That thief who was condemned, who was crucified with the Lord, passed into eternal life not by the benefit of his nativity, but by the confession of faith. It was not the force of nativity but the offense of the disregarded divine prediction that cast Jonah into the sea, and the whale, receiving him as a token of the future mystery, after three days vomited him forth again and reserved him by the merit of prophetic grace. An angel, not the sequence of the stars, freed Peter from prison and from imminent death. Blindness converted Paul to grace, and when he was struck by a viper and tossed by shipwreck, it was not the remedies of nativity but the merits of his devotion that burned out the venom. What shall we say of those who, by their prayers, rose again when they had been dead?
Did their own nativity, or apostolic grace, call them back? What need was there for them to commit themselves to fastings and perils, if by some benefit of nativity they could attain whither they wished? But if they had believed this, while awaiting the necessity of the fates, they would never have attained to so great a grace. Useless, then, is this persuasion. What of the fact that it is even impossible? For—that we may take something from their own disputation, for the sake of refuting, not of proving—they say that there is a great force in nativity, and that it must be gathered by certain minute and fixed moments; and that, unless it is gathered more accurately, there is the greatest divergence.
For they say that by a brief instant and tiny moment the nativity of the poor and the powerful differs, of the needy and the rich, of the innocent and the guilty; and that often in the same hour there is born one destined for long life and one who will die in the first age of childhood, if the rest be unequal and distinguished by some point of time. Let them answer how they can gather this. Set the case of a woman's delivery; one first perceives him by the womb, examines his cry, by which the life of the newborn is gathered, attends to whether it is male or female. How many moments, besieged amid these delays, do you wish there to be? Place the astrologer ready at hand. Can a man be present at the childbirth?
While the midwife gives the message, the Chaldean hears it, sets the horoscope; the fates have already migrated into the lot of another now born—about the one inquiry is made, and the genesis of another is set forth. Suppose their opinion about the necessities of nativities to be true: the reckoning cannot be true. The points pass away, irrecoverable time flees. That time is in an atom and in the twinkling of an eye, I am led to believe, since we are all raised in an atom, in the twinkling of an eye, as the Apostle attests, saying: «Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall indeed all rise, but we shall not all be changed—in an atom, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; and the dead shall rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed.»
Between the bringing forth and the receiving and the laying down of the pledge, between its weeping and the announcement, how many atoms have passed! And this, supposing I have woven these matters simply. For they themselves divide that vital circuit of the twelve signs into twelve parts, and, because in thirty days the sun goes out from the twelfth part of its sphere—which is held to be its servant—so that the circle of the sun may be completed in the circuit of the year, they distribute each one of those twelve portions into thirty little portions, which the Greeks call «moirai»; and each little portion they apportion again into sixty turns. Again, each one of those sixty they cut into smaller divisions.
How incomprehensible it is that they should fix the moments of nativity at a sixtieth of a sixtieth of a little portion, and what the motion or appearance of each single sign may be at the birth of the one being born. Hence, since it is impossible to comprehend such subtle minutiae of time, and a tiny alteration brings in an error of the whole, the entire business is full of error. The disputers do not know what is their own: and how have they come to know what is another's? They are ignorant of what threatens themselves: can they announce to others the things that are to come? It is ridiculous to believe it, because, if they could, they would rather provide for themselves first.
Now how absurd it is that, if anyone should say he was born under the sign of Aries, he is reckoned most excellent in counsel from the use of the beast, because such a beast stands out in the flock; or wealthier, because the ram has a natural clothing and reaps the profit of its fleece from the lands, and therefore the gains of profit seem familiar to that man. Likewise they argue from the signs of the Bull and of the Fishes, so as from the nature of cheap animals to estimate the powers of the heaven's motion and of the signs as to be interpreted. Our food, then, fixes for us the decrees of living, and our nourishments—that is, the Ram, the Bull, and the Fish—imprint upon us the discipline of morals.
How, then, do they fetch from heaven for us the causes of things and the substance of this life, when to the heavenly signs themselves they assign the causes of their own motion from the qualities of cheap food? They say one born under the sign of Aries is generous, because the ram lays aside its wool not unwillingly; and they prefer to ascribe a chosen virtue to the nature of a cheap animal rather than to heaven, whence both serenity shines upon us and rain often descends. They say those whom the Bull has looked upon at birth are laborious and of pleasant service, because the laborious animal puts its neck of its own accord under the yoke to take it up, subjecting itself to servitude. The sheep too—whose nativity the Scorpion has embraced with its part—they say spits out the storehouse and the poisons of malice, because it is a venomous animal.
Why, then, do you put forward by the dignity of the heavenly signs that which is to give authority for living, and take an argument for your assertion from certain trifles? For if such properties of morals, taken from animals, are imprinted upon the motions of heaven, then heaven too seems to be subject to the power of bestial nature, from which it received the causes of the vital substance which it would impart to men. But if this shrinks from the truth, far more ridiculous is that other thing—that they, being destitute of the support of truth, should fetch from this source credence for their disputation. Next, let us consider that they call those signs planets, by whose motions they assert the necessities of our life are formed.
Whether, then, as the name sounds, they always wander, or, as they themselves say, are borne with so swift a motion that ten thousand times a day—or, if this seems incredible, that by their innumerable revolution they change their manifold appearance—it lacks all credibility that, by so wandering an error of their own and by so swift a motion, they should decree for us a fixed and immovable, dreadful lot of living. Yet they maintain that the motions of all are not equal, but that the circuits of some are swifter, of others slower, so that in the same hour they both frequently see one another and frequently hide, while one is passed by another.
They say, moreover, that it matters very much whether beneficent signs look upon the rising of one's generation, or maleficent and harmful ones; and that the difference of nativity lies in this, that the aspect of a beneficent sign confers very much, that of a maleficent and harmful one harms very much. For thus they are wont to call those same signs which they venerate; for I am obliged to use the names of those whose assertions I make use of, lest they should allege their arguments to be ignored rather than emptied out and destroyed. And so, since they cannot comprehend that wandering and swift motion, it often happens that, through that incomprehensible subtlety of the point and moment, they place the aspect of a beneficent sign where the offense of a grievous and harmful one falls in.
And what wonder if men are deluded, where harmless signs are blasphemed? For if these are believed to be by their own nature harmful, then God Most High is accused, as if He made what is evil and was a worker of wickedness; but if they are thought of their own will to have taken on what harms the innocent and those as yet conscious to themselves of no most wicked deed—those to whom punishment is ascribed before guilt—what is so irrational, what exceeds even the savagery of irrational beasts, as that the practice of fraud or of favor should be attributed not to the merits of men but assigned to the motions of signs? «He committed no fault,» one says, «but a harmful star looked upon him.» They seek for him the star of Saturn: it turns itself a little aside and takes away the calamity, absolves the charge.
But this wisdom of theirs is compared to a spider's web, into which, if a gnat or a fly falls, it cannot extricate itself; but if some kind of stronger animal is seen to have run into it, it passes through and breaks the feeble snares and the empty meshes for itself. Such are the nets of the Chaldeans, that in them the weak stick fast, while the stronger in understanding cannot meet with hindrance. And so you who are stronger, when you see the astrologers, say: «They weave a spider's web,» which can have neither any use nor bonds, if you do not run into it like a gnat or a fly through the lapse of your weakness, but like a sparrow or a dove dissolve the feeble meshes by the swiftness of your soaring flight.
For indeed, who of the prudent would believe that the motions of signs, which are often changed within a day and recur upon themselves in manifold ways, bestow the insignia of powers? For if it were so, how many configurations of royal nativities there would be within a day! Daily, then, kings would be born, nor would royal succession be transmitted to sons, but always from a different state would arise those who should acquire for themselves the right of power. Who, then, of kings casts the horoscope of his son, if the empire is owed to him, and does not rather by his own will transcribe the succession of the kingdom to his own? We read indeed that Abijah begot Asa, Asa begot Jehoshaphat, he begot Joram, Joram begot Uzziah, and all the rest down to the captivity, the succession of both lineage and honor being equally carried on through the kings.
Were they able, because they were kings, to command the heavenly signs to shape their motions? For what man can hold dominion over them? Then, if our acts and deeds are to be referred to natal necessity and not to the institutions of morals, why have laws been set forth, and rights too promulgated, by which either punishment is decreed for the wicked or security is granted to the harmless? Why is pardon not given to the accused, since indeed, as they themselves say, they have sinned not by their own will but from necessity? Why does the farmer toil and not rather wait, that by the privilege of his nativity he may bring into the receptacles of his barns crops he has not labored for?
If he was born so that riches flow to him without labor, surely let him wait, that the earth may of itself bring forth for him spontaneous returns without any seed, that he may not press the plowshare into the fields, nor set his curved hand to the sickle, nor undertake the expense of the vintage to be gathered, but that of their own accord the flowing wines may be poured for him into all his jars, and that of itself the berry of the wild olive, grafted onto no stocks, may sweat out oil for him. Nor let the trafficker of the wide sea, the merchant anxious for the peril of his own safety, shudder, into whom, while at leisure, the treasure of riches can, as they say, glide by a kind of natal lot. But this is not the verdict of all.
In short, the unwearied farmer, with plow pressed down, cleaves the earth; naked he plows, naked he sows, naked under the burning sun he threshes on the threshing-floor the grain parched by the heat; and the trader, impatient of his own east wind, on a mostly unsafe vessel furrows the sea. Whence the prophet, condemning their importunity and rashness, says: «Be ashamed, O Sidon, says the sea»; that is: if perils do not move you, let shame at least restrain you, let modesty confound you. Be ashamed, O Sidon, in which there is no place for virtue, no care for salvation, no youth devoted to war for the watch-posts of the fatherland, trained in arms; but all anxiety is about gain, all zeal is for merchandise. «The seed of merchants,» he says, «is like a harvest.»
But what reward is there for a Christian man, if he orders his cares and works not from will, but from necessity? For where necessity is decreed, there industry is unhonored. We have said much; we are unwilling to say more, lest anyone should suppose that the things which are taken up by us from their assertions are taken up for refutation, for acknowledgment. For how can we as old men recount the things at which we laughed in our youth? Now let us direct our pen to those things which remain according to the reading. «Let there be lights,» He says, «for signs and for seasons and for days and for years.» Of signs we have spoken; but what are the seasons but the changes of alternation—winter, spring, summer, and autumn? In these seasons, then, the transit of the sun is either swifter or slower.
For one thing it grazes with its rays, another it sets ablaze with its heat. And so, when the sun lingers in the southern regions, it is winter for us. For when the sun is farther away, the earth grows stiff with frost, is bound fast by the cold, and a great shadow of night covers the lands, so that the spaces of night are far longer than those of day. From this arises the cause whereby in the winter months an excessive force of snows and rains is poured down upon us.
But when, departing from the southern regions, it returns above the earth, it makes the times of night and day equal; and the more it adds delay to its courses, so much the more does it gradually bring back the mildness of this air and recall the gentleness of the breezes, which, cherishing all things, compel them to seek again their birth, so that the earth may sprout and the seeds, loosed in the furrows, may come to life again; and that, by the budding of the trees, a succession may be propagated for the perpetual preservation of those kinds which, whether on the lands or in the waters, rejoice in their yearly offspring. But when, toward the summer solstice, it rises high into the north, it lengthens the spaces of the day, while it shortens and constrains the nights.
And so, the more it is joined and mingled with this air by constant contact, the more it warms the very air, dries up the moisture of the lands, makes the seeds grow, and ripens the fruits of the woods as it were into manly juices. Then, because it is more burning, it casts smaller shadows at midday, since from on high it illumines this place. Whence also the synagogue says in the Song of Songs: 「Tell me, O thou whom my soul hath loved, where thou feedest, where thou liest at noon, lest by chance I become as one veiled about over the flocks of thy companions」 — that is: 「Tell me, O Christ, whom my soul hath loved.」 Why does it not rather say 「whom it loveth」? But it is the synagogue of our day, the Church, that loves, and never changes her affection toward her Christ.
「Where,」 she says, 「of ours, where dost thou lie at noon?」 I desire to follow thee as a foster-child, who, as one joined to thee, held thee before, and to seek thy flocks, because I have lost my own. Thou feedest among ours, in the place of the Church; among ours it shines again, where judgment gleams like noonday, where no shadow is discerned, where the days are longer, because for them the Sun of righteousness lingers longer, as in the summer months. Indeed, the day of the Lord is not short, but great, for it is written: 「until the great day of the Lord come.」 Whence also Jacob says: 「All the days of my life which I pass are few and evil」; for the doubtful light is evil. Therefore the short days are of doubtful light and are full of shadow.
The great days are without shadow, as many have learned by experience and example in certain hotter regions. And so the synagogue, in the short and evil days — Jacob in his own person frequently expressing a figure of judgment, or rather of this people — had abundant shadow, since it did not see the Sun of righteousness, and saw Him not from on high above its own head, but from the south of judgment, when winter was a sign. But to the Church it is said: 「The winter is past」 — a sign to herself — 「the flowers have appeared on the earth, the time of harvest has come.」 Before the coming of Christ it was winter; after the coming of Christ there are the flowers of the spring of mangers and the harvest of summer. From the south, therefore, and from the least turning, beholding Him as He shines upon it, it is overshadowed.
But the people of the Gentiles, who were of confusion — the heathen who sat in darkness — saw a great light; they who sat in the region of the shadow of death, upon them a light has arisen, a great light of the Godhead, which no shadow of death interrupts. Therefore He illumines from on high, since this too is of His brightness, as Zacharias says: 「whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.」 There is indeed also a certain shadow of salvation, not of death, as rather it is said: 「Under the shadow of thy wings shalt thou protect me」 — a shadow indeed, because it is of the body; a shadow, because it is of the cross; but a shadow of salvation, because in it was the remission of sins and the raising again of the dead.
We can therefore take an example, that the winter days are short but have larger shadows, while the summer days are longer but have smaller shadows. At midday too the shadow is smaller than either at the beginning or the end of the day, and this is so with us in the western part. Moreover there are those who, in the southern regions, have two days of the whole year better without shadow, because, having the sun above their very head, they are illumined on every side all around — whence in Greek they are called 「ascii」 (shadowless). They report further that the sun comes so directly from on high that through the narrow shafts of wells it makes the water that lies in the depth shine back more strongly. And in the south there are said to be those who are called 「amphiscii,」 because they cast a shadow on both sides.
For the shadow is behind those who walk opposite the sun: thus, if you go toward the east, in the morning hours; if you press toward the southern quarter, at midday; if toward the west, at the setting of the day. From three quarters, therefore, the sun meets you — from the east, from the south, from the west. In the morning and the evening it is behind you, at midday also at your side; but truly from the north the sun is never, and therefore neither shadow: if you direct yourself toward the north, whether in the morning or the evening or at midday, it cannot be behind you. For there are some who, in this circle of lands which we inhabit, are placed about the south, who seem to cast a shadow toward the southern quarter. And this is said to happen to them at the height of the heat, when the sun directs itself toward the north.
Afterward autumn, receiving us, breaks indeed the magnitude of the heats, but, the warmth being relaxed and laid aside little by little, through the temperateness of a middle moderation it hands us over without harm and without any injury to the wintry blasts. 「Let them be also for days,」 it says — not that they should make the days, but that in them they should hold the chief place; so that the sun may illumine the rising of the day with a richer grace, so that throughout the whole day they may have the power of marking it out, by the gift of their course. Thus some understand what the prophet says: 「the sun for power over the day, the moon and stars for power over the night,」 since they carry their light around. They were also appointed for years, both that sun and moon:
The moon completes her course through thirty days in twelve cycles, making up that year — according to the Hebrews with certain days added, according to the Romans with the addition of one day once within four years in the bissextile. There is also the solstitial year, when the sun, having completed its circuit through all the signs, returns to that point from which it took the beginning of its course; for the full traversal of the whole space is reckoned as a year for it. 「God therefore made these two great lights」 — we can understand them as great not so much by comparison with others as by their own office, just as 「the heaven is great」 and 「the sea is great」;
for the sun too is great, which fills the circle of the lands with its heat, and the moon with its light — and not only the lands, but also this air and the sea and the face of heaven —, which, in whatever part of heaven they may be, He loved all things and they are alike beheld by all, so that each several people believes them to linger as it were only over their own regions and to be present and to shine only for them, although they shine alike upon all, so that no one should think another nearer to them than he himself is. The proof of their magnitude is evident, because to all men the disk of the moon appears the same. For even if at times its light is increased and diminished, yet in the same night, such as it appears to me, such it appears to all.
For if to those placed far off it appeared smaller, and to those set nearer it shone larger, it would betray a sign of narrowness and scantiness. Indeed, we judge all other things placed far off to be smaller, and when we behold them nearer, larger to themselves. The closer you are to it, so much the more is the magnitude of that thing heaped up for you. The sun's ray is nearer to none, farther from none; likewise too the globe of the moon is equal for all. The sun appears alike both to the Indians and to the Britons at the same moment when it rises, nor when it sinks into setting does it appear smaller to the eastern peoples than to the western, nor, when it rises, is it reckoned lower by the western than by the eastern. 「How far,」 it says, 「is the east from the west!」 These are distant from one another in turn, but the sun is distant from none.
To none is it more present, from none more remote. Nor let it move you that the disk of the sun appears to you as it were a cubit wide when it rises; but consider how great the space of distance is between the sun and the lands — which the weakness of our sight cannot traverse without great loss of itself. Our sight grows dim: does the sun then grow dim, or the moon? Our gaze is narrow: does it therefore make narrower the things that are seen? The appearance is lessened, the magnitude is not taken away. For we ought not to ascribe the weakness of our own affliction to the affliction of the luminaries. Our sight lies; do not therefore deem its testimony trustworthy, but, of heavenly things, it is the figure of the spectacle that is smaller, not their form.
If from the highest peak of mountains you should desire to behold the plain set beneath your eyes, and there the herds grazing, will you not judge their bodies like those of ants? If you should look at the sea from some watchtower, do not the white sails of the largest ships, gleaming among the blue waves, seem to you from afar like the appearance of flying doves to cover the sea? What of the very islands which the sea spreads abroad as the fields of the lands — within how narrow a bound are they reckoned to be enclosed, how round they appear instead of rugged, how dense instead of sparse! Weigh, then, these weaknesses of your sight, and from yourself, as a just arbiter, summon up faith in the things we set forth. But do you wish to estimate the magnitude of the sun not only by the eye of the mind, but also by that of the body? Consider.
However many globes of stars seem to interweave the axis of heaven and to mark it with countless lights, they cannot nevertheless wipe away the darkness of night and the clouds of heaven. As soon as the sun has sent before it the signs of its rising, all the fires of the stars vanish beneath the splendor of one luminary; the air is opened, and the face of heaven is suffused with a purpling redness. While the dawn is still breathing forth its beginning, already with momentary swiftness the splendor of the full light flashes, and the sweet forerunning breeze of the rising sun breathes upon us. Tell me, I pray, unless the orb were great, how could it illumine the great orb of the lands? But what shall I say of so great a tempering and moderation of the Creator, who measured out a healthful and salutary apportionment of the sun, so that neither should its fiery vapor...
...as it appears, being poured in, burn up the veins of the lands and the kinds of things; nor again, having been cooled through such great spaces of the world, plant in the lands no seed of warmth, but, leaving a starveling and needy fruit, exhale toward no grace of fertility. Similar things concerning the nature of the moon agree, which we have recorded concerning her consort and brother, since indeed she clothes herself in that same ministry into which her brother also clothes himself — to illumine the darkness, cherish the seeds, increase the fruits. She has also very many things distinct from her brother: so that what the heat has dried out of the earth's moisture all day, the dew may restore in the brief time of night; for the moon herself too is a generous giver of dew. In short, when the night is calmer and the moon shines all night long, then more abundant dew is borne to bedew the fields.
And many who rest beneath the open air have perceived that, the more they had been beneath the light of the moon, the more moisture they had gathered in the head. Whence also in the Song of Songs Christ says to the Church: 「For my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.」 Then thereafter it is diminished and increased, so that it is smaller when it rises anew, and when it has been diminished, it is heaped up. In this is a great mystery. For the elements suffer together with its waning, and with its advance the things that have been emptied are heaped up — as the brain of living creatures, the moist parts of sea-creatures, since indeed oysters are said to be fuller, and many other things, when the lunar globe grows. The same things they allege concerning the inner parts of trees, those who store this up by their own practice in barns.
We see therefore that its rising and waning are of a fixed order, not of weakness. For it would never give so great a change in things unless it possessed an excelling power and a grace conferred by the Creator. Some men, even learned and Christian, have alleged that the air too is wont to be changed at the moon's rising; but if that change came about by some violence of the moon, at all its risings the heaven would be interwoven with clouds and rains would be poured down. Indeed, when some days ago there was talk of rain, which was said to be likely to be useful, a certain man said: 「Behold, the new moon will give it.」 And although we were eager for showers, nevertheless I did not wish such assertions to be true.
In short, I was delighted that no rain was poured out, until, granted to the prayers of the Church, it made manifest that it was not to be hoped for from the beginnings of the moon, but from the providence and mercy of the Creator. To be sure, the straits, when they surge on every side according to the various phases of the moon and are borne with great force, even by the very floods received upon floods, yet at the moon's rising they stand calm, as long as the moon is without light; but truly when the advance of days has unveiled it, then they return into their refluent courses.
The ebb-tide too, which is said to be in the ocean, although on the remaining days it is said to keep its order, is said at the moon's rising to give an evident sign of its own change, so that the western sea itself, in which the ebb-tide is observed, advances and recedes more than usual and is borne with a greater swell, as if it were drawn backward by certain breathings of the moon and again, driven and drawn back by the same, is poured back into its proper measure. Whence, if you marvel how the moon suffers waning, when it possesses so great a force of change of its own, consider that in this too there is a great mystery, that by its example you may learn, O man, that nothing of human things can be, nor of the whole mundane creation, that is not at some time dissolved.