Most high and holy God, origin of all power, almighty One, whom it is right neither to comprehend with human minds by sense in any subtle searching of things, nor lawful not to know: for by deep reason we believe You to be God in three, yet three thus one, so that an undivided substance renders the proper kinds of the one nature, preserving its covenants in a holy bond. You are without beginning, likewise perpetually without end, alone ever the same and subject to no age; You are the space of all things — wherever the recess of the mind extends, You exceed it in space and are bounded by none; nor is there any place that can contain You together with Your nursling creatures, nor still less is there any place itself.
Nor is it permitted to the mind to grasp what likeness belongs to You, since, confined by no limit, Your form flees the senses; nor what motion of blessed power quickens You, since You are always wholly everywhere. You are mind, and the inmost substance of the sacred mind; You are reason, and the provident origin of full reason; You are virtue, the very pinnacle of virtue; and assuredly You Yourself are life and the begetter of life and of deep light; You are the true light, O God; You are the cause and the vigor of all things. From You whatever suddenly flashed forth out of nothing has drawn its beginning, and, filled by so great an Author, it either has the force of mind or has received form in mind. Nature, preserved in its perishable parts, proves You its Lord, and the established order confesses the appointed sequence You commanded.
You, distinguishing the docile numbers, weighing the weights, varying the measures, governing the modes and the motion, bid the alternating turns and the perpetual recurrence of things to keep their course and stand fast; and, full of the image of mind, You bid the world, with the moving heavens, now roll its ages for You. You, not content to endow what is created with a single gift — whatever it is that comes through You into use — there is also something more in what is made, and all things are better in the part where they lie hidden, and an inner cause makes them please of themselves and be welcome: some sharpen their own vigor from others; certain opposites, if they contend, have the more peace. Thus, rich Founder, You bind together all things, even akin among opposing elements, and fill them with virtues poured forth from the whole.
And yet, though these things belong to the majesty of creating, You need none of these which You beget; nor does the work of the completed world, that stands fast through You by the firm framework of things, run on for You, nor is it ready at our service. To be able to do all things is Yours; nor is Your glory in this alone, that as a good Author You make things that are to be furnished, but also that You make the things themselves able to furnish, and You wrap up the secondary causes in the first — so that he who feels Your gifts is himself also Your gift. By clear reasoning You have proved that the cause for Your bidding all things to be begotten was for You, O God, goodness alone; when by Your commands You granted first to the living spirits and to the world to flourish — which You bore in mind — and to come into being for sudden things, and to yield far and wide into heaven and the earth alike, and to offer a glittering seat to the angelic flock.
To whom, having lavished free hearts and self-determination from a kindly mind, that the work of virtue might come to be, and that to the merits of the holy You might confer this also: that by Your bestowing You should become a debtor. Nor — because of those first ones created by You to reign, one of them, while he envies the Lord of light and life and his own Author, and seeks for himself this title — Author, preferred to be the author of evil and to bring death upon the lands, cast down from lofty Olympus with the partners of his crimes — nor is it lawful to prescribe anything to sacred virtue, for which it is enough to have done good; nor was it right that any gift of God should be lacking, and the summit of nourishing praise comprises this: not to have denied life and sense to the ungrateful, and a proper kingdom of the mind throughout all its affairs. For what fruit is there in things begotten, unless the mind is free?
A mind is utterly free to none, unless there is the possibility of perishing. That this possibility was granted, no one but the sinner would have proved. To this I will add: that all diverse things, brought together in turn, hold a balance, and from this it was granted to all that they could perish, so that to live might be the sweeter, and that the mutual, matched measure of alternate peril might yield to merit — when, with a stern judge, the punishment of the wicked should double the worthy rewards of the saints — or because (let it be lawful to have said it, trembling, by Your leave, O Father, with foreword) it may perhaps be in Your sight a greater good not to have sinned, through the slippery seasons of life, than for the wretched to have sinned, an evil. But let that majesty itself see how the censure of the future stands.
This is enough for us: that through You, breathing the noble work of reason into the earth from worthless dust — so that even such a one as this might conquer the foe, ungrateful to its Lord — You raised up man; and man, whom You snatched into the snares of death and to impious Tartarus by the deceit of the savage poison, You restore, deigning soon to take up a body by Your own blood, sought back with greater care from the seats of Erebus than he had been made, and You render him back to perpetual life and bear him up into heaven with Yourself, the foe subdued. Now, now let no rash man accuse our father Adam, that, undoing the slight command by his violated law, he opened the road to death. That first punishment of our parent was worth so much, because it is greater to conquer death than not to have known how to die.
Now joyful from the Father's hall he looks down upon the ethereal poles and treads upon the stars, and calls his appointed ministers into the kingdoms that are to come, whom the wisdom of the Father's Word, which begot the whole, formed again by water and taught to be reborn. In whom I beseech You, kind God, who with favoring power grant minds to perceive and compel hearts to speak the truth even when the prophet is unaware: grant me, as I pray, to know — while we prepare to form tender souls and hearts to the true way of virtue in the years of boyhood — what the renowned chests of law-giving Moses unfold: what is the origin of the sky or what the first beginnings of the world, and who shook off the hidden faith by a swelling plague, and how error sank deeply into men's ways, and by what path the truth returns again and drives away profane rites and unlocks the sacred mysteries of eternal life.
Grant likewise a mind, grant fitting times for the mind, grant zeal, lest care fail so great a labor, and a good sense of zeal — and that which by right outruns all things known and encloses them in a mighty mantle: do not condemn me only because, so guilty, I dare so great a task. Pardon kindly all the faults I have committed; both strength and sense and merit You have given to souls. But if anything in the order has sinned against the law of meter, if improper speech and wavering sense have sinned — let it be allowed to run on everywhere in an unguarded verse — let no measure of peril come upon faith from this, through Christ of the laws, who, the only Son, flourishing with You in equal majesty, by whom the kindly Spirit lives and reigns in the unperceived ages of ages of souls — to whom the solemn Amen consecrates this for You. THE FIRST BOOK.
Before the poles and the day of heaven and the darkness of the world, before the forms of works, or things, or the seeds of things — He to whom it ever underlies to be eternal without end backward, without end of the future — there was one God, with whom there lived the begotten Word, God, and likewise the nourishing Spirit, the sum of secret, life-giving vigor. One substance of the three, quickening itself by which bond, unbegotten, ever blessed itself by its own virtue and reigned mighty, in the majesty of creating already foreseeing things and the causes of things and the chances of the future, and beholding with capacious mind the things to be made and to be begotten, surveying the ages and, whatever the times unroll, ever having present.
The threefold virtue, God, was Himself His own immense kingdom in blessed bulk, nor did His kingdom lack a witness — He who first, giving bodies to things from no seed, while He compels things to exist, that He might make our gift, which He alone possessed, alone knew the work — begot all things at once that complete the rich world, but, bringing them forth in parts by a fixed limit, He produced them with a special birth, that order, by motion into a sequence, might now establish the times. For neither — as the tongue of sacrilegious madness perceived, an instance of mind bereft, while it rolled unknowing seeds — did it so prudently whirl the work; nor is it lawful to say the begotten was before the day, since things born are moved with time, and there was then no time; nor to believe that backward it held an eternal and stable vigor forever.
For what consists of bodies must be confessed to have had a beginning. For a body — which a blow wears away, which the times dissolve and abolish by that very end toward which it stretches at the last — shows a beginning, since the things that are proved to have been allotted are fittingly either believed to be made or thought to be born. For the things that are born, since they are borne along moved with time, the times running after the bulk of the world — that they are born, which is the prior point — and it is necessary that they consist of bodies, they prove could not be, they confess could be made. It is established therefore that the world was made, which everyone, subdued, assents to and, convinced by the true teaching, believes.
He granted that God made it, who, mighty by the power of the Word and by virtue, disposed, commanded, admonished whatever is reckoned nature, and sustains the created gift, ever reforming the fleeting things by successive turns, and, drawing back the swift orb, whirls it around. And if He should choose to dissolve the whole suddenly, He would take being away from things, and not only this being, but the very past — He would remove it by the reason by which He knows it has been. O how great is the Father's power, O how great is the glory of the Word! What measure is there in the whole, what summit in the work, whose first part is the vault of the lofty pole and the lands lying below? But the sea had covered the lands, and a blind shadow, with its dense gloom, pressed upon the air, dripping in the midst with a foul cloud. And the sacred Spirit, hanging over the outspread waters,
quickened the fostering waters and gave the seeds of things, not yet to be poured forth into shoots upon the still-uncomposed lands, to be infused — when light, sent from above, flashed forth, God compelling, and the separated shadow, drawing back its black mantle, departed from the highest Olympus, and cast the waters between, and, fleeing the pursuer, was soon behind its back. Thus the limit gave the name of day to the spaces of light, and the interspersed darkness made the night, poured back over the world, equal. Again a new morning:
when, the first evening now driven away, the restored light shone, while a most firm mass, stretching itself from the midst of the waves with a solidified body, lifted itself up and, made solid far and wide with hard rigidity, suspended the divided waters, and set the cold deep against the hot axes, and, resting upon the enclosed expanse, poured itself over the things which it shut in with a vast circuit, and stripped the ancient sky of its name. Perhaps here someone, in skilled error, might thus discourse with himself: lest food be lacking for the ethereal flames, and lest excessive heat, seeking the depths by pursuing its nourishment, should burn up the mortal race, and lest things earthly should not be able to endure the glittering heaven — placed beneath, downward, is the firm machine of the pole, which, while it protects us with its shadow, is also veiled by the waters. But, my mind, flee far from seeking such causes:
let it be more for you always to believe that God can do whatever is thought impossible to be done. And prove by their own reasoning, who refuse to believe and yet wish the world to hang suspended — which the Founder Himself, ever governing it by incomprehensible reason, should carry and should roll, constant in its immense weight — that a great ocean is borne above the stars and constellations. The third light marveled to see the swelling waves depart, when God, the waves of the remaining flood now thrust away, laid open a great void in the airy spaces. Then for the first time the lowest part of the world showed its uncovered face, and, trembling at the divine power of the Word, the azure seas girdled the bared lands.
These lands, suddenly bidden to grow green with varied offspring, luxuriant shoots covered with new mud, and the rough forest, bursting forth from the tender turf, flung itself out with joyful foliage and with its very fruits, and, each bearing its own seed, bore witness to the Sower.
Now, three days completed, the first day of the sun, kindled by swift motion, was bidden to gather itself into flames and into a globe of fire; and the established seeds of light scattered their purple locks with a rosy spark; and the moon, the honor of night, whether it shone with its own light or, struck by the coming globe, poured back the rays, hung set beneath the sun on a lower path; and the stars, painting the world in distinct zones, were bidden to vibrate varied colors with ethereal blossoms, and that the heaven might gleam more with adorned darkness. The azure night marveled, while points of light, poured in ruddy flames, glitter and the new constellations urge their eager casts.
These — which the radiance veils with its rays and with a certain night of deep light covers, and, marking off the times by a fixed boundary, dispersing them, bidden, once their fixed station accomplished, to return by the numerous succession of the headlong pole and to go but once — complete the year as it rolls back, and confess the sacred Artificer by their wondrous framework. The fifth day moved breathing bodies in the sea, which the liquid begot with ease and scattered through the deep, the delights of the ocean, which nature formed in varied seed by wondrous modes; nature, bidden to create on behalf of the whole, also compels the parts to live for themselves, and granted the soul to go into brute forms; and these — that they might lift up the squalid backs of the swelling salt deep in the gulf without any end, stuffed with soft fattening — were it not that a swift end should prescribe a limit to their vast age.
The generative liquid itself favors the bodies, its nurslings, which also nourishes the germ of the earth, and rather dissolves the heaped-up limbs which the moisture had over-extended. Hence the birds too, a soft kind, drew their vigor. While He shapes the liquid waters, and life, sent in, enters the sea, the swelling expanses seethe again with offspring not pregnant to themselves with their own brood; and now, sent forth from the deep, the scaly throng, while it rises into the highest waves over the brine, that which was flitting in the waters, gradually swims in the pure air, and teaches that this creature can reach the ethereal recesses — this creature which is born again in the gleaming waves.
Now twice three days were radiating from bright Olympus — the third after the generative gifts of the warm sun — and now the warming earth had loosened its laden limbs, when God, devising greater things, bade the earth bring forth every living animal which reason alone of moving quickens, to which it was granted to serve wherever the use of things demands. Nor was there delay: the vital pledges burst forth from the teeming lands, and each, having obtained the figures of its own kind, now needing a master, for whose sake He prepared all things, who alone is able to create even the things to be made. Henceforth let it be lawful for me to touch lightly upon certain things, to pass over certain others, anxious and trembling, in a deep course, and to relate certain things passed over, the sequence changed.
After the given order brought forth all things by kinds — which the almighty Son, then full of the Father's mind, should make at God's command, and the holy Spirit should approve, full of true goods and stored with much endowment, and should cherish, destined to remain in a long sequence — a nearer cause is given to the world, for which in turn there is a prior, just cause. Now the world existed, now the stars and the risings and the ether and the glassy sea and the green lands: unless a spectator is present, whom the glory of so great a mass should fill and lead, eager, through each thing with his eyes, what can they confer upon God? There is no possession, if the possessor of things is absent. Then the Ruler of Olympus: "The sum given to the work stands; whatever I have created is good. Now let us make man," He says, "who may reign in the world and be the image of God."
"It is fitting that he be like his Creator, free unto choice, who with his mind enjoys created things." He had said this, and man was made — whether in his whole body, without soul and outward form, perhaps in the manner by which He makes things future, things to be done, by which He always already possessed the thing made, now nearly in a past which had not yet drawn near in any age. And soon, having set him over things, He bade him grow through offspring with his consort and replenish the empty lands. Now, God speaking thus rightly, the nature of creating was imposed on all things which are moved alive of themselves. The seventh light saw the great Parent cease — but only that He ceased to create the numbers of kinds, and held His rest; and it was deservedly hallowed, which saw the differing work; for this too is full of virtue, that God ceased and laid aside His labors.
For the offspring it is enough that the Lord beheld for twice three days a form by which they might prepare worthy rewards; the seventh light taught the venerable examples of rest, which He bids the peoples to hope for as a gift of life, ever to be granted hereafter according to the deeds of the holy. This light too is that one, dread, by which Christ loosed Tartarus and, Avernus conquered, laid open the return, while He rests on the ground, about to return to the Father's hall. Thus God knew to cease, thus to take leisure, that ceasing He might do the more.
Likewise resting without end and working without end, and mingling the sequence and the times, by ceasing He consummates the work, whatever He had created, so that He might make and now endow the first man with a body — he who was last; for to establish the causes of things is not the same as to give limbs — or, since the seventh thus runs on that the sixth day also remains, because the sixth is assuredly to God this which the first is — to Him who always has all things present, things that flee from us — after whatever times the supreme Author still thus fashions man in the sixth light; or, that He might teach us to deservedly excel created things, whom He Himself makes with His hand, He now more manifestly declares that man was made, and intimates this to the whole firm world:
"All things whatsoever that move, begotten at the soul's bidding, do so with God working." What sacred offerings of praise can anyone bring worthy of so great a Parent, who unfolded the world and all things in a moment by His command, and, while He commands them to be, accomplished it? It is delay that makes us be; He deigns to bestow around us the care of sacred zeal, and persuades that the work of toil be nearly accomplished. For He seizes the pliant clay, easy to yield and to follow the bending and the form by the art by which it is led, and unfolds into shape such a one as He already bore in His sacred mind; and life, sent in with vaporous breath, watered the soil. The earth, softened with moisture, became flesh in part: blood, the slippery moisture, distended the soft veins through the known passages; and man, now full of mind and thrust up from the earth, leaps forth and, prudent, adores the Lord of reason.
Not otherwise — that bodies, bidden to rise again from the burst tombs, true faith — when majesty, gliding down from the open heaven, unbolts the hollow inward parts of the heavy earth. For what it did not have, since thus from the highest dust, with God forming, needy of its own virtue, it brought forth — it is easy that by the same judge it should render, bidden, what it received. Thus the whole form of the future is that which is first begotten; and while Adam himself is thus founded, so that a repeated narrative may twin the sacred gift, it is usefully sown beforehand that the peoples shall some day be reborn. The fountain of these being given, and the highest origin even then, where the happy land opens its eastern recesses, on a higher globe the paradise of a pleasant grove is set, and is distinguished by the order of the smooth woodland.
Here, where now a boundary is divided by equal spaces of the sun and an eternal spring tempers the hours with equal portions, there each tree, rich, stands with its own fruits, and ripe apples are pushed off by succeeding apples — which are alluring to the eyes and full of wondrous vigor, and cherish the limbs and the spirits, and feed them with taste and with scent.
The earth, distinct, vibrates star-like colors, ever with new flower; and those plants which, dry with a parched covering, now loose their fragile stalks, animated by the vigor of the ambrosial gift, pour forth breathing cinnamon. But neither what the Mede exhales, nor what the Achaemenian is fragrant with, his hair loosed, nor what the rich Assyrian with soft amomum and the Mareotic harvest, reddening with nard, nor what the Tartessian shrubs, nor what the rod of the Sabaean, nor what the Palestinian branch weeps from its torn wound — these fail to pour forth their airs with diverse sense. For hither God gathered all things together alike, which nature received singly in fixed places, and brought them back, packed close.
And while the grove quivers, stirred by a gentle breeze in its passing, it mingles one nectar from diverse scent, and a new gift comes to be, which no single tree may claim for itself; and where, trembling, gently tossed by a soft murmur, it shudders with its moved leaves, the whole woodland resounds with a hymn to God by its trees, and the modulating breeze whistles its songs: nor does empty motion shake the air in vain, for indeed with the Author, who binds all things, thing to thing by alternate law, holds them under one mass, nothing is empty, nor does any appearance hold an empty figure. And perhaps the grove itself and the glittering woods are arguments of His works and the seed-plots of things; and that which comes into the cultivation of men by a bare name has there a sure body and flourishes on its own stock.
Glory, simplicity; zeal, vigilance; sleep, care; safety, terror; eloquence, grace; the motions and affections of the soul, its goads; protection, virtue — and all that the world holds, because it is born there, flourishes here and stirs minds and supplies the senses. But this is enough for faith: that, rising from a joyful seed, on this side the tree of life seeks the air with its lofty fruits, on that side the knowledge that will harm with its diverse fruit has suspended the balance of things upon the tree of law. But the bosom of the sacred grove, which the woodland crowns, a fountain waters and weds the offspring with rich virtue, loosing its swelling head, joyful, into a fourfold stream, richer than the ocean; for, springing from a perpetual gulf, here it gives its own waters, there it receives all and feels not the waters.
Less is he who knows not how to swell when such great floods pour in, than he who knows not to shrink when his rivers run dry. But first the river Pishon leaps forth exulting, the fourth part of the blessed spring, putting forth such gifts as nature, guided by wisdom, bestows; it fills the peoples of the Ganges' land, and over the realms of the Havilites it spreads its silt, and rolling earth and seeds it sows the fields it makes. Where the bare sands lie parched, amid the golden filings of the gleaming metal the carbuncle glitters, glowing red with fiery flame, and the emerald shines, sparkling with green light. Nor less than it is the Gihon next, but gentler with its calm waves it raises the waters of the Nile, and with its kindly flood covers the fields that else would scorch far and wide, and, resisting the heavens, it tempers the air of the Ethiopians with its pools that flow back upon themselves.
Hence the third, the Tigris, running on with swift current, goes as companion to the Euphrates; and as the two rush together in joined mass, the conquered earth, laid open, swallows them in a hollow abyss, until into the glades of Armenia and the pastures of Media it vomits forth those rivers which it could not endure nor any longer contain. But the Tigris, as though indignant at the dark Avernus, leaps forth into the airy breezes with greater motion, and again sinks into its caverns, and plunged within the hollows it drives its roarings inside; and made stronger by the barrier, it is multiplied in waters, and swifter through the narrow cave it issues out and cuts the Assyrian plains with its swift column.
More just is the Euphrates, which, lavish with its rich current, waters the parched fields of Persia lying below; drawn off into gentle streams, it serves all alike and gives itself wholly to human uses, until, dry of waters, prodigal it consumes its very name upon the lands—that name which it owed to the waves of the sea. These regions, then, rich with every offspring of nature, these delights stocked with so great and so many gifts of virtues, are the first possession of the first man, into which, led to exult in everlasting life, he was bidden to dwell. And now amid the first of gifts, while he is still made worthy and learns to earn by labor what he enjoys, having obtained the fruit of full virtue, free of cares and ignorant of any desire he lived. So great is it before the Author, in lieu of the highest title of merit, not yet to have merited any evil.
How much, do we think, can the Father pay back to a life destined to return to time, whose first largess toward His servants, even then, was not wages but Paradise? And whereas that severe law brought forth its decrees and restrained their liberty, He still promises greater things to the good and reserves rewards—He who set the cause for merits when He said, 'Eat of all the trees: only remember to dread this one, which, bearing within it the swarms of diverse things, then, when wounded by an unholy bite, having made you know good, will make you know evil—the evil that the penalty of death shall follow.' By such a law given, the deep reason of the Parent teaches that He willed man not to become mortal but to live worthily—worthy, whom He would make so by a small observance. O how great is the indulgence of the great God!
It is the work of our praise, what He of His own kind bounty bestows upon His servants; He desires it to be of our labor, and what He gives, He would rather be seen to owe. But you, whom the guardianship of sacred law binds, do not complain that your liberty, shut within narrow bounds, is bereft of part of itself: nothing has been cut away from you by this law. Before, you had obtained only power over land and sea; now you already have the power of the eternal kingdom and of life, now also of death. Then, that the untaught dweller of the world might believe the kindly Parent had granted all things to himself, God bade every animal—which the earth, commanded, had thus far created and poured forth from silent seed, blooming in living body—to be present and obey its proper sovereign, and after their kinds to speak the chief names, the names of their parts; that he, as it were for servant-creatures, might fix names for them—Adam:
By the Lord's admonition, He who among such great gifts of life had given also a proper name. Nor is there delay: nature presents to God every kind, in whatsoever part of the new world it was created. Together they come, things so discordant in their movement, within the span of a single moment—creatures whom the Maker had formed: some strong in struggle, some sluggish with soft gait, some most ready in swift running with headlong rush, or to glide downward through the air, or upheld upon the seas and borne, slippery, by their weight—endowing them with diverse gifts, and arming them with hand, horn, foot, tooth, venom, and the rest, with which He fortified the compacted work that was poor in skill and of lesser mind.
But none of living things flourished in form, in countenance, in bearing equal to man; and being set nearly side by side, it added the greater honor. And amid so many creatures, which a twofold sex made to illustrate life, he alone was unmatched, who all this while, unknowing, possessed within himself the matter fit for begetting a spouse. Therefore God undertakes the well-known work, and swiftly loosens the man's heart, struck and made languid by so deep a sleep, that, mighty to draw forth a rib from one deprived of mind, while the commanded flesh rose to follow and the receding skin did not let the bone or the gap intermingle in the middle, He might snatch it with limbs unharmed and body whole. Opening this rib, and soon arranged through its various members, it received form, and quickened with warm marrow it drew on the work of life; now pleasing in the second sex, and given to her own husband, she was called Eve.
At this point, O most foolish throng, cease at last to deem anything superior to the holy Parent. For why was woman thus formed from a man's own members, when she could have been fashioned from soft dust, could have been made from nothing? This is indeed the true reason: lest the natural order should rather take it to itself, or lest, because man is from man, it should be made plain to the clear world that all things were made at once then—so that a certain kinship might mingle mutual love for one's own care, compelling each to recognize itself in the other's members. Hence it is that Adam, all unknowing, perceived that he had received back a part of himself:
a new grace touched his mind, and an affection, received through his eyes into his inmost flesh now known, rushed in and penetrated to his bones with such warmth that it now gave him to know that the wife is named 'spouse,' that sweet children and parents are to be set after spouses. What more? Now the two were to remain one in flesh, leading an eternal life together—for while they were free of the vices and stain of earthly things, they flourished with divine souls, needing none of the wealth the world gave: indeed they bore bodies not liable to diseases, nor nurslings of a greedy belly; only amid delights was food, and what use demanded; not yet was it an aid to life, and the immortal property of the soul flourished of its own—had not the dire serpent, goaded by the venom of a greater evil, with such deceits persuaded heedless Eve to break the law: