'Thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight.' [XXXI] But on the seventh day, that is, the same day repeated seven times—which number is itself also perfect by another reasoning—the rest of God is commended, in which first sanctification sounds. Thus God willed not to sanctify this day in any of his works, but in his own rest, which has no evening; for neither is there any creature which might make, as it does otherwise in the Word of God and otherwise as known in itself, a cognition partly as it were daytime, partly as it were evening. Concerning the perfection of the number seven, indeed, more things can be said; but this book is already long, and I fear lest, an occasion being found, we should seem to wish to flaunt our little learning lightly rather than usefully.
Account must therefore be taken of moderation and gravity, lest perhaps, while we speak much about number, we be judged to neglect measure and weight. Let this, then, suffice to admonish: that the first wholly odd number is three, the first wholly even is four; from which two, seven is constituted. Therefore it is often put for the universal, as it is: 'The just man shall fall seven times, and shall rise again'; that is, 'However often he shall fall, he shall not perish'—which he willed to be understood not of iniquities, but of tribulations leading to humility; and, 'Seven times a day will I praise thee'; which is elsewhere said in another manner: 'His praise shall be always in my mouth';
and many things of this kind are found in the divine authorities, in which the number seven, as I said, is wont to be put for the universality of any matter. On this account, by the same number the Holy Spirit is often signified, of whom the Lord says: 'He shall teach you all truth.' There is the rest of God, in which rest is had in God. For in the whole—that is, in full perfection—there is rest; but in the part, labour. Therefore we labour, so long as we know in part; but when that which is perfect shall come, that which is in part shall be done away. Hence it is that even these Scriptures we search out with labour.
But the holy angels, for whose society and congregation we sigh in this most laborious pilgrimage, just as they have eternity of abiding, so also they have ease of knowing and felicity of resting. For they help us without difficulty, since by spiritual movements, pure and free, they do not labour. [XXXII] But lest anyone contend and say that the holy angels were not signified in that which is written, 'Let there be light, and there was light,' but should either suppose or teach that some corporeal light was then first made; and that the angels were made prior not only before the firmament, which, made between the waters and the waters, was called heaven, but before that of which it is said, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth';
and that what is said, 'In the beginning,' was not so said as though this were made first, since he had made the angels before, but because he made all things in wisdom, which is his Word, and which Scripture itself named 'the beginning' (as he himself, in the Gospel, when the Jews asked who he was, answered that he was the beginning): I will not, on the contrary, take up the contention, especially because this delights me most greatly—that even in the very highest opening of the holy book of Genesis the Trinity is commended. For when it is thus said, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' so that the Father is understood to have made it in the Son—as the psalm attests, where it is read, 'How magnified are thy works, O Lord! thou hast made all things in wisdom':
Most fittingly, a little afterward the Holy Spirit also is mentioned. For when it had been said what kind of earth God first made, or what mass and material of the future construction of the world He designated by the name of heaven and earth, subjoining and adding: 'But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss'; then, that the commemoration of the Trinity might be completed, He says: 'And the Spirit of God was borne over the water.'
Accordingly, let each one take it as he will, since it is so profound that, for the exercise of readers, it can beget many opinions not at variance with the rule of faith—provided only that no one doubts that the holy angels in their sublime seats, though not indeed coeternal with God, are yet secure and certain of their everlasting and true felicity. And that His little ones belong to the fellowship of these, our Lord teaches, not only when He says, 'They shall be equal to the angels of God,' but He also shows what contemplation those very angels enjoy, when He says: 'See that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, that their angels in heaven do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.'
[XXXIII] But that certain angels sinned and were thrust down into the lowest parts of this world, which are to them as a prison, until their final condemnation at the day of judgment, the apostle Peter most plainly shows, saying that 'God spared not the angels that sinned, but casting them down to the prisons of the darkness of hell, delivered them to be reserved unto judgment to be punished.' Who, then, can doubt that God, either by foreknowledge or in deed, has divided between these and those? And who can gainsay that the latter are deservedly called light? For even we, who still live by faith and still hope for equality with them—not yet holding it—are already called light by the apostle: 'For ye were,' he says, 'sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.'
But that those deserters are most aptly named darkness, they surely perceive who either understand or believe that they are worse than unbelieving men. Wherefore, even if another light is to be understood in this passage of this book, where we read, 'God said, Let there be light, and there was light,' and other darkness is signified in that which is written, 'God divided between the light and the darkness'; we nevertheless understand these two angelic societies—the one enjoying God, the other swollen with pride; the one to whom it is said, 'Adore Him, all ye His angels,' the other whose prince says, 'All these will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me'; the one burning with the holy love of God, the other smoking with the unclean love of its own eminence;
and since, as it is written, 'God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble,' the one dwelling in the heaven of heavens, the other, cast down thence, raging tumultuously in this lowest airy heaven; the one tranquil in luminous piety, the other turbulent with dark desires; the one at God's command mercifully succoring and justly avenging, the other seething in its own pride with the lust to subjugate and to harm; the one, that it may aid as much as it wills, a minister to God's goodness, the other, that it may not harm as much as it wills, curbed by God's power; the one mocking this latter, so that against its will it profits by its own persecutions, this latter envying the former when it gathers in its pilgrims—
we therefore have judged that these two angelic societies, mutually unlike and contrary—the one both good in nature and right in will, the other indeed good in nature but perverse in will—which are declared by other more manifest testimonies of the divine Scriptures, are also in this book, whose name is Genesis, signified by the terms 'light' and 'darkness.' And even if perchance he who wrote it felt otherwise in this place, the obscurity of this sentence has not been discussed unprofitably; for although we could not trace out the will of the author of this book, we have nevertheless not departed from the rule of faith, which is sufficiently known to the faithful through other sacred writings of the same authority.
For even though the works of God commemorated here are corporeal, they doubtless have some likeness to spiritual things, according to which the apostle says: 'For ye are all sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night nor of darkness.' But if he who wrote it also felt this, then our intention arrives at a more perfect end of the discussion: namely, that a man of God of such surpassing and divine wisdom—nay rather, the Spirit of God through him—in commemorating the works of God, all of which he says were perfected on the sixth day, should by no means be believed to have passed over the angels; whether it was written 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth' because He made them first, or, as is more fittingly understood, 'in the beginning' because He made them in the only-begotten Word;
by which names the whole of creation is signified—either spiritual and corporeal, which is more credible, or the two great parts of the world by which all created things are contained—so that first he might set forth the whole of it, and then follow out its parts according to the mystical number of the days. [XXXIV] Although some have thought that by the name of 'waters' the peoples of angels were in some fashion signified, and that this is what was said, 'Let there be a firmament between water and water,' so that above the firmament the angels are understood, but below either these visible waters, or the multitude of evil angels, or all the nations of men. But if it is so, it does not there appear where the angels were made, but where they were separated;
although certain persons—and this belongs to a most perverse and impious vanity—deny that the waters were made by God, since it is nowhere written, 'God said, Let there be waters.' By a like vanity they may say the same of the earth; for nowhere is it read, 'God said, Let there be earth.' 'But,' they say, 'it is written, In the beginning God made heaven and earth.' There, then, water also is to be understood, for by the one name both are comprehended. For 'the sea is His,' as we read in the psalm, 'and He made it, and His hands formed the dry land.'
But those who wish angels to be understood by the name of the waters that are above the heavens are moved by the weights of the elements, and therefore do not think that the fluid and heavy nature of water could have been set in the higher places of the world; men who, according to their own reasonings, if they themselves could make a man, would not put phlegm—which in Greek is called phlegma and holds, as it were among the elements of our body, the place of water—in his head.
For there is the seat of phlegm, according to the work of God most fittingly indeed, but according to the conjecture of these men so absurdly that, if we did not know this, and it were similarly written in this book that God placed a fluid and cold—and thereby heavy—humor in the part of the human body highest above all the rest, these weighers of the elements would by no means believe it; and if they were subject to the authority of that same Scripture, they would judge that something else must be understood by it.
But since, if we diligently scrutinize and treat each thing that is written in that divine book concerning the constitution of the world, both many things would have to be said and a long digression must be made from the purpose of the work undertaken; and since we have already disputed, as much as seemed sufficient, concerning these two angelic societies mutually diverse and contrary—in which are certain beginnings also of the two cities in human affairs, of which I have determined to speak hereafter—let us at length close this book too.