place little by little, each growing thing reaches its proper measure, whether it happens to be one of the grains, or of the pulses, or of the vegetables, or of the shrubs. A single blade of grass and a single plant are enough to occupy your whole mind in contemplating the art that fashioned them: how the stalk of wheat is girded with knots, so that, like bands, they may easily bear the weight of the ears when, full of fruit, they bend down toward the earth. That is why oats are hollow throughout, since their head is weighed down by nothing, while nature has secured wheat with these bands. It has laid up the grain in a sheath, so that it may not be easily snatched by grain-pickers, and further, by the projection of the beards, as with points, it keeps off the damage done by small creatures.

What shall I say? What shall I pass over in silence? Among the rich treasures of creation it is impossible to find the more precious, and the loss of what is passed over is very hard to bear. "Let the earth put forth the plant of grass." And at once poisonous plants were brought forth together with the nourishing ones: with the wheat, hemlock; with the other foods, hellebore and aconite and mandrake and the juice of the poppy. What then? Shall we leave off acknowledging our thanks for useful things and accuse the Creator for the things that destroy our life? And shall we not reckon this: that not everything has been created for the sake of our belly? The foods assigned to us are ready at hand and well known to all, and each of the things that have come into being fulfills its own particular principle in creation. Because the blood of a bull is poisonous to you, ought that animal, for that reason, either not to have been brought into being, or, once brought into being, to have been bloodless? Does not our life need its strength for so many tasks? But for you the reason that dwells within you is sufficient to guard against deadly things. Surely sheep and goats know how to avoid what harms their life, distinguishing what is hurtful by sense alone; and for you, who have reason and the art of medicine providing what is useful, and the experience of those before you suggesting the avoidance of harmful things, is it hard, tell me, to steer clear of poisons? Not one of these has been made idly, not one uselessly. Either it provides food for one of the irrational animals, or it has been discovered by the art of medicine for us as well, to relieve certain illnesses. For starlings feed on hemlock and escape the harm of the poison because of the constitution of their body: since the passages to their heart are narrow, they digest what they have swallowed before its chill can take hold of their vital parts. Hellebore is food for quails, which escape the harm through the peculiarity of their temperament. And these very things are sometimes useful to us at the right time. For by means of … physicians induce sleep, and with opium they lull severe pains of the body to sleep. Some have even subdued the frenzy of the appetites with hemlock, and with hellebore have rooted out many chronic illnesses. So what you thought you had as a charge against the Creator has turned out for you as an addition to your thanksgiving.

"Let the earth put forth the plant of grass." How much food, growing of itself, does he speak of in these words: that in roots, that in the plant itself, and that in the fruits already! And how much more comes to us from care and farming! He did not command seed and fruit to be produced at once, but the earth to sprout and turn green, and then to be brought to completion in seed, so that that first command might become nature's teacher for the order that follows. How then, they say, does the earth produce its seeds according to kind, when often, having sown wheat, we gather in this black grain? But this is not a change into another kind; it is a sort of sickness and infirmity of the seed. For it has not put off being wheat, but has been blackened by burning, as one can learn from the very name. Burned by excess of cold, it has changed to another color and taste. And indeed it is said that, when it finds suitable soil and temperate weather, it returns again to its original form. So you would find nothing among growing things that is brought about contrary to the command. The so-called darnel, and all the other bastard seeds that are mixed in with food crops, which Scripture usually calls tares, do not come from a change in the wheat, but came into being from their own origin, having a kind of their own. They fill out the image of those who corrupt the Lord's teachings, who have not been genuinely taught by the word but corrupted by the teaching of the evil one, and who mix themselves into the healthy body of the church, so as to inflict their harm secretly on the simpler. The Lord also likens the perfecting of those who have believed in him to the growth of seeds, saying: "As when a man casts seed upon the earth, and sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed springs up and grows, he does not know how. For the earth bears fruit by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear." "Let the earth put forth the plant." And in an instant of time the earth, beginning from sprouting so as to keep the laws of the Creator, went through every form of growth and at once brought its shoots to completion. The meadows were deep with abundant grass, and the fertile plains, bristling with crops, presented in the movement of the ears the image of a surging sea. Every plant and every kind of vegetable, and whatever there is among shrubs and among legumes, then rose above the earth in all abundance. For there was no failure in what was then put forth, neither from the inexperience of farmers, nor from bad weather, nor from any other cause harming what grew. Nor did the sentence of condemnation yet hinder the earth's abundance. For these things are older than the sin for which we were condemned to eat our bread in the sweat of our face.

But "and the fruit-bearing tree," he says, "producing fruit whose seed is in it, according to its kind and according to its likeness, upon the earth." At this word all the thickets grew dense; all the trees shot up, both those whose nature it is to rise to the greatest height, firs and cedars and cypresses and pines, and all the bushes were at once leafy all round and thick; and the so-called garland plants, rose bushes and myrtles and laurels: all of them, which did not exist before on the earth, came into being in a single moment of time, each with its own peculiar character, separated from those of other kinds by the clearest differences, each recognized by its own mark. Except that the rose was then without thorns; afterward the thorn was yoked to the beauty of the flower, so that we might have grief lying close beside the delight of enjoyment, remembering the sin for which the earth was condemned to bring forth thorns and thistles for us. But the earth was commanded, he says, to give forth the fruit-bearing tree producing fruit on the earth, whose seed is in it; yet we see many trees that have neither fruit nor seed. What shall we say, then? That the things more precious by nature have received mention first; and then, that to one who looks closely all of them will be found either to have seed or to have what is equivalent to seeds. For black poplars and willows and elms and white poplars and the like do not seem to bear any visible fruit, but anyone who examines carefully will find that each of them has seed. For the grain lying under the leaf, which some of those who have busied themselves with naming things call the stalk, has the power of a seed. For whatever naturally grows from branches generally puts forth its roots from there. And perhaps the offshoots of the roots too hold the place of seed, which the gardeners tear off and so increase the kind. But first, as we said, mention was made of the things that most sustain our life, those that were to welcome man with their own fruits and provide him with abundant fare: the vine, producing wine that was to gladden the heart of man; the olive, providing fruit able to make the face cheerful with oil. How many things ran together at the same moment, brought forth in haste by nature! The root of the vine; the branches, flourishing and great, spread out round about over the earth; the bud, the tendrils, the unripe grape, the clusters. A vine, observed with understanding, is enough to give your eye a reminder of your own nature. For you surely remember the Lord's image, in which he calls himself a vine and the Father the vinedresser, and named each one of us, planted in the church through faith, branches; and he calls us to bear much fruit, so that we may not be condemned for uselessness and handed over to the fire. And he does not cease everywhere comparing the souls of men to vines. "My beloved had a vineyard," he says, "on a hill, in a fertile place"; and, "I planted a vineyard, and put a hedge around it." Clearly he calls human souls the vineyard, around which he set as a hedge the security that comes from the commandments and the guard of the angels. For "the angel of the Lord will encamp around those who fear him." Then he also fixed stakes beside us, as it were, setting in the church "first apostles, second prophets, third teachers." And raising our thoughts on high by the examples of the ancient and blessed men, he has not let them lie cast on the ground and fit to be trodden underfoot. He wants us also to cling to our neighbors with the embraces of love, as with tendrils, and to rest upon them, so that, always having our impulse upward, we may, like climbing vines, wind ourselves around the tops of the loftiest. He also requires us to accept being dug around. And the soul is dug around in putting off the cares of the world, which are burdens on our hearts. So he who has put off fleshly love and fondness for money, and has judged the passion for this paltry glory … to be loathsome and contemptible, has as it were been dug around and breathed again, having put off the vain weight of earthly-mindedness. And, according to the saying of the proverb, we must not run wild in wood, that is, not live for show nor hunt after praise from outsiders, but be fruitful, storing up the display of our works for the true Vinedresser. And you, be "like a fruitful olive in the house of God," never stripped of hope, but always having salvation through faith flourishing about you. For in this way you will imitate the evergreen character of the plant …

But let us return to the investigation of the arrangements of art. How many kinds of plants then sprang up: some fruit-bearing, some for roofing, others suited to shipbuilding, others for burning! Among these again, the arrangement of the parts in each tree is varied, and it is hard to discover the peculiar character of each and to observe its difference from each of the others of different kinds. How some of them are deep-rooted, others shallow-rooted; some grow straight and with a single trunk, others are low and at once divided from the root into many offshoots! How the trees whose branches stretch far out into the air also have deep roots spreading very widely round about, nature laying down, as it were, foundations proportionate to the weight above! How many differences of bark there are! Some plants have smooth bark, others cracked bark; some have a single layer, others many folds. And what is wonderful is that you would find in plants too things like the accidents of human youth and old age: in the young and flourishing the bark is stretched tight, while in those growing old it becomes, as it were, wrinkled and rough. Some, when cut, sprout again, while others remain without successors, as if they had undergone a kind of death in the cutting. Some have even observed that pines, when cut down or burned, change into oak forests. We know too that some have had their natural defect remedied by the care of farmers: for example sour pomegranates and the more bitter almonds, when they are bored through at the trunk near the root and receive a fat wedge of pine driven through the middle of the pith, change the unpleasantness of their juice into usefulness. So let no one living in vice despair of himself, knowing that, while farming changes the qualities of plants, the soul's care for virtue is able to overcome infirmities of every kind. And the difference among fruit-bearing plants in their bearing of fruit is so great that no one could go through it in words. For the differences of fruits are not only among those of different kinds, but there is much variety even within the same species of tree; for the growers distinguish one character in the fruit of the male trees and another in that of the female, and they even divide palms into male and female. And you may sometimes see the one they call female letting down her branches, as if in heat and longing for union with the male; and those who tend the plants throw among her branches what are, as it were, the seeds of the male, the so-called psenes; and so she seems to come into a sense of enjoyment, and raises her branches again, and her foliage returns to the proper shape of the plant. They say the same about fig trees too. Hence some plant wild figs beside the cultivated ones, while others tie on the green wild figs and so cure the weakness of the fruitful, cultivated figs, checking the fruit that is already dropping and falling away. What does this riddle of nature mean for you? That we must often take from those who are outside the faith too some vigor for the display of good works. For if you see someone among the pagans, or someone cut off from the church by some heresy, taking care of a sober life and of good order in the rest of his conduct, increase your own zeal still further, so that you may become like the fruitful fig tree, which gathers strength from the presence of the wild ones, checks the dropping of its fruit, and nourishes it with greater care.

Such, then, are the differences in the manner of their generation, to mention a very few out of very many. As for the fruits themselves, who could go through their variety, their shapes, their colors, the peculiar character of their juices, the usefulness of each? How some ripen bare under the sun, while others mature covered in husks? And why those whose fruit is tender have a thick covering of leaves, as with the fig, while those whose fruits are more solid have a light covering of leaves, as with the walnut? Because the former, owing to their weakness, needed more help, while for the latter a thicker covering would have been harmful because of the shade it would cast. How the leaf of the vine is deeply cut, so that the cluster may withstand the harms that come from the air and also receive the sun's ray abundantly through the openings! Nothing is without cause, nothing by chance; all things have a certain unspeakable wisdom. What word could reach it? How could the human mind go through everything with precision, so as to perceive their peculiar characters, to distinguish clearly their differences from one another, and to discover without doubt their hidden causes? One water, drawn up through the root, nourishes the root itself in one way, the bark of the trunk in another, the wood in another, and the pith in yet another. It also becomes leaf, is divided into boughs and branches, and gives the fruits their growth; and the tear and the juice of the plant come from the same cause; and how great their differences from one another are, no word could express. For the tear of the mastic is one thing, the juice of the balsam another; and certain fennels in Egypt and Libya weep out yet another kind of juice. There is also an account that amber is the juice of plants hardened into the nature of stone. The account is borne out by the bits of straw and the tiniest creatures that appear in it, which were caught while the juice was soft and are held fast. And in general, one who has not learned from experience the difference among the qualities of juices will find no word to set out their effects. How again, from the same moisture, wine is formed in the vine and oil in the olive? And this is not the only wonder, how here the liquid became sweet and there oily; but also that among sweet fruits the variety of quality is beyond telling. For the sweetness in the vine is one thing, in the apple another, and in the fig and the date others. I want you also to apply your skill to this inquiry: how the same water is now smooth to the senses, when, having entered certain plants, it has been sweetened; now sharp to the taste, when, having passed through other plants, it has turned sour; and again, changing into the utmost bitterness, it roughens the sense, when it comes into scammony; and in acorns, or in the fruit of the cornel, it changes to an astringent and harsh quality, while in terebinths and walnuts it passes into a soft and oily nature.

And why speak of things far apart, when in the same fig tree the water passes into the most opposite qualities? It is very bitter in the sap, and very sweet in the fruit itself. And in the vine it is most astringent in the boughs, and most pleasant in the clusters. And how many are the differences of color! You may see in a meadow the same water turning red in this flower, purple in another, dark blue in this one, and white in another; and again producing a difference of scents greater than the variety of colors. But I see that my discourse, through insatiable desire for contemplation, is falling into excess; and unless I bind it and bring it back to the necessity of the creation, the day will fail me while I set before you the great wisdom from the smallest things. "Let the earth put forth the fruit-bearing tree, producing fruit upon the earth." And at once the mountain peaks were covered with foliage; gardens were artfully laid out; and the banks of rivers were beautified with countless kinds of plants. Some had been prepared to adorn the human table; others provided food for cattle from their leaves and their fruits; others procured for us the benefits of medicine: the juices, the saps, the twigs, the bark, the fruit. In short, everything that long experience has discovered, collecting what is useful from particular cases, the keen providence of the Creator foresaw from the beginning and brought into being. And you, when you see the cultivated and the wild, the plants that love water and those of dry land, those that bear flowers and those without flowers, recognizing the great one in the small, always add to your wonder and increase, I pray you, your love for the Creator. Examine how he made some evergreen and others that are stripped of leaves; and among the evergreens, some that shed their leaves and others that keep them always. For the olive and the pine shed their leaves, even if they change them unnoticed, so that they never seem to be stripped of their foliage; while the palm keeps its leaves always, the same leaf remaining from its first sprouting to the end. Then consider this too: how the tamarisk is, as it were, amphibious, counted among the water-loving plants and yet multiplying in the deserts. That is why Jeremiah rightly likens double and wavering characters to such a plant.

"Let the earth put forth." This small command at once became a great nature and a skillful principle, accomplishing the countless peculiar characters of growing things faster than our thought. That command, present in the earth still now, urges it every year to bring out all the power it has for the generation of plants, seeds, and trees. For as tops, from the first blow given to them, make their successive turns when, having fixed their point, they spin round on themselves, so too the sequence of nature, having received its beginning from the first command, goes on through all the time that follows, until it reaches the common consummation of the universe. Toward this let us all too hasten, fruitful and full of good works, so that, "planted in the house of the Lord, we may flourish in the courts of our God," in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and might to the ages of ages. Amen.

The spectator of athletes ought himself to have some share of vigor. One can see this from the rules of the festivals, which direct those seated in the stadium to sit with bare heads, so that, it seems to me, each may be not only a spectator of the contestants but in a measure himself a contestant. So too the one who examines great and supernatural spectacles, the hearer of truly great and unspeakable wisdom, ought to come bringing from home some resources for contemplating what is set before us, and to share in the contest with me as far as he can, standing by not so much as a judge as a fellow contestant, lest the discovery of the truth escape us, and my error become a common loss for the hearers. Why do I say this? Because, since what lies before us is an examination of the constitution of the world and a contemplation of the universe that takes its starting points not from the wisdom of the world but from what God taught his servant, speaking to him in visible form and not through riddles, it is altogether necessary that those who love great spectacles should not have their minds untrained for understanding what is set before us. If ever, then, on a clear night, gazing at the unspeakable beauties of the stars, you have formed the thought of the Craftsman of all, who it is that embroidered heaven with these flowers, and how in what is seen the necessary outweighs the delightful; if again by day you have studied the wonders of the day with a sober mind, and through the things that are seen have reasoned your way to the one who is not seen: then you come as a prepared hearer, fit to fill this august and blessed theater. Come, then: as those who take strangers to a city by the hand and lead them around, so I too will guide you as strangers to the hidden wonders of this great city. In this city lies our ancient homeland, from which the man-slaying demon removed us, having enslaved man by his baits. Here you will see the first coming into being of man, and the death that at once overtook us, which sin begot, the firstborn offspring of the demon who is the author of evil. And you will come to know yourself: earthy by nature, but a work of divine hands; falling far short of the irrational animals in strength, but appointed ruler of the irrational and the inanimate; inferior in natural equipment, but able by the abundance of reason to rise up to heaven itself. If we learn these things, we will know ourselves, we will know God, we will worship the Creator, serve the Master, glorify the Father, love our Nourisher, revere our Benefactor, and never cease to worship the author of our present and future life, who through the wealth he has already given assures us of what lies in the promises, and by the experience of present things confirms for us what we hope for. For if temporal things are such, what will eternal things be? And if visible things are so beautiful, what will invisible things be? If the greatness of heaven exceeds the measure of human understanding, what mind will be able to trace the nature of everlasting things? If the sun, subject to corruption, is so beautiful and so great, swift in its motion and orderly in completing its circuits, proportioned in size to the universe so as not to exceed its due relation to the whole, and by the beauty of its nature shining in creation like a clear eye; if the sight of it never satisfies, how beautiful will the sun of righteousness be? If it is a loss for a blind man not to see this sun, what a loss it is for a sinner to be deprived of the true light!

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven for illumination upon the earth, to divide between the day and between the night." Heaven and earth had come first; after these light had been created, day and night had been distinguished; then the firmament, and the appearing of the dry land. The water had been collected into a fixed and bounded gathering. The earth had been filled with its own products, having sprouted the countless kinds of plants and abounding in trees of every sort. But there was not yet a sun, nor a moon, so that those who did not know God might not name the sun the author and father of light, nor think it the maker of what grows from the earth. That is why it was on the fourth day that God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven." When you have been taught who spoke, at once join in your thought the one who heard. "God said, Let there be lights; and God made the two lights." Who spoke, and who made? Do you not perceive in these words the twofold persons? Everywhere the doctrine of theology is mystically sown through the history. And the purpose of the creation of the lights is added: "for illumination," he says, "upon the earth." If the coming into being of light had come first, how is the sun now said to have been made for illumination? First, let the peculiarity of the expression move no one to laughter, if we do not follow your choices of words nor practise a rhythmical arrangement of them. For among us there are no polishers of phrases, nor is euphony of sound prized; everywhere the clarity of the words is preferred. Consider, then, whether by "illumination" he has not sufficiently shown what he meant: for instead of "lighting" he said "illumination." And this does not conflict with what was said about light. For then the very nature of light was brought forth; now this solar body has been prepared to be a vehicle for that firstborn light. For as fire is one thing and the lamp another, the one having the power of giving light, the other made to shine for those who need it, so too the lights have now been made as a vehicle for that most pure, unmixed, and immaterial light. For as the apostle speaks of some as lights in the world, while the true light of the world is something else, by participation in which the saints became lights to the souls they taught, rescuing them from the darkness of ignorance; so now too the Creator of all, having furnished this sun with that most brilliant light, kindled it around the world.

And let no one find incredible what has been said, that the brightness of light is one thing and the body underlying the light another. First, from the fact that we divide all composite things in this way, into the receptive substance and the quality that has come upon it. As whiteness is one thing by nature and the whitened body another, so too the things now spoken of, though different in nature, have been united by the power of the Creator. And do not tell me that these cannot be separated from each other. For I do not say that the separation of the light from the body of the sun is possible for you and me; but that what is separable for us in thought can also be separated in actual operation by the maker of their nature. For you too cannot separate the burning power of fire from its brightness; yet God, wishing to turn his servant aside by a marvelous sight, set fire on the bush, working by its brightness alone, while its power of burning stayed idle. As the Psalmist also testifies, saying, "The voice of the Lord who divides the flame of fire." In the recompense for the lives we have lived, a word teaches us in secret that the nature of fire will be divided, and the light assigned to the righteous for enjoyment, the pain of burning to those who are punished. Then too, from what happens to the moon we can find proof of what is being examined. For when it wanes and diminishes, it is not consumed in its whole body, but by putting off and taking on again the light around it, it gives us the appearances of decrease and increase. That its body itself is not consumed when it wanes, what is seen is clear evidence. For you can, in clean air free of all mist, especially when it happens to be crescent-shaped, if you watch carefully, see its dark and unlit part bounded by an arc as great as that which fills the whole of it at full moon; so that the full circle is seen plainly completed, as the eye takes in, together with the illuminated part, the shadowy and airy hollow. And do not tell me that the moon's light is borrowed, since it decreases as it moves toward the sun and increases as it moves away. That is not what we have set ourselves to examine now, but that its body is one thing and what illuminates it another. Understand something of the same kind with the sun too, except that the sun, having received the light once and holding it mixed with itself, does not put it off, while the moon, continually as it were undressing and dressing again in the light, by her own case confirms what has been said about the sun. These were also appointed to divide between the day and between the night. Earlier God divided between the light and between the darkness; then he set their natures in opposition, so that they are unmixed with each other and light has no fellowship with darkness. For what the shadow is by day, that we must think the nature of darkness is by night. For if every shadow, when some brightness shines, falls from bodies opposite the light, stretching toward the west in the morning, inclining toward the east in the evening, and turning north at midday, night too withdraws to the side opposite the rays, being nothing else by nature but the shadow of the earth. For as by day the shadow is cast beside what blocks the radiance, so night naturally forms when the air around the earth is shaded. This, then, is what was said: "God divided between the light and between the darkness," since darkness flees before the onrush of light, a natural estrangement between them having been established at the first creation. But now he appointed the sun to the measures of the day, and the moon, whenever she completes her own circle, to be the ruler of the night. For at that time the lights stand almost diametrically opposite each other: when the sun rises at full moon, the moon goes down into invisibility, and when the sun sets again, she often rises in her turn from the east. If in her other phases the light of the moon does not extend over the whole night, that has nothing to do with the present argument. Except that, when she is at her fullest …

"And let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years." The signs given by the lights are necessary for human life. For if one does not pry beyond measure into the signs they give, he will find the observations drawn from long experience of them useful. For much can be learned about rainy weather, and much about droughts and the movement of winds, partial or general, violent or gentle. The Lord too has handed down to us one of the things shown by the sun, saying, "There will be a storm, for the sky is red and lowering." For when the sun rises through mist, its rays are dimmed, and it is seen coal-like and blood-red in color, the thickness of the air producing this appearance to the eyes. And the air, until then condensed and compacted, not having been dispersed by the ray, has clearly not been able to prevail because of the inflow of vapors from the earth, but will bring a storm through the excess of moisture on the regions over which it is gathered. Likewise when the moon is surrounded by a pool; and when what are called halos are drawn around the sun, they indicate either a mass of airy water or a movement of violent winds; or when the so-called mock suns run along with the course of the sun, they become signs of certain happenings in the air. So too the rods that appear upright on the clouds in the colors of the rainbow indicate rains, or extraordinary storms, or in general the greatest change in the air. Those who have studied these things have also observed many signs in the waxing or waning moon, since the air around the earth necessarily changes along with its phases. When it is thin and clear around the third day, it promises settled fair weather; but when it appears thick in its horns and reddish, it threatens either heavy rain from the clouds or a violent movement of the south wind. Who does not know how much benefit the signs drawn from these things give to life? The sailor can keep his ship inside the harbor, foreseeing the dangers from the winds; the traveler can avoid harm from far off, expecting the change from the gloominess of the air. And farmers, who toil over seeds and the care of plants, find from here all the right times for their work. And the Lord has foretold that at the dissolution of the universe signs will appear in sun and moon and stars: … "blood, and the moon will not give her light." These are signs of the completion of the universe …

But those who leap beyond what is written have dragged the saying into the advocacy of casting nativities, and they say that our life depends on the movement of the heavenly bodies, and that this is why the Chaldeans draw from the stars the signs of what befalls us. And the simple word of Scripture, "Let them be for signs," they take, as suits themselves, not of the changes in the air, nor of the alterations of the seasons, but of the allotment of our lives. For what do they say? That such an interweaving of these moving stars with the stars lying in the zodiac, when they come together with one another in such a figure, produces such births, while such another relation of the same stars produces the opposite lot in life. About these things it is perhaps not useless, for the sake of clarity, to speak, taking the matter up a little from the beginning. I will say nothing of my own, but will use their own words to refute them, offering some remedy to those already caught in the harm, and to the rest a safeguard against falling into the same. Those who invented the casting of nativities, having realized that in the breadth of time many of the figures escape them, narrowed the measures of time to the utmost, as though in the smallest and shortest moment, as the apostle says, "in an atom," and "in the twinkling of an eye," there were the greatest difference between one birth and another; and the one born in this instant would be a tyrant of cities and a ruler of peoples, exceedingly rich and powerful, while the one born at the next moment of time would be a beggar and a vagrant, going from door to door for his daily food. That is why, having divided the so-called zodiac circle into twelve parts, since the sun passes through the twelfth part of the so-called fixed sphere in thirty days, they have divided each of the twelfths into thirty degrees. Then, dividing each degree into sixty, they cut each of the sixtieths again sixty times. Let us then set down the births of those born, and see whether they will be able to keep this precision in the division of time. As soon as the child is born, the midwife examines whether the newborn is male or female; then she waits for the cry, which is the sign that the child is alive. How many sixtieths do you suppose pass in this time? She tells the Chaldean what has been born. Through how many of the very smallest units, would you have us suppose, does the midwife's voice pass, especially if the one recording the hour happens to be standing outside the women's quarters? For the one who is going to learn the horoscope must record the hour precisely, whether it falls by day or by night. How great a swarm of sixtieths runs past again in this time? For the star that marks the hour must be found not only in which twelfth it is, but in which degree of the twelfth, and in which sixtieth, into which we said the degree is divided; or, that precision may be reached, in which sixtieth of those subdivided from the first sixtieths. And they say that this so fine and incomprehensible finding of the time must be made for each of the planets, so as to find what relation they had to the fixed stars, and what figure they formed with one another at the moment of the child's birth. So if it is impossible to hit the hour exactly, and the slightest deviation makes one miss everything, then both those who busy themselves with this nonexistent art and those who gape at them as able to know their affairs are laughable.

And what of their predictions of outcomes? So-and-so, they say, is curly-haired and bright-eyed, for he has the Ram for his hour, and such is somehow the look of that animal. He is also high-minded, since the Ram is a leader; and generous, and again good at providing, since this animal puts off its wool without pain and is easily clothed again by nature. And the one born under the Bull, he says, is long-suffering and servile, since the bull is under the yoke. And the one born under the Scorpion is quick to strike, because of his likeness to that creature. And the one born under the Balance is just, because of the equality of our scales. What could be more laughable than these things? The Ram, from which you take the birth of a man, is the twelfth part of heaven, on reaching which the sun touches the points of spring. And the Balance and the Bull likewise: each of these is a twelfth of the so-called zodiac circle. How then, while saying that the primary causes of men's lives lie there, do you characterize the characters of those who are born by the cattle among us? For the one born under the Ram is generous, not because that part of heaven produces such a character, but because the sheep has such a nature. Why then do you overawe us with the credibility of the stars, while trying to persuade us with bleatings? For if heaven has taken such peculiarities of character from the animals, then it too is subject to principles foreign to it, having its causes depending on the cattle; and if it is laughable to say this, it is much more laughable to try to bring plausibility to one's argument from things that have nothing in common. But these clever notions of theirs are like spiders' webs: when anything weak is caught in them, it is bound and held fast; but when one of the stronger creatures comes near, it easily breaks through itself and tears the feeble webs apart and destroys them.

And they do not stop at these things; even of the things over which each one's own choice is master (I mean the pursuits of virtue or of vice) they attach the causes to the heavenly bodies. To contradict them would otherwise be laughable, but because many are already in the grip of the deception, it is perhaps necessary not to pass it by in silence. First, then, let us ask them whether the figures of the stars do not change countless times every day. For the so-called planets are always moving, some overtaking one another more quickly, others making slower circuits, so that often within the same hour they both see one another and are hidden; and in births, as they themselves say, it has the greatest power whether one is looked upon by a beneficent star or by a maleficent one. And often, not finding the moment at which the beneficent star was bearing witness, through ignorance of one of the smallest units, they have registered the child as lying under an evil genius. I am compelled to use their own words. In such talk there is much folly, and many times more impiety. For the maleficent stars shift the blame for their own wickedness onto the one who made them. If evil is theirs by nature, the Creator will be the maker of evil; but if they are made evil by choice, then first they will be living beings with the power of choice, using free and self-governing impulses; and it is beyond all madness to tell such lies about things without souls. Then, how great the absurdity is, to distribute evil and good to each not according to desert, but to say that because a star has come to be in this place it is beneficent, and because it is looked upon by that one the same star becomes maleficent, and when it inclines a little from the figure again it at once forgets its wickedness! But so much for this. If at every instant of time they are shifted from one figure to another, and in these countless changes, many times a day, the configurations of royal births are completed, why are kings not born every day? Or why at all do hereditary successions of kingship exist among them? For surely each king does not carefully fit the birth of his own son to the royal figure of the stars; for what man is master of such a thing? How then did Uzziah beget Jotham, Jotham Ahaz, Ahaz Hezekiah, and none of them happened on a servile hour of birth? Then, if the beginnings of the acts of vice and virtue are not in what is in our power, but are necessities arising from our birth, superfluous are the lawgivers who define what we must do and what we must avoid, and superfluous too the judges who honor virtue and punish wickedness. For the wrong is not the thief's, nor the murderer's, if even when he wished it he could not restrain his hand, because of the inescapable necessity driving him to his deeds. And most foolish of all are those who toil at the arts: the farmer will prosper without sowing seed or sharpening a sickle; the merchant will become exceedingly rich whether he wishes or not, as fate gathers his money for him. And the great hopes of Christians will vanish and be gone, since neither is righteousness honored nor sin condemned, because nothing is done by men by choice. For where necessity and fate rule, there is no room for desert, which is the special mark of just judgment. So much against them. For you, being sound of yourselves, do not need more words, nor does the time allow us to go on against them beyond measure.

Let us return to the words that follow. "Let them be," he says, "for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years." We have spoken about the signs. By seasons we take him to mean the changes of the seasons: winter, spring, summer, and autumn, which the ordered movement of the lights enables to come round for us in good order. Winter comes when the sun lingers in the southern parts and produces much nighttime shadow in our region, so that the air around the earth is chilled, and all the moist exhalations, gathering about us, provide the cause of rains and frosts and untold snow. But when, returning again from the southern regions, it comes to the middle, so as to divide time equally between night and day, the longer it lingers in the regions above the earth, the more it brings back the mild balance by degrees. And spring comes, the leader of sprouting for all plants, giving most trees their revival, and preserving the kinds of all land and water animals through the succession of their offspring. From there the sun, driving on toward the summer solstice in the direction of the north itself, presents us with the longest of the days. And because it keeps company with the air for the longest time, it scorches the air above our heads and dries out the whole earth, thereby helping the seeds toward ripeness and urging the fruits of the trees on to maturity; at that time the sun is at its most fiery, making the shadows short at midday, because it shines down on our region from on high. For those are the longest days in which the shadows are shortest, and those are the shortest in which the shadows are longest. So it is among us who are called "heteroskioi" (shadowed on one side), we who inhabit the northern parts of the earth. For there are some who on two days of the whole year become altogether shadowless at midday, on whom the sun shines from directly overhead and lights them equally from every side, so that even the water at the bottom of wells is lit up through their narrow mouths; whence some call them "askioi" (shadowless). Those beyond the spice-bearing land shift their shadows to both sides; for they alone in our inhabited world cast their shadows to the south at midday; whence some have named them "amphiskioi" (shadowed on both sides). All these things happen when the sun has already passed over into the northern part. From these one can conjecture how great the heat is that arises in the air from the sun's ray, and what effects it brings about. Next the season of autumn takes us over, breaking the excess of the stifling heat and gradually relaxing the warmth, and by the moderation of its temperature bringing us harmlessly through itself to winter, as the sun returns again from the northern regions to the south. These revolutions of the seasons, following the movements of the sun, govern our life. "And let them be," he says, "for days": not to make days, but to rule the days. For day and night are older than the coming into being of the lights. This the psalm too shows us, saying, "He set the sun for authority over the day, the moon and the stars for authority over the night." How does the sun have authority over the day? Because, carrying the light about in itself, whenever it rises above our horizon it produces day by dissolving the darkness. So one would not err in defining day as the air lit by the sun, or day as the measure of time in which the sun is in the hemisphere above the earth. But sun and moon were also appointed for years. The moon, when it has completed its own cycle twelve times …

"And God made the two great lights." Since "great" sometimes has an absolute sense, as when heaven is great, and earth is great, and the sea is great, while for the most part it is naturally referred to something else, as a great horse and a great ox (for such things receive the testimony of their greatness not from an excess in the bulk of their bodies but from comparison with their like): how, then, shall we take the notion of "great" here? As we call the ant, or something else small by nature, great, attesting its superiority by comparison with its own kind? Or is "great" said here in the sense that greatness is displayed in the very constitution of the lights? I think the latter. For they are not great because they are bigger than the smaller stars, but because they are of such a circumference that the light poured out from them suffices both to illuminate heaven and the air and at the same time to extend over the whole earth and the sea. In whatever part of the sky they are, rising, setting, or holding the middle, they appear equal to men from every side, which offers clear proof of the abundance of their size, since the breadth of the earth makes no difference to them, so that they would seem bigger or smaller. For things standing at a distance we see as somewhat smaller, and the nearer we come to them, the more we discover their size. But no one is nearer the sun and no one farther; it strikes those who dwell in every part of the earth from an equal distance. The sign of this is that Indians and Britons see it as the same. For it neither lessens its size for those who live in the east as it sets, nor appears smaller as it rises to those who dwell toward the west; nor, when it is in mid-heaven, does it differ from the view on either side. Do not let the appearance deceive you, and because it seems to those who look at it a cubit across, do not reckon that it is that size. For at very great distances the sizes of the things seen are naturally contracted, since the power of sight does not manage to cross the space between, but is, as it were, spent in the middle and strikes the visible objects with only a small part of itself. So our sight, having become small, makes the things seen be thought small, bestowing its own condition on what is seen. So if sight lies, the criterion is untrustworthy. Remember your own experiences, and you will have from yourself the proof of what is said. If ever from a great mountain ridge you have seen a broad and level plain, how large did the yokes of oxen appear to you? How large the ploughmen themselves? Did they not give you the impression of ants? And if from a lookout facing the great ocean you have cast your eyes on the sea, how large did the greatest of the islands seem to you? How large did one of the great merchant ships appear, sailing with white sails over the dark blue sea? Did it not give you an impression smaller than any dove? Because, as I said, the sight, spent in the air and growing faint, does not suffice for an exact grasp of the things seen. And sight declares even the greatest mountains, cut by deep ravines, to be rounded and smooth, striking only the projections and unable through weakness to enter the hollows between. So it does not even preserve the shapes of bodies as they are, but thinks square towers round. So it is plain from every side that at the greatest distances it receives no distinct image of bodies but a confused one. The light, then, is great, according to the testimony of Scripture, and infinitely larger than it appears.

Let this too be a clear sign of its size for you. Though the stars in heaven are countless in number, the light they contribute together is not enough to dispel the gloom of night. But this one alone, appearing above the horizon, or rather while it is still awaited, before it has even risen fully above the earth, has made the darkness vanish, outshone the stars, and melted and spread out the air around the earth, which until then was congealed and compressed. Hence morning winds arise, and dews pour around the earth in clear weather. And how could it, the earth being so great, light up the whole of it in one moment of time, if it did not send forth its radiance from a great circle? Here learn the wisdom of the Craftsman: how he gave it heat proportioned to this distance. For its fieriness is just so great as neither to burn up the earth by excess nor to leave it chilled and barren by deficiency. Let what concerns the moon be understood as akin to what has been said. For its body too is great, and the brightest after the sun. Yet its size does not always remain visible; now it appears complete in its circle, now deficient and diminished, showing what it lacks on one side or the other. For in one part it is shadowed while it waxes, and another part of it is hidden at the time of its waning. And there is some unspoken reason of the wise Creator for this varied change of shapes: to give us a clear example of our own nature, that nothing in human things is lasting, but some things advance from not being to perfection, while others, having reached their own prime and grown to their greatest measure, waste away again by gradual losses and perish, and are destroyed by diminishing; so that from the sight of the moon we may be taught our own condition, and, taking a notion of the swift turning of human affairs, may not think highly of the prosperities of life, nor exult in power, nor be lifted up by the uncertainty of riches, but despise the flesh, which is subject to change, and care for the soul, whose good is unmoved. And if the moon grieves you as it uses up its light by gradual losses, let a soul grieve you more, which has acquired virtue and through carelessness destroys its beauty, and never remains in the same disposition, but turns and changes often because of the instability of its judgment. For truly, as it is said, "The fool changes like the moon." I think also that the changing of the moon contributes no small part to the constitution of animals and of the other things that grow from the earth. For bodies are disposed in one way when it wanes and in another when it waxes: when it is waning they become thin and empty, and when it waxes and hastens to fullness they too are filled again, because it imperceptibly sends into their depth a kind of moisture mixed with heat. This is shown by those who sleep under the moon, whose cranial cavities are filled with excess moisture; and by freshly slaughtered meat, which quickly turns at the moon's touch; and by the brains of animals, the moistest parts of sea creatures, and the pith of trees. The moon would not have been able to make all these change along with its own change, if it were not something surpassing and exceeding in power, according to the testimony of Scripture.

The conditions of the air also change along with its changes, as we are shown by the sudden disturbances that often follow calm and stillness at the new moon, when the clouds are shaken and dash against one another; and by the back-and-forth flows in the straits; and by the ebb around the so-called Ocean, which those who live beside it have found to follow the periods of the moon in regular order. For the straits flow back and forth in either direction during the other phases of the moon, but at the time of its birth they are not still even for the briefest moment, but remain in continual tossing and swaying, until the moon, appearing again, gives some order to the reflux. And the western sea undergoes ebbs, now withdrawing, now flooding again, as if drawn back by the moon's inhalations and pushed forward again to its proper measure by its exhalations. I have said these things to demonstrate the size of the lights and to establish that not even a syllable of the God-inspired words is idle; and yet our discourse has touched almost none of the important points. For much can be discovered by reasoning about the sizes and distances of the sun and moon by one who has examined their operations and powers not in passing. We must, then, candidly acknowledge our own weakness, so that the greatest of created works may not be measured by our word, but each may infer for himself, from the few things said, how many and how great are the things passed over. So do not measure the moon with your eye either, but with reason, which is far more exact than the eyes for the discovery of truth. Laughable myths, babbled by tipsy old women, have spread everywhere, that the moon, moved from its proper seat by certain sorceries, is brought down to the earth. How will the incantation of sorcerers move what the Most High himself founded? And what place would receive it if it were pulled down? Do you want proof of its size from small evidences? The cities of the inhabited world, though very far apart from one another, all receive the moonlight equally in the streets that face the east. If it did not face all of them, it would fully light up only those streets directly opposite it, while it would strike those falling beyond its breadth with inclined rays carried off to the sides. This can be seen happening with lamps in houses: when several people stand around one, the shadow of the one standing directly opposite stretches straight out, while the others incline to either side. So if the moon's body were not something immense and surpassing in size, it would not extend equally opposite all. For when it rises from the equinoctial regions, both those who live near the frozen zone, lying under the revolutions of the Bear, and those who are neighbors to the hollows of the burning south share in it alike; and extending opposite all of them across its breadth, it gives the clearest testimony of its size. Who, then, will deny that its body is enormous, being equal at once to such great and so many distances? So much about the sizes of the sun and moon. May he who has granted us understanding to learn the great wisdom of the Craftsman from the smallest things of creation grant us also to receive from the great things greater thoughts of the Creator. And yet, compared with their Maker, sun and moon hold the place of a gnat and an ant. For it is not possible to gain from these a contemplation worthy of the greatness of the God of all; we can only be led forward through them by small and faint glimpses, as also through each of the smallest things among animals or plants. Let us be content with what has been said: I giving thanks to him who has granted me this small ministry of the word, and you to him who nourishes you with spiritual food, who even now has fed you, as with a kind of barley bread, by the plainness of our voice; and may he feed you forever, granting you, according to the proportion of faith, the manifestation of the Spirit, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and might to the ages of ages. Amen.

"And God said, Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls according to their kind, and birds flying along the firmament of heaven according to their kind." After the creation of the lights, the waters too are now filled with living things, so that this region also might be adorned. The earth had received its adornment from its own growths; heaven had received the flowers of the stars and had been adorned with the pair of the great lights, as with twin eyes. It remained for the waters too to be given their proper adornment. The command came, and at once rivers were active and lakes fruitful, each of them with the kinds proper and natural to it. The sea was in labor with every kind of swimming thing; and not even what water there was in mud and marshes was left idle or without a share in completing creation: frogs and gnats and mosquitoes were clearly born from them. For what is still seen even now is proof of what is past. So all water hastened to serve the Creator's command; and the great and unspeakable power of God at once made active and moving the life of creatures whose very kinds no one could count, as the fitness to bring forth life came into the waters together with the command. "Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls." Now for the first time an animate living being, sharing in sensation, is created. For plants and trees, even if they are said to live because they share in the power of nourishment and growth, are nevertheless not animals, nor animate. For this reason: "Let the waters bring forth creeping things." Every swimming thing, whether it swims on the surface of the water or cuts through the water in its depth, is of the nature of creeping things, since it drags itself along the body of the water. And even if some water creatures have feet and walk (most of these are amphibious, such as seals, crocodiles, hippopotamuses, frogs, and crabs), swimming is still their primary trait. That is why: "Let the waters bring forth creeping things." In these few words what kind is left out? What is not included in the command of creation? Not the live-bearing, like seals and dolphins and torpedo rays and those like them, the so-called cartilaginous fishes? Not the egg-laying, which are nearly all the kinds of fish? Not the scaly, not the plated, not those that have fins and those that have none? The voice of the command is small, or rather not even a voice, but only the inclination and impulse of the will; but the meaning in the command is as manifold as are the differences and common features of the fishes, to go through all of which with precision is like counting the waves of the sea or trying to measure out the water of the sea in cups. "Let the waters bring forth creeping things." Among these are the creatures of the open sea, of the shore, of the deep, of the rocks; those that go in shoals and those that are solitary; the sea monsters, the huge, and the tiniest of fishes. For by the same power and the same command both the great and the small receive their being. "Let the waters bring forth." He has shown you the natural kinship of swimming things with water; that is why fish, separated from the water for a little while, die. For they have no breathing by which to draw in this air of ours; what air is to land animals, water is to the swimming kind. And the cause is clear: in us there is the lung, a porous organ full of passages, which receives the air through the expansion of the chest and fans and cools the heat within us; but in them the opening and closing of the gills, which take in the water and let it out, fulfills the function of breathing. The fishes have their own lot, their own nature, a separate way of life, a life of their own kind. That is why none of the swimming things will be tamed, nor will it endure the touch of a human hand at all.

"Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls according to their kind." He commands the firstfruits of each kind to be put forth now, as seeds of nature, so to speak; their multitude is kept in store for the succession that follows, when they are to grow and multiply. Of another kind are the creatures called shell-skinned, such as mussels, scallops, sea snails, whelks, and the countless varieties of oysters. Another kind besides these are those called soft-shelled: crayfish, crabs, and the like. Yet another kind besides these are the so-called soft creatures, whose flesh is tender and loose: octopuses, cuttlefish, and the like. And among these again there are countless differences. For sea serpents, morays, and the eels found in muddy rivers and lakes come closer in the likeness of their nature to venomous reptiles than to fishes. The egg-laying kind is one, the live-bearing another. Sharks and dogfish are live-bearing, and in general the so-called cartilaginous fishes. Most of the sea monsters are live-bearing too, dolphins and seals, which are said, when their young are still small and are frightened by some cause, to take them back into their belly and shelter them. "Let the waters bring forth according to their kind." The kind of the sea monsters is one, and that of the small fishes another. Among the fishes again there are countless differences divided by kind: they have names of their own, different food, shape, size, and qualities of flesh, all separated from one another by the greatest differences and set in various species. What tunny-watchers can enumerate for us the differences of the kinds? Yet they say these men even report the number of fish in great shoals. And which of those who have grown old on beaches and shores can make known to us precisely the account of them all? Those who fish the Indian sea know some, those who hunt the Egyptian gulf others, islanders others, and Moors others. But all alike, small and great, that first command and that unspeakable power brought forth. Many are the variations in their ways of life, many the differences in how each kind succeeds itself. Most fishes do not brood like birds, nor build nests, nor rear their young with toil; the water receives the egg that has fallen out and brings it to life. And for each kind the succession is unchanged and unmixed with another nature; there are no crossings like those of the mules on land, or of certain birds, which counterfeit the kinds. No fish is armed with teeth by halves, as the ox and the sheep are among us; for none of them chews the cud, except that some report it of the parrot fish alone. All are thickly set with very sharp points of teeth, so that the food may not slip away in long chewing; for if it were not quickly cut up and sent on to the belly, it would be carried off by the water while it was being ground down.

Fishes have food assigned to them, different for different kinds. Some feed on mud, others on seaweed, others are content with the plants that grow in the water. But most fishes eat one another, and among them the smaller is food for the larger. And if it happens that the one that overpowered a smaller fish becomes another's prey, both are taken into the one belly of the last. What else, then, do we men do in oppressing those weaker than ourselves? How does he differ from that last fish, who with a gluttonous love of wealth hides the weak away in the insatiable bosom of his greed? That man held the poor man's goods; you took him and made him part of your own abundance. You have shown yourself more unjust than the unjust and more grasping than the grasping. Take care lest the same end as the fishes' await you: a hook somewhere, or a fish trap, or a net. For certainly we too, having gone through many injustices, will not escape the final punishment. Having observed much craft and treachery even in a weak creature, I want you to flee from imitating evildoers. The crab desires the flesh of the oyster, but the prey is hard for it to catch because of the covering of the shell; for nature has secured the tenderness of the flesh with an unbreakable enclosure. That is why it is called "shell-skinned." And since two hollows, exactly fitted to each other, enclose the oyster, the crab's claws are necessarily useless. What then does it do? When it sees the oyster in sheltered places warming itself with pleasure and opening its folds to the ray of the sun, then it secretly slips in a pebble and prevents the closing; and it is found to make up for its lack of strength by cunning. This is the wickedness of creatures that share in neither reason nor speech. But I want you, while you emulate the resourcefulness and ingenuity of crabs, to keep from harming your neighbors. Such is the one who comes upon his brother with deceit, takes advantage of his neighbors' misfortunes, and revels in other people's calamities. Flee from imitating those condemned. Be content with your own. Poverty with true self-sufficiency is preferable, for the sober-minded, to every enjoyment. I would not pass over the deceit and thievery of the octopus, which, whatever rock it clings to at any time, takes on that rock's color; so that many fishes, swimming unawares, fall upon the octopus as though upon the rock, and become ready prey for the villain. Such in character are those who fawn on whatever powers rule at the time and adapt themselves to the needs of each occasion, never standing fast in the same purpose but easily becoming one thing and then another, honoring self-control with the self-controlled and licentious among the licentious, changing their opinions to please each person. It is not easy to avoid them or to guard against the harm they do, because their wickedness, deeply prepared, is hidden under the pretense of friendship. Such characters the Lord calls ravening wolves who appear in sheep's clothing. Flee the many-sided and manifold in character; pursue truth, sincerity, simplicity. The serpent is many-colored; that is why it was condemned to creep. The righteous man is without guile, like Jacob. That is why "the Lord makes those of one way of life dwell in a house." "So is this sea, great and wide: there are creeping things without number, small living things with great." And yet there is a wise and orderly arrangement among them. For we can not only accuse the fishes; there are also things in them worth imitating. How is it that the kinds of fishes, each having apportioned to itself a suitable region, do not encroach on one another, but stay within their own bounds? No surveyor among them distributed their dwellings; they are not enclosed by walls or divided by boundary markers; yet what is useful has been assigned to each of its own accord. This gulf feeds certain kinds of fishes and that one others, and those that abound here are scarce elsewhere. No mountain rising with sharp peaks separates them, no river cuts off their passage; but there is a law of nature that allots to each kind its way of life equally and justly, according to its need.

But we are not like this. How so? We move the everlasting boundaries that our fathers set. We cut off land, we join house to house and field to field, so as to take something away from our neighbor. The sea monsters know the way of life assigned to them by nature: they have taken the sea outside the inhabited places, the sea without islands, where no mainland lies opposite on the far side; that is why it is unsailed, since neither curiosity nor any need persuades sailors to venture on it. The sea monsters have taken it, creatures like the greatest mountains in size, as those who have seen them say, and they stay within their own bounds, harming neither the islands nor the coastal cities. So each kind dwells in the parts of the sea assigned to it as in cities, or villages, or ancient homelands. But some fishes are migratory, setting out abroad as if from a common council chamber, and all depart at one signal. For when the appointed time of breeding comes, they leave their various gulfs, roused by the common law of nature, and hasten to the northern sea. And at the time of their ascent you might see the fishes united like a stream, flowing through the Propontis into the Euxine. Who moves them? What king's command? What edicts posted in the marketplace announce the appointed day? Who are their guides? You see the divine ordering filling all things and reaching through the smallest. A fish does not contradict the law of God, and we men cannot bear the teachings of salvation! Do not despise the fishes because they are altogether voiceless and irrational; but fear lest you be even more irrational than they by resisting the ordering of the Creator. Hear the fishes all but uttering a voice through what they do: "For the preservation of our kind we set out on this long journey." They have no reason of their own, but they have the law of nature firmly established in them and showing them what must be done. "Let us go," they say, "to the northern sea. For that water is sweeter than the rest of the sea, because the sun, lingering over it only a short time, does not draw out all its drinkable part with its ray." Even sea creatures delight in sweet waters; which is why they often swim up into rivers and are carried far from the sea. For this reason the Pontus is preferred by them to the other gulfs, as suited for giving birth and rearing their young. And when what they were eager for has been sufficiently accomplished, they all return home again in a body. And what is their reason? Let us hear it from the silent ones. "The northern sea," they say, "is shallow and lies open to the force of the winds, having few shores and shelters. That is why the winds easily stir it up from the bottom, so that even the sand of the deep is mixed with the waves. Besides, it is cold in winter, being filled by many great rivers." That is why, having enjoyed it in moderation in the summer, in winter they hasten back to the warmth of the deep and to sunny places, and, fleeing the stormy north, they take harbor in gulfs that are less buffeted.

I have seen these things myself, and I wondered at the wisdom of God in all things. If irrational creatures are inventive and protective of their own safety, and the fish knows what it should choose and what it should avoid, what shall we say, who are honored with reason, instructed by the law, encouraged by promises, made wise by the Spirit, and yet manage our own affairs more irrationally than the fishes? For they know how to take some forethought for the future, while we, through hopelessness about the future, spend our life in beastly pleasure. A fish crosses so many seas to find some benefit; what will you say, you who live with idleness? And idleness is the beginning of wrongdoing. Let no one plead ignorance. A natural reason has been sown in us that shows us our affinity for the good and our aversion from what is harmful. I do not leave the examples of the sea, since these are set before us for examination. I have heard from one of those who live by the sea that the sea urchin, a tiny and altogether contemptible creature, often becomes a teacher of calm and storm to those who sail. When it foresees a disturbance from the winds, it gets under a stout pebble and rides securely on it as on an anchor, held down by the weight so as not to be easily swept away by the waves. When sailors see this sign, they know that a violent movement of the winds is to be expected. No astrologer, no Chaldean, inferring the disturbances of the air from the risings of the stars, taught the urchin this; but the Lord of sea and winds placed even in this small creature a clear trace of his great wisdom. Nothing is left without providence, nothing neglected by God. The sleepless eye watches over all. He is present to all, providing each with its safety. If God has not left the urchin outside his oversight, does he not oversee your affairs? Husbands, love your wives, even if you came together into the fellowship of marriage as strangers to one another. Let the bond of nature, the yoke laid on by the blessing, be the uniting of those who were apart. The viper, the most dangerous of reptiles, comes to mate with the sea lamprey, and, signaling its presence by a hiss, calls her out of the depths to the marriage embrace. And she obeys, and is united to the venomous one. What does my discourse mean? That even if your husband is rough and savage in character, the wife must bear with her yoke-fellow and on no pretext consent to tear the union apart. He strikes? But he is your husband. He is a drunkard? But he is united to you by nature. He is harsh and hard to please? But he is already your own member, and the most honored of your members.

Let the husband too hear the exhortation fitting for him. The viper vomits out its venom out of respect for the marriage; will you not put off the harshness and inhumanity of your soul out of respect for the union? Or perhaps the example of the viper will be useful to us in another way as well: the coupling of the viper and the lamprey is a kind of adultery against nature. Let those who plot against other people's marriages learn, then, what kind of reptile they resemble. I have one aim: that the church be built up from every side. Let the passions of the licentious be restrained, being instructed by examples from land and sea. Here the weakness of my body and the lateness of the hour compel me to stop my discourse. And yet how much more I could add, worthy of wonder, for those who love to listen, about the things seen in the sea; about the sea itself, how its water congeals into salt; how coral, that precious stone, is a green plant in the sea, but when it is brought out into the air it hardens into the firmness of stone; whence nature put the costly pearl into the cheapest of creatures, the oyster (for the things the treasuries of kings covet are cast about on beaches and shores and rough rocks, lying in the shells of oysters); whence the pinnas produce the golden wool, which no dyer of flowers has imitated until now; whence the murex shells grant kings their purple robes, which surpass even the flowers of the meadows in their fair color. "Let the waters bring forth." And what of the things that are necessary did not come into being? What of luxuries was not granted to our life? Some things for the service of men, others for contemplating the wonder of creation. Others are fearful, schooling our sloth. "God made the great sea monsters." They are not called great because they are bigger than the shrimp and the sprat, but because in the bulk of their body they equal the greatest mountains; they often give the impression of islands when they swim up to the very surface of the water. Yet these, though so great, do not frequent shores or beaches, but inhabit the so-called Atlantic Ocean. Such are the creatures made to fill us with fear and amazement. And if you hear that the tiniest little fish, the remora, so easily stops the greatest of ships, borne by a fair wind with sails spread, that it keeps the ship motionless for a long time, as though rooted in the open sea, do you not receive even from this small creature the same proof of the Creator's power? For not only swordfish, sawfish, dogfish, whales, and hammerheads are fearful; the sting of the sea stingray, even when it is dead, and the sea hare are no less fearful, bringing swift and inexorable destruction. So the Creator wants you to be watchful in all things, so that in your hope in God you may escape the harms that come from them. But let us run up from the depths and take refuge on land. For somehow the wonders of creation, overtaking us one after another like waves, have submerged our discourse with their continuous and successive onrushes. And yet I would be surprised if our mind, meeting still greater marvels on land, did not again run away to the sea like Jonah. It seems to me that my discourse, falling among countless wonders, has forgotten due measure, and has suffered the same as those who sail on the open sea, who, judging their motion by nothing fixed, often do not know how far they have run. This seems to have happened to us too: as our discourse ran through creation, we did not notice how much had been said. But even if this august theater loves to listen, and the account of the Master's wonders is sweet to the ears of servants, let us bring our discourse to anchor here and wait for the day to render what remains. Let us all rise and give thanks for what has been said, and ask for the completion of what remains. And at your taking of food, may the table talk be of the things our discourse went through for you in the morning and in the evening; and, overtaken by sleep while thinking of these things, may you … the gladness of the day …

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth a living soul according to its kind, four-footed creatures and creeping things and wild beasts according to their kind. And it was so." The command came, advancing on its way, and the earth too received its own adornment. There: "Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls"; here: "Let the earth bring forth a living soul." Is the earth, then, ensouled? And have the vain-minded Manichees room for their view, who put a soul in the earth? It was not because he said "Let it bring forth" that it brought forth what was stored up in it; but he who gave the command also bestowed on it the power to bring forth. For neither, when the earth heard, "Let it put forth the plant of grass and the fruit-bearing tree," did it bring forth grass it had kept hidden within itself, nor send up to the surface the palm, the oak, or the cypress hidden somewhere down in its flanks; the divine word is the nature of the things that come into being. "Let the earth put forth": let it not bring out what it has, but acquire what it does not have, God bestowing the power of the activity. So now too: "Let the earth bring forth a soul," not one stored up in it, but the one given to it. Then too, the argument will turn against them: for if the earth brought forth the soul, it left itself bereft of soul. But the abomination of these people is plain at once. Why, then, were the waters commanded to bring forth creeping things of living souls, and the earth a living soul? We reason that the nature of the swimming creatures seems to share in life in an imperfect way, because they live in the thickness of water. For their hearing is dull, and they see dimly, looking through water; and they have no memory, no imagination, no recognition of the familiar. So the word indicates, as it were, that in water creatures the life of the flesh leads the movements of the soul; but in land animals, since their life is more complete, the soul has been entrusted with the whole rule. For in most four-footed creatures the senses are sharper, the perception of present things keen, and the memory of past things exact. That is why, it seems, in the case of the water creatures, bodies were created ensouled (for creeping things of living souls were brought forth from the waters), while in the case of the land animals a soul that governs bodies was commanded to come into being, since those that live on the earth have received a greater share of the vital power. For land animals too are irrational; yet each by its natural voice signals many of the affections of its soul. Joy and grief, recognition of the familiar, lack of food, separation from its companions, and countless feelings it makes known by its cry. But water creatures are not only voiceless, but also untamable, unteachable, and unmanageable for any sharing of life with men. "The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's manger"; but a fish would not recognize the one who feeds it. The donkey knows the familiar voice; it knows a road it has often walked, and sometimes even becomes a guide to a man who has lost his way. No other land animal is said to have hearing as sharp as this creature's. And the camel's resentfulness, its heavy wrath and lasting anger: which of the sea creatures could imitate it? A camel once struck stores up its wrath for a long time and, when it finds an opportunity, pays back the injury. Listen, you who are slow to forgive, who practise resentment as a virtue: see what you resemble when you keep your grievance against your neighbor like a spark hidden in ashes, until, finding fuel, you kindle your anger like a flame.

"Let the earth bring forth a living soul." Why does the earth bring forth a living soul? So that you may learn the difference between the soul of a beast and the soul of a man. A little later you will learn how the soul of man was constituted; but now hear about the soul of the irrational animals. Since, according to what is written, "the soul of every animal is its blood," and blood when congealed naturally changes into flesh, and flesh when it decays is dissolved into earth, the soul of beasts is fittingly something earthy. "Let the earth, then, bring forth a living soul." See the sequence from soul to blood, from blood to flesh, from flesh to earth; and resolving it again, go back through the same steps from earth to flesh, from flesh to blood, from blood to soul, and you will find that the soul of beasts is earth. Do not think it older than the subsistence of their body, nor that it survives after the dissolution of the flesh. Flee the nonsense of the pompous philosophers, who are not ashamed to make their own souls and those of dogs of the same kind as one another, who say that they themselves were once women, and bushes, and fish of the sea. Whether they were ever fish I would not say; but that while they were writing these things they were more irrational than fish, I would maintain with all vigor. "Let the earth bring forth a living soul." Why, as my discourse was running along all at once, I fell silent for no short time, many perhaps wonder; but the more diligent of my hearers are not ignorant of the reason for my speechlessness. For they are the ones who, by looking at one another and nodding, turned me toward themselves and brought me to remember what had been passed over. For a whole kind of creation, and not the least, escaped us, and very nearly went away, leaving the discourse altogether unexamined. For: "Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls according to their kind, and birds flying over the earth along the firmament of heaven." We spoke about the swimming creatures in the evening, as much as the time allowed; today we passed on to the examination of the land animals. The winged kind in between escaped us. So, like forgetful travelers who, when they have left behind something important, turn back the same way even if they have gone far along the road, paying the toil of the journey as a fitting penalty for their carelessness, so we too, it seems, must walk the same road again. For what was passed over is not contemptible; it seems to be the third part of the creation of animals, if there are three kinds of animals: the land kind, the winged, and the water kind. "Let the waters bring forth," he says, "creeping things of living souls according to their kind, and birds flying over the earth along the firmament of heaven according to their kind." Why did he give birds too their origin from the waters? Because there is, as it were, a kinship between flying things and swimming things. For as fishes cut through the water, going forward by the movement of their fins and steering both their turns and their straight rushes by the shifting of their tail, so with birds too one may see them swimming through the air with their wings in the same way. So, since swimming is one property of both, a single kinship was given them by their origin from the waters. Except that no bird is without feet, because all of them have their living from the earth, and all necessarily need the service of their feet. To birds of prey the points of their talons are given for hunting; to the rest the necessary service of the feet has been granted both for providing food and for the rest of their way of life. A few birds have weak feet, fit neither for walking nor for hunting, such as the swallows, which can neither walk nor hunt, and the so-called drepanides, whose food has been arranged from the things carried about in the air. For the swallow, flying close to the ground takes the place of the service of feet.

There are, moreover, countless differences of kinds among the birds too; if one goes through them in the same way in which we partly touched on the examination of the fishes, he will find a single name for the winged creatures, but countless differences among them, in sizes, shapes, and colors, in ways of life, actions, and habits: an untold variation from one another. Some have even tried to coin names, so that by a kind of brand of unusual and strange names the peculiar character of each kind might be recognized. Some they named "split-winged," like eagles; others "skin-winged," like bats; others "feather-winged," like wasps; others "sheath-winged," like beetles and all those that are born in cases and coverings and are freed for flight when their sheath bursts around them. But for us common usage, and the distinctions Scripture makes between clean and unclean, are enough to mark the peculiarity of the kinds. The carnivorous kind is one, with a structure suited to its manner of life: points of talons, a hooked beak, a swift wing, so that the prey can be easily seized and, torn apart, become food for its captor. The structure of the seed-eaters is different, and different again that of those that feed on whatever they come across. And among these there are very many differences. For some of them are gregarious, apart from the birds of prey; none of these is sociable, except for pairing in couples. Countless others have chosen the flocking life, like doves, cranes, starlings, and jackdaws. Again, among these some are without a leader and as it were self-governing, while others accept being ranged under a leader, as cranes do. There is also another difference among them, by which some are resident and native, while others naturally depart very far away and mostly emigrate as winter approaches. Many birds, when reared, become tame and domestic, except the weak ones, which through excessive timidity and cowardice do not endure the constant handling of the hand. Some birds live alongside men, accepting the same dwellings as we do; others live in mountains and love solitude. The greatest difference is also the peculiarity of each one's voice. Some birds are chattering and talkative, others silent. Some are songful and many-voiced, others altogether unmusical and without a share of song. Some are imitative, having the ability to imitate either from nature or acquired by training; others utter a single, unchanging voice. The cock is proud; the peacock loves beauty; doves and domestic fowls are lustful, mating at every season. The partridge is deceitful and jealous, wickedly helping hunters to catch their prey.

Countless, as we said, are the differences in actions and ways of life. Some irrational creatures are even social, if it is the mark of a commonwealth that the activity of the individuals converges on one common end, as one may see in the bees. For their dwelling is common, their flight is common, and the work of all is one; and, greatest of all, they set about their work under a king and a kind of commander, not consenting to go to the meadows until they see the king leading off the flight. And their king is not elected (for often the lack of judgment of a people has put the worst man into office), nor does he hold his authority by lot (for the irrational chances of the lot often carry power to the very last of all), nor does he sit on the throne by hereditary succession (for these too mostly become uneducated and ignorant of all virtue through luxury and flattery); but he holds the first place over all by nature, excelling in size and shape and in the gentleness of his character. For the king has a sting, but he does not use it for defense. These are certain unwritten laws of nature: that those who ascend to the greatest powers should be slow to punish. But the bees that do not follow the king's example soon repent of their thoughtlessness, because they die upon striking with the sting. Let Christians hear this, who have the command to render to no one evil for evil, but to overcome evil with good. Imitate the special way of the bee, which builds its combs harming no one and spoiling no one else's fruit. It gathers the wax openly from the flowers; and the honey, the moisture sown like dew in the flowers, it draws up with its mouth and puts into the hollows of the combs. That is why at first it is liquid; then, matured by time, it returns to its proper consistency and sweetness. It has received fair and fitting praise from the Proverbs, being called wise and a worker: so diligently gathering its food (whose labors, it says, kings and commoners take for their health), and so wisely and artfully contriving the storehouses for the honey (for, stretching the wax into a thin membrane, it builds the hollows close together and contiguous with one another), that the closeness with which the tiniest parts are bound to one another becomes a support for the whole. For each cell holds on to the next, at once separated from it and joined to it by a thin partition. Then these tubes are built upon one another in two and three stories. For it took care not to make a single hollow running all the way through, lest the liquid by its weight should fall out. Learn how the discoveries of geometry are side-works of the most wise bee. For all the cells of the combs are hexagonal and equal-sided, not set directly on top of one another, lest the bottoms, resting on empty spaces, should give way; but the angles of the hexagons below are the base and support of those above, so as to hold up the weights above them securely and keep the liquid in each hollow separately.

How could I go through for you precisely all the peculiarities in the lives of birds? How the cranes take the night watches in turn: some sleep, while others, going round in a circle, provide them with complete safety in their sleep; then, when the time of the watch is completed, the one that cried out turns to sleep, and the one that takes over the duty repays in its turn the safety it enjoyed. You will see this good order in their flight too. Now one, now another takes the lead, and, after guiding the flight for a set time, goes round to the rear and hands over the leadership of the journey to the one behind it. And the conduct of the storks is not far from rational intelligence: so all at the same season they arrive in these regions, so all depart at one signal. Our crows escort them and send them on their way, providing, it seems to me, a kind of alliance against hostile birds. The sign of this is, first, that no crow at all appears at that season; and then that they come back with wounds, bringing clear marks of their shield-fellowship and their fighting alongside. Who laid down among them the laws of hospitality? Who threatened them with an indictment for desertion, so that none is left out of the escort? Let the inhospitable hear, who shut their doors and do not share even a roof with strangers in winter and at night. The storks' care for their aged would be enough to make our children lovers of their fathers, if they were willing to attend to it. For no one is so lacking in good sense as not to judge it shameful to fall behind the most irrational birds in virtue. They gather round their father when his feathers have fallen out in old age, warm him with their own wings, provide food abundantly, and give him what help they can in flight too, gently raising him with their wing on either side; this is so celebrated everywhere that some now call the repaying of benefits "antipelargosis." Let no one lament poverty, nor despair of his life who has left no means at home, when he looks at the resourcefulness of the swallow. When it builds its nest, it carries the straws in its mouth; but, being unable to lift mud with its feet, it wets the tips of its wings in water, then rolls in the finest dust, and so contrives the use of mud; and gradually binding the straws to one another with the mud as with a kind of glue, it rears its young in the nest. And if anyone pricks out their eyes, it has a remedy from nature by which it restores the sight of its young to health. Let this warn you not to turn to wrongdoing because of poverty, nor, in the hardest sufferings, to throw away all hope and lie idle and inactive, but to take refuge in God, who, if he grants such things to a swallow, how much greater things will he give to those who call on him with their whole heart? The halcyon is a sea bird. It naturally nests by the very shores, laying its eggs on the sand itself; and it nests about midwinter, when the sea is dashed against the land by many violent winds. Yet all the winds are lulled to sleep and the sea wave is still while the halcyon broods for its seven days; for in that many days alone it hatches its young. And since they also need food, the munificent God has granted to this tiniest creature another seven days for the growth of its young. So all sailors know this and call those days "halcyon days." These things have been ordained through God's providence over the irrational creatures to encourage you to ask God for what pertains to salvation. What marvel would not be done for your sake, who have been made according to the image of God, when … the sea, commanded …

They say that the turtle-dove, once separated from its mate, no longer accepts union with another but remains unpaired, refusing union with another in memory of the one it was once joined to. Let women hear how, even among the irrational creatures, the dignity of widowhood is preferred to the unseemliness of many marriages. The eagle is most unjust in rearing its young. For when it has hatched two nestlings, it dashes one of them to the ground, pushing it away with blows of its wings, and takes up and owns only the other, disowning the one it begot because of the labor of feeding it. But, they say, the osprey does not let this one perish, but takes it up and rears it with its own nestlings. Such are those parents who, on the pretext of poverty, expose their infants, or who are most unequal toward their children in the division of their inheritance. For it is just that, as they gave existence to each equally, so they should also provide them equally and with equal honor the means of living. Do not imitate the harshness of the birds with hooked talons, which, when they see their own nestlings at last venturing on flight, throw them out of the nest, striking and pushing them with their wings, and take no care of them thereafter. The crow's love for its young is praiseworthy: it follows them even when they are already flying, feeding and rearing them for a very long time. Many kinds of birds do not need the union of males for conceiving; but among the others the wind-eggs are infertile, while vultures, they say, mostly bear without mating, and these are very long-lived, their life mostly extending as far as a hundred years. Keep this marked for me from the natural history of birds, so that whenever you see some laughing at our mystery, as though it were impossible and outside nature for a virgin to give birth while her virginity itself was kept unstained, you may consider that he who was pleased through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe laid down beforehand from nature countless grounds for believing marvels.

"Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls, and birds flying over the earth along the firmament of heaven." They were commanded to fly over the earth because all have their food from the earth. And "along the firmament of heaven," as we explained before, heaven here meaning the air, named from its being seen, and firmament because the air above our heads is somewhat denser compared with the ethereal body and more compacted by the vapors that rise from below. You have, then, heaven adorned, earth beautified, the sea abounding in its own offspring, the air full of the birds that fly through it. All these things, brought from not being into being by the command of God, and all that our discourse has now passed over to avoid lingering longer on them, lest it seem to exceed due measure: work them out for yourself, you who are diligent, learning the wisdom of God in all things, and never cease from wonder, nor from glorifying the Maker through the whole creation. In the darkness you have the night-living kinds of birds, in the light those that go about by day. Bats, owls, and night ravens are among the night-feeders. So that if ever sleep does not come to you, it may be enough to spend your time on these, and to examine the peculiarities that belong to them, for the glorifying of their Maker: how the nightingale is sleepless when it broods, not ceasing its melody all night long; how the bat is at once four-footed and winged; how it alone of birds has teeth, and bears its young alive like four-footed creatures, and is carried along on the air raised not by a wing but by a kind of skin membrane; how it also has this mutual love in its nature, that bats cling to one another like a chain, each hanging from the next, which is not easily achieved among us men, for the separate and private is preferred to what is sociable and united with many. How like the eyes of the owl are those who have spent their time on vain wisdom! For its sight at night is … ; their mind is very sharp for the contemplation of vanity, but is blinded for the understanding of the true light. And by day it is very easy for you to gather the wonder of the Creator from every side: how the bird that lives with you rouses you to work, crying out with its shrill voice and announcing from far off the sun that is still approaching, rising early with travelers and leading farmers out to the harvest; how wakeful the race of geese is, and very quick to perceive what is hidden, which once even saved the imperial city by revealing enemies who were about to seize the citadel of Rome through hidden passages under the ground. In what kind of birds does nature not show some marvel of its own? Who announces beforehand to the vultures the death of men, when they march against one another? For you may see countless flocks of vultures following the armies, inferring the outcome from the preparation of the weapons; and this is not far from human reasoning. How shall I describe to you the fearful invasions of the locust, which rises all together at one signal and encamps across the breadth of the land, yet does not touch the crops before the divine command is given to it? How the selucid bird follows as the cure for the plague, having a boundless power of eating, since the God who loves mankind made its nature insatiable for the benefit of men? What is the manner of the cicada's song? And how are they more songful at midday than at other times, the sound being given out by the drawing in of the air which they make in the expansion of the chest? But I seem to fall farther short of the wonder of winged creatures with my discourse than if I tried to match their speed with my feet. When you see the so-called insects among the winged things, such as bees and wasps (for they have been so named because they appear notched all round), consider that they have no breathing and no lung, but are nourished by the air through and through. That is why they die when soaked in oil, their pores being blocked; and if vinegar is poured on at once, they come to life again as the passages are opened. Our God created nothing beyond what is needed, nor left anything lacking in what is necessary. Again, if you study the water-loving creatures, you will find a different structure in them: feet neither split, like the crow's, nor hooked, like those of the carnivores, but broad and webbed, so that they may easily swim on the water, pushing the water away with the membranes of their feet as with oars. And if you learn how the swan lets its neck down into the depth and brings up its food from below, then you will discover the wisdom of the Creator, that for this reason he gave it a neck longer than its feet, so that, letting it down like a fishing line, it might obtain the food hidden in the depth.

The words of Scripture, read simply, are a few short syllables: "Let the waters bring forth birds flying over the earth along the firmament of heaven"; but when the meaning in the words is searched out, then the great wonder of the Creator's wisdom appears. How many differences among winged creatures he foresaw! How he separated them from one another by kinds, and marked each with distinct peculiarities! The day fails me as I describe to you the wonders of the air. The land calls us to the display of wild beasts and creeping things and cattle, ready to show in its turn things equal to the plants, the swimming kind, and all the winged creatures. "Let the earth bring forth a living soul of cattle and wild beasts and creeping things according to their kind." What do you say, you who disbelieve Paul about the change at the resurrection, when you see many creatures of the air changing their forms? Such is what is reported about the horned worm of India, which first changes into a caterpillar, then in time becomes a silk moth, and does not stop even at this form, but grows wings of loose, broad leaves. So when you sit, you women, unwinding the work of these creatures, I mean the threads which the Seres send you for making soft garments, remember the change in this creature, take a clear idea of the resurrection, and do not disbelieve the change which Paul announces for all. But I perceive that my discourse is exceeding due proportion. When I look at the quantity of what has been said, I see myself carried beyond measure; but when I look again at the variety of wisdom in the works of creation, I think I have not even begun the account. At the same time, keeping you longer is not useless. For what would one do with the time until evening? No hosts are pressing you, no banquets await you. So, if you will, let us use the bodily fast for the gladness of souls. You have often served the flesh for enjoyment; today persevere in the service of the soul. "Delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." If you love wealth, you have spiritual wealth: "The judgments of the Lord are true, justified altogether, more to be desired than gold and much precious stone." If you love enjoyment and pleasure, you have the words of God, which are "sweeter than honey and the honeycomb" to one strong in spiritual sense. If I let you go and dissolve the assembly, some will run to the dice. There are oaths there, and bitter quarrels, and the pangs of love of money. A demon stands by, kindling the madness through the spotted bones, moving the same money to one side and the other, now exalting this one with victory and bringing dejection on that one, then again showing the other exultant and this one put to shame. What use is it to fast in body and fill the soul with countless evils? And the one who does not play dice but spends his leisure otherwise, what vain things does he not utter? What absurdities does he not hear? For leisure without the fear of God is a teacher of wickedness to those who do not use their time well. Perhaps, then, some benefit will be found in what is said; and if not, at least not sinning is gained for you from being occupied here. So to keep you longer is to keep you longer away from evils. What has been said is enough for a fair-minded judge, if one looks not to the wealth of creation but to the weakness of our power and to what is sufficient for the gladness of those who have come together. The earth has welcomed you with its own growths, the sea with its fishes, the air with its birds. The land stands ready to show in turn things equal to these. But let this be the measure of the morning feast, lest excessive fullness make you duller for the enjoyment of the evening one. And may he who filled all things with his creation and left among us in all things clear memorials of his wonders fill your hearts with all spiritual gladness, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and might to the ages of ages. Amen.

How did the morning table of words seem to you? It occurred to me to compare my own offering to the hospitality of some poor host who, eager to be thought a man of refinement, wearies his guests for lack of costlier fare by setting his meager provision lavishly on the table, so that his ambition turns into a reproach of bad taste. Ours is something of that kind, unless you say otherwise. But whatever it may be, you must not despise it. For the people of that time did not decline Elisha as a poor host, even though he feasted his friends on wild vegetables. I know the laws of allegory, though I did not find them out myself but came upon them in the labors of others. Those who do not accept the common meanings of what is written say that water is not water but some other nature; they interpret plant and fish as they please, and explain the creation of creeping things and wild beasts by twisting them to their own notions, like interpreters of dreams, who explain what appeared in visions in sleep to suit their own purpose. But I, when I hear "grass," understand grass; and plant, fish, wild beast, and cattle: all of them I take as they are said. For I am not ashamed of the gospel. Nor, because those who have written about the world have argued much about the shape of the earth, whether it is a sphere or a cylinder, or resembles a disc and is rounded equally on all sides, or is shaped like a winnowing basket and hollow in the middle (for those who wrote about the world have been carried to all these suppositions, each overturning the others), will I on that account be led to call our account of creation less honorable, because Moses, the servant of God, said nothing about shapes, nor said that the circumference of the earth is 180,000 stades, nor measured how far into the air its shadow reaches when the sun moves under the earth, nor how this shadow, falling on the moon, causes eclipses. Since he passed over in silence, as useless to us, the things that are nothing to us, shall I on this account consider the oracles of the Spirit less honorable than the wisdom that has been made foolish? Or shall I rather glorify him who did not occupy our mind with vain things, but arranged that everything should be written for the building up and perfecting of our souls? This is what some seem to me not to have understood, who have tried, by certain distortions and figurative interpretations, to attach to what is written a dignity of their own devising. But this is the part of one who makes himself wiser than the oracles of the Spirit, and under pretense of interpretation brings in his own ideas. Let it be understood, then, as it is written.

"Let the earth bring forth a living soul of cattle and wild beasts and creeping things." Consider the word of God running through creation, beginning then, active until now, and going on to the end, until the world is completed. For as a ball, when someone pushes it and it then meets a slope, is carried downhill by its own shape and the fitness of the ground, and does not stop until some level ground receives it, so the nature of things, set in motion by one command, passes evenly through the creation subject to coming-to-be and perishing, preserving the succession of the kinds through likeness, until it reaches the end itself. It makes a horse the successor of a horse, a lion of a lion, an eagle of an eagle; and it sends each of the animals on, preserved by successive generations, until the consummation of the universe. No length of time corrupts or effaces the peculiarities of the animals; nature, as if newly established, runs along with time, always fresh. "Let the earth bring forth a living soul." This command has remained in the earth, and it does not cease serving the Creator. For some things are produced by the succession of those already existing, while others are shown even now being brought to life from the earth itself. For it not only sends up cicadas in rainy seasons, and countless other kinds of winged things carried about in the air, most of which have no name because of their smallness; it even produces mice and frogs from itself. Around Thebes in Egypt, when it rains heavily in the hot season, the land is at once filled with field mice. And eels we see formed in no other way than from mud: neither an egg nor any other means produces their succession; their origin is from the earth. "Let the earth bring forth a soul." The cattle are earthy and bent toward the earth; but man, the heavenly plant, differs from them as much in the dignity of his soul as in the shape of his bodily form. What is the shape of four-footed animals? Their head is bent toward the earth; it looks to the belly and pursues the belly's pleasure by every means. Your head stands erect toward heaven; your eyes look upward. So if you ever dishonor yourself with the passions of the flesh, serving the belly and what is below the belly, "you are compared to the senseless cattle and have become like them." Another care befits you: to seek the things above, where Christ is, and to be above earthly things in your mind. As you were shaped, so order your life. Have your citizenship in heaven. Your true homeland is the Jerusalem above; your fellow citizens and fellow tribesmen are the firstborn, who are enrolled in heaven.

"Let the earth bring forth a living soul." The soul of the irrational animals, then, did not appear as something stored up in the earth, but came into existence together with the command. The soul of the irrational animals is one, for one thing marks it out: the lack of reason. But each of the animals is distinguished by different peculiarities. The ox is steady, the donkey sluggish, the horse hot in desire for the female, the wolf untamable, the fox crafty, the deer timid, the ant industrious, the dog grateful and mindful of friendship. For each was created and at the same time brought with it the peculiarity of its nature. Spiritedness was born together with the lion, its solitary manner of life, its unsociability toward its own kind. For, like a tyrant among the irrational animals, it will not accept equality with the many, because of its natural arrogance. It will not even take yesterday's food, nor go back to the remains of its own prey; and nature has given it such great organs of voice that often many animals that surpass it in speed are caught by its roar alone. The leopard is impetuous and quick in its rushes; it has been given a body suited to it, supple and light, following the movements of its soul. The nature of the bear is sluggish, its character peculiar, sly, deeply hidden; and it is clothed with a body to match, heavy, compact, without distinct joints, truly fitted for a cold den. If we go through in our discourse how much untaught and natural care for their own life these irrational animals possess, we shall be moved to guard ourselves and to take thought for the salvation of our souls, or else we shall be condemned the more, when we are found falling short even of imitating the irrational animals. A bear, often wounded by very deep blows, heals itself, by every means stuffing its wounds with mullein, a plant that is dry by nature. You may also see the fox healing itself with the tear of the pine. The tortoise, when it has gorged itself on viper's flesh, escapes the harm from the venomous creature by the counteracting power of marjoram. And the snake heals the harm in its eyes by feeding on fennel. And their foreknowledge of changes in the air: what rational understanding does it not throw into the shade? The sheep, as winter approaches, eats greedily, as though stocking itself up against the coming scarcity; and oxen, shut up for a long time in the winter season, when spring is at last approaching, perceive the change by natural sense and look out from their stalls toward the doors, all changing their posture at one signal. Some diligent observers have also noticed that the land hedgehog contrives two breathing holes for its burrow, and when the north wind is going to blow, blocks the northern one, and when the south wind takes its place, moves over to the northern one. What is shown to us men by these things? Not only that the care of our Creator reaches through all things, but also that there is among the irrational animals some perception of the future, so that we too may not cling to the present life but give all our zeal to the age to come. Will you not take pains for yourself, O man? Will you not lay up in the present age the rest of the age to come, looking at the example of the ant? It stores up its winter food in summer, and does not let the time pass in idleness because the hardships of winter are not yet present, but strains itself at its work with unremitting zeal until it has stored enough food in its storehouses. And not carelessly either: it contrives by a wise device to make the food last as long as possible. For it cuts through the very middle of the grains with its pincers, so that they may not sprout and become useless to it for food. And it dries them when it perceives that they are soaked; and it does not put them out at any time, but when it foresees that the air is keeping a fair-weather state. Indeed you would never see rain pouring from the clouds while the ants have their grain put out. What word could reach it? What hearing will contain it? What time will suffice to tell and describe all the wonders of the Craftsman? Let us too say with the prophet: "How great are your works, O Lord! You have made all things in wisdom." So it is not enough for our defense that we have not been taught what is beneficial by letters, since we have received the choice of what is profitable by the untaught law of nature. Do you know what good you should do to your neighbor? What you want done to yourself by another. Do you know what evil is? What you would not choose to suffer from another. No art of herb-cutting, no botanical experience discovered for the irrational animals the knowledge of useful things; each of the animals is by nature able to provide for its own safety, and has an unspoken affinity for what accords with its nature.

There are also in us virtues according to nature, toward which the soul has an affinity that comes not from human teaching but from nature itself. For as no argument teaches us to hate sickness, but we have a spontaneous aversion to what pains us, so the soul too has an untaught turning away from evil. Every evil is a sickness of the soul, and virtue holds the place of health. For some have rightly defined health as the steady working of the natural functions; and one who says the same of the soul's good condition will not miss what is fitting. Hence the soul, untaught, desires what is proper and natural to it. That is why self-control is praised by all, justice welcomed, courage admired, and prudence eagerly sought; and these are more proper to the soul than health is to the body. "Children, love your fathers. Parents, do not provoke your children to anger." Does nature not say these things too? Paul urges nothing new; he tightens the bonds of nature. If the lioness loves her young, and the wolf fights for its cubs, what will a man say who both disobeys the commandment and counterfeits nature, when a son dishonors his father's old age, or a father, through a second marriage, forgets the children of his first? Among the irrational animals the affection of offspring and parents for each other is extraordinary, because God who made them compensated for their lack of reason by the abundance of their senses. How is it that among countless sheep a lamb leaping out of the fold knows the very color and voice of its mother, hastens to her, and seeks its own fountains of milk? And even if it finds its mother's teats poor, it is content with them, passing by many udders heavy with milk. And how does the mother recognize her own among countless lambs? One voice, the same color, a smell alike in all, as far as our sense of smell can tell; yet they have a perception keener than our apprehension, by which each can tell its own. The puppy does not yet have teeth, and yet it defends itself with its mouth against whoever hurts it. The calf does not yet have horns, and it knows where its weapons will grow. These things prove that the natures of all are untaught, that nothing among existing things is disorderly or undefined, but that all bear traces of the Maker's wisdom, showing in themselves that they were brought forth equipped to preserve their own safety. The dog has no share in reason, yet it has a sense equivalent to reason. For what the wise men of the world, who sat in great leisure all their lives, barely discovered, I mean the intricacies of syllogisms, the dog shows that it has learned from nature. For when it is tracking a beast and finds the trail divided many ways, it goes over the turnings leading in each direction and all but utters the syllogistic statement through its actions: "Either the beast turned this way," it says, "or that way, or toward this part; but it went neither this way nor that; it remains that it rushed this way." And so, by eliminating the false, it finds the true. What more do they do who sit solemnly over their diagrams and scratch in the dust, eliminating two of three premises and finding the truth in the one that remains? And the dog's memory of kindness: which of those who are ungrateful to their benefactors does it not put to shame? Many dogs are remembered to have died beside masters murdered in lonely places. Some, while the deed was still fresh, have even become guides to those seeking the murderers and have brought the criminals to justice. What will those say who not only do not love the Lord who made and feeds them, but even keep as friends those who speak unrighteousness against God, share the same table with them, and at the very meal put up with blasphemies against the one who feeds them?

But let us return to the contemplation of creation. The animals more easily caught are more prolific. That is why hares bear many young, and wild goats and wild sheep bear twins, so that their kind may not fail, consumed by the flesh-eaters. But those that destroy others bear few. Hence the lioness barely becomes the mother of one lion; for, they say, the cub comes out by tearing the womb with the points of its claws; and vipers come out by eating through the womb. So nothing among existing things lacks providence, or is without a share in the care that befits it. And if you study the very members of the animals, you will find that the Creator neither added anything superfluous nor took away anything necessary. To carnivorous animals he fitted sharp teeth, for such were needed for their kind of food. Those that are armed with teeth by halves he provided with many and various storehouses for their food. For since their food is not ground fine enough the first time, he gave them the means to bring up again what they have swallowed, so that, made smooth by chewing the cud, it may be assimilated by the animal it feeds. Paunches, honeycomb bags, reticula, and abomasums do not lie idle in the animals that have them; each fulfills a necessary use. The camel's neck is long, so that it may match its legs and reach the grass on which it lives. The neck of the bear is short and sunk into the shoulders, as also those of the lion, the tiger, and the others of this kind, because their food does not come from the grass, and they have no need to stoop to the ground, being carnivores that live by hunting animals. What is the purpose of the elephant's trunk? Since the animal is great, the greatest of land animals, brought forth to astonish those who meet it, its body had to be very fleshy and massive. If a great neck in proportion to its legs had been given it, it would have been unwieldy, always weighed down by the excessive weight. As it is, the head is joined to the spine by a few vertebrae of the neck, and it has the trunk, which fulfills the use of a neck, by which it brings its food to itself and draws up its drink. And its legs have no joints, but, like columns joined together, support the weight. For if loose and supple limbs had been put under it, its joints would continually have been dislocated, since they would not have been strong enough to lift the weight as it knelt down and rose up. As it is, a short ankle lies under the elephant's foot, and it is articulated neither into a bend nor into a knee. For slippery joints would not have borne the animal's great mass of flesh, poured round it and quivering. Hence the need for that trunk let down to the feet. Do you not see in wars how they lead the phalanx like living towers, or like hills of flesh with an irresistible charge, breaking through the enemy's locked shields? If their lower parts had not been in proportion, the animal would not have lasted any time. As it is, some report that the elephant lives three hundred years and more; that is why its limbs are compact and without joints. Its food, as we said, the trunk carries from the ground up to the height, being serpent-like and quite supple in nature. So true is the saying that nothing superfluous or lacking can be found in created things. Yet God has made this animal, so great in size, subject to us, so that it understands when taught and accepts being beaten, clearly teaching us that he subjected all things to us because we were made according to the image of the Creator. Not only in the great animals may one see the unsearchable wisdom; in the tiniest one may gather no less wonder. For as I do not marvel more at the great mountain peaks, which, being near the clouds, keep their wintry cold through the continual blowing of the winds, than at the hollow of the ravines, which not only escapes the stormy winds of the heights but also keeps the air always warm, so too in the structures of the animals I do not admire the elephant for its size more than the mouse, because it is feared by the elephant, or the very fine sting of the scorpion, how the Craftsman hollowed it like a pipe so that through it the venom is injected into those it wounds. And let no one on this account accuse the Maker of having brought in venomous animals, destructive and hostile to our life; or in that case one might as well accuse a tutor who brings the frivolity of youth to order and corrects their license with blows and whips.

Wild beasts are a proof of faith. Do you trust in the Lord? "You will tread upon the asp and the basilisk, and you will trample the lion and the dragon." And you have authority through faith to tread upon serpents and scorpions. Or do you not see that the viper that fastened on Paul as he gathered sticks did him no harm, because the saint was found full of faith? But if you are faithless, fear not the beast so much as your own faithlessness, through which you have made yourself an easy prey to every destruction. But I perceive that I have long been asked about the creation of man, and I seem almost to hear my hearers crying out in their hearts, "We are being taught what the nature of our possessions is, but we do not know ourselves." I must speak, then, pushing aside the hesitation that holds me back. For truly it seems hardest of all to know oneself. For not only does the eye, which sees outward things, not use its sight on itself, but our very mind, quick to see another's sin, is slow to recognize its own failings. That is why now too my discourse, having gone quickly through the things of others, is sluggish and full of hesitation in examining our own. And yet one who examines himself with understanding can come to know God from his own constitution no less than from heaven and earth, as the prophet says: "Your knowledge has become wonderful from me," that is, by studying myself I was taught the surpassing greatness of your wisdom. "And God said, Let us make man." Where is the Jew for me, who earlier, when the light of theology was shining through as through windows, and a second person was being indicated mystically, though not yet clearly revealed, fought against the truth, saying that God spoke to himself? For he himself spoke, they say, and he himself made: "Let there be light, and there was light." The absurdity of what they said was obvious even then. For what smith, carpenter, or shoemaker, sitting alone at the tools of his craft with no one working with him, says to himself, "Let us make the sword," or "Let us fit together the plough," or "Let us finish the shoe"? Does he not rather carry out the work in hand in silence? It would truly be dreadful nonsense for someone to sit as his own ruler and overseer, urging himself on lordly and vehemently. But those who did not hesitate to slander the Lord himself, what would they not say, having tongues trained for falsehood? Yet the present word stops their mouths entirely: "And God said, Let us make man." Is the person single here too, tell me? For it is not written, "Let man come to be," but, "Let us make man." As long as the one being taught had not yet appeared, the proclamation of theology was hidden in the depth; now that the creation of man is awaited, faith is uncovered, and the doctrine of the truth is shown more plainly. "Let us make man." You hear, enemy of Christ, that he is speaking to the partner in creation, "through whom he also made the ages," who "upholds all things by the word of his power." But they do not quietly accept the word of piety; like the most man-hating of wild beasts, which, when shut up in cages, roar around the bars, showing the bitterness and savagery of their nature but unable to satisfy their fury, so the Jews, a race hostile to the truth, when hard pressed, say: "There are many persons to whom the word of God was addressed; he says to the angels who stand by him, Let us make man." A Jewish fiction, a myth of their usual frivolity! So as not to accept the one, they bring in countless; and rejecting the Son, they attach the dignity of counsel to servants and make our fellow servants lords of our creation. Man, when perfected, is raised to the dignity of the angels; but what creature can be equal to the Creator? Consider also what follows: "According to our image." What do you say to this? Is the image of God and of the angels one? Of Son and Father the form must necessarily be the same, the form being understood in a way befitting God, not in bodily shape but in the property of the Godhead. Hear this, you too of the new concision, who champion Judaism under a pretense of Christianity. To whom does he say, "According to our image"? To whom else but to "the radiance of his glory and the express image of his hypostasis," who is "the image of the invisible God"? To his own living image, then, who said, "I and the Father are one," and, "He who has seen me has seen the Father": to him he says, "Let us make man according to our image." Where the image is one, where is the unlikeness? "And God made man." Not, "They made." Here he avoided a plurality of persons. By those words he instructs the Jew, by these he shuts out paganism, and returns safely to the unity, so that you may understand the Son with the Father and escape the danger of polytheism. "In the image of God he made him." Again he brought in the person of the fellow worker; for he did not say, "In his own image," but, "In the image of God." In what man has what is according to the image of God, and how he shares in the likeness, will be said in what follows, God granting; but for now let this much be said: if the image is one, how did it come into your head to be so impious as to call the Son unlike the Father? What ingratitude! The likeness you received, you do not grant to your benefactor? And you think that what was granted to you by grace remains yours, but you do not allow the Son to have by nature likeness to the one who begot him? But the evening, which long ago escorted the sun to its setting, now commands us to be silent. Here, then, let us too put our discourse to rest, content with what has been said. For now we have touched on the matter enough to rouse your zeal; the more complete examination of the questions before us we will give in what follows, with the help of the Spirit. Go away rejoicing, Christ-loving congregation, and instead of costly dishes and varied sauces, adorn your dignified tables with the memory of what has been said. Let the Anomoean be put to shame, let the Jew be abashed, let the pious man rejoice in the doctrines of the truth, let the Lord be glorified, to whom be glory and might to the ages of ages. Amen.