'O race destitute of a better life and ignorant of good things, you humans! For he who knows not how diverse things differ from goods, this one knows not even goods. And therefore God did not wish it to be lawful for man to pluck the august fruits, lest, with the cloud removed from the mind, they should give eyes to the spirit, and—teaching what things are best in all the secret matters—make the skilled like the gods, the other side of things.' Here now let it be lawful to run on a little and bewail the base ruins of the ancients. Ah, too wretched the gentiles, whom frenzy drove into varied rites! It is plain in what death the profane have utterly perished. The plural name of gods first sounded forth from the impious voice of the dread serpent, who then was the cause of death.
For after credulous Eve broke the precept with sacrilegious bites, now taught by tasted evil, she seeks solaces for her fault and, intending to draw her pliant husband into the same crime, by the very craft by which she had perished first, she makes her approach. Thus, subdued by a twofold foe, wretched Adam yields to the crime, and tasted the apples most enticing with their sacred juice. But because in these lay hidden the precepts of the severe law, which would bring death more than viper's venom, as soon as they had violated their members with the forbidden savor, at once they felt the sin and the deed accomplished, and it grew, and struck their hearts with a sense till then unknown. Hence fear, thence shame:
indeed before it had been granted them to live naked and to know nothing of it. Whether—being unschooled men, hearts full of kindly vigor, conscious of lofty things and bearing breasts intent only on heaven and the world, ever turned toward the exalted Parent, while with the splendor of an almost incorporeal mind they marked the wonders of divine secrets—no care for their own members had yet touched them, as men senseless to a better soul; or whether no motion that might make known whatever is necessary to be known could penetrate bodies that needed no delay to dissolve into old age. After that everlasting vigor of life deserted the now mortal animal, at last cold and heat, the alternations of the air, came upon them, and lo, men felt themselves in want of clothing, and secretly blushed at their sex.
Lamenting their misery with silent tears, they weave new coverings of leaves from the shady fig, joining them together, that, with the body veiled, they might strip bare the shame received into the mind after their fault. Nor is this enough for the trembling pair. What shall they do? Whither flee the branded crime and their very selves? They would, if perchance there lay a way open, hide themselves in the earth: so close a neighbor to its own penalty is their fault, that now to the wretched, fearing death, the very image of death is welcome. They spread over themselves the woods and the shady haunts—the false solaces of an empty hiding-place. For whither is it lawful to withdraw your timid body, you, you, I say, who soon must first be dragged back, O Adam? The living, all-hidden virtue of the Father of the world, present, fills the immense recesses and goes forth diffused. But it is truly a sin to cheat the fearful of their hiding-place.
He can escape by fleeing the supreme Lord who flees to the Lord; leaving Him with the mind alone, in what vast and not swift shadows you lie! Calling with His voice 'Where art thou?' He attests both at once. For why does God, who sees you, seek you—you to whom He shall ever be present, you whom not even death itself can withdraw from Him by its own theft, into which you have sunk with frail mind—why does He ask where you are, except that, after the manner of grief, He confesses you to be fallen of your own accord, no longer with Him, and to have fallen from holy heaven? Yet the holy love of the Parent forbids despair, whose clemency—it is lawful for me to have said it, and lawful too to have proved my words—exceeds His justice.
Nor does He so much hold me, rebuking with stern voice 'Where art thou? What dost thou turn over in thy trembling breast?'—as He restores me; for He still, after my crimes, calls forth and calls back the one fallen and plunged in fear into hiding-places and almost buried. That long examples be not sought: the very pardon of fault proves the Lord gentle. After the searching inquiry had distinguished the guilty and most accused, the Almighty begins—heaven, sea, and earth tremble at His speaking, and, shaken, lays open its vast recesses; and while the sentence punishes the guilty, it made Tartarus—: 'Since you have thought it safe to depart from my commands, by that very chain of crime in which the fault ran on, by this my just censure shall smite the new offenders.'
'Among all the things which I commanded to be enjoyed throughout the world, you shall be accursed, and worse than what you cover within—your envious mind, serpent, who cast down men, created to enter heaven, and drove them by your fraud to touch the forbidden fruits, you, the origin of harsh death. That a measure of penalty worthy of the sin may follow—you plunged men into the earth: and you, with limbs stretched on the unjust ground, shall furrow the hard earth with your breast; you made them sin by foods: for such daring deeds you too shall ever eat the squalid bowels of the earth. And because it pleased you to be worthy of this for yourself, to be the first inventor of death, you shall die by a bloody penalty; and especially arming the hatred of the human race against your whole kind, you steeped in savage venoms, I shall bid you—that you may be slain the more—to be ever feared.'
'And of her, whom you rejoice to have subdued by your first fraud, dwelling beneath her feet and prone of breast, you shall lie in wait only thus at the very soles, so that, trembling, you may even fix your tracks upon the head.' He spoke, and thus began upon bloodless Eve:
'But you, who, thinking it the least fruit of your crime to ruin only yourself, with a wretched mind already plotting harm, lay in ambush for your husband and lorded it over so great a crime—you shall offer your neck to a servile yoke, and, made subject, shall feel the will of a harsh man; you shall endure labors with constant misfortunes, so that you, who first dared the wickedness begun, may multiply it and be tossed in many perils; and in bearing you shall be so tormented with frequent offspring that those whom your fault shall cause to be created mortal shall sometimes be the cause of a mangling death to their mother.' 'You too, to whom it seemed good of your own accord to set our warnings and the first bonds of salvation after a woman's deceits, having dared to die—as guilty receive such a lot: cursed by your crimes be the earth, which you shall furrow with the plow.'
'Let it bear thorns and menacing thistles, and let wicked hope deceive your prayer. You have ceased to serve me with a faithful mind: nor let the earth keep faith with you. You of your own accord refused to live glad in these delights and to live through all ages: now live by hard labor, live in miseries, until slow old age makes you earth—which you the more truly are—and returns you to the earth.' He spoke, and pitying them, He clothes the unknowing pair with the skins of beasts, that heaven might shield their members, and teaches them to protect their life.
But lest Adam, driven by dread of death, should dare again the deed he was pondering in his mind—if, ignorant of things, he, who had held the right of the first law, should after the extremities of his case seek again the proud aid from the tree of life, and, redeemed by no art of the Father, should live, and the now mystic order of the world should totter, and heavier things await the wretched and ever-guilty—straightway the winds, bidden, hasten the pair commanded to depart from the sacred groves; the winds which the forest of the deep grove rouses—but the bearing breeze and the spirit hold them bound in its balancing whirl, and as nature inclines, the air snatches the whole—and bearing them back to the lands whence the body was given, with softened blast they set them down, free of so great a space and free of peril, yet not free of the grief that stirs the heart.
Whither they had fallen, what they had lost, what life would follow, what life had been—a sad comparison vexes their mind, which the more it heaps up the differences. And they revolve within themselves how much another thing they now are, how much each, changed, seeks himself—uncertain whether to ascribe this to the first fault and to the penalty, since error compelled them to know the force of evil, or whether this is to die; or, if heavier things remain, whether return be granted to the wretched, or whether by an everlasting end they lose what is left, or whether, since the way of bitter death has burst upon the world and the peoples to come through a tree, life might still by some means return through a tree. SECOND BOOK. Thus far I have run through the hidden sequence, the beginnings of the world, as pure faith laid it open, without deceit, while earthly things were free of vices deserving death.
Now, having entered upon the ways of men and things mortal in verse, let it be lawful for a poet to mingle true things. After each was bidden to depart from the hallowed seats and realms, and touched the natal fields, and stood, an exile, on his own soil—how pitiable!—with what countenance might the raw settlers then be stunned at the barbarous countryside, which does not bloom adorned with fruit-bearing stock! No beauty of the soil delights, but a brute heap, set in a compelled mass, lies neither chosen nor arranged in ordered bulk. Steep crags stand stiff, the lowlands toil under woods, the plains lie hidden in grass, the heights bristle with brambles. Alas, with what eyes do they behold these things, with what heart do they perceive them, in whose souls Paradise yet dwells! Nor is there one cause of grief—that the face of all things, now full of evils, opens itself—but that they remember the good things.
Now that honor of the sacred grove shines with a greater serenity, now the blessed wood, more heaped, brings forth its riches, now sweeter is the enjoyment of fruits and the nectar-like savor; now the earth breathes with living flowers, and grazes the sorrowful with the scent of what is absent. O Paradise, how unlike are the requitals you render to deserts! The comparison of worse things exalts you the more, and you make worse the things which alone remain to the wretched. Here the nourishing love of life perishes; the want of things insinuates that now it is sweet to die—did not a greater destitution come to the rescue with a heavier evil; for, kindling the bowels with the madness of eating, it leads the famished through all the foods which the barren wood gives, and forces them everywhere to search for doubtful sustenance from the malign roots of herbs as their fare; and that they cannot escape such a life is brought about by the very hunger which compelled them to wish it.
At last the final extremity taught them—needy and destitute of all the things use requires—to hope for the aid of the supreme Father: each, prostrate, his limbs upon the ground, with tears only and mute grief, while shame withdrew words from unjust complaints, was dying of weariness. But after his mind was restored, Adam at last, rising, supplicates with such a prayer: 'Almighty Author of the world and Creator of all things, woe is me for the stain of evil! While happy life remained, and it was granted that I might be able to follow my swift soul in sight beyond the stars, I saw with these eyes—as it were beholding the secrets of the mind—Him diffused far around and through all things, ever present and veiling sight with the splendor He poured in; and what is proper to say, I saw that He cannot be seen.'
Now too, after our fault, despoiled of the sacred light, although the better mind, free to be borne through the whole, has fled, and, in the cell of an earthly prison shut up, nothing of truth beyond mortal things remains for us to know—yet only this has remained: to feel all things full of You. And therefore, Almighty, who art ever wholly everywhere, we flee to You, praying with trembling mind:
'Hear the wretched, whom You ever see and hear, if, when he wished to bind me to the condemned party—he, the chief of crimes, guilty before the world and his own enemy, daring nothing by himself alone, lest, conquered, he should yield—the unforeseen fraud of that artificer of crimes subdued the wretched serpent (whose mind was heedless) by craft, and subdued me through the affection which both sexes feel; and when I was being condemned by a just penalty for the crime, I so repented of the fault, my mind smitten by so great a grief grew indignant at itself, that I thought You, most gentle Judge, then granted me vengeance upon myself.'
'Therefore I also denied to my cause both groans and tears, because I, even as a guilty man, judged myself unworthy of pardon; and embracing in my soul the sweet solaces of the penalty, setting this very thing hereafter among these sacred gifts, I shall hold it in lieu of pardon for the crime—that I have been condemned. It is not, then, a dread thing. But may You, in serene majesty, deign to hear those who pray nothing against Your commands, and no longer ask with tears for what You will of Your own kind bounty bestow upon Your servants, so that the censure may relax itself, yet so that the whole sentence may hold its full force. You bade me, the conquered, seek food from the moved sod: arms, then, must be given for moving the condemned fields—to make the lands give brambles, barren ground, and clinging thorns instead of fruit:'
'Pure soil, then, must first be sown by me, so that the crop sought by labor may deceive my prayers—to weave bread together with the constant seed of herbs: grant to my mind what the herbs are, what the manner of labor; grant, O Father, Your aid, having mercy, and imbue my senses. Then it shall come to pass that Eve, mistress of things and sure of salvation, may serve me, and, having experienced the savage torment of bearing, may bring forth peoples who will be punished for our crime, and that succession may purge the parents' sins by the deaths of grandchildren, making the penalty eternal.' As they prayed thus, the image of the false serpent, seen with silent dread as a sign, bearing itself gently by a winding path toward the soft tracts with quivering herbs, turned the trembling pair upon itself and, shaken from their sluggish sorrow, drew them into kindred wraths. And first Eve to her husband:
'If the supreme cause of evils moves you, snatch up stones in your hand; lo, the chance is given to deal death to death's author. The first one ought to teach, by punishments of his own and by a bloody death, how sad it is to die—he who basely ruined me and you.' She spoke, and as it slipped away they pursue it in their course with hurled weapons, and whirl rocks, of which one, sure to give an easy stroke with the arm drawn back higher to greater effort, obeys their wishes, and following their eyes and their spirit, rebounds from the bare flint with the serpent in the middle, and strikes out a spark, which, fed by dry tinder and soon turned to flame, spreads wide its tressed fires and now blooms white with dry smoke.
They had shuddered and with trembling step were seeking hiding-places, but the very amazement holds the frightened pair, and lays open the keen anxiety of human vice, that, timid, they wish to see again and to behold the things to be feared; and, withdrawn a little upon the ridge of the barren earth, they marvel that the shady foliage of the groves has sunk down, that the day grows grimy with cinders and is darkened, that the whole earth gleams, and that there is a new light beneath the sun. Nor with quiet mind do they receive the cracklings amid the woods hissing on every side, and the billowing globes of flames borne to the stars, while the devouring fire, sunk deep, stretches its roots to the lowest depths, by which heat the raw earth, overcome, opens its noble veins to generous gifts; and when it has now been dried of all its moisture, the very liquid begins to be formed, and to pour out the metals, each in its own streams.
In a tawny torrent gleams the highest honor of gold; shining with glowing milk, silver flows forth; the slippery liquidity of bronze wanders and coalesces, its body dissolved, into a soft mass—the steel, a livid clod. So Etna, with its furnaces burst open, casts up hissing sulphur mingled with flames, slippery while they boil; but when they have felt the temperate touch of the breathable air, they stiffen, and the dry liquid, swiftly congealed by fire grown icy, is turned into a gleaming clod, and becomes a sluggish body. Thus they marvel that the diverse streams come to a halt—streams which, where the heat fails, they now watch with eager eyes, and which receive a winning color in their members; and what they had feared, they pursue.
They perceived the aid of God and rejoice that, for the guilty, and with no virtue following their first fault, the prayers had yielded to their wish; and to the supreme Parent they refer it as received, both because the fire gave fire and a mind, to which He laid open what work was needful. I hold both certain: that the parents, eager, explored the sacred gift, surveying all with their eyes, but first applied their hands to the rich gold, which now strikes their minds with its flash and subdues them with the gleam of that dear poison, and does not satisfy, until, with much weight, it overcomes the marveling ones, and, when slipped, wounds them as it were on the purple of a hard crag, and teaches that an easy blow can be endured with the body marred. Suddenly a new care comes upon the astonished pair and sharpens their minds, and warns them to follow their downfall, that teacher, with skill.
Then with the weight of a hard stone they strike in alternate turns, and bend and draw into various shapes the mass yielding to the blows. This no toil can shape, but conquered, it quickly loses its figure hence, because the matter, unequal to great efforts, receives the zeal but deceives the use. They seek therefore something harder; but from this too gold pleases, which has taught the rigid metal to be the more useful. Thence, to that whose beauty is nearer and whose vein is second, they pass to silver, which, firmer than seductive gold, is more patient of service. But stronger is bronze, that which is less conspicuous. Soon, with bronze as teacher, the use, transferred to rigid steel, came to a stop.
Perhaps our lyre could also run through in verse all the chances which opinion imagines, fashioning the highest craftsmen of works: how the most fertile earth, laid open by a silent heat in baked clods, was moved into varied offspring, which, bringing them to birth with the marrying rain, the fields dissolved by their crumbling passage; whereby the swelling folds cracked, and the raised harvest sprang up, and waving it trembled with the stirred ears of grain, so that the new settler might learn the look of a cultivated crop; and how the kind of birds and beasts, and the lesser throng's black cohort, running down greedily from every side to so great a prey, thrusting into their bodies the larger seeds than themselves for fodder, packed in foods friendly to life with matter nearer at hand, and every service followed, which the care of teachable zeal received.
Meditation, always taken from masters as examples, would have made the work of art: but the bountiful glory of the Father, well known, cries out against false claims: let use claim nothing for itself from this, nor chance, destitute of virtue: 'I have given to created things, together with the light, to know what good things are, and to the lesser world to make known by sacred sense whatever the greater possesses, and through these I have willed Myself to be known.' And would that it remained inviolate, as the mind was given to man, and liable to no fault: him neither the appearance, nor the bodies of things, nor the measure of the stars, the number, nor the mass of the sand would deceive.
But with what vast spaces the earth is stretched along with the great deep, what may be the measure of the completed mass, what vocal melody of harmony the motion of the sevenfold axis resounds—now is learned by practice and granted to constant studies, and what remains inborn is reckoned a matter of art. Nor does he, made dull by the cloud of evils, perceive that, if anyone thinks he first comes to know certain things, he is but recognizing them again. Let him therefore cling to this at the highest border of truth. When Adam was driven from the august seats, no other duty did he perform prior to one worthy of his spouse, and he spent unknown loves upon his children. Amid so many cares, to him whom it pleased to create was creation sweet, and life was sweet. He who proved life to be sweet, was living with God as ruler; nor was there lacking to his nurslings what might instruct their life, what might equip them with the use of things.
And now the house, full of children, had brought wondrous solaces to the unschooled pair, and, multiplied in the parents' tender heart, care relieved their grievous labors; and hope was now at hand, to rejoice in their own ministers in the duties of the field. Of these, the greatest in age, Cain, turned the rich soil with hard mattocks; but Abel, most worthy to rejoice in living gain, on bare hills or in the fields of dry growth fed his harmless sheep and his parents with milk. After the awaited fruits had sated their joys, and they were astonished that their prayers were girt with sacred favor, the just one admonished their minds to dedicate the first libations of their works to God.
He, the elder, first loads the sacred altars with the new fruits, but this one offers more acceptably with a snow-white lamb—the first appearance of priests, soon the impious sacrifice of a brother, yet even then imbued with the sign and token of the future pious one. For when Cain noted his brother's accepted sacrifice, and that to himself, sacrificing with no fruit, no assent was given—whether because he had picked out the offerings beforehand and polluted the feast, or whether to Him who beholds all in a single moment he stands guilty as one at some time to be present and guilty in mind—from that (dread) fountain whence the serpent and his mother had drunk poison, he drinks, and butchers his brother, slaughtered by savage murder and unaware of caution. Alas the crime!
What would not frenzied lust, what would not fresh anger, old hatred, the wicked contests of crimes that harass the nations compel—if he committed so great a deed who thus grieved that his brother was holier than himself? Now there is no fault of the parents. And lest anyone think there remains some complaint at least about the serpent—that we die—we began to be slain before. O how much did the first offshoot add to the crime! That death was brought into the world in the name of a penalty is scarcely worth saying: impiety made it a new wickedness. The parents shall expiate their sins by death alone: you shall pay penalties released from death, and in place of death, worse than the abominable serpent. For he persuaded to slaying, did not inflict it: but you shall be the first author of slaughter.
The public enemy pursues you, the private robber pursues you; against you armed men shall avenge crimes with darts, swords, and the avenging iron. All wickedness is your warfare, and that the peoples to come shall perish less by ordained death than by slaughter—to you the chief blame returns. Nor is that example wholly displeasing to morals, that human blood first began to be shed by a brother's blood, so that he might feel a like deed committed against him—he who is established by such a crime to have renewed a brother's wickedness, reason teaching that every death of a man slain, not by the first lot, is the murder of a brother.
Even then, dripping with such slaughter, God did not scorn him — so great is His clemency — but deemed him worthy of address. He convicts the man who denies his crime, yet for so great a transgression punishes lightly, exacting the measure of the penalty from only a part of the deed: so that, because forewarned he did not fear to commit the dread crime, he might now tremble; and that what he refused to be a punishment might become his desert.
What his mind, refusing to drink it in, had reckoned light, his agitated limbs should prove a heavy thing; and when the soul is struck — by which inward tormentor every wickedness avenges itself — horror at his crime should shatter the body too, and rushing violently pour forth into every joint, and the limbs, set in motion, be swept along in headlong whirling: as when waters enclosed within a basin, with the light flung back, break the rays they have caught, and a slippery brightness slips into the hall and, ranging over all, is nowhere and everywhere; and as it quivers, a thread of light, woven by degrees into the faint gleam, flickers without end through the bluish shadow. This was no such trembling as cold fluid stirs in stiffened sinews, when, filling men half-dead, it so chills them that they cannot wholly lose their life.
but such as the wrath of God stirs up, when its conscious power masters the mind and the heart is wrung with a sane frenzy. Yet what, and how often, is such a sentence? The whole vengeance for the slain man's crime — the most just penalty of a savage offender, a terror to his people and to the people to come, an example set before them, the present purging of guilt, and the sign promised, the safeguard of his life — lest anyone slay him and labour to blot out by the sword one whom he sees has paid the penalty. Nor does this punishment suffice: God mingles harsh things with gentle; He banishes him far off and exiles him to vast shores.
This too the punishment achieves: that he should not pollute the fields of the godly, nor should his penalty bear witness that such a crime could have been committed against the peoples yet to be created; that he should never mingle with them, nor should the condemned race ever draw near to sorrowing parents, nor heap ever-bitter grief upon the good, nor torment the bereaved with the unequal cause of brothers' pain — that they should look for the one, and behold the other, in whom it is necessary to mourn this also: that he still remains. The worst of all in a son's death is the death itself, of whatever kind; but those afflicted with so dreadful a punishment for so great a crime perish worse alive, before any judge whatever. How much more fitting that he, condemned, should depart far from his ancestral lands — he who loves seclusion — and that it should be a heavier punishment to be seen among the happy and the blessed of pure mind.
To one who is to live on after his punishment and the shame of his deed, exile is granted in mercy. Now that a faithful wife is added as companion to the guilty man, and that the hope of God should not desert the condemned becomes a sure pledge. Behold, one is given to soften the cares of his sick heart, who by moving her body might steady his broken frame with her embrace, and, subject to no guilt herself, by entreating God alone and worshipping with a pure mind, might draw forth whatever could suffice for the two of them. O good Majesty, what may we not hope for! You yourself supply the silent ways of pardon and the cause whereby You may avail to profit the guilty — whom, increasing him with offspring to follow, You multiply through a thousand names of descendants, and soon appoint, from the supreme Father, as king of his own people. For he first taught how to gird cities with walls, which no one can do save by gathering a populace.
And, confessing through fear that he deserved an avenger from among his own kin, he warned the Syrian and taught him to perish while he feared to be slain — by which slaughter, perhaps expiated, he washed away his guilt, since he repaid it with a like death; and death itself is gain, in that it became the vengeance for the crime. Meanwhile grave Eve had again to her grieving husband made up the loss with a holy pledge, and restored once more cares and vows to their father. Seth was the name given to the boy, whom the Almighty granted, by His favouring power, to fill the place of Abel with the virtues that aided him — a gift which the gladness of the joyful father did not keep silent, and the succeeding line proved true.
For from this man's seed sprang Enos, who, first chosen as priest in his silent virtue, hoped and deserved to be able to summon God by holy prayers and by His true name; and the people that followed he steeped in keeping the worship of the eternal Father, and, by holy aid, to use it as life required — the Almighty acknowledging what He bore in His majesty, granting both the will and the desert, and for many years allowing the punishment of the ancient crime to be deferred — so far indeed that Enoch, mighty in all virtues, of the line of these whom the kindly stock contains, restored to the ancestral seats and the blessed world, lives even yet and already holds the kingdom of the life to come.
Indeed, while the world still lacked all culture, the contest of those living was to lead thrice three hundred years, completing a thousand by the gains of a tenth verse. But after crimes had infected their souls, and guilt was born in the succeeding stock, and the offspring, worse than its sire, ever added to its vices what the heir might surpass, the brevity of life came to the rescue — since this was the one way of curbing wickedness, that there should be a limit to its light. For when the youth of better blood had joined itself in profane marriages and so condemned itself with the race of Cain's descendants, deserted by sacred favour it fell into manifold crime, and, laid open to ambush, received the enemy by his snares, while God spoke thus:
'My Spirit shall not always abide among these peoples, nor shall it any longer defer the appointed times of late death twice six times ten; their guilty life shall live a hundred and twenty years, since, following earthly things, they have more of the flesh than of the mind.' Whether, then, the stern sentence of the kindly Judge broke their nature, so as to convict each guilty one of having more of his brute mother, from whom he was born; or whether the lavish grace of the divine bounty — which in His first gift He had given to the servants who were to be created by sacred power — by being drawn away from sins into the deeds of the fathers, in order to prove that it had passed from the whole man to the body alone, suddenly bred monstrous men, giants of towering bulk of limb, wild with swollen mind.
How great a power lies beneath dreadful spirits in their bodies, and how needful it was that there should be a will to match, in those oppressed by the servitude of so great and wicked a mass — to them nothing unlawful or profane was a defilement, nor anything lawful dear to the heart: lust, kindled the more fiercely by what was forbidden, and for things to be sought a worth set not by beauty but by crime.
No nights without bloodshed, nor days without slaughter; sweet to them was it to take their meals with a kinsman in tears, and to defile those very kinsmen with the meals; forgetful of the bond of fellowship, of human kind and of themselves, of holy affection, of their mothers and fathers, and of the Author of heaven. So far did they advance into the highest crimes that it repented God to have fashioned all things — He who had given them life and light — and He chose rather to gather together the souls innocent of the guilty ones' crime, than not to submerge the earth a second time beneath the headlong sea, the world returning to its ancient form... [There was one] faithful, who for five hundred years had led a life immune from crime, and had proved himself living by the law laid down; to whom God thus revealed His holy mysteries, unveiling them: