Hexameron

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–1.22 · 1.23–1.38 · 2.1–3.1 · 3.2–3.29 · 3.30–3.54 · 3.55–4.8 · 4.9–4.29 · 4.30–5.18 · 5.19–5.44 · 5.45–5.76 · 5.77–6.20 · 6.21–6.45 · 6.46–6.68 · 6.69–6.76

1. 1.1Ambrose opens by setting out the philosophers' theories of the first principles of the world, Plato's three and Aristotle's.
2. 1.2To make the world eternal with God, or divine, leads to the worship of its parts.
3. 1.3The philosophers disagree about how many worlds there are and whether the world is eternal.
4. 1.4If the world or its parts are gods, nothing coherent can be said about the divine.
5. 1.5Moses' opening words answer the philosophers: God is the maker of matter itself, and he made the world at once.
6. 1.6Moses, trained in Egyptian learning, chose exile for justice and was granted to know God face to face.
7. 1.7Moses spoke by God's Spirit, not by philosophy, and rejected the atomists' world of chance.
8. 1.8“In the beginning” teaches that the world began; “made” teaches that God created instantly by his will.
9. 1.9Scripture repeatedly names God as maker of heaven and earth, against human speculation.
10. 1.10That a circle has no visible beginning does not mean the world had none; Christ teaches that it will end.
11. 1.11A world whose parts are corruptible cannot itself be eternal or equal to God.
12. 1.12Ambrose distinguishes the senses of “beginning”: time, number, foundation, discipline, and others.
13. 1.13Ambrose argues that the world was created in spring, the month of Passover, the beginning of months.
14. 1.14Spring is also the season of the Exodus and of Easter baptism, the passage to rebirth in which the devil is renounced.
15. 1.15In a mystical sense the “beginning” is Christ, through whom and in whom all things were made.
16. 1.16“In the beginning” may mean before time, or “in sum”; the visible heaven and earth point to the invisible creator.
17. 1.17Like a building or a woven cloth, the world remains as a witness to the wisdom of its maker.
18. 1.18God made the world by his will; it is not a shadow cast necessarily by God.
19. 1.19The Son is the invisible image of the invisible Father; all things were created through him and return to God.
20. 1.20Time begins with the world; heaven and earth contain the four elements, but such physics matters less than eternal life.
21. 1.21Isaiah describes heaven as fine like smoke and as a vault stretched out like a tent or a book.
22. 1.22The earth's stability depends not on physical balance but on God's will, as Scripture teaches.
23. 1.23Ambrose reports the philosophers' debate over whether heaven is made of the four elements or of a fifth, ethereal substance.
24. 1.24Scripture and Christ teach that heaven will pass away; Christians need faith, not philosophical dispute.
25. 1.25“The earth was” does not mean that matter was eternal; uncreated matter would need an eternal place, or God himself.
26. 1.26The earth was “invisible” because it was covered by water and there was no light yet, or because it was not yet visited by God.
27. 1.27God first made, then adorned the world, to prevent belief in uncreated forms and to lead faith step by step, as at the raising of Lazarus.
28. 1.28The earth was unformed because it was flooded and unadorned; the darkness was the absence of light, not evil powers.
29. 1.29The Spirit over the waters is the Holy Spirit, so that the whole Trinity is at work in creation.
30. 1.30Evil is not a creature of God but arises from human changeableness; the dualist heresies are wrong.
31. 1.31Evil is not a substance but a perversion of the will; we are its cause, and outward misfortunes are not true evils.
32. 1.32The primeval darkness was the shadow of heaven's vault, and the “abyss” is a mass of deep water.
33. 1.33God's first word creates light, the first grace of the world's building; his speaking is his will made effective, not a sound.
34. 1.34God's “seeing” that light was good is a judgment of its beauty and usefulness, not a discovery.
35. 1.35Day was made by light before the sun existed; the sun only brightens the day.
36. 1.36Day comes first: evening ends the day, morning ends the night, and “day” includes both.
37. 1.37Scripture says “one day,” not “first day,” to set the twenty-four-hour day as a unit and to point to the one eternal day.
38. 1.38Since the day begins and ends in light, Christians should walk as in the day; Book 1 ends with a doxology.
39. 2.1Ambrose recalls the work of the first day, done by Father, Son, and Spirit, and marvels at the harmony of the world.
40. 2.2Uncreated matter would make God dependent on it; the first day is “one day,” the foundation of all the rest.
41. 2.3The works of creation must be judged by the rule of Scripture and the power of Christ, not by philosophy.
42. 2.4God's command “Let there be a firmament” overrides the nature of water; his word is the law of nature.
43. 2.5Against philosophers who deny that God could make more than one heaven, Scripture says God does whatever he wills.
44. 2.6Scripture speaks of several heavens; the philosophers borrowed this and invented the music of the spheres.
45. 2.7Ambrose refutes the music of the spheres: if it existed, we would hear it as we hear thunder.
46. 2.8Ambrose asks whether the firmament is the same as the heaven of Gen 1:1, and leans to its being distinct.
47. 2.9Against the claim that water could not stay on a revolving heavenly sphere, Ambrose argues the heaven may have flat surfaces.
48. 2.10Ps 148 confirms waters above the heavens; God's command, carried out by the Son, keeps them there.
49. 2.11The parting of the Red Sea and the Jordan show God's power over water; even the philosophers' physics allows waters above the heavens.
50. 2.12God set water above and within the world to balance the heat of fire; the great rivers show this balance, which will one day end.
51. 2.13Fire consumes much moisture, as cupping vessels show, so a great store of water is needed to temper the heavenly fire.
52. 2.14Against those who deny the sun is hot, Ambrose argues that any fire consumes moisture, as the saltiness of the sea shows.
53. 2.15“Heaven” is the general name and “firmament” the particular; Ambrose explains the Latin and Greek words for heaven.
54. 2.16Scriptural uses of “heaven” shut or iron illustrate the firmament, named for its firmness.
55. 2.17Allegories of the heavens and waters as spiritual powers are allowed, but Ambrose takes the waters above as real.
56. 2.18“God said” and “God made” show Father and Son sharing one name and one operation, against those who make the Son inferior.
57. 2.19God's approval of his work reflects the perfect mutual knowledge of Father and Son in one nature.
58. 2.20What God approved is good, and its creator still more so, against the Arians and Eunomians.
59. 2.21Unlike human artists, God praises each part already knowing the beauty of the finished whole.
60. 2.22Ambrose ends the second day's sermon before nightfall so his hearers can go home and eat.
61. 3.1The water obeyed God's command to gather; Ambrose's congregation should be as obedient in gathering for church.
62. 3.2Scripture shows water obeying God at the Red Sea and the Jordan; Christians should likewise gather in one church.
63. 3.3The gathered waters figure the one catholic church gathered from heretics, pagans, and devotees of the circus.
64. 3.4The marsh stands for vice, out of which faith and purity have been gathered into the church.
65. 3.5The church, not the theatre, is the Christian's delight: a temple of the Trinity whose curtains cover sins.
66. 3.6The faithful are rivers flowing into the church from Christ, the spring of living water.
67. 3.7The appearance of the dry land confirms that the earth was “invisible” only because water covered it.
68. 3.8Water's tendency to flow was itself given by God's command, which became the law of its nature.
69. 3.9Springs, aqueducts, the rock in the desert, Christ's stilling of the storm, and Elisha's axe show God's power over water.
70. 3.10The sea receives all rivers without overflowing, held in by the sand at God's command.
71. 3.11The failed canals of Sesostris and Darius show that the higher Red Sea is held back from flooding Egypt.
72. 3.12Ambrose asks how there can be “one gathering” when there are many seas.
73. 3.13All the seas form one continuous body of water, as many lands form one earth.
74. 3.14If the primeval waters covered even the mountains, where did they all go?
75. 3.15God could have widened the earth or deepened the sea; the ocean's extent and the inland lakes absorb much water.
76. 3.16Separate lakes do not contradict “one gathering,” as the stars do not contradict “two great lights.”
77. 3.17Scripture says “dry land,” not “earth,” to name the earth's proper quality and to show it was dried by God before the sun.
78. 3.18Each element has a proper quality, and paired qualities link them in a harmonious circle.
79. 3.19God named the earth by its principal property, dryness.
80. 3.20Ambrose defends the Septuagint's added sentence in Gen 1:9, noting the Seventy's additions are not idle.
81. 3.21However beautiful the sea looks, God judged it good by its fitness for its purpose.
82. 3.22The sea is good because it waters the land, carries trade, protects, and supplies the rain.
83. 3.23The sea's islands shelter ascetics, and the church at worship, singing psalms antiphonally, is like the sea.
84. 3.24Ambrose closes with a prayer for a safe voyage through life with Christ as helmsman.
85. 3.25The earth's form is its vegetation, which God commands so that it ceases to be “invisible and unformed.”
86. 3.26God's first command became the lasting law by which the earth sprouts of itself.
87. 3.27Plants were made before the sun, so that no one should worship the sun as the cause of growth.
88. 3.28Fodder came first because God cares for small things and to teach frugal, natural eating.
89. 3.29The grass is an image of human life: “All flesh is grass,” and its glory soon withers.
90. 3.30Examples of sudden illness, disgrace, imprisonment, and death show that human glory withers like grass.
91. 3.31Humans, God's offspring made in his image, should sow spiritual seed true to their kind as plants do.
92. 3.32Against Manichees, Photinians, and Eunomians, Ambrose argues from Gen 1:26 that the Son is co-creator and equal to the Father.
93. 3.33Every plant grows from seed or root, and always after its kind.
94. 3.34The growth of wheat from a dying seed to the protected ear shows the wonderful providence of God.
95. 3.35The earth is a faithful debtor, repaying with interest what is sown in it.
96. 3.36The beauty and fragrance of the flowering field, especially the lily, show the incomparable craftsmanship of God.
97. 3.37Herbs and leaves provide many remedies, as animals themselves show.
98. 3.38Harmful plants no more discredit the creator than bad men or fallen angels discredit creation.
99. 3.39Poisonous plants feed some animals and provide medicines for men: hemlock, hellebore, mandrake, opium.
100. 3.40Animals instinctively seek healing herbs and avoid poisons, so creation's dangers become occasions of thanks.
101. 3.41Man, who has reason, should value the creatures God gave, like the ox, rather than complain that some things harm him.
102. 3.42God ordered sprouting, greening, and then seed, so that the fields give first beauty and then fruit.
103. 3.43Seeds that seem to degenerate are only damaged, not changed in kind; God's command of reproduction after kind still holds.
104. 3.44Tares are a distinct kind, not degenerate wheat; as Christ's seed differs from the devil's.
105. 3.45Before the fall the earth bore fruit unaided by God's word; the curse brought toil.
106. 3.46Even now the earth bears fruit of itself while the farmer sleeps, as Christ's parable teaches.
107. 3.47At God's word the trees sprang up, each keeping for ever the properties then given, like the evergreen laurel and holm oak.
108. 3.48The rose was thornless before the fall; its thorns now remind us that every joy of life is fenced with cares.
109. 3.49The vine, which gladdens the heart, teaches us to find joy within ourselves and to cling and rise as it does.
110. 3.50The church is God's vine, walled by commandments and angels, with a tower of apostles, and freed from earthly cares.
111. 3.51The trellised vine teaches equality in the church and the love that binds believers to one another and to God.
112. 3.52The ripening grape warns us not to meet death with unripe works; the church's virtues are like clusters on the vine.
113. 3.53Trees without fruit serve as types: cedar and cypress for the church's pillars, palm and laurel for victory, willow for Christ's bonds of love, box for unfading hope.
114. 3.54The variety of trees, their ages, and their power to regrow display the creator's art; trees even have sexes.
115. 3.55The pollination of the palm and the caprification of the fig teach that converted pagans and heretics can strengthen the faithful.
116. 3.56As grafting sweetens bitter almonds and tended pomegranates bear fruit, so teaching and discipline can reform any soul.
117. 3.57Fruits and herbs differ in kind and serve as food and medicine; if plants can be changed, so can hearts.
118. 3.58Some fruits ripen exposed to the sun, others inside shells, yet all are nourished by its heat.
119. 3.59God gives tender fruits like the fig thick leaves, as he protected the exiles of Judah with his mercy.
120. 3.60The shape of vine and fig leaves shows divine wisdom, sheltering the fruit while letting in the sun.
121. 3.61Leaves differ in shape and firmness.
122. 3.62The same water takes many colours, temperatures, and tastes, and nourishes plants of very different fruits.
123. 3.63Trees fed by the same water produce different saps and gums, such as balsam and amber.
124. 3.64Even Solomon, who spoke of trees and roots, could not explain all of creation; Ambrose restrains his account.
125. 3.65At God's word, more abundant than any water, all plants sprang up for food, shade, and medicine, foreseen from the beginning.
126. 3.66Even trees that seem seedless, like the willow, have something with the power of seed, so God's command holds.
127. 3.67God calls the locust his great power in judgment; how much more is his power shown in fruitful plants.
128. 3.68The ordered pine cone is an image of nature, keeping its law from the beginning until the end of time.
129. 3.69The tamarisk, growing in both wet and dry places, is a figure of double-hearted men.
130. 3.70The earth obeys God's command at once, but men do not obey the command to love him.
131. 3.71Like the evergreen palm, the Christian should keep the greenness of innocence and flourish in the church.
132. 3.72God created the vine; Noah only planted it, and its abuse is man's fault, while its fruit serves salvation in the Eucharist.
133. 4.1Before speaking of the sun, Ambrose bids his hearers cleanse their minds and remember that light and plants came before the sun, which is no god.
134. 4.2The splendour of the sun should lead us to praise its creator, Christ the Sun of Righteousness and true light.
135. 4.3Plants preceded the sun to show that the earth's fruitfulness does not depend on it.
136. 4.4Nature speaks: the sun is its fellow servant and helper, not its creator, groaning with creation for redemption.
137. 4.5The Father commanded and the Son, the Sun of Righteousness, made the sun; the lights, richly endowed, serve and owe the more.
138. 4.6Scripture teaches that fruitfulness comes from God the Father through Christ, not from sun or moon.
139. 4.7The sun and moon serve day and night; mystically, the waning moon figures the church, diminished by persecution but filled by martyrs.
140. 4.8The light of the first day differs from the light of the sun, which adds brilliance to the day.
141. 4.9Light and the sun are distinct; fire both lights and burns, as the burning bush, which gave light without consuming, shows.
142. 4.10God's fire consumes only sins: it lights the righteous and burns the wicked.
143. 4.11As shadows flee light by day, night is the shadow of the earth, opposite the sun.
144. 4.12The lights divide the times and serve as signs, as Christ said of the signs of the end.
145. 4.13Astrology destroys moral responsibility; the apostles, the thief, Jonah, Peter, and Paul were saved by grace and faith, not by their stars.
146. 4.14Astrology is impossible in practice: no one can fix the exact moment of birth among the tiny divisions they claim matter.
147. 4.15Astrologers derive human character from animal signs like the Ram, Bull, and Scorpion, which makes heaven subject to beasts.
148. 4.16The planets' wandering, rapid motions cannot fix an unchanging lot for human lives.
149. 4.17If stars are maleficent by nature God is blamed; if by choice they punish the innocent; astrology removes guilt from men.
150. 4.18Astrology is a spider's web for the weak; royal succession by birth in one family refutes the claim that stars confer power.
151. 4.19If fate governed acts, laws, labour, and rewards would be pointless; farmers and merchants themselves act as if they were free.
152. 4.20Ambrose ends his refutation of astrology and returns to the text.
153. 4.21The sun's course produces the seasons and the length of days and shadows.
154. 4.22Allegorically, the synagogue saw Christ in the short winter days of shadow, while the church, and the Gentiles, see him at noon with full light.
155. 4.23Shadows vary with season and latitude; the “shadowless” and “double-shadowed” peoples of the south show the sun's course.
156. 4.24The lights rule the days and measure months and years, with calendar adjustments among Hebrews and Romans.
157. 4.25Sun and moon are “great” because they appear the same size to all peoples, near or far.
158. 4.26The sun looks small only because of its distance and the weakness of our sight, as distant herds look like ants.
159. 4.27The sun's size is shown by how it outshines all the stars and lights the whole world.
160. 4.28God set the sun at just the distance that it neither burns nor fails to warm the earth.
161. 4.29The moon shares the sun's ministry, brings dew, and its waxing and waning affect living things, a sign of its God-given power.
162. 4.30Rain comes from God's providence, not the new moon, as an answered prayer in Milan showed; but the moon does affect straits and tides.
163. 4.31The moon's waning teaches the instability of earthly things; the fool, not the wise man, changes like the moon, and creation waits on our conversion.
164. 4.32The waning and waxing moon is a type of Christ, who emptied himself, and of the church, which shines with his borrowed light and grows through persecution.
165. 4.33Magic cannot draw down the moon, nor harm the church, whose enchanter is Christ, as Paul and Peter overcame magicians.
166. 4.34Ambrose rejects superstitious avoidance of the fourth day, the day of the sun and moon and of the Paschal fourteenth.
167. 5.1On the fifth day the sea, idle until now, was given the privilege of bringing forth the first creatures with living souls.
168. 5.2At God's word the waters teemed with life; the delicacies of the sea existed before man, who was not content with them and ate the forbidden fruit.
169. 5.3All creatures of the waters came alive at once at God's command.
170. 5.4All swimming creatures “creep” through water, even amphibians such as seals and hippopotamuses.
171. 5.5One word produced the smallest and greatest sea creatures, and the sea has more kinds than the land, whose names were borrowed from it.
172. 5.6Creatures fearsome on land are harmless or delightful in the sea, as in the church the waters of baptism reconcile wolves and lambs.
173. 5.7Some fish lay eggs in the water, others bear live young and shelter them in their bodies, a devotion that shames human cruelty.
174. 5.8Egg-laying fish leave their eggs to the water, which hatches them without labour.
175. 5.9Fish keep to their own kind, rebuking men who breed mules and make eunuchs against nature.
176. 5.10Water is to fish what air is to us; fish cannot be separated from their “mother,” a lesson to unloving human parents.
177. 5.11Fish breathe through gills as we do with lungs, and so have a separate nature that cannot be tamed.
178. 5.12Fish have sharp teeth in both jaws so as to swallow quickly; only the parrot-fish chews the cud.
179. 5.13Big fish eat smaller ones and are eaten in turn, a warning against the greed of the powerful.
180. 5.14The greedy rich man is like the sheatfish full of smaller fish: he too will be caught.
181. 5.15Humans are fish in the gospel net; the good fish, caught by Christ's hook, bear in their mouth the confession that pays Christ's tribute.
182. 5.16The good fish need not fear Peter's net; Stephen, the first martyr, was such a fish, with confession in his mouth.
183. 5.17The sea is a figure of the gospel, in which Christians, like fish, should swim safely through the storms of the world.
184. 5.18The lamprey who answers the viper's call teaches wives to bear with difficult husbands and keep faith during absence.
185. 5.19Husbands must be gentle guides, not masters, and must not commit adultery, which divides the one flesh God made; the adulteress is like the viper.
186. 5.20The viper serves as an example both of faithfulness and of adultery.
187. 5.21The octopus that takes the colour of the rock to trap fish is like the deceiver who changes his face to suit each company.
188. 5.22The crab props open the sunning oyster with a pebble to eat it.
189. 5.23Do not be a crab preying on others; simple innocence and modest poverty with the fear of God are better.
190. 5.24The sea urchin foresees storms and anchors itself with a pebble, warning sailors better than astrologers.
191. 5.25The urchin's foresight is God's gift, as are the skills of spider, horse, and lily; God cares still more for men.
192. 5.26Each kind of fish keeps to its own region and takes only what it needs, a natural law of sufficiency.
193. 5.27Unlike fish, the greedy rich move boundaries, claim the sea as property, and rob their neighbours, whom God will judge.
194. 5.28Even the great whales keep their own distant regions peacefully without encroaching on others.
195. 5.29Migrating fish go to the Black Sea to spawn as if under an emperor's orders; they obey God's law better than men.
196. 5.30Fish migrate for the sake of their young at the proper season, while men sail for profit and breed without regard to season.
197. 5.31The echeneis that stops ships and the harmful sea creatures show God's gifts and keep us watchful in faith.
198. 5.32The huge whales of the Atlantic deter sailors from venturing into its depths.
199. 5.33The sea yields salt, coral, pearls, the golden “sea wool” of the pinna, and royal purple.
200. 5.34The sea's beauty surpasses gardens, and a voyage is better than a chariot race, since every ship that arrives wins.
201. 5.35Jonah, preserved by the sea monster, prefigures Christ; Peter was upheld on the sea; Ambrose ends the morning sermon.
202. 5.36Resuming after a pause, Ambrose turns to the birds he had forgotten, whose songs at dawn and dusk shame men who neglect psalms.
203. 5.37Ambrose recalls his discourse to the birds, the third of the three kinds of animals.
204. 5.38Like a traveller retracing his steps, Ambrose will hurry through the birds.
205. 5.39Ambrose wishes for the songs of swans and nightingales but will use the plainer lore of country folk.
206. 5.40The halcyon's seven days of brooding and seven of feeding bring calm to the winter sea, the “halcyon days.”
207. 5.41If God calms the sea for the halcyon, how much more may man, made in God's image, trust him; the bird lays its eggs fearlessly.
208. 5.42The halcyon trusts her young to God on the bare shore, while anxious parents, by over-protecting, deprive theirs of heaven's care.
209. 5.43Divers, coots, and herons foresee storms and seek shelter.
210. 5.44The geese that saved the Capitol from the Gauls kept watch while Rome's gods slept.
211. 5.45Birds and fish are akin, both made from the waters, and flying is a kind of swimming.
212. 5.46Unlike snakes and fish, all birds have feet, because they feed on land.
213. 5.47Birds differ in diet and in sociability: birds of prey live apart, others in flocks.
214. 5.48Some birds stay all year, others migrate; the stork's return heralds spring.
215. 5.49Birds differ in tameness, habitat, song, character, and social life.
216. 5.50Cranes keep night watch in turns, willingly, a model of free and faithful service.
217. 5.51Cranes take turns leading their flying column, sharing labour and honour.
218. 5.52The cranes' rotation of duty mirrors an early human commonwealth corrupted by the lust for permanent power.
219. 5.53Storks migrate in military order escorted by crows, which loyally fight for them.
220. 5.54The crows' loyalty to the storks rebukes human inhospitality, which brought ruin on Sodom and Egypt.
221. 5.55Young storks feed and carry their aged parents, shaming men; the Greek word for returning kindness comes from “stork.”
222. 5.56The poor swallow builds a wise nest of mud and straw among human houses to protect her young.
223. 5.57The swallow heals her blinded chicks and builds without money; we should not despair in poverty but hope in God.
224. 5.58Crows care for their young; human mothers refuse to nurse, expose infants, or procure abortions, and fathers disinherit sons.
225. 5.59Hawks drive their fledglings from the nest to train them to hunt, not out of meanness.
226. 5.60The eagle rejects only the chick that cannot face the sun, as unworthy of its royal kind, not from harshness.
227. 5.61The phēnē adopts the rejected eaglet, while humans abandon children they know to be theirs.
228. 5.62The turtledove, offered at Christ's presentation, does not remarry when widowed, an example of widowhood for women.
229. 5.63Even Paul did not make widowhood a law but allowed the young to remarry; God himself gave the turtledove its continence.
230. 5.64Vultures are said to conceive without mating and to live a hundred years.
231. 5.65If vultures conceive without males, the virgin birth of Christ from Mary is not incredible.
232. 5.66Ambrose defines a commonwealth by common law, common reverence, and common counsel, as a preface to the bees.
233. 5.67Bees share everything in common, including virginal generation without mating.
234. 5.68Bees have a king chosen by nature for his size and gentleness, whom they obey with unmatched devotion.
235. 5.69Bees work together on their honeycomb, a hexagonal camp, each with its task, and make honey from dew.
236. 5.70Scripture sends us to the bee, whose honey benefits kings and commoners alike and heals as well as delights.
237. 5.71Bees die for their king, and when he is lost they abandon their work and destroy the honey.
238. 5.72Bees breed twice a year.
239. 5.73Birds fly “along the firmament” because the visible air is loosely called heaven or firmament.
240. 5.74Birds' feet differ to suit their lives: separate toes, talons for prey, webbed feet for swimming.
241. 5.75The swan's long neck lets it reach food in deep water and makes its song purer.
242. 5.76Cicadas and bees sing, and insects breathe through pores, as oil and vinegar show.
243. 5.77The silkworm's transformations, the chameleon, and the hare that changes colour are marvels of change.
244. 5.78Natural transformations point to the resurrection change Paul describes, not to speculative theories of change.
245. 5.79The phoenix, reborn from its own remains, is an example teaching belief in the resurrection.
246. 5.80Like the phoenix, the Christian should make Christ and faith his coffin, filled with virtues, as Paul did in martyrdom.
247. 5.81Vultures follow armies, as if foreseeing the slaughter.
248. 5.82Locusts devour crops only at God's command, as instruments of his judgment.
249. 5.83The seleucis bird is God's remedy against locusts.
250. 5.84Night is falling, and the birds sing their evening thanks as they return to their nests.
251. 5.85The nightingale sings while brooding, and the poor woman grinding at night sings like her for her children.
252. 5.86The owl, blind by day, is like the worldly wise, who see in darkness but are blind to the light of Christ.
253. 5.87The bat is part bird, part beast; bats hang together in clusters, an image of love rare among men.
254. 5.88The cock's crow brings hope, rouses prayer, and recalled Peter to repentance after his denial.
255. 5.89Ambrose prays for Peter's tears of repentance, contrasting them with the joy of Pharaoh and Judas.
256. 5.90Ambrose ends the sermon, praying that Peter weep for them and that Christ's passion, celebrated in the sacrament, forgive their sins.
257. 5.91As Christ fed the crowd lest they faint, Ambrose releases his hearers to eat.
258. 5.92Ambrose turns from the birds to the mysteries of the Lord's body, as evening ends the fifth day.
259. 6.1On the sixth day, the climax of creation and of the sermons, Ambrose feels the pressure of the final day of a contest.
260. 6.2Ambrose invites his hearers into the theatre of creation, to see that God has given humans a soul that surpasses all other creatures.
261. 6.3Hearers want to learn about themselves, but the order of creation and of knowledge requires first speaking of the animals.
262. 6.4Ambrose quotes Gen 1:24–26 and declares he will take the animals literally, not as allegories of vices.
263. 6.5Ambrose's plain fare, like Elisha's wild herbs made sweet, is better than luxurious mixed dishes that fault the creator.
264. 6.6Like Elisha's barley loaves, Ambrose's plain words will suffice; Scripture's plain words should be understood plainly.
265. 6.7The size of the earth is God's knowledge, not ours; it profits more to know the kinds of lands.
266. 6.8Moses, though learned, wrote by the Spirit only what serves our hope and virtue, not astronomy.
267. 6.9God's word once spoken made each kind reproduce after its kind for ever.
268. 6.10Animals are bent toward the earth and the belly; man, made upright, should not live like them in gluttony, lust, or cruelty.
269. 6.11The lazy ass warns against sloth.
270. 6.12The cunning fox is hateful and careless of its own safety.
271. 6.13The partridge that hatches stolen eggs loses the chicks to their true mother, as the devil loses the Gentiles to Christ and the church.
272. 6.14The lion is a proud, solitary king whose roar paralyses other animals.
273. 6.15The leopard's spots show its fickle fury, applied by Jeremiah to the people who will not change.
274. 6.16The small ant, working by foresight without a master, is the model Scripture sets before the sluggard.
275. 6.17Faithful dogs teach gratitude and courage in defending Christ's flock; Tobias's dog accompanied Raphael.
276. 6.18The bear licks its shapeless cubs into shape, a lesson for parents to form their children.
277. 6.19Bears, serpents, tortoises, and foxes know herbal remedies for their ills.
278. 6.20Birds, ants, oxen, sheep, and hedgehogs know the seasons and the weather, unlike God's people who ignore his judgments.
279. 6.21Animals know by nature how to protect and heal themselves; the tigress, deceived by mirrors, loses her cubs through devotion.
280. 6.22Beasts love and defend their young without the favouritism and disinheritance found among humans.
281. 6.23A dog tracking a hare reasons like a philosopher's syllogism, and dogs are loyal unto death and even expose murderers.
282. 6.24At Antioch a murdered man's dog seized the murderer in the crowd and convicted him; we are less grateful to God.
283. 6.25Among thousands, lamb and ewe recognize each other unerringly by voice and smell.
284. 6.26Young animals instinctively use their weapons, and animals know their own remedies.
285. 6.27Like the wolf that loses its power when seen first, the devil flees from the Christian who takes refuge in Christ the rock.
286. 6.28Garlic, which leopards flee, should be medicine, not food; fasting is a greater remedy, deadly even to serpents.
287. 6.29If the turtledove protects her nest with squill, we should protect our souls against spiritual wolves.
288. 6.30Flesh-eaters have short necks, grazing animals long ones suited to reaching the ground.
289. 6.31The elephant's trunk serves for feeding and drinking; its pillar-like legs cannot bend, so it sleeps leaning.
290. 6.32Elephants leaning on trees to sleep can fall and be killed; hunters saw the trees for ivory.
291. 6.33Elephants are like towers in war, bearing archers and crushing opposing armies.
292. 6.34Elephants' solid limbs support them for a life of three hundred years.
293. 6.35The elephant's tusks, trunk, and feet are formidable, yet it serves man, showing nothing in creation is superfluous.
294. 6.36The mightiest and fiercest beasts are tamed and trained by man, a prelude to his creation.
295. 6.37Nature is wonderful in small things as in great: the mouse frightens the elephant, and a scorpion's tiny sting kills the lion.
296. 6.38Poisonous creatures are like tutors' rods, correcting the weak; believers like Paul are unharmed, so unbelief is the real danger.
297. 6.39“Know yourself” comes from Scripture: you are your soul, not your flesh, which is only its garment.
298. 6.40God's “Let us make” is addressed not to angels but to the Son, against Jewish and Arian objections.
299. 6.41The Son, the image of the invisible God, is one in substance with the Father; “Let us make … our likeness” excludes inequality.
300. 6.42Know your soul, not your possessions; the soul painted by God bears the image of Christ, which Adam lost by sin.
301. 6.43The soul is God's image and the whole of man; the body is shared with the beasts.
302. 6.44The image of God is not in the body: our height, sight, and hearing are limited and surpassed by animals.
303. 6.45The soul, which by thought ranges over the whole world and up to heaven, is the image of God.
304. 6.46Scripture calls man a “soul,” and the soul is conformed to Christ's image and justified, not the body.
305. 6.47God has painted the soul in his image; women who paint their faces with cosmetics deface God's work.
306. 6.48Murderers destroy God's work; humans dig pits for one another, so that Christ has nowhere to rest his head in them.
307. 6.49God rested only after making man in his image; he rests in humble souls, which he has fortified like a walled city.
308. 6.50Knowing oneself as God's image means guarding thoughts, eyes, and speech, using one's powers to save others, and seeking repentance when wounded.
309. 6.51Riches pass like a shadow; in the tomb rich and poor are alike, so the rich should remember God and their mortal flesh.
310. 6.52The poor share the beauty of creation, God's great house, and sound sleep, and will be rewarded hereafter.
311. 6.53Both poverty and riches tempt; Proverbs asks for sufficiency, and the rich must not credit their own strength.
312. 6.54The human body excels in beauty, upright stance, and well-proportioned build.
313. 6.55The body is like the world: the head is its heaven and citadel, and the eyes its sun and moon.
314. 6.56Hair adorns and protects the head, which shelters the brain, as foliage crowns a tree.
315. 6.57The head is the whole man and the commander whom all the other members serve.
316. 6.58The forehead shows the mind and bears the sign of faith; the eyebrows protect the eyes.
317. 6.59The eyes are set high like a lookout on a mountain or a mast, to see danger from afar.
318. 6.60The eyes are placed and protected by brows, cheeks, nose, and lashes; we should likewise guard our innocence.
319. 6.61Physicians say the brain is the source of the nerves and senses, and the heart of the arteries and vital heat.
320. 6.62The ears, nearly equal to sight, are shaped to catch and soften sound and protect against cold and heat.
321. 6.63The nostrils hold smells long and drain the head.
322. 6.64Touch is a valuable sense, testing what sight cannot.
323. 6.65The mouth, by taking food, gives strength to all the other senses.
324. 6.66Teeth serve both for chewing and for speech.
325. 6.67Speech and understanding set man apart: he alone interprets what he sees and hears, and can become the instrument of God's voice.
326. 6.68The human kiss expresses love, which Judas perverted; the mouth is the sanctuary of speech that utters the heart.
327. 6.69The hand works, writes Scripture, offers and receives the sacraments, and even names the Son of God as God's right hand.
328. 6.70The chest protects the organs, and the moist lung cools the angry heart.
329. 6.71Spleen, liver, and coiled intestines are arranged by providence for digestion and to prevent insatiable hunger.
330. 6.72Noah's ark, with its door at the side, was patterned on the human body, whose shameful parts the creator placed out of sight.
331. 6.73Pulse, bones, and genitals are each wisely arranged by the creator.
332. 6.74The knee bends in humility before Christ; man's two feet make him like the birds, rising toward heaven.
333. 6.75The sixth day ends with man, the summit of creation, in whose mind God rests.
334. 6.76God rested only after making man, whose sins he would forgive; this foreshadows Christ's rest in the tomb for our redemption.