For if even the moon, to which the Lord has committed so great a ministry, that it should illumine the circle of the lands, both increases and wanes — for all things fail which, having arisen out of nothing, have come to their perfection and again, being perfected, are diminished; for heaven and earth shall pass away — why do we not take up this measure of moderation, that neither in adversities should we cast down our spirit (for He who made all things out of nothing is also easily able to advance you to the highest and most perfect), and again, that we should not be lifted up in prosperity, nor boast ourselves in any power or in riches, nor glory in the strength of the body or in beauty — wherein change is easy and frequent, as with waves — but that we should pursue the grace of the soul that abides for the future?
If the setting of the moon, which ever repairs and reforms itself, saddens you, much more ought it to sadden you if the soul, when it has been filled with the increase of virtue, afterward, through the inconstancy of the mind and through negligence, turned aside from its own purpose, should often change its pursuits — which is the mark of folly and is a thing to be feared. Whence also the Scripture says: 「The fool changes like the moon.」 And therefore the wise man does not change with the moon, but his prudence shall abide with the sun. Whence the moon is not a partaker of folly, because the moon does not change like a fool, but the fool changes like the moon. In short, the seed of the just, like the moon perfected in strength, abides forever, and is a faithful witness in heaven.
For it is one thing to perform a ministry, another to be carried about by one's own disposition and, through the weakness of perception, not to hold a fixed resolve. The moon labors for you and is made subject because of the will of God; for 「the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected it in hope.」 She therefore is changed not of her own will, you are changed of your own will. She groans together and changes her own beauty; you do not understand, and you congratulate yourself against the truth. She frequently awaits your redemption, that she may be freed from the common servitude of the whole creation; you bring a hindrance both to your own redemption and to her liberty. It is, therefore, of your folly, not of hers, that, while you are awaited and are not even late in being converted, she still is changed.
Do not, therefore, estimate the moon by the eye of your body, but by the vivacity of the mind. The moon is diminished that it may refill the elements. This, then, is the great mystery. He bestowed this upon her, who bestowed grace upon all. He emptied her, that she might refill, who also emptied Himself, that He might fill all things; for He emptied Himself of His own fullness, that He might descend to us; He descended to us, that He might ascend for all; for 「He ascended,」 it says, 「above the heavens, that He might fill all things.」 And so He who had come emptied, from His own fullness filled the apostles. Whence one of them says: 「For of His fullness have we all received.」 The moon therefore announced the mystery of Christ. Not common is she in whom He has set His sign, not common is she who has the figure of the beloved Church, which the prophet signifies, saying:
「In his days shall righteousness arise, and abundance of peace, until the moon be taken away.」 And in the Song of Songs the Lord says of His own spouse: 「Who is this that looketh forth as the dawn, fair as the moon, chosen as the sun?」 And rightly is the Church like the moon, which has shone upon the whole world and, illumining the darkness of this age, says: 「The night is far spent, the day is at hand.」 Beautifully it says 「looking forth,」 as one gazing upon her own from a higher place, just as you have: 「The Lord looked forth from heaven upon the children of men.」 The Church, therefore, looking forth like the moon, has her wanings and her frequent risings, but by her own wanings she has grown and by these has merited to be enlarged, while by persecutions she is diminished and by the martyrdoms of confessors she is crowned.
This is the true moon, which borrows for itself, from the perpetual light of her brother, the light of immortality and of grace. For the Church shines not by her own light, but by the light of Christ, and draws her splendor for herself from the Sun of righteousness, so that she may say: 「Yet I live, no longer I, but Christ liveth in me.」 Blessed indeed art thou, O moon, who hast merited so great a distinction! Whence I would call thee blessed not for thy phases, but for the figure of the Church; for in those thou servest, in this thou art beloved. How ridiculous, moreover, that men for the most part believe thee able to be drawn down by magic incantations! Those are old wives' tales and opinions of the common crowd. For who would suppose that a work of God, assigned to so great a ministry, could be assailed by Chaldaean superstitions?
Let him be fallen who transfigures himself into an angel of light and is led astray by his own will, not by the power of incantations. To be sure, in this too, O Church, you are thought able as it were to be drawn down from your place and station. Many tempt the Church, but the songs of the witch's art cannot harm her by their knowledge. The enchanters avail nothing where the song of Christ is daily chanted. She has her own enchanter, the Lord Jesus, through whom she has emptied of power the songs of the chanting magicians and the venoms of serpents; and she herself, like the serpent lifted up, devours the snakes, and although the deadly song of the Egyptians murmurs, in the name of Christ it is blunted. Thus also Paul, by the loss of his eyes no less than by the weakness of the witch's art, brought the magician...
Thus Peter cast down and laid low Simon, who was seeking the heights of heaven by magic flight, when the power of his songs had been dissolved. Beautifully, as I think, the fourth day has come to its close. How, then, do many usually count the fourth day among mysteries — and how do they think it idle to begin anything with this number, by which the whole world flashed forth with new light? Or did the sun begin under sinister auspices? And how can he sign good things who at his rising did not know how to choose by mildness the day of the valleys? Or how do they approve his signs, whose rising they do not approve? What also shall we say of the moon, which both began on the fourth day and on the fourteenth signs the day of salvation? Or does the number displease, by which the mystery of redemption is celebrated?
For this reason the demons persuade men that that number must be shunned, by which their wickedness was destroyed. For this reason the Gentiles assert that nothing should be undertaken on it, because they know that then for the first time their arts began to be idle and the Gentile peoples began to migrate to the Church. They certainly reckon that the moon on the fourth day, if it has been pure and with horns not blunted, gives, for the remaining days up to the end of the month, a sign of fair weather. They are unwilling, therefore, to begin with those same beginnings with which fair weather begins. But now it must be guarded against, lest in our discourse the fourth day set; for greater shadows fall from the mountains, the weakness is diminished, the shadow is heaped up. THE FIFTH DAY.
All the earth was green with diverse growths; the heaven too, marked with the twin lights of its countenance, sun and moon, and with the beauty of the stars, shone brightly. There remained a third element, the sea, that to it also grace might come by the divine gift. For by the ethereal spirit all the offspring of the lands are nourished, and the earth too, loosing all its seeds, gives life to them, and then especially, first bidden by the word of God to grow green, girded with its own office, it sprouted forth: the water was at leisure and seemed kept apart from the benefit of the divine working. The Creator still has something which He may confer upon it, whereby He may make it equal to the offices of the lands; He was reserving for it that it too might claim something proper and special to itself, of the prerogative of the gift conferred upon it.
The earth gave life first, but to those things which did not have a breathing soul: the water is commanded to bring forth those things which should display the vigor and dignity of a living soul, and should receive the perception of guarding their own safety and of fleeing death. And so God said: 「Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls according to their kind, and flying fowl flying according to the firmament of heaven.」 The command came, and at once the water was poured forth into the bidden offspring; the rivers began to generate, the lakes to give life, the sea itself to bring to birth diverse kinds of creeping things and to pour forth according to their kind whatever it had formed. Not the small whirlpools, not the muddy marshes were idle, but all took up the power of creating given to them.
The fishes leaped out of the river, the dolphins played before the waves; about the rocks the night-creatures clung, the sea-urchins grew. Woe is me! Before man, allurement began — the mother of our luxury; before man, dainties. Before man, therefore, was the temptation rather than the creature. But nature did wrong in nothing: it gave nourishment, it did not prescribe vices. These things it gave in common, that you should not claim any as it were as your own. For you the earth brings forth its fruits; for you both the parrot-wrasses and all things — the waters generate their offspring; and not content with these, you have tasted the foods forbidden to you. To your reproach all things are heaped together, that the transgression of your greed may be burdened.
But neither how many species and names there are can we recount, all of which were animated in a moment at the divine command. At once the form of the body was put together and the soul was at work, the vital vigor too something of power. The earth was filled with growths, the sea filled with living creatures. There the insensible things sprout, here the sensible things move about. On the lands too the waters claim for themselves their portions. The fishes of the waters lap the earth and seek for themselves prey from it; the gnats too buzz about your breeding marshes; and these too heard the command of the Lord saying: 「Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls.」 We know that creeping things...
...are said to be kinds of serpents, because they creep upon the earth; but much more does everything that swims have either the appearance or the manner of creeping. For even if some of them, having plunged into the deep, seem to sink into the water, yet when they swim upon its surface, they creep with the whole body, which they drag over certain backs of the waters. Whence also David said: 「This great sea, and of mighty deeds; there are creeping things, of which there is no number.」
Moreover, although very many have feet and the use of walking — because they are amphibious, living either in the waters or on the lands, as are seals, crocodiles, and the horses which they call hippopotami, because these are wont to be generated in the Nile — yet when they are in the deep of the waters, they do not walk but swim, nor with the footstep for advancing, but as it were with an oar for creeping; since indeed a ship too, driven by oars, glides and the reed-pole furrows the waters. 「Let the waters bring forth creeping things,」 said the Lord. A brief word, but vehement and broadly extending, it infuses a nature common to the least and the greatest. In the same moment the great fish is brought forth in which the frog is born by the same force of operation. God does not labor over the greatest, nor disdains the least.
Nor does nature feel pain in giving birth to dolphins, just as she felt no pain when she brought forth the tiny purple-fish and snails. Mark, O man, how many more there are in the sea than on the lands. Number, if you can, all the kinds of fishes, whether of the small or even of the largest, the cuttlefishes, the shellfish, the crayfishes, the crabs, and among these innumerable kinds of their own sort. What shall I say of the kinds of serpents, the dragons that are asserted in Job? Nor will I pass over the scorpions, the frogs, the tortoises, the weasels too and the sea-dogs, the sea-calves, the monstrous whales, the dolphins, the seals, the lions.
What of the sea's blackbirds too, the thrushes, the peacocks as well, whose very colors we see expressed in the birds — so that the blackbirds are black, the peacocks painted on their backs and necks with changing color, the thrushes mottled on the belly, and the rest? Whose species and names the lands have claimed for themselves? For first these began in the sea, in the rivers, since indeed the water, bidden by the divine nod, first brought forth the creeping things of living souls. Add this grace, that the things we fear on the lands we love in the waters. For things harmful on the lands are harmless in the water, and the very water-snakes are without venom. The lion is fierce on the lands, gentle in the floods. The lamprey, which they say has something harmful, is a more precious food.
The frog, hideous in the marshes, comely in the waters, surpasses almost all foods. If anyone foolishly wishes to learn more, let him inquire of the various fishermen of the places; for no one can comprehend all things. The sea-dogs indeed, beware of them even in the sea, whom the Apostle teaches to be troublesome and to be guarded against in the Church also, saying: 「Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers.」 The weasel has a heavy odor on the lands, but in the waters it is preserved. The earthly kind knows how to avenge itself by its stench; this one has no less grace caught than free. Nor will I let you go unhonored by our pursuit, O grayling, to whom the name has clung from the flower. Whether the wave of the river Ticinus or the wave of pleasant Athesis has nourished you, you are a flower.
In short, there is a rather well-attested saying, wittily spoken of that which gives off a pleasing sweetness: 「It smells either of fish or of flower」; thus the same odor was pronounced to be that of a fish which is of a flower. What is more pleasing than your appearance, what more delightful than your sweetness, what of a more rocky sweetness? What the honeycombs exhale, this you breathe forth from your own body. What shall I say of the ravens of the sea, what too of the wolves it has called forth? The lamb knows not to fear these wolves. So great is the grace of the waters, whose sea-calves both wolves and lions flee. So that that prophetic saying of the mind concerning the holiness of the Church rightly fits them: 「The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion and the ox shall eat straw together.」
Nor is it a wonder, since even in the Church the waters work this — that the washed-away wickedness of robbers may be compared with the innocent. What too shall I mention of the purple-fishes, which adorn the banquets of kings and steep their garments? It is of the waters, therefore, what is adored in kings; it is of the waters, that splendor which gleams. Add the sea-swine, pleasing even to the Jews, because nothing is common which the water does not wash away, and therefore they cannot reckon them common, as though produced on the land. Innumerable, then, are the uses, innumerable the kinds of fishes. Some generate eggs, like the various larger ones which they call trout, and commit them to the waters to be cherished.
The water, therefore, gives life and creates, and to this very day it carries out the office of that first command as though it were a perpetual law — a kind of gentle mother of living creatures. Some bring forth living young from their own bodies, such as weasels and dogfish and the huge sea-monsters, dolphins and seals and other beasts of this kind. When these have brought forth their offspring, if perchance they perceive any threat of ambush or terror to their young from anyone whatever, in order to protect them, or to calm with a mother's love the fearfulness of their tender age, they are said to open their mouths and suspend their offspring on harmless teeth, and even to take them back within their inner body and hide them in the womb that bore them. What human affection could imitate this devotion of fishes?
Kisses are enough to satisfy us; for them it is not enough to open their inward parts and take their young back and recall them whole, and again by a kind of warmth to revive them with their own heat, and to foster them with their own breath, and to make two live in one body, until either they bring them safety or, interposing their own bodies, defend their young from dangers. Who, seeing this, even though he might be able to do so, would not yield to so great a devotion of fishes? Who would not be struck with amazement, that nature should preserve in fishes what it does not preserve in men? Very many, prompted by suspicion through a stepmother's hatred, have killed their own sons; others, as we read, in famine have devoured their own offspring.
For human pledges of love a mother has become a tomb, while for the fish's offspring the parent's womb, like a wall with a kind of rampart of its innermost parts, keeps the pledges unharmed. Different kinds of fish, then, have different practices: some produce eggs, others bring forth living and fully formed young. And those that produce eggs do not weave nests like birds, nor undertake the labour of prolonged brooding, nor nourish their young with trouble to themselves. The egg has dropped, which the water, in a certain bosom of its own nature, has received like a gentle nurse and, by a swift warming, has rendered a living animal. For straightway, animated by the touch of its parent, the egg dropped and a fish came forth. And then, how pure and inviolate is the succession! So that none mingles with another, but with its own kind: grayling with grayling, pike with pike!
The scorpion-fish too preserves the chastity of an unstained union, begetting only its own kind. It thus possesses the modesty of its kind, yet does not possess the venom of its kind; for the scorpion-fish does not strike, but restores. Creatures of another kind, then, know nothing of adulterous unions with a partner of a foreign species — such as those which, through the great pains of men, are perpetrated by the coupling of asses and mares with each other, or again when she-asses are mated with horses, which are truly of an adulterous nature; for surely that which is committed to the defilement of nature is a greater thing than what is done to the injury of a person. And you, O man, contrive these things as the broker of a beast's adultery, and you used to think that animal more — what is adulterous than what is true!
You yourself confound foreign kinds and mix diverse seeds, and for the most part drive the unwilling to forbidden couplings, and you call this skill. And because you cannot do this with men — so that the careless mingling of diverse stocks might bring forth offspring — you take from a man that which has been born, and from a man you make a man-less creature, and by cutting off part of the body you deny his sex, you make him a eunuch, so that what nature denied in men your audacity might fulfil. But how good a mother the water is, consider also from this. You, O man, have taught the disinheriting of children by their fathers, separations, hatreds, offences: learn what bonds the kinship of parents and children should keep undivided.
Fishes cannot live without water, nor be separated from the fellowship of their parent, nor severed from the office of their nurse; and this happens by a certain natural law, that once separated they die at once. For they do not, like all the creatures of this air, live by breathing, since the nature of drawing in and breathing out breath is not given to them; otherwise they could not always live beneath the waters, not receiving the inflow of breath. What breath is to us, water is to them. As breath supplies to us, so water supplies to them the substance of living. We, when the passage of breath is cut off — since we cannot for even a brief span be without the vital breath — are at once extinguished; fishes too, when taken out of the water, cannot exist without that which is their substance.
And the cause is plain, since in us the lung, through the wider recesses of the chest, receives the breath, and, being itself penetrable through its many pores, cools the inner heat by the inflow of breath. For the chest, as it receives nourishment, so it separates the superfluous parts of food from the wholesome juices and the blood; and the lung gathers up these juices, whence the inspiration of breath can more easily reach it. Fishes, however, have gills, which they now fold and draw together, now spread out and open. In this folding and opening, therefore, while the water is taken in and passed through and penetrates, the office of respiration seems to be fulfilled.
The nature of fishes, then, is peculiar and not shared with other creatures: a special mode of life, and a kind of substance for living set apart and secret from all others. For this reason they are not fed, nor, like land animals, are they delighted by the touch of the human hand and by any soothing, even if they live kept in their own ponds. But what shall I say of the close-set rows of their teeth? For they do not, like sheep or oxen, have teeth on one side only, but both sides are armed with teeth, because they are in the water; and if they should turn their food over too long and not pass it down quickly, their food might be carried off from their teeth and dissolved by waters of that sort. Therefore they have teeth close-set and sharp, so that they may quickly cut and quickly finish their food, and easily and without any delay or postponement pass it down.
Finally, they do not chew the cud; yet the parrot-fish alone among them is said to chew the cud, as those report whose experience or practice or zeal it has been to grasp such things. Indeed even these fish have not escaped the violence of their own kind, and, subjected to the greed of the stronger, are everywhere the weaker. The weaker each one is, the more it lies open as prey. And most indeed feed on plants and tiny worms; yet there are some which devour one another in turn and feed on their own flesh. Among them the smaller is food for the greater, and again the greater itself is attacked by a mightier, and the predator of another becomes food for yet another.
And so it comes about that, when one has devoured another, it is itself devoured by another, and both meet in one belly, the devoured together with its own devourer, and there is at once in one stomach the fellowship of prey and of vengeance. And perhaps this wrong has grown up among them of their own accord, just as among us it began not from nature but from greed; or because they were given for the use of men, they were also made into a sign, that in them we might see the vices of our own ways and beware of the examples, lest any stronger one should attack a weaker — about to suffer in himself the wrong he inflicts on the mightier. And so he who harms another prepares a snare for himself, into which he himself may fall. And you too are a fish, who invade another's vitals, who drown the weak, who pursue the one who yields, even into the deep.
Beware, while you pursue him, lest you yourself fall upon a stronger, and lest one whom you avoid lead you into another's ambush — one who shuns your own snares and beforehand looks for your calamity, who, while you pursued him, was dreading his own. What difference is there between a rich man who, in the gluttony of wicked greed, swallows up the patrimonies of the weak, and a sheatfish with its belly filled by the entrails of smaller fish? The rich man has died, and his spoils profited him nothing; nay rather, the infamy of his plunderings made him the more detestable. The sheatfish has been caught, and its useless prey laid bare. How many are found within it, that had devoured others! And you, rich man, hold within your bosom the plunderer of another. He held the goods of the poor, which he had seized;
you, oppressing him, have added two patrimonies to your own resources, and still you are not satisfied with so great an increase, and you say that you have taken vengeance on others, while you commit the very things you punish — more unjust than the unjust, more iniquitous than the iniquitous, more greedy than the greedy. Beware lest the same end find you that found that fish: the hook of the sun and the nets. But you presume on your power, that no one can resist you: the sheatfish too presumed that no one would cast a hook for it, no one would spread nets, and that, if it should fall in, it would break them all asunder; and yet it did not escape the trident, or it ran into the bonds of a stronger fetter, from which it could not extricate itself.
Without doubt, the iniquity of men too, the graver the crimes it has committed, the less can it be safe in its own wickedness, but at some time must pay the penalty which, as the price of its crimes, is plainly hard to escape. You are therefore a fish, O man. Hear that you are a fish: 'The kingdom of heaven is like a net cast into the sea, which gathered of every kind of fish. And when it was filled, they drew it to the shore, and sitting down they chose out the best into their vessels, but the bad they cast away. So shall it be at the consummation of the age. The angels shall go forth and shall separate the wicked from the midst of the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire.' There are, then, both good and bad fish;
the good are kept for a price, the bad straightway burn. The good fish the nets do not entangle but lift up, and the hook does not slay it utterly and pierce it through, but bathes it in the blood of a precious wound, in the confession of whose mouth a good price is found — by which is paid the apostolic tribute and the tax proper to Christ. For thus it is written, the Lord saying: 'Of whom do the kings of the earth receive tribute or tax? Of their own sons, or of strangers?' And when Peter answered 'Of strangers,' the Lord said: 'Go to the sea and cast a hook, and take that fish which first comes up; and when you have opened its mouth, you will find there a stater. Take it and give it for me and for you.' Do not therefore, O good fish, fear the hook of your own kind; it does not kill, but consecrates.
Do not despise yourself as though worthless, because you see your body weak. You have in your mouth that which you may offer both for Peter and for Christ. Do not fear the nets of Peter, to whom Jesus says: 'Launch out into the deep and let down your nets'; for he does not cast them to the left side but to the right, as he was bidden by Christ. Do not fear his folds, because it was said to him: 'From henceforth you shall be giving life to men.' Therefore he cast his nets and embraced Stephen, who first ascended from the Gospel, having in his mouth the stater of righteousness. By his steadfast confession he cried aloud, saying: 'Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.' For this fish the Lord Jesus stood; for he knew there was in his mouth the price of his tax.
Finally, by his glorious martyrdom, this wealthy advocate fulfilled both the judgement and teaching of Peter and the grace of Christ. Nor let it disturb you that I have put the Gospel in place of the sea. The Gospel it is, in which Christ walked: the Gospel it is, in which, though Peter wavered when he denied, yet through the right hand of Christ he found the safeguard of faith, the grace of standing firm: the Gospel it is, from which the martyr ascends: the Gospel is the sea, in which the apostles fish, into which the net is cast which is like the kingdom of heaven: the Gospel is the sea, in which the things of Christ are figured by their own likenesses: the Gospel is the sea, in which the Hebrew escaped and the Egyptian was destroyed:
the Gospel is the sea, because the Church, the bride of Christ and the fullness of divine grace, is founded upon the seas, as the prophet said: 'He himself has founded it upon the seas.' Leap out upon the waves, O man, for you are a fish. Let not the waves of this world overwhelm you. If there is a storm, make for the high and the deep; if calm, sport among the waves; if a tempest, beware the rocky shore, lest the raging surge dash you against the crag; for it is written: 'Be wise as serpents.' And since the example was set before us from wise serpents, let us be wise concerning the seeking and keeping of marriage bonds, let us love the partnerships allotted to us.
And if those who had been born of distant flowers, separated from one another by time and region, should come together, and if one should strive after foreign things, let no poverty, no want, lessen the love that has won approval. The same law binds together the present and the absent; the same bond of nature, and so the same laws of charity, has bound fast both the distant and those near at hand; under the same yoke of blessing the necks of both are joined together, even if one should go to the long divorce of separated regions, because it is not by the neck of the body but by the yoke of the mind that they have received the grace.