That which is approved by sight is more than that which is praised by speech. For it uses its own testimony, not the support of another. But if among us judgment is sent forth by the eyes, by which at once both the grace of beauty and the nature of things is apprehended, how much more does God see all that He approves, and approve all that He sees—according to what is written, that 「the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous.」 The nature of light is of this kind: that its grace lies not in number, not in measure, not in weight, as other things, but wholly in the seeing of it. And so He expressed in fitting words the nature of light, which pleases by being seen, since it itself furnishes the office of seeing. And not undeservedly could it find for itself so great a herald.
By what right is it first praised? Because it itself brought it about that the other members of the world also are worthy of praises. 「God therefore saw the light」 and illumined it with His own countenance, 「and saw that it was good.」 It is not a partial judgment on God's part, but a general one. And so the grace of light is approved not only in its splendor, but in all its usefulness. Hence too a division is made between light and darkness, so that the nature of light and of darkness, being separated, may seem to have nothing confused within itself. 「And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night,」 so that by the very name He might distinguish day and night. We observe, therefore, that the rising of the light is seen to open the day before the sun;
for the beginnings of day shut off the going-out of night, and the limit of time and the boundary of its state seems to be prescribed for night and for day. The sun makes the day bright, light makes it. Frequently the heaven is covered with clouds, so that the sun is veiled and no ray of it appears; yet light shows the day, and hides the darkness. 「And there was evening and there was morning, one day.」 Some ask why Scripture mentioned evening first, then morning—lest perhaps it seem to signify night before day. And they do not observe, first, that it had set the day before by saying: 「And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night」; and then, that evening is the end of the day and morning the end of the night.
Therefore, in order to give the prerogative and primacy of birth to the day, He first signified the end of the day, after which night was to follow, and then afterward added the end of the night. But Scripture could not prefer night to day to such a degree that it both included the times of day and of night under the appellation of 「day」 and, as it were, claimed them by the authority of the chief name. And that this is a custom of Scripture, that it assigns the appellation to the more excellent, we prove by frequent examples; since both Jacob said: 「The days of my life are few and evil,」 and again: 「All the days of my life」; and David set down: 「the days of my years,」 he did not say 「and nights」—whence we observe that those things which are now delivered in the guise of history have established the force of a law for the future.
The beginning of the day, then, is the voice of God: 「Let there be light. And there was light.」 The end of the day is evening. Now the following day succeeds from the end of the night. But the sentence of God is evident, since He called the light 「day」 first and called the darkness 「night」 second. Admirably too He said 「one,」 not 「first,」 day; for, with a second and third day and thereafter the rest to follow, He could have said 「first」—and this seemed to be of order—but He established a law, that twenty-four hours of day and night should be defined by the name of 「day」 alone, as though He said: the measure of twenty-four hours is the time of one day. For just as the generation of men is reckoned and understood to include also that of women, because the latter are joined to the former as the more excellent, so too the days are numbered and the nights reckoned as joined to them.
As, therefore, one circuit, so one day. For very many even call one week 「one day,」 because it returns into itself as into one day, and as it were recurs sevenfold into itself. Now this is the figure of a circuit: to begin from itself and to return into itself. Hence too Scripture sometimes says 「one age」—for although in other places it calls them 「ages,」 it seems rather to signify the diversities of public states or affairs than to define any successions of ages—since 「the day of the Lord is great and most glorious」; and elsewhere: 「Wherefore do you seek the day of the Lord? And it is darkness and not light.」 For it is manifest that to the evil-conscienced and unworthy that day will be dark, on which innocence shall shine and the guilty mind shall be tormented.
For the rest, Scripture teaches us that that perpetual day of eternal recompense shall be without the interruption of nights and the succession of darkness. And beautifully, being about to call both turns 「one day,」 He concluded it with a morning end, so as to teach both that the day begins from light and ends in light. For the time of day and night is not complete unless it has been filled out. Hence let us too always, as in the day, walk honorably and cast off the works of darkness. For we know that night was given for the repose of the body, not for the performance of anything or of any work, which is run through in sleep and oblivion. Let there not be among us reveling and drunkenness, the bedchamber and unchastity; let us not say:
「Darkness and walls cover us, and who knows whether the Most High will see?」 But let there be in us love of light and care for honorableness, so that, walking as in the day, we may desire that our works shine before God—to whom be honor, praise, glory, and power, with our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, from the ages and now and always and unto all ages of ages. Amen. THE SECOND DAY. The first day—or rather the 「one」 day (for let the prerogative of the prophetic word remain for it)—we have, as we could, brought to a close; in which we have learned the founding of heaven, the creating of earth, the overflowing of the waters, the air poured around, the division made of light and darkness, by the working of God Almighty and of the Lord Jesus Christ, and also of the Holy Spirit.
Who, then, would not marvel that a world disparate in unlike members rises up into one body, and that things so far apart come together, by an indissoluble law of concord and charity, into a fellowship and conjunction of one another, so that things which are separate in nature are knit, as it were by an undivided compassion, into a bond of unity and peace? Or who, beholding these things, could scrutinize their possibility of reason with a feeble wit? All these things the divine power, incomprehensible to human minds and ineffable by our words, has woven together by the authority of its own will. God therefore made heaven and earth, and commanded them to be, as their Author—not as an inventor of figure, but as the Worker of nature.
For how do the operative power of the impassible God and the passible nature of matter agree with each other, as though each borrowed from the other that which it lacked? For if matter is uncreated, then the power of creating matter seems to have been wanting to God, and He borrowed from it the things subject to His working; but if it is uncomposed, it is very strange that matter, coeternal with God, could not confer beauty upon itself—matter which did not receive its substance from a Creator, but possessed it of itself without time. The Worker of all things, then, found more than He conferred: He found matter in which He could work, but conferred the figure which should bring beauty to the things found.
Hence it is to be set apart from the rest as 「one day,」 not to be compared with the rest as a 「first day,」 on which the foundations of all things were laid and the causes began to be, by which the substance of this world and of the whole visible creation is supported. Wherefore let our discourse go forth to the wondrous works of the second day, the eminence of which is to be referred to the praise of the Creator, not according to the capacity of our treatise, but according to Scripture.
You, therefore, I beg, that you would deign to estimate the things we say naturally, and to weigh them with a probable, simple mind and a diligent disposition—not gathering things merely like the truth according to the traditions of philosophy and the empty seduction of persuasive rhetoric, but according to the rule of truth, which is expressed by the oracles of the divine word and poured into the breasts of the faithful by the contemplation of so great a majesty; for it is written: 「Confirm me in Thy words: the unjust have recounted to me their exercises, but not as Thy law, O Lord. All Thy commandments are truth.」
Let us therefore consider the things that have been made, not according to the natures of the elements, but according to Christ, who made all that he willed, abounding in the fullness of his divinity; and let us inquire into the possibility of nature. For when in the Gospel he healed the leper and restored sight to the blind, the crowd that was present and looking on did not recognize any order of medicine, but, marveling at the power of the Lord, gave praise to God, as it is written. Nor was it according to the numbers of the Egyptians, or the conjunctions of the stars, or the measures of the elements, that Moses stretched out his hand for the Red Sea to be divided, but in obedience to the command of divine power. Whence he himself also says:
'Thy right hand, O Lord, is glorified in power; thy right hand, O Lord, hath shattered the enemies.' Lift up therefore thy mind to him, O holy people, and direct toward him thy whole soul. God does not see as man sees: God looks upon the heart, man upon the face. Nor, then, does man see as God sees. Thou hearest that God saw and praised. Do not, therefore, judge by thine own eyes the things that have been made, nor gather opinions about them; the things that God saw and approved, do not think them subject to thy reconsideration. And God said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide the water. And it was so. Hear the words of God: 'Let there be,' he says.
This is the language of one who commands, not of one who estimates; he gives orders to nature, he does not bow to possibility; he does not reckon measures, he does not weigh masses. His will is the measure of things, his word is the completion of the work. 'Let there be,' he says, 'a firmament in the midst of the water.' Firm is everything that God establishes. And quite fittingly he set down first that they should make the firmament before he subjoined 'in the midst of the water,' so that thou shouldst first believe the firmament was made by the command of God before thou shouldst doubt because of the flowing quality of the waters. If thou shouldst consider the nature of the elements, how was the firmament made solid amid the waters? They flow forth, it is bound fast; they run, it remains. And 'let it,' he says, 'divide the water.' But water is wont to confound, not to divide.
How does he command what he knows to be contrary according to the principle of the elements? But since his word is the very origin of nature, he rightly claims the right to give law to nature who gave it its origin. But let us first consider what the firmament is: whether it be the same that he called heaven above, or something else, and whether there be two heavens or more. For there are those who say there is one heaven, and that the substance for making another heaven could not have sufficed, since (as they themselves say) there was but one for the breathing elements, because, when the whole was spent upon the higher heaven, nothing remained that might serve for the building of a second or a third heaven.
Others indeed assert that there are innumerable heavens and worlds, men whom their own party deride—for our dispute with them is no greater than theirs is with their own—who with geometric numbers and necessities strive to prove that there cannot be another heaven, that nature cannot allow there to be a second or a third, and that the power of the Maker is not adequate to make many heavens. And who would not laugh at this artful eloquence of theirs, who, while they do not deny that many things of the same kind can be made by men from one and the same cause, yet doubt concerning the Creator of all things whether he could make many heavens—he of whom it is written: 'But the Lord made the heavens,' and elsewhere: 'All things whatsoever he willed, he made.' For what is difficult to him for whom to will is to have done?
Their reasoning about impossibility therefore wavers when they dispute concerning God, of whom it is truly said: 'Nothing is impossible to thee.' And so we cannot deny that there is not only a second but also a third heaven, since the Apostle, by the testimony of his own writings, confirms that he was caught up to the third heaven. David too sets the heavens of heavens in that choir of those who praise God. Imitating him, the philosophers introduced the harmonious motion of the spheres of the five planets and of the sun and moon, by whose orbits, or rather spheres, they relate that all things are bound together.
These spheres, interlocked and as it were inserted into one another, they suppose to be carried backward and in a motion contrary to the rest; and they hold that by the very impulse and motion of these spheres there is rendered a certain sweet sound, full of pleasantness and art and most agreeable melody, since the air, cleft by so artful a motion and tempering the high notes with the low, produces such varied harmonies in even balance that it surpasses all the sweetness of any musical song. If thou shouldst require and demand proof of this matter by being verified to our sense and hearing, they hesitate. An ant, if it were true...
...how is it that, with the motion of the spheres resounding so greatly—since that celestial sphere, to which they say the courses of the stars are fixed, which roll without ceasing, has a more rapid revolution and rouses a sharp sound, while this lunar sphere has the deepest—this sound is not heard by us, although we are accustomed to hear lighter sounds?
If, then, we should demand that the credibility of that argument be proved by our testimony and by the gift of hearing, they reply that our ears have grown deaf and that our sense of hearing has been made too dull because of that habit of the sound conceived from the very beginning of our generation; and they bring forward an example from this, that the Nile, greatest of rivers, in that place where it hurls itself down from the loftiest mountains into those cataracts, by the magnitude of its roar so stops up the ears of those dwelling nearby that they are said to be deprived of the faculty of hearing. But truth itself easily answers them. For we who hear the thunders generated by the collision of clouds—would we not hear the revolutions of such great spheres, which surely, being judged to be carried with greater motion, would rouse all the more violent sounds?
They add moreover that this sound does not reach the earth for this reason: lest men, captivated by its pleasantness and sweetness—which that most swift motion of the heavens produces from the eastern parts even to the west—should abandon their own affairs and works, and lest all things here should remain idle through a certain ecstasy of the human mind toward the celestial sounds. But let us leave the things that are foreign to our pursuit and to the sequence of divine reading to those who are outside: let us cleave to the teaching of the heavenly Scriptures. Our subject, then, is that God said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide between water and water. And from this it is discussed whether he calls this the firmament which he had already made before, of which it is written:
'In the beginning God made heaven and earth.' Nor are we misled by the fact that some before us have understood it thus: that, because Scripture had above expressed the heaven created and founded by God as its author, here it has expanded the exposition of the work and of the creation, so that there the sum of the work is briefly comprehended, while here the quality of the operation is set out through the very kinds of the things that concur. But it moves us that another name is signified, and a more solid kind, and a cause is distinguished, and the person of a cooperator is joined. For thus it is written: And God divided between the midst of the water which was under the firmament, and the midst of the water which was above the firmament.
And first they wish to overthrow that which by frequent reading of the Scriptures has grown ingrained and impressed upon our minds, namely that waters cannot be above the heavens; saying that that sphere of heaven is round, in the midst of which is the earth, and that in that circuit water cannot stand, because it must necessarily flow down and slip away, since from higher places there is a descent to lower ones. For how, they ask, can water stand upon a sphere, when the sphere itself revolves? This is that cunning of dialectic. Give me whereby I may answer thee. But if it be not granted, no word is brought to bear.
They ask that it be granted them that the axis of heaven is whirled with rapid motion, while the sphere of the earth is immovable, in order to establish that waters cannot be above the heavens, because all of them would be poured out by the spinning of the axis—as though, even granting them what they demand and answering them according to their own opinions, they could deny that in that height and depth there is both length and breadth, which no one can comprehend except him who is filled with all the fullness of God, as the Apostle says. For who can easily be an estimator of the divine work? There is, then, breadth in the very height of heaven.
There are also—to speak of things we are able to know—many buildings round on the outside and square within, and square on the outside and round within, whose tops are flat, on which water is wont to lodge. These things, however, we say for this reason: that they may notice that their opinions can be refuted by opinions more like the truth, and may cease to measure so great a work of God by the contemplation of human operation and of our own possibility. But we follow the sequence and order of the Scriptures, and we estimate the work by contemplation of its author—what was said, and who said it, and to whom. 'Let there be,' he says, 'a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide between the waters.'
I hear that the firmament was made by command, that the water might be divided and the upper separated from the lower. What is more manifest than this? He who commanded the water to be divided, by interposing the firmament in the midst, provided how the divided and separated water might be able to remain. The word of God is the strength of nature and the permanence of substance, for as long as he who established it wills it to remain, as it is written: 'He established them for ever, and for ever and ever; he set a command, and it shall not pass away.' And that thou mayest know that he said this concerning these waters, which thou deniest can be in the upper parts of heaven, hear the verse above: 'Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and let the waters that are above the heavens praise the name of the Lord.' Did he not say, as it were to thee who opposest:
'For he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created: he established them for ever, and for ever and ever; he set a command, and it shall not pass away.' Or does the author not seem to thee competent, who would give law to his own work? It is God who speaks—of venerable nature, of inestimable greatness, immense in his rewards, incomprehensible in his works, whose height of wisdom who can easily search out? But he speaks to the Son, that is, to his arm; he speaks to his power; he speaks to his wisdom; he speaks to his justice. And the Son acts as one who is mighty; he acts as the power of God; he acts as the wisdom of God; he acts as the divine justice.
When thou hearest these things, why dost thou marvel if above the firmament of heaven the wave could be suspended by the operation of so great a majesty? Gather these things from others, from those things that are seen by the eyes of men: how, if thou seekest a reason, the wave divided itself for the passing over of the Jews. It is not wont to be of nature that water should separate itself from water, and that in the deep the interfusions of waters should be parted in the midst of the earth. 'The floods froze,' it says, and in the appearance of a firmament reined in their course with an unusual end. Could he not also have freed the Hebrew people in another way? But he wished to show it to thee, so that by that spectacle thou mightest reckon that even those things thou hast not seen are to be believed. The Jordan too, its stream turned back, returned to its own source.
For water to cling fast while it slips away is unusual; to return upward without any barrier is held to be impossible: but what is impossible to him who gave power to the weak, so that the weak one might say: 'I can do all things in him who strengthens me'? Let them tell, surely, how air is compacted into cloud—whether rain is generated by the clouds or gathered in the bosom of the clouds. We see for the most part clouds going forth from the mountains. I ask whether water ascends from the earth, or whether that which is above the heavens descends in a copious shower. If it ascends, surely it is contrary to nature that the heavier water should ascend into the higher regions and be borne by air, since air is finer. Or if water is snatched up by the motion of the whole rapid sphere, then, as it is snatched at the lowest sphere, so it is diffused at the highest.
If it does not cease to be poured out, as they hold, surely it does not cease to be snatched up, because if the axis of heaven is always in motion, the water too is always drawn up. If it descends, then it remains continually above the heavens, having whence to descend. Then what prevents it, if they should confess that water is suspended above the heavens? For by what word do they say that the earth is suspended in the midst and remains immovable, although it is surely heavier than water? By that same reasoning they can say that the water which is above the heavens is not hurled down by the revolution of that celestial sphere. For just as the earth is suspended in the void, or, with its weight balanced, remains immovable on every side, so also the water is poised either by heavier weights or by weights equal to the earth.
And therefore the sea is not easily poured out over the lands, except when it is commanded to go forth. Then, since they themselves say that the sphere of heaven, gleaming with burning stars, revolves, did not divine providence necessarily foresee that water should overflow within the sphere of heaven and above the sphere, to temper those fires of the blazing axis? Therefore, because fire abounds and burns hot, water too overflowed upon the lands, lest the heat of the rising sun and the glittering stars should scorch them, and lest an unwonted vapor should harm the tender beginnings of things. How many springs, rivers, and lakes irrigate the lands, because a certain inner fire heats them! For whence would trees sprout, or grain and crops burst forth, or things once grown be ripened, unless an inner fire also animated them?
This fire is also frequently struck out from stones, and often, when wood is cut, it leaps forth from the wood itself. Therefore, just as the creature fire is necessary, that things ordered and arranged may remain, and that the mildness of heaven may temper the rigor of the waters, so also the overflowing of the waters is not superfluous, lest the one be consumed by the other; for unless there be a fitting measure of each, just as fire dries up water, so also water extinguishes fire. And therefore by weight and measure he weighed all things; for even the drops of the rains are numbered to him, as we read in the book of Job.
Knowing that there would be either an easy failure of things or a dissolution of the universe, if the one were overcome by the other, he so tempered the wastings of each that neither should fire burn up more, nor water be more abundant, than would be a measured diminution of each—a diminution that would both remove the superfluous and reserve the necessary. And so, although such great floods of the greatest rivers burst forth from the lands—the Nile, flooding Egypt with its outpoured stream; the Danube, from the western parts cutting between the barbarian and the Roman peoples until it buries itself in the Black Sea; the Rhine, directing its courses from the ridge of the Alps to the depths of the ocean, a memorable wall of empire against savage nations; the Po, faithful conveyor of maritime traffic for the supplies of Italy:
the Rhône, driven in rapid course, cleaves the straits of the Tyrrhenian Sea, in which no slight danger is said to befall sailors, while the waves of the sea and the streams of the river contend with one another; and likewise from the northern part the Phasis, poured from the Caucasian mountains, with many others hurls itself into the Euxine Sea—it would be tedious to pursue the names of the individual rivers, which either are channeled into our sea or are emptied into the ocean—although, then, there is so great an abundance of waters, yet for the most part the land of the southern region is parched with heat and, dissolved by the burning heat, gapes apart into dust, the labor of the pitiable farmer consumed, so that often, the wells being dried up, the vital relief fails at a parched stream when there is need to drink. And there will indeed be a time when he shall say to the deep:
'Thou shalt be a wilderness, and I will dry up all thy rivers,' as he announced through Isaiah would come to pass. But even before that day comes, appointed by divine decree, the nature of the elements no little contends among itself. And so frequently the world is shaken by the harshness of inundations, or vexed by excessive heat and drought. Do not, therefore, deem the multitude of waters incredible, but look to the force of heat, and thou wilt not be incredulous. Great is what fire absorbs, which ought to be manifest to us even from this: when physicians fasten to the body certain vessels, narrow at the mouth, flatter above, hollow within, having received the light of a small lamp, how that heat snatches into itself all the moisture!
Who, then, would doubt that the fiery ether, boiling with great vapor, would inflame and burn up all things, were it not restrained by a certain law of its author, so that neither rivers nor lakes nor the seas themselves could quench its force? And therefore the water from above, descending with a certain rush, breaks for the most part into such great showers that rivers and lakes are suddenly filled, and the seas themselves overflow. Whence frequently we see even the sun moist and dripping; in which it gives an evident sign that the element has taken water unto itself for its own tempering. But so great is their zeal for assailing the truth that they deny that the sun itself is of a hot nature, on the ground that it is white and not ruddy or glowing like fire.
And therefore they say that it is not fiery by nature, and that if it has any heat, they maintain it comes from the excessive motion of its revolution. This they think must be said in order that it may seem to consume no moisture, because it has no natural heat by which moisture is either diminished or for the most part exhausted. But they accomplish nothing when they compose these things, because it makes no difference whether one has heat from nature or from some affection or some cause, since all fire is a consumer of moisture, or of such material as flame is wont to burn up.
For whether fire, struck out from wood not at all half-burnt but bending in upon itself, be caught by the leaves, the flame still kindles; and if from fire thou kindle a torch, or from the light of a flame thou kindle a light, the same is the appearance and nature of the light, as if it had not been kindled from natural fire, but an accidental cause had generated it. Or at least from this let them contemplate the heat of the sun, in that God appointed for it diverse places and times of its course, lest, if it always lingered in the same places, it should burn them up with daily vapor. The sea itself, they themselves say, has salty and bitter water for this reason: that what flows into the straits from the rivers is consumed by heat, and as much is consumed by the daily vapor as is daily brought in from the diverse courses of the rivers.