Scotus Academicus, Tomus quintus: De Creaturarum Corporalium et de Homine

What God created and wrought on the first day of all things Moses lucidly sets forth in these words: In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of the Lord moved over the waters. And God said: Be light made. And light was made. And God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light from the darkness. And he called the light Day, and the darkness Night; and there was evening and morning one day. In which words he embraces many things worthy of note, which, that they may be made known, are to be opened up under the following Questions.

You ask 1. — What Moses signified or intended by these words, In the beginning God created?

I answer. That since Moses stood forth as the most keen-sighted and chief of all the prophets, and wrote nothing save at the dictation of the divine Spirit, it ought not to seem wonderful that his utterances are laden with mysteries and embrace divine arcana beneath the rind of the letter; which appears above all in the first chapter of Genesis; for as many words as he brought forth, so many oracles does he seem to have poured forth. That however we may uncover and examine each one according to our measure, that first verse of Genesis must be weighed point by point under the distinct headings now to be proposed.

IN THE BEGINNING. — A threefold exposition of these words is allowed among the sacred interpreters, especially with St. Ambrose, book 7 of the Hexaemeron, chapter 4, and St. Augustine, book 1 of De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 1. For first, in the beginning sounds the same as in the Son, who several times called himself the beginning of things. Thus John 8, being questioned, answered: The beginning, who also speak unto you; and Apocalypse 1: I am the last and the first, the beginning and the end. For he is as it were the idea and wisdom of the Father, and likewise the Word by which he created all things; for through him all things were made, and without him was made nothing: or, as St. Paul speaks to the Colossians 1, In him were created all things in the Heavens and on the Earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers: all things were created through him and in him: and he is before all, and all things in him consist. But this exposition is mystical and symbolical.

The second explanation is that in the beginning, or commencement, not of an age but of time, and of the world, God created all things; namely, when the duration of the world began together with the world itself. For although in the beginning of the world there was not such a time as now is — for our time is the measure of the motion of the first Movable, the Sun, and the Heavens: but then there was not yet the first Movable, nor the Sun, nor the Heavens; and consequently there was not yet their motion, which could be measured by time — there was the duration of a corporeal thing, namely in that very instant in which Heaven and Earth were created. Whence God is said to have created Heaven and Earth, not indeed in time, but in the beginning of time, that is, in the first moment of time. We may also understand, says St. Ambrose, in the beginning, that is, before time: just as the beginning of a road is not yet a road, and the beginning of a house is not yet a house.

The third explanation, finally. That in the beginning signifies the same as before all things, so that God is deemed to have created nothing before Heaven and Earth, in order that the order of the creation of things may be designated, and it may be signified that Heaven and Earth hold among all creatures the primary degree and order of formation: which David signifies in Psalm 101: In the beginning, O Lord, thou didst found the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands. As if he should say, that as one about to build a house lays the foundation before the rest, so God, in fashioning the world, before other things created Heaven and Earth, as it were the two chief parts of the world, which of necessity precede the others in the order of nature; and he cast and built in advance, as it were, the bases and props that should sustain and support the rest, and enclose them as it were in their bosom. And so the narrative of Moses concerning the making of the world could be resolved thus: God in the beginning created heaven and earth: the earth was void and empty, and a rude and undigested mass; which darkness covered and encompassed, and from which God straightway brought forth light.

— From which two things, observes St. Basil in his Homily on the Hexaemeron, can be inferred: first indeed, that from the teaching of Moses it be clearly inferred that the world is not eternal, but had at some time a beginning of its arising. Secondly, that the antiquity of the world can also be known, and likewise a reckoning be made of how far from our age its beginning lies distant, by computing, as it were along its course, all the years gone by. In which things the Ethnic writers erred from the truth: for some judged the world to be everlasting: others indeed thought it began at some time, yet feigned very many myriads of years, and ages almost innumerable, to have slipped by. This indeed was formerly the common fiction among Christian and ethnic writers, to whom only an obscure report of the Genesis and origin of the world had come, so that — as is the way of men — they adulterated the truth of God and the sacred history with alien fictions.

Here however the marvelous consensus of the writers of both Testaments must not be passed over in silence. For since there are two kinds of things that have an origin: some eternal and divine, as the Son and the Holy Spirit, of which the one proceeds from the divine Father alone, the other from the Father and the Son; others indeed temporal, as all the things procreated at the beginning of the world — the sacred writers Moses and John the Evangelist, who made mention of both origins, used a like beginning; for each takes his rise from these words: In the beginning; yet so that they expressed those two origins, as greatly discrepant, also in diverse ways. For Moses adds: In the beginning created, etc. But John: In the beginning was the Word, etc. Yet each wrote aptly to his purpose. For, says Severianus of Gabala, that one spoke usefully, this one properly. For where creation was in question, Moses used the word of making or creating; but where the Creator and Author of the Evangelist, he used the word was. A wide difference indeed lay between, namely between created and was; for the one was made when it was not: but the other was who ever is. That both writers used the same beginning, they add, was that one root of piety might be shown, which both instructed this Lawgiver and illumined that Theologian. For the two Testaments are twin, begotten of one parent. Hence it comes to pass that with one consent they utter their discourse: for it is almost the same image and likeness. And as to two twins born of the same Parent there belong like properties, and culture, and certain equal lineaments of countenance: so also the two Testaments, because they sprang from the same Parent, have a certain great similitude.

CREATED. — That he might open the mode of the production of the Universe, Moses did not use the word iatsar, which signifies to fashion or form, which word he used in chapter 2, verse 7, when he recounted the formation of man: but he wrote bara, which word denotes the production of any thing from nothing, or which proceeds from non-being to being; doubtless that he might signify the world to have been founded from nothing, and might refute the erroneous opinion of those who feigned that all things proceeded from a certain pre-existing eternal formless matter, as if in their formation God had added nothing else than ornament and form: which silly fiction Moses dissipated when he said that all things were first founded not by generation, nor by eduction, nor by any other mode of production from a pre-existing subject, but by the omnipotent power and divine Word and command.

Therefore when it is said that God created heaven and earth in the beginning, it is openly signified that Heaven and Earth were not made from any pre-existing matter, but simply from nothing; as also that most pious Mother of the Machabees expounded, book 2, chapter 2, where, addressing her younger son, she says: I beseech thee, my son, look upon Heaven and Earth, and upon all things that are in them, and understand that God made them of nothing. It does not escape me that Aben Ezra, in his commentary on these words of Moses, contends that the word bara, that is, created, does not signify the production of a thing from nothing; which opinion he labors to establish from the clause of the first chapter, verse 21: And God created the great whales. And verse 27: God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. In which places the word bara is employed to signify the procreation of a thing from another thing, as of man from the soil, and of woman from man. — But all others whatsoever that are celebrated among the Hebrew Doctors cry out against him, with Moses Bar-nachman, who writes expressly in his commentary: There exists not among us in the sacred tongue a word by which we signify the production of a thing from nothing, except BaRa. To him accords R. D. Kimchi: Every, he says, signification of creation is the innovation of a thing, and its passage from non-being to being. That however they may reconcile the texts just cited, which seemingly conflict with this assertion, they distinguish a twofold use of the verb to create in the Scriptures. For first it signifies the production of some thing from pure nothing, in which sense they affirm it must be taken in this place. Second, that word is used to denote some pre-eminent and excellent thing, which is brought to light by the singular virtue and power of God. And hence it is that he uses it where he sets forth the creation of the heavens and of man. For the whales are of vast and, in a manner, portentous magnitude: but man, by reason of his excellent gifts, surpasses all creatures, indeed is as it were the head and prince of all creatures. — They observe moreover that a distinction intervenes between these words bara, that is, created, and iatsar, that is, formed, and agascha, that is, made. That to create is to make something from nothing; to form is to induce a figure upon a created being; to make is to arrange, perfect, complete the several members, and adapt them to their certain use. There extants the passage of Isaias XLIII, 7¹: Every one that calleth upon my name, I have created him for my glory, I have formed him, and made him. Which passage Rabbi Kimchi thus expounds: First I created him, that is, I produced him from non-being to being. Then I formed him, that is, I made him to exist in a fitting form. Thereupon I made him, that is, I disposed or ordered him. For the word signifies the disposition of a thing and its perfection, wherefore he says also: I made him.

GOD CREATED. — That the world was founded by God Moses distinctly pronounces, that he might signify that its fabric and workmanship are not to be ascribed to Angels, or to any other creature, as very many of the Ancients, heretics, raved. Above all Simon Magus, who assigned the fabrication of the world to Angels; which error St. Irenaeus admirably crushed, book 2 of Adversus haereses, chapters 1 and 2, with this efficacious argument: namely, that if Angels created the world, it was either against the command of God or by his own order and mandate. If the first, it follows that God is impotent, or improvident and negligent. If the second be asserted, the consequence will be that the creation of the world is to be referred not to the Angels themselves but to God.

For if, he says, God himself made the Angels, or was even the cause of their creation; he will seem to have made the world itself also, who prepared the causes of its fabrication: although they say the Angels were made, or the fabrication of the world, through a long succession downward from the first Father; nevertheless that which is the cause of the things that were made will recur to him who was put forth as the origin of such a succession. Just as the correction of the war is referred to the King, who prepared those things which are the cause of victory: and the founding of this city, or of this work, to him who prepared the causes for the perfection of those things which were made below. Wherefore we no longer say that the axe cuts the wood, or the saw cuts; or that man cuts and hews — most rightly should one say that he does, who made the very axe and the saw for this, and much earlier all the instruments by which the axe and the saw were fabricated. If therefore justly, according to their reasoning, the Father of all is said to be the maker of this World, and not the Angels, nor any other maker of the world besides him who was put forth, existing first as the cause of this reparation having been made. So St. Irenaeus. — Lest anyone however should think that God founded the world by the aid of Angels, he adds: But all things that were made, he made by the unwearied word. For this is proper to the supereminence of God, not to need other instruments for the creation of the things that are made; and his own Word is fit and sufficient for the formation of all things, as also John the disciple of the Lord says of him: all things were made through him, and without him was made nothing. But in all things is this one also who is with us according to our manner. And this world therefore was made by his Word, as the Scripture of Genesis says, that God made all things that are with us through his Word. Likewise also David pursues it: for he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.

St. Epiphanius pursues the same error, Haeresis 22, and slays it both by the words of Moses: In the beginning God created heaven and earth, and by the oracle of Christ the Lord, Luke 10, where addressing the divine Father he calls him the Lord of heaven and of earth; whence he gathers: that if the creator of heaven and earth is God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in vain are all things bandied about by the impostor Simon, namely that the world was fabricated by the Angels with defect. He should also be seen in those things wherein he presses the case against Saturninus, the assertor of the same error. — Theodoret also impugns the same error, book 5 of the Haereticarum fabularum, chapter 4, and refutes it from the cited oracles both of the Old and of the New Testament. From the Old indeed he produces the aforesaid words of Moses, as also those of David, Psalm 32: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, etc. Then he adds:

All the prophets also teach us things consonant with these. And Isaias indeed cries out, chapter 42: Creating the heavens, and stretching them out: establishing the earth, and the things that spring from it: giving breath to the people that is upon the earth, and spirit to them that tread upon it... Nay even God himself says through him, chapter 11: I stretched out the heavens alone. But I have no need of prophetic voices. For before the law and the prophets nature taught men this. And that ancient Melchisedech, blessing Abraham, spoke thus, Gen. 14: Blessed be Abraham by the most high God, who created heaven and earth... The noble Job also, who before the law was given was illustrious in virtue, acknowledged the true God the Creator: Who, he says, stretcheth out the heavens alone, who walketh upon the sea as upon the ground. Job 9. — He adds from the New Testament. Let us hear therefore, he says, the divine John saying that all things were made through the Word; without him, he says, was made nothing. Let us hear also the divine Paul crying out: In him were created all things, visible and invisible. And when he preached in the Areopagus he said, Acts 17: God who made the world, and all things that are in it — since he is Lord of heaven and earth — dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is he worshipped with men's hands, needing anything, since he himself giveth to all life, and breath, and all things: and made of one blood all mankind to dwell upon the whole face of the earth.

St. Augustine should be seen on this matter, book 12 of De Civitate Dei, chapters 24 and 25, where he expressly proves that although the Angels at times serve God in producing, conserving, and governing creatures, these are yet to be ascribed not to them but to God:

For if, he says, in that species it ever is, as we say that all that Alexander had its founders: how much rather ought we to call none but God the founder of natures, who makes not otherwise out of matter; and if he withdraw, so to speak, his fabricative power from things, will they not so be not, as before they were made they were not? But I say before, by eternity, not by time. For who else is the Creator of times, but he who made those things by whose motions times run?

He inquires there whether the Angels served God in the creation of the world: but he leaves the question doubtful.

Moreover God founded creatures, not because he needed them, but because he is good; for, as Plato says in the Timaeus, no other reason was there with God for creating the world than the manifestation of his goodness: Let us seek therefore, he says, the cause which impelled him who contrived these things to seek an origin of things and a new workmanship: namely, that Goodness stood forth. Hence

Tertullian, book 2 of Adversus Marcionem, chapter 26, where inquiring into the reason by which God was induced to the production of the world: The first, he says, is the goodness of the Creator, which God willed not to lie hidden for eternity: that is, he willed there to be something by which he might be known: he subjoins: And he committed the same to his highest goodness, that it was about to appear as the trafficker of good; not indeed sudden, nor of a goodness that obtrudes itself, nor of a summons of oneness, as if it were to be judged from that point at which it began to work. It must however be observed that Moses expressed in Hebrew the aforesaid words created God thus: Bara Elohim, where the name Elohim of plural termination is joined to the singular verb Bara by a construction, as it seems, altogether unusual; as if the sense were, the Gods or Judges created. Whence the Master of the Sentences, book 1, distinction 2, says: Moses used this formula of speech, that he might shadow forth the mystery of the Trinity, and might signify the unity of essence, power, and operation in God, by the singular verb Bara; but the Trinity of persons by the name Elohim, which he judges to be a plural declined from El. But that exposition is slender and altogether meager. For Elohim is not derived from El; otherwise in the plural termination it would not be said Elohim, but Elim; nor indeed is it truly of the plural number, but common, although its termination be plural, as St. Jerome expressly teaches, epistle 136: We must know, he says, that Elohim is of common number, for both one God is so called and many; after the likeness of which, heaven also is called schamaim, that is, heavens. Thence also the interpreters often vary; an example of which thing we can have in our own language: Athenas, Thebas, Solonas etc., which although they have a plural termination, nevertheless express a singular thing; for neither were there many Athens, nor many Thebes etc. — Confirmation of this truth can be sought from the fact that that word is at one time construed with a plural, at another with a singular verb: with a plural indeed, thus 2 Kings, chapter 7 and 23, where in the Vulgate we read: And what one nation in the earth is like thy people Israel, for whom God went, to redeem them to himself for a people; in the Hebrew we read: halecu Elohim, that is, the Gods went. So also Genesis chapter 20, verse 13, and chapter 30, verse 7. With the singular however, as throughout the whole first chapter of Genesis, and often elsewhere. Further, if the word Elohim connoted plurality and in God a Trinity of persons, it would rightly be said that in God there are three Elohim, and presently three gods, or three judges; such is the signification of the word Elohim. But it is altogether absurd that the three divine persons should be called three gods, or three judges, as also three Lords; because, as the Symbol of St. Athanasius testifies, As we are compelled by Christian truth to confess each person by himself to be God and Lord; so we are prohibited by the catholic religion from saying three Gods or Lords. Moreover in the same chapter the word Elohim is found said of the single divine persons: for the divine Father, to whom omnipotence and the creation of heaven and earth are appropriated in the Symbol of faith, is called Elohim. Likewise the Son or Word of the Father is illustrated by the same name when it is said: Elohim said. Even the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Elohim, who moved over the waters. Therefore if Elohim by force of number embraces three persons, each divine person embraces the others, and so the Son will be the Son of himself, and the Holy Spirit the Spirit of himself: how absurd and false these consequences are, no one does not see. Finally the word Elohim imports plurality no more than the word Adonim, since the termination of each is plural. But the word Adonim is for the most part carried in Scripture of one only, as Genesis chapter 21, verse 9, and chapter 12, verse 30, and Isaias chapter 19, verse 4.

Perhaps someone will reply that the reason of the two words is not the same, inasmuch as the word Adonim, since it lacks a singular from which it might be declined, must needs be of common gender; but otherwise of the word Elohim, which is declined from Elouh. — But whoever objects these things does not advert that the word Adonim is in truth declined from the singular Adon, which is read Josue chapter 3, verse 2, and Mich. chapter 4, verse 2.

Therefore the aforesaid exposition of the word Elohim rests on no solid foundation. Wherefore I judge it must rather be said that it is either of common gender, or is here used by Moses in the plural after the manner of the Hebrew tongue, indeed also of human custom, whereby princes and magnates, by reason of the dignity and eminence whereby they excel others, speak of themselves in the plural; or are for the sake of honor and reverence addressed by inferiors in the number of multitude, as is even now in use among the French, as also among the Spaniards and Italians.

The Hebrews also raise here the question why Moses used the word Elohim rather than Iehova. R. Barnachman answers that he touched on it for this reason, that the word Elohim signifies the strength, power, and infinite fortitude of God, which was needed that he might wonderfully produce all things from nothing. But Iehova signifies the ineffable majesty of God, whereby he infinitely excels all creatures. The Cabbalists add that the sacred name Iehova chiefly signifies the mercy and goodness of God in the divine Letters; but the word Elohim his equity and justice, which he willed especially to be commended at the origin of things. For although the creation of the world be a work of the overflowing goodness of God pouring itself forth beyond the bosom of the divinity, as St. Basil expressly declares in his Homily on the Hexaemeron; nevertheless its constitution and ordering is a work of divine justice and righteousness(?), as Tertullian most excellently explains, book 2 of Adversus Marcionem, chapter 12, where he elegantly says: From the beginning the Creator was as good as he was just, both proceeding together; his goodness wrought the world, his justice tempered it: which even then judged that the world was to be made out of good things, because with the counsel of goodness he judged. It is a work of justice, that the separation pronounced between light and darkness, between day and night, between Heaven and Earth, between the upper and the lower water, between the surge of the sea and the mass of the dry land, between the greater and the lesser lights, of day and of night, between male and female, between the tree of the knowledge of death and of life, between the world and Paradise, between the water-born and the earth-born animals. All things as goodness conceived, so justice distinguished.

You ask 2. — What Moses understood by Heaven, and Earth?

I answer. Many of the Ancients judged those words to be a certain general utterance whereby Moses embraced summarily and as it were in compendium all things that are made by God, that at the outset of his discourse he might at once teach the Jews that the whole visible universe of things proceeded from God the Maker of the whole world; wherefore he pronounced thus: In the beginning God made heaven and earth, as if he should say, whatsoever you behold in the nature of things, and whatsoever the circuit of heaven and earth embraces, together with the sun itself and the earth, all that God fabricated at the beginning of times. Then indeed he describes, by parts and point by point, the order in which things were founded by God. Which exposition St. Gregory of Nyssa approved in his Hexaemeron, asserting that Moses, while he made mention of heaven and earth, did so as the extremes of all things that are conceived by the senses: so that when he said that the other things comprehended between them(?) were created by God, he might embrace all that which is contained within the extremes. — More distinctly indeed St. Cyril of Alexandria expounds this same opinion, book 2 contra Iulianum, page 51: When therefore, he says, Moses said: In the beginning God made heaven and earth, understand him summarily, and as it were with all things brought into a compendium, to set forth the creation of all things; then to proceed artfully to explain in what part the several things were adorned, that each created thing might chiefly have attained its proper existence: namely, he says, he founded all things by his most powerful Word. St. Basil also makes mention of this interpretation, Homily 3 on the Hexaemeron, page 33, although he dissents from it: It has been said, he says, expounding these words, by our predecessors, that this is not the creation of the second heaven, but a certain explanation of the former; for there the Scripture referred the creation of heaven and earth in sum: here however it more curiously delivers to us the reason by which each thing was made its element. But we say, since a diverse name and peculiar office of the second heaven has been handed down, that one must needs be other than that first which was made in the beginning, having a more solid nature, which furnishes to all things a pre-eminent utility. — St. Augustine also makes mention of this opinion, book 1 of De Genesi ad litteram chapter 3, and likewise book 1 contra adversarium legis, where he confesses it probable. The same likewise some of the Recentiers champion with Petavius, book 1 De Opificio chapter 2. — But to this interpretation the recital of Moses of the things made by God at the beginning of the world conflicts: for his purpose was to relate the heads and chief kinds of things in the order in which they were procreated. Moreover if by the words heaven and earth he did not set forth the distinct creation of each made on the first day of the world, he would have omitted the formation of those chiefest parts of the world: for neither does he afterwards make mention of their creation. — God indeed commands that the firmament be made on the second day, which straightway existed; but that procreation of the firmament supposes that the formation of heaven and earth and of the waters subsisting in the earth had already taken place, since when unto the end it is commanded that the firmament be made, that it divide the waters from the waters, already therefore the waters existed, and presently the earth their support and center. Moreover on the first day of the world the earth was void and empty, and the Spirit of the Lord moved over the waters; therefore on that day the earth was already produced, and the waters existed, the same earth an abyss surrounded with darkness, constituting the same globe. Then if here the procreation of the earth be not recited, the consequence will be that it was omitted by Moses, since its formation is not distinctly recited elsewhere. God indeed commanded on the third day of the world that the earth bring forth the green herb, but not that it exist. I ask however on what day it was founded, if not on that first day on which God created heaven and earth? Finally when God commanded that light be made, either heaven and earth already existed, or they were procreated together with the light, or that primordial light occupied and irradiated void and imaginary spaces; which last no arbiter, unless of unsettled mind, will affirm. It must needs be therefore confessed that heaven and earth were founded on the first day of the world together with that primordial light.

St. Augustine furnishes three other expositions of the aforesaid words: the first indeed, book 12. Confessionum, c. 7. where by Heaven he interprets the angelic nature: by Earth truly the corporeal nature; so that he willed God from the beginning to have founded two things as it were the two extremes of the whole of being: one the highest, and next to God, namely the angelic nature: the other the lowest, and next to nothing, which are corporeal things, and prime matter. Secondly the same, in the book De Genesi contra Manichaeos chapter 7. Heaven, and Earth, he says, is here called prime matter from the fact that out of it Heaven was to be produced on the second day, and Earth on the third. But he judges the matter first to have been formless, then formed. Thirdly, in the book De Genesi ad litteram chapter 15, he thus opens his mind, and subjoins the third exposition of the words, writing thus: In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth, etc. Not because formless matter is prior in time to things formed: since both were created together, both that of which it was made, and that which was made. For as the word matter is of the words, but the words indicate the formed word: not however does the speaker first send forth a formless voice, which he may afterwards gather and form into a word: so God the Creator did not first make in time formless matter, and afterwards form it through the order of whatsoever natures, as it were by a second consideration: for he created matter formed; namely because that of which anything is made, although not prior in time, yet by a certain origin is prior to that which is made from it. Scripture could diversify the times of speaking, which God did not distinguish in the times of doing: for if it be asked whether we make words of the voice or of the word, no one is easily found of so dull a wit who would not rather prefer that words are made of the voice: so since the speaker makes both together, what he makes from what sufficiently appears by natural attention. Wherefore since God made both together, both the matter which he formed, and the things into which he formed it, and both ought to have been said by Scripture, nor both at once... [the exposition is pursued] — it is attributed to Severianus bishop of the Gabali, book 1 De Mundi creatione, where when he had said: in six days all things were created by God: nevertheless the first day differs from the rest that follow. For on the first day God made, whatsoever he made, out of non-beings: but from the second day onward he made nothing out of non-beings, but out of those which he had created on the first day he changed them as he willed; he concludes: Therefore on the first day God created the matters of things: but on the remaining days he cast their forms and ornament or distinction. Nor is St. Gregory of Nyssa far removed from this opinion, in his Hexaemeron, page 8, who hands down that at the beginning there existed not the corporeal things themselves, but only the seeds of things and of bodies: ⟦Thus, he says, certain powers existed in that first act of God created(?), joined to the reasons of seeds⟧; yet so that the several things were not yet in act. That exposition moreover St. Augustine delivers and champions in many places, especially book 1 of De Genesi contra Manichaeos chapter 5.: The first matter, he says, was made confused and formless, whence would come all things which are distinct and formed, which I believe was called by the Greeks chaos... And yet God is most rightly believed to have made all things of nothing; because even if all things formed were made of that matter, this matter itself nevertheless was made of altogether nothing. He then opens why that matter is Heaven and Earth: not because, he says, it was already there, but because it could be so: for Heaven also is written to have been made afterwards: just as if considering the seed of a tree we should say that there are the roots, and the trunk and the branches, and the fruits and the leaves, not because they already are, but because from it they are to be, etc. The same he holds, book 12. Confessionum, c. 7., 8 and 12., and in the imperfect work De Genesi ad litteram. Which interpretation Bede in his Commentary embraces, and Isidore book 1 De Differ. chapter 9. — But this interpretation altogether abhors the opinions of the Philosophers, especially of those who judge that matter never existed separate from form, nor can exist even by divine power. There are added the reasons previously adduced, by which this opinion no less than the preceding is prostrated; above all because if heaven and earth, the element, were not created in the very beginning of things, it will be necessary that their formation was omitted by Moses; for neither was the earth founded on the third day; for on that day we read indeed that God said, not that the earth should become, but that the dry should appear, and germinate; that is, that what was covered and buried by the waters should become dried, and a fit place of generation both of plants and of animals. Therefore, says St. Basil, homily 2, page 19, God made heaven and earth, not by halves each, but the whole heaven and the whole earth; the very essence, I say, or matter he made comprehended with form. For God is not the inventor of figures, but the Creator of the very nature of things.

BUT YOU WILL SAY, heaven and earth and all things that are in them. That God made out of nothing the Scripture sacred for the most part testifies, Wisd. 11, verse 17; Isai. 45, verse 7; and 2 Machab. 1, verse 20(?); certainly for no other reason than because God at the beginning created prime matter out of nothing, or out of no pre-existing subject; but the rest he then fashioned out of it. The production therefore of that matter was shadowed forth under the words heaven and earth. — I answer that God could as easily fashion out of nothing heaven and earth, consisting of their own matter and their own forms, as the prime matter itself void of forms. For if by hypothesis matter had pre-existed, he could have educed from it the forms of heaven and earth; why not create these together with it? Moreover that it was so made the very text of Scripture persuades, which distinctly relates not prime matter, from which heaven and earth proceeded; but heaven and earth created at the beginning.

Perhaps someone will press the case with Hermogenes, in Tertullian, book adversus Hermogenem chapter 21: if therefore we say that all things were made out of nothing because no mention is made of matter out of which they are feigned to have been procreated; in turn it can be contended that all things were made out of matter, because Moses does not openly signify that any things were procreated out of nothing. — Tertullian answers that the cause is diverse in each case:

For although, he says, Scripture has not openly pronounced that all things were made out of nothing, just as neither out of matter, I say there was not so great a necessity of openly signifying that all things were made out of nothing, as there would have been if they had been made out of matter. Because what is made out of nothing, while it is not shown to have been made out of something, is manifested to have been made out of nothing: and it does not run the risk of being judged made out of something, when it is not demonstrated out of what it was made. But what is made out of something, unless this very thing be openly declared, that it was made out of something — while out of what it was made is shown — it will run the risk of first seeming to have been made out of nothing, because it is not published out of what it was made. These things said he; by which he plainly indicates sufficiently that heaven and earth can rightly be said to have been procreated out of nothing, since mention is made of no matter out of which they were made.

From these things therefore it may be gathered that by the words heaven and earth it was signified by Moses without any figure that heaven and earth were in truth founded on the first day of the world: but that out of them, as it were out of matter and seeds, the rest both celestial and terrestrial were produced; especially if we confess that water with earth constituted the same mass. Whence those two chief parts of the world alone were procreated out of nothing; the others indeed were formed out of them pre-existing. Wherefore Moses preferred heaven to earth, Theophilus of Antioch most excellently explains, book 2 ad Autolycum, saying that it was so done that the omnipotence of God the Artificer might be commended; For man, he says, who is situated in the lowest region of the world begins to build from the earth, nor can he construct the roof unless the foundation be laid. But the power of God in this is shown: that out of the very things that exist not, he first creates all things according to his will. For the things that are impossible with men are possible with God. Therefore the prophet said that the fabrication of the heavens was made first, because it was as it were the roof, speaking thus: in the beginning God made heaven; that is, by the beginning heaven was made: as I showed above.

That however a fuller and more distinct knowledge may be had of the aforesaid words of Moses concerning the production of heaven and earth, these two words must be weighed point by point.

HEAVEN. — Since in sacred Scripture the acceptation of this word is manifold, that the Interpreters might set forth its evident signification, they distinguished a threefold heaven, of which the first they called the aerial, namely the space of the air encompassing earth and water and expanded to the sphere of fire (if there be one) or to the orb of the lower planet. The second the aetherial, distinguished into several orbs of the planets. The third finally is that dwelling of the blessed minds, therefore called the empyrean heaven, because it shines and resplends after the manner of fire. To which division St. Paul seems to have been precedent when in II ad Cor. chapter 12 he says that he was rapt unto the third heaven, and heard arcane words which it is not lawful for mortal man to utter. Where by the third heaven he seems to signify that dwelling of the Angels and holy Souls, which the sacred Interpreters place in the empyrean heaven. It is asked however which of these Moses willed to signify by the name of heaven. — There are those who judge that by him was designated namely the empyrean, which is the dwelling of the Angels and of the Blessed, far removed from the sight of men, and named by Scripture the heaven of heavens and the seat of God. Thus thought Severianus of Gabala, Oration 1 De Creatione mundi: He created heaven, he says, when it was not: not this heaven, but that which is above: for this was founded only on the other day. God created the higher heaven, of which David says: The heaven of heavens is the Lord's. The same judge St. John Damascene, book 2, chapter 6; Beda, and very many others. — But since Moses tempered his words and opinions to the capacity of the rustic and dull Jewish people, it is not likely, says Petavius book 1 chapter 2, that he willed at the very outset of the book that another thing be understood by the name of heaven, than what commonly all learned and unlearned subject to that word, and what is more often expressed in the sacred Scriptures. But that highest heaven is discerned by no senses, nor is it established otherwise than by authority alone and the opinion of the Doctors. Then that heaven which they call empyrean is thought to be incorruptible and immutable, inasmuch as it is to be forever the dwelling of blessed minds: and it seems not to have had that lucidity of the latter, because it has splendor, and as it were the dowries of a glorious body. Therefore if that empyrean heaven were created together with the earth on the first day of the world, since between it and the earth there interposed a great abyss, why did it not irradiate the latter, nor put to flight the darkness which covered it? — The Angelic Doctor thinks himself to solve this instance, part 1, question 66, article 3, ad 1, saying that therefore the splendor of that heaven did not dispel the gloom of the nascent orb, because, lacking density, it emits no rays. Molina adds, disputation 3, that that heaven, in the part wherein it is nearest to the other orbs, is overlaid with a curtain and thick with opacity; whence it comes to pass that its clearness cannot be seen, nor does it cast forth light and influence outward; nor does it serve the generation and conservation of nascent things, but only the habitation and delectation of blessed minds. But as gratuitously as these things are feigned, so easily are they rejected as vain fictions. — Hence also is refuted the ludicrous and vain fiction of Abeuchus Eugubinus at the beginning of his cosmopoeia, wherein, swept away into a freer speculation, he did not doubt to assert that the empyrean heaven is eternal, inasmuch as it is the seat of God and the throne of his divine Majesty. For if the empyrean heaven be anything (as in truth it is) distinct from God, it is heretical to establish that it is coeternal with God, and not made by him, through whom all things were made; which error also the royal Poet condemns when he says: praise the Lord, ye heavens of heavens, by which words he designates the empyrean heaven; but straightway he subjoins: he spoke, and they were made, etc. Nor does the reason of Steuchus urge anything; for the throne of God is therefore called eternal, because his kingdom shall stand for eternity, nor shall it be subject to any mutation after the manner of earthly kingdoms. — Therefore the opinion of those seems to me more likely who think that on the first day of the world the celestial orbs were founded, which God afterwards willed to adorn with the light of stars and astral bodies, and likewise with solidity and firmness, that they might become fit receptacles and vehicles of the stars, and might by their influence and splendor quicken the interior parts of the world which they encompass. For this the Hebrew word schamaim connotes, by which heavens, several, at least two, are indicated. Nor does it stand in the way that on the second day God commands the firmament to be made which he calls heaven; for it would be permitted to reply: that so far the celestials were created procreated on the first day, in that they in truth received existence, but their substance was fluid and as it were watery; for that properly the word schamaim signifies; for the word seems to be compounded of the letter sch and maim, that is, waters, or which(?) are waters, or of schum and maim, that is, there are waters. But on the second day they received solidity and firmness after the manner of crystal, that they might become fit to sustain the supercelestial waters.

From all these things it may be gathered that on the first day of the world not only light, but also in truth heaven and earth together with the other three elements were procreated, as St. Basil expressly explains, hom. 1, page 10:

Whereas Moses says: in the beginning God made heaven and earth, he, he says, intimates the origin of the Universe from two principles: granting to Heaven indeed the prerogative of generation: but establishing the earth second in origin. But whatsoever is the mean of these arose altogether with the same bounds with them. Therefore although he said nothing of the other elements — of fire, I say, water, and air — he nevertheless by his own subtle ingenuity willed them to be understood. First indeed because in all things all things are commingled: and so in earth you will find water, air, and fire. For even as from flint so from iron, which draw their origin from the earth, fire issues forth, emerging from copious frictions and shining forth. Where it is worthy also of admiration, in what manner, since fire lies hid unharmed within those very bodies, the same when it has gone forth consumes those very things by which it was until then preserved. But that water is innate by nature to the earth itself, those demonstrate who dig wells; and that the nature of air likewise inheres in the same earth, those vapors themselves, which we behold rising from the earth moistened and warmed by the sun, and borne upward. These things said he.

Wherefore, says Franciscus Valesius, in the book De sacra philosophia chapter 1, on the first day was made the whole sphere of generable and corruptible things, consisting of the bodies of the Elements: earth, I say, air, and fire: those indeed neither pure, and retaining their sincerest natures, nor set apart, and colored by order, nor illustrated by any celestial light, but commingled with water and earth within the obscure air, and within all these, fire invisibly enclosed, which among the rest warmed the waters, and rendered them fluid, lest they congeal with cold; and night and this chaos existed, God made light, through which those bodies were rendered visible, and the first day was touched.

So Valesius: by which he signifies that as Moses by the name of heaven embraced all the celestial orbs, so by the name of earth he declared the production of all the elements, of which the earth seems the support and in part the dwelling; for all the elements are commingled with the earth, for it embraces fire, air, and water in its bosom and its caves and grottoes.

Hence it appears what Moses willed to signify by this word:

AND EARTH. — For by the name of earth he narrated at least implicitly the production of the four elements, which together with the earth were created at the beginning of the world, the royal Poet saying, ps. 101: In the beginning thou, O Lord, didst found the earth. Or as the Hebrew text has: Before and before other things. Whence the opinion of those must be disapproved who will that by the name earth was signified by Moses prime matter, out of which all sublunary bodies consisted. For in truth, if the earth, the element, was not created in the very beginning of things, it will be necessary that its formation was passed over by Moses. For neither, as some think, was it founded on the third day: for on that day we read indeed that God said, not that the earth should become, but that the dry should appear; that is, that what was covered and buried by the waters should become dried, and a fit place of generation both of plants and of animals. Therefore, says St. Basil, homily 2, page 19, God made heaven and earth, not by halves each, but the whole heaven and the whole earth; the very essence, I say, or matter he made comprehended with form. For God is not the inventor of figures, but the Creator of the very nature of things.

Proceed: what Moses willed to signify by these words added: And the earth was void and empty?

I answer. That this expression is made up of those two Hebrew words Thohu va-bohu, which the Seventy Interpreters render ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος, that is, invisible, or unseeable, and formless, the Wise Man also confirms, when he says, chapter 11, 18: Thy almighty hand made the world of matter without form, in Greek ἐξ ἀμόρφου ὕλης, that is, out of hyle, or formless matter. Hence St. Augustine, book 11. Confessionum, c. 6 and 8: Thou, O Lord, hast made the world of formless matter, which Thou didst make of nothing, hardly any thing so great(?), etc. Aquila however translates it: vanity and nothing; Symmachus: useless and undigested; Theodotion: empty and nothingness; the Paraphrase of Onkelos: desolate and blind; Pagninus: desolate and nothing; Ionathas: empty of men and of beasts of burden; which St. Basil, homily 2, explains thus: The earth, he says, is called invisible, not because there was not yet anyone who could behold and contemplate it, or who could not do so at that time, since it was plainly immersed in the waters, which, floating upon its surface, had covered it over on every side(?); add to this that light had not yet arisen: in whose absence it seems hardly wonderful that the earth situated in the middle part of the world was invisible, and this very thing was also said by Sacred Scripture, because with the air diffused everywhere over it, it would lack light. Therefore the earth is said at the beginning to be invisible or formless, because it was covered with waters, and shrouded in darkness, and thus, on account of the mist diffused around it and the most profound abysses of the waters, could not be seen, especially since it was still bereft of its beauty and ornament, which it obtained only on the third day. Moses therefore rightly expressed this by those two words thohu va-bohu: for the Hebrews use them when they wish to designate something empty and confused, invisible and formless. Thus in that sense those words are used in 1 Kings, chapter 12: Do not go aside after vanities, which shall not profit you; neither follow them, for they are vanities, namely idols and vain divinities, Bohu. — Severianus, bishop of Gabala, weighs these points thus in his second Oration On the creation of the world:

The earth, he says, is called invisible. The Interpreters have clearly expounded this. For Aquila says: But the earth was vanity and nothing. It is called invisible, as it were unseeable, not that it did not appear, but as if one should say that it lacked ornament. It was not yet planted with shoots of a glad countenance, not yet crowned with fruits, not yet anointed with rivers and swelling streams, not yet adorned with various other ornaments; and it was inconspicuous, ἀόρατος, namely not yet prepared so as to be fit for bringing forth from itself plants and crops. Scripture says of a certain man strong and of elegant form, Exodus 2. 14: Is not this he who struck the Egyptian man χοπάρων? Is the man then invisible? But he is worthy, he says, to be seen and beheld. Therefore just as he called the Egyptian the visible man, as worthy to be seen, so also he named the earth formless, invisible." So much for him.

Tohu indeed is the same as empty, nothingness. Hence Isaias, chapter 34, prophesying the fall of Babylon, which he foretells is to be reduced to nothing, uses these words: And there shall be stretched over her the measuring line to reduce her to nothing, and the plummet to desolation; writing for nothing and desolation, or emptiness and vacuity, Thohu and Bohu. Similarly Jeremias, chapter 4: I looked upon the earth, and behold it was void and nothing, where for void and nothing, in Hebrew it is Thohu and Bohu. Hence those two words, though slightly different in pronunciation, are nevertheless almost identical in sense. Wherefore in the sacred Text they are written together on account of the equipollence of their signification. Moses therefore used these words aptly, that he might disclose what sort the first state of the earth had been. For it was without light, without any ornament or beauty; empty of men, of living things, and of plants; not divided into mountains, valleys, plains, and hills; not rising up and standing forth above the waters, but covered on every side most deeply by the waters; finally such that it could truly be called invisible and formless matter; for thus it is called in the book of Wisdom, chapter 11, where it is said that the hand of God made the round world of matter invisible, or formless.

Therefore by those words of his, In the beginning God created heaven and earth, Moses supplied arms for the refutation and overthrow of the triple error that afterwards arose: first indeed that of the Philosophers, who feigned the world eternal; second, that of the Manichaeans and Marcionites, who assert that there are two principles of created things, one good, namely God the best and greatest, from whom only spiritual and immaterial things were founded, the other most evil, from whom material things subject to corruption were procreated; thirdly finally that of those heretics who attribute the production of certain spiritual things to God, but assign the procreation of others to Angels or to other fabricated principles. The first error Moses proscribes with these words: In the beginning God; for St. Basil says, homily 1: Because many of those who held that the world existed from eternity together with God, opined that it was not made by Him Himself, but was as it were a certain shadowing forth of His power, asserted that it emerged of its own accord, as it were a self-appointed arbiter; and they confess indeed that God is its cause, but a cause not concurring by will: but just as the body is the cause of the shadow, and light of splendor; therefore prophecy, perceiving such an error, used this most exact structure of words: In the beginning God created, etc.

Hence also the error of the Platonists is proscribed — those who judged God to be indeed the artificer of heavenly things and of the intelligences, but that the authors of the lower parts of the world were lesser gods, whom they called daimones. Plato had gone before them, for speaking in the Timaeus about the lesser gods, he reports the supreme God addressing them thus: "Attend to these things, you who are sprung from the seed of the gods: I am the parent and maker of those works of mine which, having been made through me, are indissoluble, insofar indeed as I will. Although every thing bound can be loosed; yet it is by no means good, when reason is bound by reason, to wish to dissolve it. Wherefore since you have come into being, you cannot be immortal and indissolible; nevertheless you shall by no means be dissolved: neither shall any fates of death destroy you, nor any fraud prevail stronger than my counsel: which is a greater bond unto your perpetuity than those by which you were bound when you were being born. Know therefore what I judge. There remain for us three kinds, and these generated and mortal; unless these be provided, the completion of heaven will not be perfected: for it will not hold within its embrace all kinds of animals; yet it must hold them, if the world is to be altogether perfect. But if these were made by me alone, and endowed with life, they would be equal to the gods. That therefore they may be begotten under a mortal condition, and that this whole may be complete with all its parts, come now, turn yourselves from the laws of nature to the procreation of animals, and imitate the power which I employed in your birth. And insofar as they are created such that they ought to be called, like the immortal gods, of divine race, and hold the principality of all living things, and obey you and your law, I will give you the seed and the state of their origin. But you, weave together the mortal part with the immortal, as much of the task remains to you. And so make living animals, and nourish and increase them with allotted foods, until you receive them again consumed." Thus Plato. Which words, however, as John Serranus, his interpreter, says, are not to be received as if he wished God to commit the making of material things to Angels, as the aforementioned heretics prated, but only so that by this figure of speech assumed he might more effectively represent that God reserved to Himself alone the authority of creating souls, lest we judge — according to the opinion of madmen — that either Angels or the influxes of the stars have any power over our souls: and that He committed the generation of material things to other creatures, whence that physical axiom: the sun and man generate man: which doctrine of Plato seems wholly drawn from the first chapter of Genesis, where God commands the earth to bring forth the green herb, and the waters to bring forth reptile of living soul and fowl; and men to increase and multiply the human race.

YOU ASK AGAIN : why God, creating Heaven and Earth on the first day, did not adorn both at once fully and perfectly?

I answer. The first cause is His holy will; but the congruent reason is, that nature (whose Creator He is) proceeds from imperfect things to more perfect ones. The second is, that we might thereby learn that all things depend on God both as regards their initiation, and as regards their adornment and perfection; and that there is nothing in created things so imperfect — sin excluded — of which God is not the author. The third is, that we might, in imitation of the divine work, keep the same order in operating and perfecting. The fourth, lest if all things were read to be perfect from the beginning, they might be thought uncreated. Which reason St. Ambrose weighs excellently well, book 1 of the Hexaemeron, chapter 7. Why, he says, did not God, as He said and it was done, at once bestow upon the elements ornaments congruent to the things arising, as if He could not have made Heaven suddenly gleam, as soon as created, studded with stars, and the earth clothed with flowers and fruits? He could indeed; but therefore things are declared to be made first and afterwards composed, lest they be believed truly uncreated and without beginning, if the forms of things appeared as ingenerated from the beginning, and not added afterwards. An incomposed earth is read of, and honored by the Philosophers with the same privileges of eternity as God: what would they have said if its beauty had remained from the beginning! Sunk beneath the waters it is described, as devoted as it were to the shipwreck of its own beginnings, and hence believed by some not to have been made: what if it claimed its firstborn beauty? To this is added that God willed us to be imitators of Himself, that we should do something first, and renew it afterwards: nay rather, that if we undertake both at once, we can accomplish neither. Moreover our faith grows by degrees: therefore God first made, afterwards adorned, that we might believe that He is the same who made and has made, who adorned; lest we think one being adorned, another created: but that the same One wrought both, so as to make first and afterwards compose, lest the one be believed wanting to the other.

The same St. Chrysostom teaches, Homily 5. Common, he says, is the table, common nurse and parent of all is the earth, common city, and common sepulchre: for even our bodies are from it; thence aliments are supplied to our bodies; therein we dwell and abide; and after death access to it again lies open. Lest perhaps, therefore, the necessity of the convenience taken from it should make you love it beyond its desert, and the multitude of benefits cast you down into impiety, it demonstrates to you that before you were, it was formless and unordered.

QUESTION IV. — What is signified by these words : Darkness was upon the face of the deep ?

I answer, that by those words is signified that immense mass of waters by which it, as it were a deep, covered the earth, and extended even up to the Empyrean Heaven, and was illuminated by no light, since light had not yet been created, but darkness and mist possessed all things. For the abyss, says St. Basil, hom. 2, is abundant water, whose depth cannot easily be penetrated downward; or, as St. Aug. speaks on Psal. 11: The abyss is a depth impenetrable and incomprehensible; and it is wont rightly to be said of waters; for there is height where there is profundity, which cannot be penetrated down to the bottom: and hence, by a drawn similitude, Scripture calls the judgments of God a great abyss, because they are incomprehensible to human reason and understanding. — That however there was on the very first day of all things an immense magnitude and profundity of waters is not to be doubted; since, as Bede says, all that space of the world which lies between the Earth and the Empyrean Heaven was occupied by waters, that is, by a certain humid and aqueous matter, and as it were cloudy; not equally dense or rare, but such that, more densely compacted, it could be turned into elementary water, and, more attenuated, grow rare into air; and out of which, by a marvelous manner of concretion, even the celestial orbs were fashioned. Further, the surface of this liquid matter, both outermost and innermost, which the Hebrews call the face, had absolutely nothing of light, whence also nothing of color; but the whole, great as it was, both within and without, everywhere was dark, misty, and discolored.

Sererianus, bishop of Gabala, asks by what means the darkness was superinfused at the beginning of the world upon the face of the deep; for God, he says, did not make them, seeing that He is the author neither of darkness nor of mist: for God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all, 1 John 1. — He answers: "I thus judge that water covered the surface of the earth, and a dense obscurity and mist had stood about the waters (as is known even now in rivers); that obscurity and fog exciting a mist had made clouds; and overshadowing clouds, darkness. That a cloud excites darkness Scripture teaches: And the heaven was darkened with clouds, 1 Kings 18." So much for him.

YOU ASK : why that space was filled rather with water than with any other body?

I answer, that several congruent reasons can be brought forward for this. The first, that since the other things were to be produced out of that intermediate body, nothing could have been constituted there more fitting than water; since for new generations the humid and thicker concurs especially; for, says Bonfrerius, moisture is held to be the mother of generation, wherein matter as it were plays the passive role in the generations of things, heat concurring as it were as father, preparing and moistening and acting more actively.

The second reason, because water, as it were a kind of medium, easily admits either condensation, as appears in ice, or rarefaction, as when it passes into vapors; therefore there ought to be a body of this kind, out of which the celestial bodies could be compacted, and fire and air, as rarer and more fluid bodies, could be expressed.

The third reason finally was, lest God be compelled to annihilate something of matter once created, or to produce anew a fresh matter, which would be matter for the production of the remaining things: for if He had filled that space with some rarer body, for example, air, it would not have been sufficient for forming the solid bodies of the Heavens; and thus matter would have had to be created anew, which had not been rarefied into air or into fire; and therefore, lest anything be superfluous in the nature of things, it behooved the body chosen by God to have been such as would suffice for compacting the solid Heavens, and, with the greater part of the matter consumed in them, the remainder would pass into fire and air.

From these things it is established that water was created by God at the first together with the earth and the Empyrean Heaven; and very many affirm with St. Basil, Homil. 2, that the other two elements were co-created together with those two, where he says: It is still laughable that the other three elements are held to be contained in manifold ways within the earth: for that fire lies hidden within the earth the perpetual eruption of flames and of sulphur, as from Mount Aetna and other places, and the eruption from the earth of the fiery heat of the boiling of many waters sufficiently indicates. How much air the earth holds within its bowels the frequent earthquakes, on account of the spirit shut up and buffeted within, are indices: to say nothing of the interior caverns and grottoes filled by the earth with much air. But how great a force of waters is contained in the inner embrace of the earth, the perennial gushings of fountains, the origins of rivers, and also the overflowing of wells, openly show. It is therefore established that the other two elements were co-created together with the earth and water. Nor does it matter that Moses makes no mention of them; since he wrote for an uncultivated people, he set forth only two elements, namely earth and water, because these alone fall under sight, and out of them the other bodies are manifestly composed for the most part, and abide in them as in their natural place. The aforementioned bishop of Gabala subjoins another reason in the same Oration 1., namely that just as Moses, in recounting the creation of man, did not enumerate one by one the individual members of the body as made by God, but judged it sufficient to assert that man was formed by God; so, in describing the Genesis of the world, he embraced the creation of the four elements together with the formation of the earth, in whose bosom they are contained. His words are: Just as in the body he did not say all the members, so neither in the creation, although they were put forth together with the fabric of the world, did he pass through all things. But if there were no fire in the earth, we would not now carve fire out of flint or out of wood. For wood struck by friction generates fire; and whence would it generate it, if it were not in nature?

QUESTION V. — What do these following words indicate : The Spirit of the Lord moved over the waters ?

I answer, that the Hebrew word ruach, which the Vulgate Interpreter renders by the name Spirit, has in Scripture a varied and manifold signification. First indeed it sounds as breath: thus Psal. 135, v. 17: There is no spirit in their mouth. Secondly the same as the powers of the mind: thus Josue 2: Our heart fainted, nor did there remain in me spirit. Thirdly it is taken for knowledge and prudence of mind; thus Job 32, 8: The spirit is in men, and the inspiration of the Omnipotent giveth understanding. Fourthly for the sentiment of the mind and good will; thus Num. 14, 21: My servant Caleb, who followed me full of another spirit, I will bring into this land which he hath compassed about. Fifthly for appetite; thus Prov. 16, 32: He who rules his spirit (in Hebrew ruach) is better, that is stronger, than he who taketh cities. And Isaias 38, 2: his spirit shall consume him as fire (sic). Sixthly it signifies the soul itself of man and of brutes; thus Ecclesiastes 111., 21: Who knoweth if the spirit of the sons of Adam ascend upward, and if the spirit of the beasts descend downward? Seventhly it signifies the wind, which is for the most part called the spirit of the Lord in Sacred Scripture; thus Exod. 16: He blew with his spirit and covered them with the sea. And Psal. 147: He shall send forth his spirit, and the waters shall flow. Finally by that word the Holy Spirit is designated; thus very many Fathers interpret this verse of the Psalmist, Psal. 103: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of his mouth all their power.

These things thus premised, there is a threefold principal exposition of the aforesaid words. The first indeed is that of Tertullian against Hermogenes on Genesis, of Severianus the Gabalite in Oration 1., and of many others with the Hebrews, who judge that by the word spirit is signified the wind which at the beginning of the world blew most vehemently over the waters, that by that means the creation itself might be made known; for since the common uninstructed multitude apprehends the air only from its motion, they could not have judged it to have been created in the beginning of the world, unless they had heard it, by its own agitation, breathing back and hovering over the waters. — The second interpretation is that by Spirit is understood a certain power implanted in the waters for the exercise of their fecundity; for it is frequent in Scripture that by Spirit is signified a certain sudden and extraordinary motion of God, for the accomplishing of something great and eminent. Thus in Judges 11 we read that the spirit of the Lord rushed upon Sampson, and he tore apart a lion: and 1 Kings 11 the same Spirit rushed upon Saul, and he cut down Borem. And therefore they think Moses wished to signify that that power and efficacy of God was present with the waters, that it might be made known that all things whatsoever are afterwards narrated to have been made out of the waters in an instant of time by the command of God, were not made by the native faculty and power of the waters, but by the supernatural virtue of God, which through that infused power was in the waters. — The third finally, and almost the opinion approved by the consensus of all the holy Fathers, is that by the Spirit of God is principally signified the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son, whose virtue brooded over the waters to render them fruitful, and to impart to them prolific power: for although it be common to the whole Most Holy Trinity, and undivided, to operate ad extra; nevertheless, because the power of vivifying is appropriated to the Holy Spirit, who is therefore called the vivifying Spirit, therefore that prolific virtue impressed upon the water is attributed to Him. Thus St. Basil, homil. 2: it has been approved by our forefathers, he says, that Scripture calls the Spirit of God here nothing else than the Holy Spirit Himself, who completes the number of the divine and blessed Trinity. The same is the sense of other more recent Fathers, praised a little below.

The authority of the Church also accedes, which in the blessing of fountains thus chants concerning the Holy Spirit: O God, whose Spirit over the waters in the very beginnings of the world was borne, even then conceived in the nature of the waters the power of sanctification. Which Tertullian explains excellently well in the book De Baptismo, who thus commends the dignity of the waters, chapter 3, where weighing the aforesaid words of Genesis, The Spirit of the Lord was borne over the waters, he says: You have, O man, first of all to venerate the antiquity of the waters, in that they are an ancient substance; hence the dignity, in that they were the seat of the divine Spirit, more pleasing of course then than the other elements; for the darknesses were still wholly unadorned, lacking the cult of the stars, and the abyss was sad, and the earth unprepared, and the Heaven not yet: the liquid alone, ever perfect matter, glad, simple, pure of itself, offered itself as a vehicle worthy of God. What of the fact that thence God constituted the waters, in a manner the modulators, of the disposition of the world? For in order that He might suspend the firmament of heaven in the midst, He made it with waters divided; and that He might suspend the dry land, He expedited it with waters gathered apart. When the world had been ordered thence through the elements, and inhabitants were to be given, it was commanded to the first waters to bring forth souls. The first liquid brought forth that birds might live, lest it be a marvel in baptism if the waters know how to animate. — But that the Spirit of the Lord is said to have been borne over the waters, that it may be signified, says the aforementioned St. Basil, the same as that He cherished, and imparted to the nature of the waters vital fecundity. St. Augustine subscribes to these, book 1 of De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 18, where he writes: That which in the Greek and Latin tongue has been said of the Spirit of God, that He was borne over the waters, according to the understanding of the Syriac tongue, which is neighbor to the Hebrew — for this is reported to have been expounded by a certain learned Christian Syrian — is held to be understood not that He was borne above, but rather that He cherished. Not as swellings or ulcers are cherished in the body with waters tempered either with cold or with congruent heat; but as eggs are cherished with broodings, wherein any heat of the maternal body is in a manner an aid in forming the young, through a certain effect of love in its own genus. St. Jerome concurs in this, Quaestiones In Genesim. For that, he says, which in our codices is written, ferebatur, in the Hebrew has Merachefeth, which we can call incubabat, thus we understand it is not said of the spirit of the world, as some judge, but of the Holy Spirit, who as He Himself is vivifier, consequently also Founder; or if you please, Founder and God. For send forth, He says, Thy Spirit and they shall be created.

Which exposition Claudius Victor thus elegantly expressed in book 2 of In Genes., in these verses:

And the holy Spirit, brooding over the outstretched waves, Was animating the fostering waters, and to the seeds of things Not yet to be poured forth into shoots upon lands uncomposed He gave them, to be insinuated.

To these accedes the Venerable Bede in the Hexaemeron, where he thus says: The Spirit of the Lord was borne over the waters, not with corporeal breathings, but with excellent power: because whatever He had thereafter begun to be formed and perfected lay subject to the will of the Creator. Tostatus interprets thus: The will and mind of God the artificer was borne over the waters: as it were penetrating with His mind, and designating what of those things which He had established He was to make out of the waters, in the similitude of a human artificer beholding and considering the matter subject to him, how from it a work can be fashioned according to the similitude of that form which he has conceived and formed in his mind. — Tertullian, aforementioned, adds, chapter 4, that therefore the Spirit of God was borne aloft over the waters, that He might impart to them His sanctity: The Holy, he says, assuredly was borne over the holy, and from that which was borne above, that which was borne borrowed sanctity. Since whatever subject matter upon which anything impends from above necessarily snatches its quality: especially a corporeal one from a spiritual, easy both to penetrate and to indwell through the subtlety of its substance: thus from the holy the natures of the waters sanctified, and itself conceived sanctifying. St. Jerome subscribes to him, epist. 83 ad Oceanum. The world was still formless (he says), nor yet was the sun glowing red, nor the moon pale, nor the stars twinkling; an unordered and invisible matter the magnitude of the abysses and deformed darknesses oppressed. The Spirit of God alone, in the manner of a charioteer, was borne over the waters, and was bringing forth the nascent world in the figure of baptism. — But it is to be noted here that Moses made mention of the Holy Spirit significantly, that namely he might expressly designate the mystery of the Trinity and the three divine Persons. For just as (as St. Aug. says, book 1 of De Gen. ad litteram, c. 6.) in the very beginning of the creature begun, which is commemorated under the name of Heaven and Earth on account of that which was to be perfected out of it, the Trinity of the Creator is intimated: for Scripture saying, in the beginning God created Heaven and Earth, we understand the Father in the name of God: and the Son in the name of the beginning, who is not the beginning of the Father, but per seipsum of the creature created first and principally spiritual, and consequently also of the whole creation. But Scripture saying, and the Spirit of God was borne over the waters, we acknowledge the complete commemoration of the Trinity: So also in the conversion and perfection of the creature, that the species of things may be disposed, the same Trinity is intimated: namely the Word of God, and the begetter of the Word, when it is said: God said; and the holy goodness, in which it pleases God whatsoever is perfected for Him according to the measure of His nature, when it is said: God saw that it was good.

QUESTION VI. — How are these words to be received : God said : Let there be light ?

The first word of God, says St. Basil, created the nature of light, drove out the darknesses, illumined and gladdened the world, and at once brought to all things a grateful and pleasant aspect. For it was congruent, adds Nazianzen, that the great light should auspicate His work with light; since He dissolved and repelled the darknesses and that blind mass and confusion possessing all things. The author of the book of Esdras 4, chapter 6, v. 10 had gone before him: Then Thou didst say, he says, from Thy treasures that luminous light be brought forth, whereby Thy work might appear. — But what that primeval light was, the opinions of Interpreters vary. St. Gregory of Nyssa in the Hexaem. pag. 9 judges it to have been fire, and with him much more Victorinus in Genes. c. 6, saying that fire afforded light to the lower world, and had a circular motion, and as it were like a shining cloud circled the orb of the lands, just as now the sun. But very many, with whom the Angelic Doctor agrees, part 1, question 67, art. 1, contend that that light was the light of the sun itself produced from the beginning, but formless, namely such as had not yet a determined power for special effects in things below the moon. St. Basil, homil. 6. pag. 7., weighing these words: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven, says: these do not conflict with those things which were said concerning light; for then the very nature of light was produced, but now this body of the sun was so founded upon it that it might be a worthy and triumphal vehicle of that primeval light. Then objecting that it could not be that light be separated from the sun; I do not say, he says, that separation of light from the body of the sun to be possible to me, but I judge that it must be asserted that those things which by the mere agitation and cogitation of the mind can be distinguished from one another, can by the very fact, by the faculty of the Creator, of either nature be joined together. Which He confirms from Exod. 3 where the bush appeared to Moses burning, yet not consuming: as also the testimony of David, Psal. 28, saying: the voice of the Lord cutting short the flame of fire. — Others indeed understand an accident of light properly so called produced in a body capable of light, whether in a thin cloud or in some other body, moved for the space of twenty-four hours about the abyss of waters by God or by Angels, which distinguished night from day in the manner of the Sun produced on the fourth day, whose vicar meanwhile that light was, as St. Bonaventura best expounds, distinct. 13. art. 2. quaest. 2. where he says: "It is understood, he says, that that light was where the sun now is, " for from it the Sun is believed to have been formed. And it was produced above " that part which is above our hemisphere; and illuminating that hemi-« sphere, it made day: and proceeding it arrived at oc-« casion [the west], and made evening; and afterwards returning to the east, it made " morning. Whence with respect to one and the same hemisphere it made night and day " successively; with respect however to our hemisphere and the other, " it made day on the one side and night simultaneously from the interposition of that " dense nature which was in the midst of that matter: which although it " was not yet in complete form, was nevertheless in that part so dense " that it could cast a shadow, just as in the upper part by its rarity " and a certain subtlety it could receive the influx of light, and therefore " insinuating both of these Scripture says: God divided the light from " the darknesses, with respect to the existence of light in one hemisphere, and dark-« ness in the other: and there was made evening and morning, with respect to its recession " from our hemisphere, and with respect to its return." — But St. Augustine willed that this light formed from the beginning was not corporeal but spiritual, for lib. 11. De Civit. Dei, cap. 9. he probably judges that under the name of Heaven, which was created in the beginning, the Angelic nature was signified by Moses; but under the name of light created on the first day, the confirmation and consummation of the Angels in grace is intimated: and by the division of light and darkness, the segregation of the evil Angels from the fellowship of the good is indicated. That he may prove this, St. Augustine argues after this manner: Moses says that Heaven and earth were created in the beginning: therefore before these nothing was created. The same Moses afterwards wrote that God rested on the seventh day from all the works which He had made. Moreover, that the Angels are works of God it is impious to doubt; since both in the hymn of the three children, and in Psal. 118, it is written: Praise the Lord, all His Angels, praise Him all His virtues: and afterwards it is subjoined: because He Himself said, and they were made, He commanded, and they were created. From these things it is concluded that the Angels were made within some one of those six days: and indeed that they were made before the fourth day, on which all the stars were founded, appears from those words of the Lord which are in Job, chapter 38, according to the translation of the Seventy Interpreters: when the stars were made, my Angels praised me with a loud voice. That they are to be judged made on the third or second day: for what was made on those days is manifest: namely on the third day the water was separated from the earth, and the earth brought forth herbs and plants: but on the second day the firmament was made, distinguishing the waters which are above the firmament from those which are beneath the firmament. Therefore it remains that the creation of the Angels, if it is to be referred to the works of those days, pertains to the work of the first day, on which light was made. — But the other holy Fathers cry out against this, as also the sacred Interpreters, who pronounce with unanimous consensus that that light was corporeal and sensible: which opinion indeed St. Bonaventura confirms with these reasons, distinct. 13. art. 1. qu. 1. First indeed, he says, because before the formation of light it is premised that darkness was upon the face of the deep: therefore if by the deep corporeal matter is understood, the light which was made for the expulsion of those darknesses was corporeal. Secondly, with the light receding gradually, and after the space of diurnal light passing into the lower parts, evening came about; as now it is wont to happen through the usual course of the sun: therefore if this cannot be understood except of corporeal light, it is plain, etc. Thirdly, Scripture numbers the series of six days: and it is established that all these days are of the same nature; otherwise they would not thus be numerable together: but after the formation of the sun from the fourth day onwards the days before were corporeal days: ergo in the three preceding days they were corporeal days: but such days cannot be except from corporeal light: ergo etc. — Therefore it seems to me more credible that that light, affixed as it were to a subject of vapor or little cloud, illuminated the whole hemisphere which we occupy, while the darknesses still occupied the lower hemisphere and half of the circle of the Orb: then by its assiduous motion it illuminated the other hemisphere so that in each part of the whole circle of the world's Orb light and darkness succeeded one another alternately within the space of four and twenty hours, and by its presence constituted day and night. — Therefore from these things it is established that that primeval light did not illuminate at once the whole globe of earth and water, but successively. Hence Moses subjoins: And God saw the light that it was good, and divided the light from the darknesses: divided, I say, first of place: for while here there is light and day, among the Antipodes there is night and darkness. Secondly He divided in time: for in the same hemisphere light and darkness, night and day succeed one another alternately and at diverse times. Thirdly in cause: for one thing is the cause of light, namely the lucid body: another of darknesses, namely the opaque body. But Moses regarded the second ground of division, as it were saying: God made it so that, after the light created by Him, darknesses and night should succeed. Whence follows: And He called the light Day, and the darknesses Night. — Hugh of St. Victor explains the matter thus in his annotations on Genesis, chapter 6. That light, he says, is believed to have been created in that place where the sun rises; and thus the beginning of that first day was not preceded by dawn as morning, that is, the light foretokening the rising of the sun; which Scripture, cautiously intimating, distinguishes the natural day by two extreme articles; thus: And there was made, he says, evening, which is the artificial end of the day; and there was made morning, which is the end of the night: namely by the rising of the sun, and its course even to its setting, and its return to its rising, one natural day is made. — There are nevertheless those who judge that the day began from light, and that the light was the primeval creature of God; to which opinion St. Ambrosius subscribes, chapter 9, book 1. Worthily, he says, the adornment of the world took its origin from light, for in vain would it be if it were not seen... for he who desires to erect some building worthy of the dwelling of the father of a family, before he lays the foundations, considers whence he may infuse light into it: and this is the first grace: which if it be lacking, the whole house bristles with deformed neglect. Another, but tropological, reason Hugh of St. Victor supplies in De sacramentis, book 1, par. 1, chapter 8, where he says: God therefore beginning His works that He might perfect them, first made light, that He might make all the rest in light. For He signified to us that He does not love works which are done in darkness, because they are evil, since every one who doth evil hateth the light, says Christ, John 3, that his works may not be reproved, because they are evil. But he who doth truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they are done in God. He Himself therefore, who was about to make truth, willed not to work in darkness, but came to the light, and made light, that He might manifest Himself through light. For not for this reason did He make light, that He Himself might be seen through light: but that He might manifest His works through light, because they are done in God. — There are those who opine that from this text of Genesis there prevailed among the Jews and other most ancient nations, with whom the commerce and custom of the Jews was, the usage of computing the day from sunrise to the same sunrise. For there was formerly in use among the Jews a triple genus of days, namely the legal or festal day, from evening to the following evening; the natural day, from sunrise to its following rise; but the usual day from midnight to midnight. Which custom also the Church observes, for on feast days and in celebrating divine offices she reckons the day in the manner of the Jews from vespers to vespers, but in keeping fasts from midnight to midnight. — But as regards the Ethnics and various nations, diverse among them was the usage of days, as appears in Gellius, lib. 3, cap. 2; Censorinus, De die natali, cap. 24; Pliny, lib. 2, cap. 77, who writes: They observe the day itself differently, different ones differently. The Babylonians between two risings of the sun; the Athenians between two settings: the Umbrians from noon to noon; the common people from light to darkness: the Roman priests, and those who define the day more civilly, likewise the Egyptians and Hipparchus, from midnight to midnight. Censorinus adds: Others divided the day into four parts, and likewise also the night: and military similitude attests this, wherein is spoken of the first watch, likewise the second, and the third, and the fourth. Nor certainly is that usage of watches recent, but most ancient, both among the Romans, as Vegetius testifies, lib. 3 of De re militari, cap. 8, and among the Jews, as appears Judg. 7, v. 19., and 1 Kings 11, v. 11. The artificial day is also wont to be distributed into two parts, namely matutinal and vespertinal, which are mutually distinguished by a point of time accustomed to be called meridies, as it were mid-day, as Varro observes, lib. 5 of De lingua latina, because, says Censorinus, it discerns the parts of the day. He adds also that at Rome the name of hour was unknown for three hundred years, and the day was distinguished into three times, antemeridian, meridian, and pomeridian: but where the usage of hours became known, their division depended at first not, as now happens, from the course of the sun, but from the arbitrament of the praetor, as Varro records from Cosconius: The praetor, he says, was accustomed being asked to order, when it seemed to him to be the third hour, to proclaim that it was the third hour, likewise midday, and the ninth hour. Equally indicative is the jest of the parasite in a comedy of Plautus, certain excerpts of which Gellius presents, lib. 3 Noct. Attic. cap. 3: thus however he was questioned:

May the gods destroy that man who first found out the hours, Yea whosoever first set up here a sundial, Who hath crushed me, wretched, bit by bit, my day; For when I was a boy, my belly was a sundial Far better than all these, and truer far.

As it were intimating that before hours were invented the days were general and lax periods, and yet that it was permitted, with a spur stimulating, to anticipate midday, since no fixed law was laid down such as clocks afterwards introduced. Nevertheless however, that gnomonic instruments and dials, on which the hours were marked out at fixed intervals of lines, and the knowledge of constructing a clock, were long ago in use among our ancestors, especially the Egyptians, Clement of Alexandria testifies, lib. 6 of the Stromata, where, recounting the duties of the Egyptians and their priests, he says: After the chanter proceeds the horoscopus who holds in his hand a clock and a palm branch, the symbol of astrology. There you see woven together that the clock is of astrology, and presently it may be conjectured, as from Adam the science of astronomy was handed down to posterity, so also the knowledge of making a clock; which received from his ancestors without doubt Moses taught to the Egyptians, although Marius Victorinus the Rhetorician, in his commentary on Cicero's first Rhetoric, brings forward another origin of the hours among the Egyptians: Of twelve hours, he says, this origin is recorded; once upon a time Hermes Trismegistus, when he was in Egypt, [observed] a certain sacred animal dedicated to Serapis, which had voided urine twice twelve times in the whole day, always with equal time interposed; it shone forth divided into twelve hours of the day, and thenceforward the number of hours is kept. Now the name of this brute living thing is Cynocephalus, which, as Horus Apollo observes, lib. Hieroglyphic. num. 6, having been accustomed to urinate twice twelve times per day and as many per night at the equinoxes, thence they distributed the day and night into twelve hours.

YOU ASK FIRST. — Why in the creation of Heaven and Earth did not God say, Let them be made, as He said in the creation of light and the other things?

I answer first, that the Author of the fourth book of Esdras, chapter 6, recounting this very history of Moses concerning the creation of the world, asserts that God said: Let Heaven and Earth be made. But this plainly disagrees with the narration of Moses. Wherefore Rupert answers secondly to this same question proposed by himself in three ways. First, he says, since the very first principle, in which all things were made, is the Word of God, it would have been superfluous and absurd to say, in the beginning God said: Next, the imperative word fiat presupposes something to which it is commanded, or a prescription laid down; but since the effecting of Heaven and Earth were themselves founded out of nothing, nothing preceded to which the voice and precept of God might be directed. Thirdly, thus Moses wished to say lest anyone should suspect that God indeed designed the species and forms of things, but did not perfect them: whereas Hyle, that is, prime matter, of which all things are full, was not made by God, but was always coeternal with God: therefore as it ought to be said, thus it was said, that in the beginning God created Heaven and Earth. Thus Rupert. Yet his opinion, says Pererius, in that which he asserts, that the voice and command of God is not made nor directed to nothing, but only to that which is, does not seem to accord with the doctrine of Paul, who in chapter 4 of the Epistle to the Romans, speaking of God, says: Who calleth those things that are not, as those that are. And David Psal. 32: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established: and Psal. 118: Praise the Lord all ye Angels, praise Him all His virtues, because He Himself said, and they were made, He commanded, and they were created: ergo as well the heavens as the Angels, all were created by the word and command of God, namely out of nothing.

YOU ASK SECONDLY. — What was the state of things before the light was founded?

I answer, that the earth with the abyss of waters superinfused upon it was as it were a certain empty chaos, rude and undigested, of which Ovid:

One face of nature was throughout the whole world, Which they called Chaos, a rude and undigested mass; Naught but inert weight, and the seeds of things ill-joined Congested together in discord.

Or as Hilary explains in verse to Leo:

When black Chaos covered all, and the deep mass Of shapeless world pressed down upon bodies from above, And late-returning night crept back amid the gloom, Nor species nor form there was: God within was working, Mingled with veiled bodies, a secret power.

Hence it appears how improbably Gabriel in 2 dist. 12, qu. 1, said that this Chaos, or, as the Wise Man speaks, formless matter, was prime matter, either alone, or at least informed only by a certain rude, obscure, general, and common form of corporeity, such that it was only in potency for receiving all particular forms, as Abulensis judged: for from this place of Moses it is established that earth and heaven were created first: ergo matter created first was not devoid of form, but induced and imbued with the particular form of Heaven and Earth.

You ask thirdly. — With what day of the week does the first day of the world correspond?

I answer, with Sunday, as appears from the sabbath, or seventh day of rest. For Sunday follows it as the eighth, and again the first. This also appears from the hymn at matins of the Lord's day... On the first day of all days on which the world stands founded (or as it is held in the new form): On the first day on which the blessed Trinity founded the world, or on which the rising Founder, death overcome, delivers us. But it is certain that Christ the Lord rose again on Sunday.

Moses explains the work of this day in the same chapter of Genesis, verse 6 and following, in these words: And God also said: Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters: and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made a firmament, and divided the waters that were under the firmament, from those that were above the firmament. And it was so done. And God called the firmament, Heaven: and the evening and morning were the second day. That these words may be set forth,

YOU ASK I. — What is signified here by the name of Firmament?

The Vulgate Interpreter, following the Septuagint on account of the word στερέωμα added by them, said that the firmament was formed on the second day of the world: but the Hebrew text has in place of firmament רקיע Rakia, i. e., an expanse; for it is derived from the word Raka, which signifies to extend, to draw apart, to expand, or to enlarge, and to attenuate; even as the curtains of tents are stretched out, and silver or other metal is beaten out and thinned with the hammer. To the force of this word the Psalmist alludes in psalm 103, when he says: Stretching out the heaven as a skin, and Isaias chap. 40: Who stretcheth forth the heavens as nothing, and spreadeth them abroad as a tabernacle to dwell in. Heaven, therefore, is called by the Hebrews Rakia from its extension, just as it is called Schamaim from its watery matter, whence it is thought to have been formed, as St. Jerome observes: Between heaven, he says, and earth the firmament is built up in the midst; and according to the etymology of the Hebrew speech, heaven, that is, schamaim, derives its name from the waters. — Now since we said above that there is a threefold heaven, namely the aerial, the sidereal, and the empyrean, it is disputed among the sacred Interpreters what Moses meant by the word firmament here. On this matter there are chiefly three opinions, of which the first holds that by the name of firmament the true heavenly body is signified, namely either the eighth orb in which the wandering stars are, or something conjoined of the eight orbs, plainly the eighth, and the other seven inferior ones, which was called firmament for this reason, because, they say, it is solid, and of firmly compacted matter. Thus Theodoret, question 1 on Genesis: Wherefore, he says, it was called Firmament, because from water which before was fluid and meltable it was most vehemently thickened and most strongly hardened into a compacted substance. Severianus, bishop of Gabala, agrees, Orat. 2. On the creation of the world:

This mass of waters, he says, stood upon the earth, suppose thirty cubits. Then God said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water; and thereupon in the midst of the waters there was a fixing like ice, and He raised one half part upward and left the other half below, as it is written: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide between water and water. But what is the reason why He calls it firmament? That plainly He made firm that substance of the waters which was rarer and dissolved. Therefore David also says: Praise him in the firmament of his power. And that I may use another example, just as smoke diffused from wood upon the fire is rarer and softer: but when it has ascended aloft, changed into a cloud it grows thick: so also God raising up the waters rarefied, fixed them in the heights, > and as it were congealed them. That this example is apt, Isaias is witness, when he says: The heaven was made firm as smoke. Heaven therefore, congealed in the midst of the waters, lifted the middle part of the waters into the heights.

Such are his words. The Venerable Bede subscribes to him in these words: After the manner of waters, he says, it is agreed that the starry Heaven is the firmament, nor does anything hinder its being believed to have been made from the waters: since we know of crystalline stone how great firmness with so much transparency and purity: it is certain that it was brought forth from the concretion of waters; what remains but to believe that the same Disposer of natures solidified into the firmament of Heaven the substance of waters? — Yet this opinion did not please Basil, but he himself derides it in his third homily on Genesis, saying that it is altogether childish, and for a mind too simple, to think that Heaven was compacted from water. — The second opinion is that of those who understand by the word firmament not only the eighth sphere but absolutely all the heavenly orbs, except the empyrean heaven produced on the first day. So judge all those, both the holy Fathers and the sacred Interpreters and Scholastic Doctors, who affirm that the waters really stand above the celestial orbs. — The third opinion at last is that of those who think that by the name of firmament the aerial heaven is signified, or that whole space of air which extends and spreads itself from the stars down to the earth, in such wise that the uppermost part is held by the Heavens and the Stars; the middle by the element of fire; the lowest by air. Which opinion St. Jerome taught in Epistle 83 to Oceanus: Between Heaven, he says, and earth the firmament is built up in the midst: and according to the etymology of the Hebrew speech, Heaven, that is, schamaim, derives its name from the waters. The same interpretation St. Augustine also hints at and proves in book 22 De Genesi ad litteram chap. 4, where, treating of the supercelestial waters, he writes that Moses designated the air by the name of heaven. He shows, he says, that even this air is called heaven, not only in common speech, according to which we speak of a clear or cloudy heaven, but also according to the very usage of our Scriptures, when the fowls of heaven are spoken of, since it is manifest that birds fly in this air. And when the Lord speaks of the clouds: you can, he says, prove the face of the heaven. But we often see clouds gathered together even in the air nearest the earth, when they lie along the slopes of ridges so that they often rise above even the summits of mountains. Since therefore He had shown that even this air is called heaven, He willed it to be considered called firmament for no other reason than because its intervening space divides certain ruptures of the waters, and those waters which float more massively upon the lands. He has similar things on the same Genesis in the incomplete commentary chap. 12, where treating of this same passage of Moses he says: When the firmament is called Heaven, that whole ethereal fabric must be understood to be meant, which contains all substance, beneath which flourishes the serenity of pure and tranquil air, beneath which again this same air, turbulent and stormy, is agitated. Rupert also subscribes, book De Trinitate chap. 22. The firmament, he says, is not something solid or hard, as is commonly thought, but it is air extended and greatly rarefied, so that it can be seen through; yet more truly can it be called spirit than body, Ecclesiastes 1 bearing witness when it says of the lights, which are borne merrily in it: The spirit goeth forward surveying all places round about, and returneth to his circuits. — This same exposition can be confirmed from holy Scripture, whereby sometimes it names as firmament that upper part of Heaven in which the stars burn and shine, sometimes it calls firmament even the lower portion of the air, as when it says that birds fly in the firmament, or above the firmament; for where the Latin version has: Let the waters bring forth the creeping thing having life, and the fowl that may fly over the earth under the firmament of heaven; in Hebrew we read word for word: and the fowl shall fly upon the face, or surface, of the firmament of heaven, al al-Raqia Coeli. Beda himself also favors this exposition, in his Commentary on Genesis, where expounding the work of the fifth day he says: It must be thus understood that it was said, the birds fly according to the firmament of heaven, because by this name also the aether is indicated, that is, that higher space of air which reaches from this turbulent and darksome region, in which birds take their flight, up to the stars, and is believed not undeservedly to be wholly tranquil and full of light: for since Scripture placed the seven wandering stars, which are said to be driven and carried in this space of the aether, in the firmament of heaven, therefore the birds are rightly said to fly according to the firmament of heaven, because these spaces of air which sustain the flight of birds are near the aether, as I said: nor is it to be wondered at if the aether be named the firmament of heaven, when the air is called Heaven, as we taught above.

You will say: This exposition seems to conflict with the very narrative of Moses: First indeed, because he says that on the fourth day God made the Sun, and the Moon, and the Stars, and placed them in the firmament: but these are not in the air, but in Heaven: therefore not the air, but Heaven is the firmament. Next, the name of firmament signifies something solid and stable; but air is a body exceedingly tenuous and unstable, and tossed about by perpetual agitation: therefore the appellation of firmament does not befit the air. Finally, Moses teaches that the firmament divides the waters which are under it from those which exist above it: but the waters do not stand unmoving above the air: therefore the air is not the firmament dividing the waters from the waters. —

I answer, that these arguments do not impede our opinion, for they are easily resolved. The first indeed, because where Moses says that God placed the Sun, Moon, and Stars in the firmament, he did not signify by the name of firmament the starry Heaven, which is commonly called the eighth sphere. For all confess that the Sun and Moon are stored not in the eighth, but in the lower Heavens, and therefore it is necessary that he signified by the name of firmament that whole amplitude of space which extends from the empyrean Heaven down to the Earth. Secondly, I say that the firmament is not so called because it is a most solid body, but because it is the interval and, as it were, the boundary interposed between the upper and lower waters: a boundary, I say, most firm and immutable, for the nature of things ever demands that the upper waters be generated in the more sublime air: but the lower waters run beneath the air and above the earth. Which exposition St. Augustine handed down in book 2 De Genesi ad litteram chap. 10, writing thus: But the name of firmament compels us to think that Heaven stands firm: for Firmament may be understood not on account of standing still, but on account of firmness, or on account of the untransgressable boundary of the upper and lower waters. And that satisfaction may be given to the third objection, I shall conclude with the words and excellent verses of Claudius Marius Victor, who in book 1 on Genesis sings thus:

From the midst of the waves, yielding in concrete body, He bore them up, and widely hardened in rigid strength,

He hung the sundered waters, and cast against the clouds A cold profound, and resting on the enclosed deep He laid beneath the things which with vast circuit The ethereal heaven encompasses. Hence drawing the name, heaven. Perhaps here someone skilled in error may thus dispute with himself, lest sustenance fail the ethereal flames, And excessive heat seeking the depths, by pursuing nourishment Burn up the mortal race, and earthly things cannot endure The gleaming heaven; the firm machine of the pole is set below: Which while it protects us with its shade, Meanwhile grows cold above with the abundant waters laid upon it. But to seek the causes of divine Godhead Far be our mind: may it ever be more for thee to believe That God can do whatsoever is thought impossible to be done, And that a great sea is borne above the stars and constellations, Prove by the reason of those very men who refuse to believe it, And who will that the world hangs, which its Creator himself Carries and rolls constant with immense weight.

YOU ASK II. — What is signified by the waters which are above the Firmament?

I answer. that since the firmament here expressly signifies whatever is above us up to the empyrean Heaven, and embraces at once the celestial spheres and likewise the three regions of the air, I think it must be said as more probable that the waters which are above the firmament are none other than those which are generated in the middle region of the air: for thither vapors from the earth and from the waters, raised upward by the power of the Sun and the attraction of the Stars, are densified and coagulated into clouds, from which rains flowing forth irrigate and enrich the earth; and that with such abundance and sometimes such violence that they seem to burst forth from huge rivers and fountains. Concerning these supercelestial waters, or those which flow forth from the middle air as if from Heaven, holy Scripture very often makes discourse, as when God is said to withhold rains from Heaven, to give rain from Heaven, to shut Heaven so that it rain not, and again to open Heaven, that it dissolve into showers, as we read in Deuteronomy chap. 18; so likewise in Ps. 103, after the Psalmist had said, Stretching out the heaven as a skin, who coverest the upper parts thereof with waters; that he may explain more clearly what these waters are, he soon subjoins: Who layeth the cloud for thy ascent. And below: Watering the mountains from his stores. Of these namely which he had before said were covered with waters, and presently of the middle region of the air, whence proceeds the irrigating rain. Which manner of speaking he also uses Ps. 146, saying: Who covereth the heaven with clouds, and prepareth rain for the earth: but the Heaven covered with clouds is surely none other than the very region of the air, wherein through the condensation and resolution of vapors the rain is prepared which may irrigate the earth. Hence in Proverbs 8 divine Wisdom says: When he prepared the heavens I was present, when with a certain law and compass he enclosed the depths, and balanced the fountains of waters. Where for that word, the aether, the Septuagint Interprets render, upper mists or clouds: wherefore what follows, and balanced the fountains of waters, seems to be understood not of the fountains which spring from the earth, but of those which flow from Heaven, namely from the clouds, down upon the earth. But God is said to have weighed out those fountains of waters because in the lofty air He suspends the clouds by His divine power, from which as from fountains they are poured forth; and that with just measure, lest too sparing or too lavish a profusion of such waters harm the lands. To this tends that word of Job chap. 26: He bindeth up the waters in his clouds, so that they break not out and fall down together. And chap. 12: If he withhold the waters, all things shall dry up, and if he send them out, they shall overturn the earth. For this very reason, when the deluge took place, God is said to have opened the sluices of Heaven, Genesis 7; so likewise He says in Malachias chap. 3: If I open not the sluices of Heaven, and pour you out blessing even to abundance: and in Jeremias chap. 10 we read that at His voice God giveth the multitude of waters in the heaven, and lifteth up the clouds from the ends of the earth. — All this St. Ambrose excellently confirms in book 2 Hexaemeron chap. 5, where weighing that word of Leviticus 26: Your heaven shall be brass over your head, and your earth iron, he says: When the people of the Jews paying the penalty of their smiting were punished with the intemperateness of the heaven and the barrenness of the earth: for from heaven comes the cause of fertility. Finally, Moses bestowed blessings upon Joseph from the ends of the heaven, and from the dew, and from the abysses of fountains descending from below, and in due season from the course of the sun, and from the months coming together, and from the top of the everlasting mountains and hills, because by celestial maturation the fruitfulness of the earth is nourished. A heaven of brass, therefore, is that which pours forth no moisture, when no shower bursts from the clouds. There is also an iron heaven the darkened air, pressed and cloudy with an iron-colored hue, when the earth is straitened by the rigor of cold, then as it were suspended moisture is seen hanging over our head, and momentarily threatening. Very often also, rigid with the icy blasts of winds, the waters consolidate into snow, and the air being broken, the snow melts down; nor indeed can this firmament be broken without some crash, or penetrated, etc. By these words St. Ambrose elegantly confirms our answer and exposition: for he teaches that in Scripture the air is called Heaven and firmament, and that those waters which flow forth upon the lands from the middle part of the air through rain or snow fall from Heaven and from the firmament. It stands, therefore, that the clouds in the middle region of the air, fertile with rainy shower, can be called water above Heaven and firmament. — This exposition is confirmed first indeed, because God and nature attempt nothing in vain: but waters constituted above the starry Heaven would seem utterly vain: seeing that all the utilities which the Assertors of the opposite opinion infer from those waters lying above the starry Heaven appear utterly futile, or rest upon a lighter foundation, as is evident from their own sayings. For Procopius and Theodoret say the waters were placed there in order that they might temper the heat of the Sun, Moon, and stars, lest it dissolve the Heavens: or, as Bede says, for remitting the heat excited by the force and motion of the stars. St. Justin, question 99, adds that they were placed above the firmament that by their weight they might press it down, lest it be carried upward, but remain as it were suspended and poised. Some think those waters lie there that they may reverberate the rays of the Sun and Moon and repel them downward to the earth. Oleaster however says the waters were first constituted there by God that through the reopening of the floodgates of Heaven they might overwhelm the earth in the deluge of Noe. Others deem those waters to have been constituted there for the adornment of the Universe; perhaps also for the delight of the Saints abiding in the empyrean Heaven, that namely their eyes might be pleasantly refreshed by these crystalline and variegated waters; for waters are of all things most capable of form, beauty, color, and ornament, as appears in the Iris. At this holy John seems to allude Apoc. 7, where he says: He shall lead them to the fountains of the waters of life. And chap. 22: He showed me a river of the water of life clear as crystal. These are the chief utilities which various Authors bring forward from the waters placed above the starry Heaven. But who does not see that all these reasons are of lighter moment than that they should suffice for asserting that God detains waters heavy by their nature and ponderous, and therefore ever seeking the earth in which as in a center they may rest, above Heaven, as it were in a violent place and state? — Secondly, the opposite exposition also does not seem to fit the narrative of Moses; since Moses, handling history and informing a ruder people concerning the beginnings of the world, seemed willing to commemorate only those divine works which would be best known to men; but passed over in silence those which appeared remote not only from the senses but even from understanding, for which reason also concerning Angels he suppressed in silence many things which he could have taught, taking up only the description and explanation of this corporeal and visible world, and of those things which fall upon the senses of men, or can most readily and easily be known from those things which have been perceived by the senses.

You will say: Not only are the celestial waters said to be above the firmament, but even above the heaven of heavens: Thus Ps. 148: Praise the Lord from the heaven of heavens; and let all the waters that are above the heavens praise the name of the Lord: but by the heavens of heavens according to the Hebrew idiom are understood the sidereal Heavens: therefore the celestial waters are above the starry heaven. Next, the three Children of the Babylonian furnace in their Canticle, where all the works of God are commemorated, invite them to the praise of God in that very order that they proceed from things higher to things lower. But in the first place are set the Angels, secondly the heavens, thirdly the waters which are above the heavens, fourthly sun, moon, and stars: therefore it is a sign that the celestial waters are superior to the sun, moon, and stars. Finally the Church in the Hymn which she publicly chants at vespers of the second feria says:

Immense Maker of the heavens, Who lest mingled things be confounded, Dividing the flowing waters, Didst give the heaven as their bound. Establishing a place for the heavenly things And at once for the rivulets of earth, That the wave may temper the flames, Lest they lay waste the soil of earth.

By which words the Church not obscurely signifies that there are waters placed above Heaven to temper the heat of the stars. Of the same opinion is Severianus the bishop, orat. 2. On the creation of the world, where having inquired why indeed the waters in the heights? For what use were they placed? That someone may drink? That someone may sail? he answers:

Truly that there are waters in the upper regions David is witness when he says: And the waters which are above the heavens. Now I attended to the wisdom of the Creator: the heaven was compacted from the waters after the manner of ice. For since it was about to receive the flame of the sun and the moon, and the immense multitude of the stars, and being wholly full of fire it was to be guarded lest by excessive heat it be dissolved and burnt up, He spread under the heaven those expanses of waters knit together, with which, as it were to enrich it, water might > anoint it, that after that manner it might resist that fire, nor be consumed by it. Nor is an example wanting: just as if today you should set fire beneath a cauldron, and cast water into it, it resists the fire: but if that be lacking, it is dissolved. So also God committed water, fire's adversary, to the heaven, that from its convexity being lined with waters there might abundantly supply wherewith it might endure and remain unharmed. » He adds in confirmation of what has been said: So greatly does moisture abound to the heavenly body, though so great a force of fire is hostile to it that it would burn up even the earth. For I ask, whence does it rain? There is no cloud anywhere. The air has no water. Is it not evident thence that it distills from the heaven, with which it abounds? Whence also Isaac the Patriarch blessing Jacob said: God give thee of the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth. They say however that three things shall be at the day of judgment: that the upper water recede, and that coherence of the waters fail of itself: and that the stars fall, which have no place among the fixed seats. These things moreover we say not rashly, but Scripture teaches: for the heaven, it says, shall be folded up, in place of saying, it shall be scorched: for what is scorched is rolled and twisted round) and the stars shall fall as leaves from the vine. » He subjoins another utility of this divine disposition in establishing the supercelestial waters after this manner: Attend indeed also, I pray, to another use: the waters which are above the heavens not only preserve the heaven. Truly they also send down the flame of the sun and moon. For if the heaven were translucent, all its splendor would flee upward. For since fire is borne upward by nature, it would leave the earth deserted. Therefore with immense force of waters He densified the higher heaven, that the splendor constrained into straits might descend to the earth. Behold the wisdom and skillfulness of the Artisan.

Such are his words. From these therefore it stands that the supercelestial waters are other than the clouds poised in the middle air. —

I deny the consequence. and to the first argument I say, that although by the Heavens of Heavens are signified the sidereal Heavens, or rather the Empyrean Heaven, which is the seat of God and dwelling of the Blessed, nevertheless it does not follow that the waters which are said to be above Heaven are above the sidereal Heavens. For David there commemorates two things as it were distinct, namely the Heaven of Heavens and the Heavens, that is, the regions of the air: whence he says not the waters which are above the Heavens of Heavens, but precisely those which are above the Heavens. Nor does it matter that he writes Heavens in the plural, as though that did not befit the air: for he uses the custom of the Hebrew tongue, in which Heaven lacks the singular number, as Estius notes dist. 11, although Interpreters have rendered now the singular, now the plural: just as among the Latins Athenae, Venetia, Trebae, etc. lack the singular and can be used only in the plural. — To the second I say, that that Canticle relates things not precisely in that order in which they were disposed by divine providence in the Universe; since first are enumerated dews, hoarfrosts, snow, ice, and frost, afterwards however day and night, light and darkness, which certainly existed before. — To the third however I say, that the Church rightly teaches that the flames of Heaven are tempered by the wave; since the earth would be utterly scorched by the heat of the stars unless it were frequently moistened and enriched by showers, dew, snow, and clouds.

YOU ASK III. — Why did Moses not say on this day, what he said on the others; and God saw that it was good?

The Hebrew Doctors answer that for this reason the elegy of charity was not added to the works of the second day, because on that very day gehenna was created, or the place destined for the punishment of the damned, into which straightway the demons were thrust. But this answer seems altogether silly and alien from all reason 1. because it can by no moment be proved that gehenna was founded on that very day, seeing that sacred Scripture maintains profound silence concerning it; 2. Gehenna, since it is the artifice and work of the best God, must truly be judged good, because, as the Apostle says, 1 Timothy 4: every creature of God is good. Nor does it stand in the way that it is ordained for the punishment of the guilty, for this redounds to the glory of God and the commendation of His divine justice; 3. Although gehenna for this reason could not be called good, must therefore all the other works of that day not be held for truly good, and accordingly be defrauded of this solemn encomium of divine approbation?

Some answer that this approbation was omitted because the firmament or heaven produced on that very day was not yet perfect, inasmuch as it was still void of stars. — Yet neither was heaven more imperfect without the stars and constellations than the earth without plants, and the water without fishes, and the light without the body of the sun and moon, to which nevertheless this divine blessing and approbation was not denied. — St. Jerome book 1 contra Iovinianum chap. 1, and from him Peter Lombard book 2 dist. 14 judge that the works of this second day were not crowned with divine benediction and approbation, because this day was second from the first, and consequently the beginning was of eternity and a sign of division; whence the number two among the ancients was of unlucky name, as Ovid testifies book 1 De natura mundi:

Twice two I pronounce you by reason of your double name, That number was not one of happy omen.

But if these things be so, why then did God Genesis chap. 2, v. 18 say: It is not good for man to be alone, let us make him a help like unto himself? Why did Ecclesiastes chap. 4 pronounce: It is better that two be together than one etc.? — Others judge this knot so difficultly solved that it is more religious to venerate in silence the counsel of God, who willed in the very frontispiece and beginning of sacred Scripture itself to show that the mysteries therein are abstruse and hidden, than by curious inquiry to search out a thing which God willed to be unknown to us mortals. — But it is certain that the divine encomium of goodness was granted no less to this second day of creation than to the others: first, because in the same chapter, v. 31, we read indefinitely written concerning each of the works of the six days of the creation of the world: God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good. Secondly, because not with general approbation alone but even with special approbation of God are gifted the works of the second day, and those which pertain to the remaining days, which will plainly be discovered if we observe that the narration of the works of the second day is not ended at v. 8, as has hitherto been thought, but only at v. 10. For on the second day God not only produced the firmament which should divide the upper waters from the lower, or the celestial from the terrestrial; but moreover separated the waters from the surface of the earth that it might appear dry: whence on the same day was made a twofold separation of the waters, one of the upper from the lower, the other of the innermost from the land, because, as Estius says tom. 2 in lib. Sententiarum, pag. 101, the gathering together of the waters into one place was in a certain way a continuation and consummation of that work whose description went before, namely the dividing of the waters from the waters. For it is credible that with one continuous local motion, following upon the condensation of the lower waters, the whole of this was done, both that they were separated from the upper, and seeking the more sloping places they left the surface of the earth and constituted the seas. Wherefore such a separation was not to be divided between two days. » Such are his words. — Since these things are so, there is no doubt that this second day of creation was likewise adorned with divine approbation, for immediately after that separation of the waters from the surface of the earth, and their gathering into one place, there is added: and God saw that it was good: even as He had said after the production of light on the first day, and its separation from the darkness.

MOSES testifies, from verse 9 to verse 13, that the third day was made illustrious by a twofold work of God. For he relates that the waters were gathered into one place together, that the greatest part of the earth was laid bare and prepared as a dwelling for the animals to come, and that forthwith the earth was restored with the greenness of herbs and the abundance and plenty of plants. Which he indeed explains in these words: And God said: Let the waters that are under the heaven be gathered together into one place: and let the dry land appear. And it was so done. And God called the dry land, Earth; and the gathering together of the waters, he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. And he said: Let the earth bring forth the green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, which may have seed in itself upon the earth. And it was so done. And the earth brought forth the green herb, and such as seedeth according to its kind, and the tree that beareth fruit, having seed each one according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day. Although these words carry before them an evident and easy meaning, they nevertheless involve a greater difficulty than appears on the surface. For truly

Quaeres 1. — Since water, before the third day, covered all the earth on every side, by what means could it on the third day be gathered at once into one place of the earth?

SOME have thought this question so arduous that they judged the earth to have been created only on the third day, at least as regards its final completion. Thus taught the Master of the Sentences, dist. 14; Hugh of St. Victor, book 1 De Sacramentis; and not a few sacred Interpreters and Scholastic Doctors. But from what has been said it is abundantly clear that the earth was founded on the first day of the world together with the Heaven: since in the beginning God created Heaven and Earth. Hence on this day God did not say: let there be earth, but only, let the dry land appear. There are those who think, with Saint Basil and Ambrose, that the overflowing waters, which before covered the surface of the earth, flowed together into one place in such wise that that vast mass of waters was constrained by divine power into a swelling like unto a mountain: whence they think the sea was raised far higher than the land, and could by its natural inclination overflow and drown the earth, unless God restrained it within the limits fixed for it by divine command, as it were with a certain bridle. This Saint Ambrose elegantly expounds, book 3. Hexaemeron, cap. 2: Circumscribed therefore, he says, by the boundary set upon them, the seas are shut in, lest, poured over the lands, they flood all things, and, the culture of trees being lacking, hinder the office of earthly fruitfulness. They know therefore that they belong to a divine precept. For the Lord speaks through the cloud to Job, among other things, also concerning the enclosure of the sea: I set my bounds around it, and made it bars and doors: and I said: Hitherto shalt thou come, and shalt go no further; and here thou shalt break thy swelling waves. Do we not ourselves see the sea often full of waves, so that in the deep its billows rise like a sheer mountain of water, where, having spent their force upon the shore, they dissolve into foam, checked by certain barriers in the course of the lowly sand? According to what is written in Jeremiah: Will you not fear me, saith the Lord, who have set the sand a bound for the sea? Therefore by the firmest of all things, the most contemptible powder of sand, the might of the sea is held back in tempest, and, as it were, by certain reins of heavenly command is governed from the limit prescribed to it; the troubled motion of the sea breaks upon itself, and is divided into its receding channels. But this reply begets another difficulty far graver than the foregoing: namely, that the congregation of the waters would occupy a station far loftier than the land; which above all Sacred Scripture seems to impugn, when it says of those who go to sea that they do not ascend but descend. So Psalm 106: they that go down to the sea in ships. Reason likewise favors this; for since water is by its own nature heavier than air, and is fluid and unstable, certainly it could not so stand without a great miracle, so as not to flow out upon the land. But to assert a perpetual miracle on this account, and that the weight and impulse of the waters are violently restrained by God beyond their natural tendency, does not seem to accord with the ordinance of the divine providence which sweetly disposes all things. Add that everywhere water exhibits an even level: wherefore, says Saint Ambrose, the sea is called aequor on account of its evenness (aequabilitas). This very thing daily experience demonstrates; for if the sea rose higher than the land, then, by an equal force and impulse of winds and oarsmen, the same ship would reach port with swifter motion than it left it; for departing from the shore, laboring upward as against a steep incline, it would make harder progress; whereas, approaching the shore, as if descending through a slippery declivity, it would be borne along with great speed and great impetus. Moreover, the farther the ship proceeded into the sea, the more conspicuous would it be, as it mounted into a higher place. Likewise, those putting out from port, the farther they went, since they were always mounting to a higher place, would the more easily behold the land lying below them; yet the contrary of this very experience persuades us. Further, we see the motion of water always carried toward lower levels; since, therefore, all rivers roll themselves through long tracts of land into the sea, doubtless the sea must needs stand in the lower places: for if it swelled higher than the land, the rivers would run a contrary course, flowing not from the lands into the sea, but overflowing from the sea upon the lands. Finally, if the sea so swelled as to be far higher than the land, the center of the sea and of the earth would not be the same, or else one must say that earth and water did not make one single globe, nor have a spherical figure: but both of these are proved false by experience; for otherwise the Sun would nowhere stand in the Equator, nor would days and nights anywhere be equal, since the swollen part and the lower part would render the days shorter or longer. All which things are opposed by experience; wherefore the aforesaid reply seems the less to be approved. — Wherefore others answer, by this reasoning, that the earth appeared dry and the waters gathered into one, because water, whereas before it was rarer and subtler, on this third day was thickened and condensed; and the same was rendered more earthy and salt: partly lest it should putrefy, partly that it might have nourishment for fishes, partly that it might more easily serve for the bearing up of ships. Thus, then, by the operation of God the water, made denser, contracted itself, and occupied a lesser place than before: and so left the greatest part of the earth dry. Which reply indeed is approved by Saint Augustine, book 1. De Genesi ad litteram, cap. 12, while he inquires, since the wavy substance covered the whole earth entirely, whither it gave way so as to lay bare certain parts: Perhaps, he says, truer is that opinion which says that the lands were stretched out where the waters were thickened by their concretions, so that from many parts of them, wherein the dry might appear, it laid bare. But although this opinion appears probable, nevertheless I judge it must be said with more truth that the earth was therefore in part laid bare of the waters, because, whereas before the earth had been entirely round, and admitted the waters equally on every side, on this third day, by God's command, it began to rise into mountains, to sink into hills, yea, and to have vast caverns and inner hollows, into which the abundance of the waters withdrew itself; as Saint Augustine indicates in the same place, adding: Although, he says, also the earth sinking down far and wide could present other parts sloping and concave, into which the waters flowing together and rushing down might be received, and the dry would appear in those parts wherein the moisture was swallowed up. — Therefore on this very third day, God ordaining, vast channels were made within the bowels of the earth, into which the greatest part of the waters poured itself forth. Hence it is no wonder if the earth is washed round about with water: for since it holds within its bowels that vast store of waters which is commonly called Barathrum, or the abyss, and which through various passages overflows into the Ocean, or within the earth through rivers: hence also it is washed with water on every side: the sign of which is, that wherever anyone digs into the earth, there he always finds water, as is evident from wells dug: for the earth is, as it were, the mother of living things and of things mingled. Thence, as in the body of any animal and of any man a great abundance of blood resides in the liver and in the heart, and thence is dispersed through very many veins through the whole body, both upward and downward: so, says Seneca, book 3. Natural Questions, cap. 16, those mighty maidens pour forth water through the tunnels of the earth, as it were through veins: and burst forth in certain places of the earth into fountains, brooks, and rivers. What therefore the liver is in man, that is that vast abyss of waters hidden within the bowels of the earth.

From these things it appears that the opinion of those must not be approved who think that before the deluge the earth was altogether round, without inequality of higher and lower places, and that this distinction of mountains and valleys which we behold in the earth existed only after the deluge. For this opinion is openly refuted by Sacred Scripture itself: for if no mountains rose before the deluge, how could that be verified which we read, cap. 7. Genesis: The waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered: the water was fifteen cubits higher than the mountains which it covered? Why does Scripture call the mountains strongest, Psalm 65? Why finally, in Solomon, Prov. 8, does the divine Wisdom, to demonstrate her antiquity, say that she existed before the mountains settled with their heavy mass? — Why, says Saint Basil, homil. 1. pag. 12. et seq., does Scripture reduce to the command of the Maker that the waters seek the sloping and lowest places? Then, by what reason does it say the waters were bidden to flow together into one congregation, when so many seas are seen to exist, disjoined from one another by the greatest interval and situation? Finally, how could so vast and almost immeasurable a mass of waters, which filled that immense space between the empyrean heaven and the earth, gather into one single place? — To the first it will be answered: The nature of the waters was commanded to run, nor is it ever wearied, that precept perpetually urging it on to its course. This indeed I would say with respect to the fluid part of the waters. For there are some which flow by their own nature, such as are the fountain-waters and river-waters. Against these there are others collected and nowhere permeable. Yet my discourse now concerns those which are stirred and flow by a certain impulse of nature. Let them be gathered therefore into one congregation. Has such a thought ever occurred to thee concerning a fountain belching forth abundant water? Who compels this water to leap forth from the midst of the bowels of the earth? Who urgently presses it to hasten, that it may proceed inward? What storehouses whence they are drawn forth contain so great a yield of waters? What at length is that place, whither they hasten with headlong overflow? How comes it that these fail not, nor meanwhile are those filled? Know that these things depend upon that first voice of God. For thus the primary motion to running was implanted in the waters as a prerogative. — Basil of Seleucia follows Basil of Caesarea, orat. 1., writing in words to the same effect: The earth lays bare its backs to the waters, shutting up the seas in certain cells, as it were, while by command it uses the abyss for a cloister, and the sand contains the formidable sea like a landslide, keeping the land free from the washing of the deep: suppose the sea be driven by the violence of winds toward the land. It is indeed borne in billows before its barriers; but touching the boundaries it turns again and flees, and when it beholds the voice of the Lord inscribed upon the shores, and bends its billows, it adores the setter of the limits: and though it strike the land violently, it is driven back, and, mindful of the divine command, is driven back in flight. Wherefore, easily growing purple, it flatters the neighboring shore of the continent contiguous thereto, and takes hold, as it were embracing the land with soft arms; ever is it honored with the Lord's precept: and it pleases to hear as ratified at every single moment: Let the waters be gathered into one place, and let the dry appear. And the sand abides mindful of the precept, bound, nor violates its bonds through reverence of its vanquisher, and silently ratifies the voice of the prophet, Psalm. 103: Thou hast set a bound which it shall not pass over. — To the second Saint Ambrose answers, book 2. cap. 6., that there is one congregation of the waters; that is, whereby, he says, the walls of one and the same continuous deep even to the Gaditan shore of the coast, and thence into the Red Sea, includes the circle of the world with the Ocean poured around: inwardly also the Tuscan, Ionian, Adriatic, and other seas are mingled, distinguished by names, not by billows.... So also there is one general collection which is called sea, and many collections which are called seas on account of the regions wherein they are named. Further, Saint Basil adds, pag. 62: The fountain, the origin of all moisture washing the earth on every side, is the abyss of the sea. For this, dividing itself through hidden passages everywhere, just as they say the lands of the littoral are cleft by rifts wider, like sponges and subterranean conduits diffused beneath, under which the sea flowing and percolating through tunneled and narrow channels, soon when it perceives that it has met its end in oblique, or certainly in straight eruptions rising aloft, compelled by the stirring spirit, bursts forth with the surface of the earth broken open by force, and leaps forth abroad, and becomes potable, its bitterness deposited by transcolation or distillation. — To the third he answers, pag. 18: That the capacious receptacles of those waters were adorned by the Maker for receiving the matter, when they were to come and be compelled into one confluence and to be separated. For neither was it now that sea which is external beyond Gades; nor likewise that pure and inaccessible and dreadful deep which embraces the British island and the western Hesperides: but a vast and capacious receptacle having been created by the command of God, the multitudes of waters betook themselves thither. His opinion, therefore, is that on this third day God, by his omnipotent command, made the subterranean hollows, yea and in the very surface of the earth, into which that vast mass of waters flowing down; by experience itself also it has been apprehended that there is a vast abundance of waters under the earth, which consequently is called by many Barathrum, or abyss, and is joined through various passages with the Ocean, and seems to be the womb and origin of all fountains and rivers. And indeed, says Seneca, book 3. Natural Questions, after the pattern of our bodies, in which there are both veins and an artery; those the receptacles of blood, this of spirit. In the earth also there are other ways, through which water runs, and others through which spirit runs: and so nature formed it after the likeness of human bodies, that our elders also called water cena (chyle).... Therefore as in our bodies the blood, when the cena is pierced, remains so long until it has wholly flowed out, or until the bursting fissure has subsided and closed, or from some other cause gives back the blood: so in the earth, when the veins are loosened or opened, a brook or river is poured forth. — Eustathius, Patriarch of Antioch and martyr, also most excellently expounds this matter in his Hexaemeron near the beginning, Leo Allatius interpreting: Of all, he says, the humidity that lies hid in the earth the fountain and origin is the water of the sea, which, since the whole earth is tunnel-like, pours itself forth through passages meeting no eyes, as is manifest from the cavernous places of the earth. For the fluid sea, running out through narrow places, when it shall have bent its course through oblique and straight outlets, breaks open by force the surface of the earth with the violence of waves and winds, and, issuing forth, becomes efficacious for drink; for, strained and sifted, it grows sweet. Again, if it be left in lakes burning hot, led forth by the same reason it boils. It is likewise the fountain of the waters which occupy the air: for of that water attracted through the clouds, and warmed by the rays of the sun, presently cooled by the shadow of the clouds, and at last made sweet by the very height exposed to heaven, it sprinkles the earth with drops. — Hence some think the Latin words concato and concavitas to be elicited from the Hebrew word liuru, i.e. let them be gathered, which Moses uses here; for it arises from the root curah, which word however signifies not to hollow out, but to expect and hope and await; whence we are admonished that the waters awaited and heard the command of God, that by his bidding they should flow forth into the place destined for them; although I judge it truer that that word Ikacu is derived from the name lin, which signifies rule, measure, and plumb-line; as if God said: let the waters be gathered to one fixed place, as it were to a rule and plumb-line, beyond which they should not flow forth. Hence the royal Prophet,

Psalm. 103: Thou hast set them a bound which they shall not pass; neither shall they return to cover the earth. — Wherefore, says Saint Basil, homil. 4. pag. 17., oftentimes the sea, swelling with winds, and lifting itself to an immense height with the violence of its billows, as soon as it has touched only the shores, dissolved with that same impetus straightway slides backward into itself. Will ye not fear me, saith the Lord, who have placed the sand as a bound for the sea? Lo, the sea, a thing plainly intolerable by its own force, yet of all things the weakest, namely sand, holds and restrains it. Otherwise what should hinder the Red Sea from breaking in with its overflowing flood upon all Egypt, which lies depressed beneath that sea by so great a hollow, and joining itself to the sea which borders Egypt, unless it were restrained bound, as it were with fetters, by the command of the Creator? For that Egypt lies lower than the Red Sea, they have persuaded us thereof in very deed, who strove to join these seas; Egypt, I say, and the Indian Sea, with which the Red Sea is mingled, to meet one another and join the one to the other. Wherefore to desist from so great an enterprise, Sesostris the Egyptian who first undertook it; likewise Darius the Mede who next wished to pursue so great a work, and to lay the last hand to the task. — The same thou hast in Eustathius, patriarch of Antioch, in his Hexaemeron.

Quaeres: How are the words to be taken which Moses subjoins, Let the dry appear, and God called the dry land, Earth; and the gathering together of the waters he called Seas? — I answer, that the earth, which had been brought forth at the beginning of the world and was covered by the waters, was likewise overlaid with a certain slimy matter; whence there was need that, the waters withdrawing, it should be dried and parched: that namely it might be habitable, sown, and bear fruit. For arid is not the same as sandy; for so, from the heap of sands, it would be utterly unfruitful: but it is so called from the dryness superinduced after the retreat of the waters from its surface. The earth therefore remained somewhat dried, yet not wholly; since it was overspread with that sweet moisture which rendered it somewhat humid; partly that it might become fruitful; partly that, as it were by a glue, its parts might be bound one to another, nor gape and dissolve into dust and sand. And God called that dried and parched matter Earth; either from the verb terere (to tread), because namely it was to be trodden by the feet of men and beasts; or, as Saint Bonaventure says, distinct. 14. par. 2. dubio 1., it is called terra as it were trita (trodden). For, he says, he first calls it dry, and afterwards earth: because the first name declares the property of the element, namely dryness; but the second name declares its use or utility, which it has by commixture with water, that it might be tilled and made fruitful. Similarly, he says, must be said of the waters; for they are called seas, not because bitterness is the first quality of water, but because it accompanies water in its congregation on account of the grossness of the parts which remain, the subtler being raised upward, or penetrating into the depths of the earth, from which subtiliation they grow sweet. Whether, however, God himself truly imposed this name upon earth and sea, or whether he inspired Adam, formed on the sixth day, so to call each of them, nothing certain can be resolved.

Quaeres: To what end did God will the waters thus to be gathered into one Ocean and sea? — I answer, that this was done on account of the various utilities thence arising to men and to the universe, which Saint Ambrose elegantly expounds, book 2. cap. 5., in these words: And if fair be the aspect of that element, he says, either when it whitens with rising heaps and whirlpools of waves, and the golden rocks rotate with silvery spray, or when the expanse of the deep grows milder with gentler breezes, and blushes purple with the bland serenity of tranquillity, passing into that color which is often shed forth upon beholders from afar; when it beats not the neighboring shores with violent billows, but encircles and greets them, as it were, with peaceful embraces: how sweet a sound, how pleasant a roar, how grateful and harmonious an echo! I nevertheless do not judge the beauty of the creature appraised by the eyes; but I define that it accords and agrees with the judgment of the Operator according to the reason of the operation. Good therefore is the sea; first, because it necessarily sustains the lands with moisture, to which through certain veins it secretly ministers a certain juice not useless. Good is the sea as the hostelry of rivers, the fountain of rains, the channel of inundations, the conveyance of traffic: whereby peoples distant from one another are joined; whereby the dangers of wars are removed; whereby the fury of barbarism is shut in; a help in necessities, a refuge in perils, delight in pleasures, salubrity of health, a conjunction of the separated, a shortening of journey, a passage for wayfarers, an aid to revenues, nourishment against sterility; hence rain is transfused into the lands... Then, setting forth how the sea rears up certain islands, wherein those who withdraw themselves from the intemperate enticements of the world choose to lie hid, and to decline the doubtful windings of this life, he concludes: The sea is therefore the secret place of temperance, the exercise of continence, the retreat of gravity, the port of security, the tranquillity of the age, the sobriety of this world, and for faithful and devout men an incentive to devotion, that the canticles of psalm-singers may vie with the sound of the gently laving waves; the island applauds with the tranquil motion of the billows, the choirs of Saints ring out with hymns.

Quaeres denique. — In what manner is the earth said, on this same third day, to have brought forth the green herb?

I answer, that it is more probable that the earth concurred on this day toward the formation of herbs and trees not actively and efficiently by producing, but only passively, by ministering matter; for neither could the earth, by its native virtue, concur actively in so many and so diverse species of plants and trees in so brief a time. Add that the earth can bring forth no plant unless either by receiving seed or a fertilizing germ. For, as Saint Ambrose observes, book 3. cap. 8.: In all things which are called the births of the earth, first is the germ: when it has lifted itself a little, it becomes herb; afterwards a shrub, thence it becomes fruit.... To some, therefore, the series of succession is acquired from seed, to others from root, to others by diverse office. For in each of the things born there inheres either seed or some seminal virtue: and that according to genus; that what is born of it may be like those things which are, or of whose root it germinates.... Straightway therefore the earth, travailing, poured herself forth into new births, and clothed herself with the garment of greenness, assumed the grace of fruitfulness, and, adorned with divers germs, took upon her her proper ornaments. — But that she attained this swift fruitfulness not by her native virtue, but by the divine aid alone working, he proves from this, that the earth cannot break forth into the propagation of any plant except with long-continuing time succeeding, wherein the seed is received, worn away, resolved, as it were by a certain death of itself, that it may rise again into richer fruits; which indeed he elegantly opens thus: The crumbling clod, therefore, receives the grain of wheat, and holds together the slain grain scattered abroad, and compresses it, as if the earth were the maternal bosom. Thence, when that grain has resolved itself, it germinates into herb; the pleasing aspect itself now of the greening verdure forthwith brings forth from it the fruit sown after the likeness of itself: that in the very sap of the stalk thou mayest recognize of what genus the herb is; and in the herbs the fruit appear; and little by little it shoots up that it may grow firm, and, growing downy with the culm, erects itself and rises. But when the jointed ear has already lifted itself, certain sheaths are prepared for the fruit, in which the grain is fashioned within, lest its tender beginnings either cold injure, or the heat of the Sun scorch, or the inclemency of winds, or the late rains shake off. Certain orders succeed in the ear, wrought with wondrous art, either for beauty's sake, or bound for safeguard by a certain bond of natural coherence among themselves, when the divine providence formed it: and lest, by the weight of more abundant fruit, the culm should give way, as it were by a certain loss, certain sheaths the culm itself assumes, that with doubled strength it may sustain the manifold fruit, lest, unequal to the burden, it bend toward the earth. Then over the very ear a husk is built of awns, that it may stretch forth, as it were, a machine in the air, lest by the bites of lesser birds it be deprived of its fruits, or be trodden underfoot. What shall I say of how the clemency of God prospers human utility? The earth, having lent, restores what it received, and multiplied with usurious increase; men often deceive, and it defrauds its creditor himself of the principal: The earth remains faithful, even though, owing, it has not paid; perchance the inclemency of cold hath withstood it, or excessive drought, or the immense force of rains; it compensates by another harvest the losses of the former year: So that when it bows down, disappointing the hope of the husbandman, nothing does the earth lack; and when the plenty of the fruitful mother smiles, she pours herself forth into births, that she may never inflict upon her creditor any loss. What, moreover, the aspect of the full field? What odor? What sweetness? What delight of the husbandman? Which we can scarce expound, if we use our own speech? But we have the testimonies of Scripture, wherein we mark the sweetness of fields compared to blessing and grace of Saints, holy Isaac saying: Behold, the smell of my son is as the smell of a plentiful field. What should I describe of the fading violets, the shining lilies, the glowing roses, of the painted countryside now with golden, now with varied, now with yellow flowers, wherein thou knowest not whether the beauty of the flowers more delights, or the sweet odor? The eye is fed with the grateful spectacle, far and wide the odor is spread abroad, with whose sweetness we are filled.

And God said: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years: to shine in the firmament of heaven, and to give light upon the earth. And it was so done. And God made two great lights: a greater light to rule the day; and a lesser light to rule the night: and the stars, etc. All of which He set into the celestial rings, or spheres, as so many most resplendent gems, with wondrous order and beauty. Concerning the expounding of these words there remains for us here but little to say, since we have discussed at length the nature, motion, and influx of the stars in our Physics. Wherefore only a few things need be noted here.

You ask 1. — Why did God form the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars on no other than the fourth day of the world's origin?

I answer, that this was done by wise counsel and by an entirely divine ordination, lest occasion should be given for suspecting that the Sun and the Stars had contributed anything to the first germination of plants, and hence that men might have an opportunity of worshipping them as divinities. Hence on that fourth day of the world God fashioned first of all the Sun and the Moon, that we might know that the intervals of days and nights could subsist without the Sun; and that grasses and plants could rise from the earth at the mere command of the Creator, without any service of His being employed; and thus men might cease to marvel exceedingly at them, or to ascribe to them some divinity, which God certainly foresaw would one day come to pass. For indeed, that not only the Gentiles but even the Jews fell into an error of this kind is sufficiently shown by the frequent rebukes read among the Prophets against the Jews, who adored the rising sun, sacrificed to the moon as to the Queen of Heaven, and venerated all the host of Heaven. From which crime of impiety Job, rejoicing and exulting that he had been pure and free, said in chapter 31: If I beheld the sun when it shone, and the moon going in brightness, and my heart in secret hath rejoiced, and I have kissed my hand with my mouth: which is a very great iniquity, and a denial against the most high God. Whence Moses, Deuteronomy chapter 4, warned the Hebrews beforehand against this error, saying: Lest perhaps lifting up thy eyes to heaven, thou see the sun and the moon, and all the stars of heaven, and being deceived by error thou adore and serve them, which the Lord thy God created for the service of all nations, that are under heaven. — Nor did that nefarious worship of the Sun and the Stars flourish only among the Jews and the Ethnics; nay, even among Christians also, as Saint Leo testifies in homily 7, On the Nativity of Christ, where, reporting and refuting many errors current among the Christians of his time, he says among other things: There are added also those who falsely assert that the whole condition of human life hangs upon the effects of the Stars, and that things which belong either to the divine will or to ours are the gods of those whose course cannot decline; yet, that they may do harm more abundantly, they promise that these can be changed if supplication be made to those stars that oppose them. Thereby the very fiction destroys itself by its own reasoning; for if what has been foretold stands fast, then the stars are not to be venerated. From such institutions also that impiety is engendered, that the sun, rising at the beginning of the daylight, is adored by certain foolish persons from elevated places! Which some even think they do religiously, so that before they arrive at the Basilica of the blessed Apostle Peter (which is dedicated to the one true God, and to Christ), having surmounted the steps by which one ascends to the raised ground of the upper area, they turn their body toward the sun as it rises, and with bowed necks incline themselves in honor of the resplendent orb; a thing over which we decay and grieve much, partly through a fault of ignorance, partly through the spirit of paganism.

Therefore, that the production of light and of plants and elements preceded the formation of the sun and moon and the other stars happened not rashly nor fortuitously, but by the prudent counsel of divine Wisdom. For since nothing is more prone to us than to bind and attribute the power of God to creatures whose ministry He uses in establishing His works; thence it is that just as the sun and moon administer light to us, we include that power in them after such fashion in our estimation, that if they were taken from the world much light would seem able to remain. Therefore the Lord testifies by the very order of creation that He holds light in His hand, which He can bestow upon us without sun and moon. Wherefore in the fashioning of the world God willed not to create first of all the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, in order that when men recalled to memory and revolved in their minds the beginnings of the world, and knew that light and plants and the elements were brought forth before the stars, they might understand that the benefits received from the influx of the Stars must be attributed not to the Stars but to God, and thanks rendered to Him.

You ask 2. — Whence have the stars been made?

I answer, that this was the opinion of certain Hebrews, namely that the stars were created on the first day of the world, and only on the fourth affixed to heaven and suspended therein. Which Rabbi Salomon teaches among others in his commentary, and some Christians concur with him, especially Cajetan and Catharinus; and accordingly they judge that the Stars were created together with the Earth and Heaven by God, and consequently were not brought forth from any presupposed matter. But this opinion accords not at all with the narrative of Moses: for he writes that on the first day light was produced together with Heaven and Earth, adding nothing further of work; then on the fourth day he declares that the greater and lesser lights were made at God's command; therefore they had not existed before this day. — There are those who think the stars were produced outside of Heaven, and were afterwards fastened into it like radiant gems by the divine hand itself, the artificer of all things; as Moses seems to indicate in these words: And God made two great lights, and set them in the firmament; expounding which, Basil of Seleucia, in Oration 1, says that the stars were set in the heaven by the divine hand like splendid flowers, saying: unto these ends He infixes the lights of the stars in the heaven, and sows the firmament with luminous flowers, conducing to the grace and use of those who dwell upon earth. To him accords Claudius Marius Victor, book 1, On Genesis:

The heavens too, painting themselves with distinct zones, Vibrate with varied colors from ethereal flowers.

Severianus, bishop of Gabala, also concurs, Oration 3, On the creation of the world, where, speaking of the formation of the stars and asking how God made the lights? he answers: It seems He made them outside the heaven, and afterwards fixed and placed them above. Just as an artisan, after he has finished a tablet, affixes it to the wall: so God first made the lights outside the heaven, and then, as an artisan, fixed them in the upper regions, as Scripture testifies: And God made two great lights, and set them in the firmament. — Some hold with Theodoret that the Astra were formed out of that primordial light which, namely, had illumined the natal days of the three former worlds. Hence Saint Maximus, in his scholia on chapter 4 of Saint Dionysius, On the Divine Names, says that the Sun is nothing else than light... and that that first-begotten light which was created on the first day was only on the fourth transformed into the Sun. Of the same opinion Saint Basil seems to have been; for in homily 6 he says that on the first day the nature of light itself was created, but on the fourth the solar body was constituted, to be the vehicle of that primordial light. — Again, I judge that it must rather be said as more probable that the stars were brought forth from some part of the Heavens, because God on this fourth day rarefied one part of the Heavens and condensed another; and into that condensed part, the form of the Heavens having been expelled, He introduced a new form of the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars.

You ask: why has Moses made mention here only of the Sun and the Moon, and not likewise of the other five Planets, in this place? — I answer, that perhaps he passed this over in silence, because in the commemoration of the Sun and Moon, as better known to us, he wished the other planets to be understood; or because he comprehended them under the general name of stars, since they appear and seem to shine only in the manner of stars; or finally because the proper motions, effects, uses, and differences of those Planets from the other stars are known only to learned men; whereas he was writing the Genesis of the world for a ruder people, and indicated only those things which could be apprehended by the senses and by the eyes.

You ask 3. — By what reason has Moses written that the sun and moon are great lights, whereas it is established by astrological reckonings that the star of Saturn, which appears the least of all on account of its great distance, is greater than the lunar!

I answer, that Moses wrote this not from inexperience, but according to the understanding and sense common to the Israelites, in whose favor he was committing the Genesis and fabric of the world to writing. And since he was appointed teacher no less to the unlearned and rude than to the learned, he could not otherwise open school to all [so take him, as you place the hope of good in his teaching?]; it is no wonder if he chooses chiefly those things which can be understood by all. If an astrologer seek the true dimensions of the stars, he will truly find the moon less than Saturn. But that is hidden: for another thing appears to the eyes. Therefore Moses turned himself rather to use. For since the Lord stretches forth His hand, in a manner, even unto us, while He makes us enjoy the splendor of the sun and moon: how great ingratitude would it be to wink knowingly at experience itself? There is therefore no reason why men of glib tongue should see inexperience in Moses, because he makes the moon the second luminary: for he calls us not up into heaven, but only sets forth what lies open before the eyes. Let the astrologians keep for themselves the higher knowledge; meanwhile, because they perceive the nocturnal splendor of the moon, they are convicted by use itself of perverse ingratitude, unless they acknowledge the beneficence of God.

You ask 4. — What is signified by these words: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons?

I answer 1. That the sense is not this, that those lights effect the night and the day by their own light; for the Moon does not establish the night by her light, as the Sun does the day; since indeed nothing is more repugnant to night than light: but that the Sun effects both, the day by His presence, the night by His absence. The sense therefore is, let them divide, that is, let them shine distinctly: the Sun indeed by day, but the Moon and the Stars by night. — It is added moreover, and let them be for signs: not indeed prognostics of judicial Astrology, for there is here no speech of signs of human events hanging upon liberty, as the judicial astrologers suppose, whom I have attacked at length, and as I believe efficaciously, in the Physics, disp. 5, question 15 and following; but as

Philo teaches rightly in the book On the making of the world, signs are things from which conjecture may be made: First indeed, of rain, serenity, frost, winds, etc. Secondly, let them be for signs for sowing, planting, reaping, navigating, vintage, healing, etc. Thirdly, and properly, let them be for signs of times, namely of days, months, and years: for the year is described by one course of the sun, and one revolution through the zodiac; but by twelve lunations, while evidently the Moon runs twelve times through the zodiac. Likewise there are signs for determining the four seasons of the world; namely for effecting spring, summer, autumn, winter. Also for presignifying times dry, hot, humid, stormy, serene, salubrious, morbid. Similarly they are signs of Feasts, Neomenies, Sabbaths, and of all those things which pertain either to religion or to the political state: the vicissitudes of all which are ordered and defined by the motion of the Sun and Moon. And finally, as Saint Augustine says in the imperfect book On Genesis according to the letter, chapter 13, those two Astra are for signs, and for seasons, that is, they distinguish times; which, he says, by the distinction of intercalations signify that the unchangeable eternity remains above them, that the lowest, that is, as it were, the footprint of eternity, may appear. — Finally Saint Bonaventure adds, that since things future are of triple difference; some proceeding from a natural cause, some provenient from the free will of man, and some proficising from the divine will, those two lights may be called signs in a threefold manner: namely they are altogether uncertain signs either of natural effects, or of acts of free will, or of divine things; but of the third order they can be signs partly certain, partly uncertain: certain indeed by prediction and divine institution, because, as Christ the Lord says concerning the last and final days of the world, There shall be signs in the Sun, and in the Moon, and in the Stars, which will shortly presignify the coming destruction of the world and the general judgment: partly uncertain however, namely as regards the knowledge of man, Christ the Lord Himself saying, that it is not for you to know the times, or moments, which the Father hath put in His own power.

You ask finally. — In what sense are the Sun and the Moon called two great lights?

I answer, that various opinions of the ancient Philosophers existed on this matter, which Plutarch reports in book 2, Of the opinions of the Philosophers, chapter 21. For Anaximander makes the axle of the Sun equal to the earth; Hierarchus of a foot's breadth. Epicurus says it is as great as it appears, etc. But these are old wives' trifles: for it is established by certain demonstrations of the Mathematicians that the star of the Sun exceeds the whole globe of the waters encompassing the earth a hundred sixty and six times, and that it stands distant from the earth four millions of miles; whence it follows that so vast is the periphery and amplitude of the solar orb, that as the sun completes its circle in twenty-four hours, in one hour it runs through one million and a hundred forty thousand miles; which is the same as if it should run around the circuit and compass of the earth fifty times: for the convex circumference of the solar Heaven contains twenty-seven millions and three hundred sixty thousand miles, which if you divide into twenty-four hours, you will find the aforesaid number, yea and somewhat more. — But as to the Moon, Saint Basil taught

in Homily 6, and elsewhere, book 1, chapter 6, that I find her far larger alike than the other stars, to which opinion Saint Augustine seems to subscribe, book 2, On Genesis according to the letter, chapter 16, where he says: Surely let them grant this at least to our eyes, that it is so manifest that she shines more upon the earth than the rest, neither does the day brighten save by the light of the sun, nor does the night, all the stars appearing, so shine if the moon be absent, as it is illumined by her presence. But Saint Augustine speaks rather of the light of the Moon than of her magnitude. Whence the Mathematicians rightly teach that all the stars and planets whatsoever are greater than the Moon, Mercury alone excepted, who is three hundred ninety times less than the earth; but there is no star in the firmament which is not ninety times greater than the whole globe of the earth; the magnitudes of the wandering stars indeed are diverse, yet all exceed the earth, three excepted; Venus, the Moon, Mercury; for the earth is greater than the star of Venus thirty-seven times, than the star of the Moon truly thirty-nine times; than the star of Mercury far more abundantly. Therefore the Moon is called a great luminary, not indeed by the amplitude of her axis, but by reason of the greater illumination, and of that marvelous efficacy whereby she prevails upon these lower things. For, says Saint Ambrose, book 4, chapter 7, the Moon assumes that ministry in which is her brother (the sun), that she illuminate the darkness, cherish the seeds, increase the fruits. She has also very many things distinct from her brother, that Him whom the heat of the day exhales of the humors of the earth, she may restore in the brief time of night with dew: for even the Moon herself is besprinkled with a milky dew. Then thereafter she is diminished and increased, that she may be less when she rises again new, and when diminished may be filled full. In which is a great mystery, for even the elements compassionate her defect, and by her progress are filled up wherein they had been diminished. For the brains of animals, and the moist things of sea-shores: since fuller oysters are reported to be found, and many other things, when the lunar globe grows.

The fifth day brought forth the twofold work of the divine art, the kinds of fishes and of birds: which Moses expressed in verses 20, 21, 22, and 23 in these words: God also said: Let the waters bring forth the creeping creature having life, and the fowl that may fly over the earth under the firmament of heaven. And God created the great whales, and every living and moving creature, which the waters brought forth according to their kinds, and every winged fowl according to its kind. And God saw that it was good; and he blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the waters of the sea: and let the birds be multiplied upon the earth. And it was evening and morning the fifth day. Concerning these words several points occur that must be discussed.

You ask 1. Whether the birds were formed out of the water, as also the fishes.

I affirm. For the narrative of Moses indicates this, and the holy Fathers of better note agree: among whom Basil, homily 8, where he proposes the same question, says: Why, he says, did He give origin even to winged creatures from the waters? He answers, because there is, as it were, a certain kinship of birds with fishes: for just as fishes cleave the water, advancing by the beating of their fins, while with their tail by a change of flexions they steer for themselves winding and straight motions and impulses: so the same may be seen even in birds, which swim through the air with wings in like manner. The same the Church teaches, which in the Hymn of Vespers of the fifth day sings thus:

Hymn, O God of power, Who of the fertile water born, Part Thou leavest to the deep, Part Thou bearest into the air; The submerged impressing upon the waters, The uplifted raising to the heavens, That, sprung from one stock, They may fill diverse places.

Which same opinion the same St. Ambrose confirms and proves, book 4 In Hexaemeron cap. 11, from the varied kinship which birds have with fishes;

For, he says, the first kinship seems to be that of birds with fishes, since certain common endowments of swimming appear to belong to both kinds. There is also a second kinship of all birds and fishes, in that the use of flying is a species of swimming: for as the fish by swimming cuts through the water, so the bird is cleft through the air by swift flight. Thirdly, to both alike the tail supplies aid, and the rowing of the wings, that fishes may raise themselves by their fins toward what is before, and advance to what is further: and by the rudder of the tail also they easily turn themselves whither they will, or by a certain impulse direct their course out of their course. Fourthly, birds also ride upon the air with their oar-like wings as upon horses, and as it were stretch out certain arms, and with the tail too either raise themselves upward or dip themselves downward. Whence, since in several respects there is the same use and species, the same divine precept bade that of the waters both kinds, thus nurtured, proceed. So Ambrose.

To him accords Severianus of Gabala, oration 4 De mundi creatione: The creeping things, he says, he calls fishes, because they creep rather than walk. Whence also the blessed David, treading in the footsteps of the Lawgiver, says: this great and wide sea, in the hands of which are the creeping things of which there is no number. Then weighing the same words morally, he subjoins these:

Since therefore He who was about to offer to the world the first life through the regeneration of the waters commanded the first waters to bring forth the nature of vital seed, that you may know whence the root of life exists: indeed when I see those who are illumined going forth from the holy waters, having entered into baptism indeed with many evils, as it were creeping things, but those who emerge upheld by eternal life, I see the Lawgiver saying: Let the waters bring forth, formerly indeed creeping things, but now a living soul. Whence may this be made manifest? Doubtless that they who approach the laver bear on account of former sins the name of creeping things. Very many went out to the baptism of John. He says to those who had gone out: Ye brood of vipers, who hath showed you to flee from the wrath to come? When a soul, about to be dipped in baptism, long since accustomed to vice for many years, shall have gone forth with its filth laid aside, see whether the Lord's voice shine forth in the very things themselves, which says: Let the waters bring forth the creeping things of living souls, and the winged fowl that fly? For he who is gifted with salvation receives a twofold grace: namely, that he is then quickened in soul, and then admitted to the rank of things winged, who now holding the paths of heaven with the Angels, dwells in their equal fellowship, and as their companion rejoices together with the heavenly order. So he.

— Tertullian had gone before him, book De Baptismo cap. 3: To the first waters, he says, was given the command to bring forth souls: the first liquid which then appeared brought them forth, lest it be a marvel if in Baptism the waters bring forth souls. Hence, complaining of Quintilla because she drew men away from Baptism, he had said before, and knew full well, that she was wont to kill the little fishes by taking them out of the water.¹ — Pererius adds that there is a great similitude and kinship between fishes and birds, whether you regard the natural place of each, that is, water and air; for both are diaphanous, humid, agitable bodies, which yield easily: the air likewise is full of aqueous moisture, and is most readily changed into water. Or whether you consider the conformation of the body in the animals of each kind, for lightness and agility inhere in both; there is a great similitude between the fins of fishes and the wings of birds, between the feathers of the latter and the scales of the former: both lack ears, and are touched through certain meatus in the office of ears. Hence birds have no bladder, lest it impede their flight, nor teats, nor milk, as Aristotle relates, book 3 De Historia animalium c. 20; lastly, many kinds of birds are aquatic, as Cranes, Geese, Coots, Mergansers, Ducks, Kingfishers; which seem to dwell in the waters rather than in the air. — I judge, however, that St. Augustine, book 3 De Genesi ad litteram c. 3, for this reason said the birds were said to be formed out of the water, namely because they came forth from an aqueous vapor together with an earthy one, borne aloft through the air; so that this word water signifies also the air, or a cloud compacted chiefly of water; whence, when he had said that both this kind of living things is related to have been brought forth from the waters, he concludes: Whatever, therefore, of the waters, whether flowingly wavy and fluid, or attenuated and suspended by evaporation, so that that volatile may appear distributed among the creeping things of living souls; yet both is assigned to the humid nature. He teaches, therefore, that the birds were said to be of the water on account of their greatest kinship, and on account of the highest similitude of the air with water expressed above. I judge, therefore, with St. Augustine, that the birds were not formed out of that dense water which glides through the earth, and is contained in it, from which the fishes came forth; but out of water attenuated into vapors, and conformed into clouds, which ascends into the inner region of the air, in which the birds flit, and inhabits it.

You will say. Moses, in the second chapter of Genesis, verse 19, sufficiently indicates that the birds were formed out of the earth; for he says: Having therefore formed out of the ground all the animals of the earth, and all the fowls of the air, etc. Then this same the Hebrew text here indicates; for where we read in the Vulgate: Let the waters bring forth the creeping thing of life, and the volatile: Cajetan, devoted as is his wont to the Hebrews, correcting the received Interpreter from the Hebrew text, says that only this is to be gathered, that the birds were here commanded to fly; for he renders it word for word: let the waters bring forth the creeping thing of a living soul, and the volatile shall fly over the earth: from which it appears that Moses in this place does not hand down that the birds were brought forth from the waters: nay rather he indicates above, c. 2, that they are said to be of the earth; here, however, that they were commanded by divine precept to fly through the airs: therefore they did not come forth from the water.

I deny the consequence. And to the objection I say that the words of Moses do not indicate in them that the birds were brought forth from the earth, but only that they were formed by God. Whence that conjunction, and, is not tied to those words of the ground, as if the sense were: formed out of the ground both the terrestrial animals and the volatile ones; but it is referred only to the passive participle formed; as if Moses said: the terrestrial animals having been formed out of the ground, and the birds having been formed also, that is, after God had created these two kinds of living things, he brought them to Adam, that he might see what he would call them. Or to the second argument in truth I say that likewise nothing is evinced from it; for in the Hebrew text there is an ellipsis of the relative pronoun, as if it said: And the volatile which shall fly, which pronoun indeed the Greeks and Latins have supplied for the sake of a clearer signification; which the Targum of Onkelos also has, writing thus: And the volatile which shall fly over the earth. Nor say that the bodies of birds are mixed of the four elements, and therefore did not come forth from water alone: for if this argument should prove anything, it would also persuade that man was not procreated of the earth, nor the earth, or the water, from nothing.

You ask 2. Why Moses did not express the fishes by their proper name, but called them creeping things in these words: Let the waters bring forth the creeping thing?

The Seraphic Doctor answers, dist. 10, first doubt, where he distinguishes the motion of creeping from the motion of walking: Every animal, he says, that is moved, either is moved by impelling itself forward, and this it does either with feet, and is a walker; or with wings, and is volatile; or it moves itself by drawing itself backward, and this can be done in four ways; either that it draws itself by the force of its mouth as the worm: or by the force of its ribs and belly as serpents: or by the force of little fins as fishes: or lastly they are said to creep, not properly, as lizards and geckos, which although they have parts, small ones [exiguaes] they have nevertheless, and raise themselves but little from the ground, and while they move apply a great part of their body to the earth: wherefore these also are said to creep: and thus according to diverse acceptations, the creeping thing can pertain to adorning all the elements. — I add from the annotation of Hugh of St. Victor on Genesis cap. 7, that there are three kinds of creeping things, namely, drawing ones, serpentine ones, and crawling ones. The drawing ones are worms, which first sucking the earth with their mouth afterwards draw themselves along. The serpentine ones are serpents, which have no feet outside the skin, but have ribs within, leaning upon which they are borne along all at once. The crawling ones are those which have feet outside the skin, as toads, lizards, geckos. Wherefore by the name of creeping thing Moses here signified chiefly the fishes, that he might denote, namely, that as serpents, lacking feet, move themselves upon the earth above their breast by creeping, so fishes in the sea swim as it were by clutching; whence they are called creeping things, because indeed they brood upon the waters with their belly, as it were creeping and rowing. Although, however, there are certain living things dwelling in the waters which have feet, as otters, beavers, hippopotami; yet these, so long as they are in the waters, do not walk, but use them for swimming as for oars. — Moses adds: the creeping thing of a living soul; because, says the Seraphic Doctor, life appeared chiefly in fishes and volatiles on this day; namely, through sense and motion: hence a living soul is called that which manifests even an animal life, such as that is which gives to the body motion and sense: such, however, is not in plants, but in animals: and therefore, to distinguish them from plants, he says: let the waters bring forth the creeping thing of a living soul, as if in plants there were a soul living, and in animals a soul flourishing, because these are moved and feel, but those by no means.

You ask 3. What Moses wished to signify by the great whales?

The sacred Interpreters answer that that word whales signifies dragons, and all huge animals, both terrestrial and aquatic; as are the whales, which seem as it were aquatic dragons. Hence Ps. 103, the immense fishes are called dragons in these words: The dragons and all the deep. And Ezek. 32, speaking of Pharaoh king of Egypt, says: Thou art likened to the dragon that is in the sea. And c. 20. Behold I come against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, thou great dragon, that sittest in the midst of thy rivers. Therefore not by whales is any one species of fishes understood, but all fishes of greater form and vaster body. Moses, moreover, makes mention chiefly of the Dragons, or Whales, that he might indeed guard against the error of the Philosophers, who deemed that animals of this kind were not made by the counsel and purpose of God, but by accident, as it were from the necessity of matter: or that he might designate that, since God is the creator of the immense beasts of the sea, He is much more easily to be believed the artificer of the smallest beasts. Although, however, certain ones deem that Moses therefore called them great whales, and did not bestow the same appellation upon terrestrial animals, because the aquatic are far greater than the terrestrial; for Whales, as Basil and Theodoret say, have a prodigious and scarcely credible bulk of body; and when they raise their back above the waters, they exhibit the appearance of an immense island. Pliny, book 9. c. 30, writes that the whales of the Indian sea are four iugera: but the Pistes two hundred cubits: and the eels in the Ganges three hundred feet: and book 32, cap. cited, Iuba, King of Mauritania, who relates in the volumes written to Caius Caesar, son of Augustus, that whales of six hundred feet in length and three hundred sixty in breadth enter the river of Arabia. — But, as Pererius observes, terrestrial animals seem of no less magnitude than the aquatic: for book 8, cap. 12, 13, and 14, Pliny writes that the Indian dragons are of such magnitude that they easily encircle the greatest Elephants with their coils, and strangle them with the knot of their grip: but the Ethiopian ones are of twenty cubits, and the Indian serpents are wont to grow to such a magnitude that they swallow stags: Aelian also relates, book 15 of the History of Animals c. 21, that when Alexander was waging war against the Indians, it happened that he heard from the inhabitants there was within a great cave an most immense serpent, which was judged to be seventy cubits long, and was venerated as something divine; and when it had put forth its head from the cave, its eyes were seen to have grown to the magnitude of a great Macedonian shield; which so terrified and disordered the army of Alexander, that unless the Emperor had held them back, all would have taken to flight. — Nevertheless I judge it must be said that the animals in the waters are far greater than those on land; for this both the history of the ancients confirms, and even the experience of today. Add that the aqueous moisture contributes especially to the fashioning of that tallness, for, as Aristotle testifies, book 3 De generatione animalium, c. 11, moisture has a nature more apt for shaping and forming than earth. Consistent with these Pliny writes, book 9, cap. 2, where, when he had said that the things which are in waters are both more numerous and greater than terrestrial ones, he subjoins: The cause, he says, is evident: the abundance of moisture; very many monstrous ones also are found, with their seeds and beginnings confused, and turned one way and another within themselves, now by brooding, now rolled by the wave; so that true becomes the vulgar opinion, that whatever is born in any part of nature is also in the sea, besides many things which are nowhere at all. Consonant with these are the things David sang in Psalm 103. This great and wide sea, in the hands thereof: there are creeping things of which there is no number. — Moses subjoins that when God had approved the production of living things, he blessed them, saying:

Increase and multiply. Which words Severianus of Gabala weighing, Oration 1 De creatione mundi:

What cause is there, he says, why when He made the stars He did not bless? Why when He made the sun and the moon did He not bless? Why when He made the herbs and plants and trees did He not bless? The one He blesses, the other He blesses not. What the cause of this distinction may be, attend. The stars, as many as were said from the beginning, so many they persevere, and of none of them can there be an increase either in number or in magnitude. Suppose that they were to remain in the identity of their nature, they had no need of a blessing which should multiply them; but those which were to be multiplied by the succession of others from others, nor otherwise were they to receive increase, are necessarily imparted a blessing also.

Aleimus Avitus, praised above, explains all these things excellently:

Straightway into diverse figures many animals arise, And run their course, brute creatures, through the empty globe. The winged fowl borne up on high, with swift-moving flight Hanging, pursued their ways, and in the clear air They poise the weights of their members on speeding wings. After, even the fishes, shut beneath the vast abyss, Breathe in the waters, and draw their breaths beneath the deep, The humid things give to them the life they deny to us. Nor less in the sea grow the mighty whales, And take for habitations dens worthy their lurking places: And what monsters the sea, now seldom, is wont to bear in its mass, His skill adapts, compacting them into unshapen forms.

Just as the fifth day gave inhabitants to the water and to the air, so the sixth gave inhabitants to the earth; for, as Pererius observes, in the first three generative days of the world God distinguished and ordered the Universe itself, separating and setting apart the three principal bodies that compose it, namely Heaven, water, and earth. For on the first day, light having been made, He distinguished day from night, light from darkness: on the second day, by the firmament He separated the heavenly waters from the earthly waters: on the third day He separated the water from the earth; for the plants then produced are reckoned as parts of the earth, since, fixed by their roots in the earth, they arise from it, are nourished by it, and grow by it. But on the remaining three days God, their Creator, both adorned these same three bodies and filled them with various kinds of things, keeping exactly the same order: for on the fourth day He graced Heaven with the stars, on the fifth the water with fishes, and on the sixth day the earth with land animals, and completed it. This Moses indeed expressed in these words: God also said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds: and it was so done. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and cattle, and every creeping thing of the earth in its kind. In which words Moses aptly expressed all the brute living things formed by God the Creator of things on the sixth day by these words: the living creature. For all of them agree universally in this appellation of a living soul. Whence by a common word they are called animals by the Latins, because they have life or soul: in which appellation not only the Hebrews agree, who derive the name of animal from the word chaia, that is, life and soul, which word is retained in the languages deriving from Hebrew origin, such as the Chaldaic, Syriac, Arabic, and the like: but also the Greeks, as it seems, imitating zoo — from the Hebrews, or rather the Phoenicians, who nevertheless had nearly the same language as they. But, says Seneca, epistle 58, there are certain things which have a soul, and yet are not animals, for it pleases him well enough that even shrubs have a mind within them: and so we have said that they both live and die; and the tree, adds Cicero, book 5 De finibus, both is nourished, and grows, and thinks, and senses, and flourishes; which things nevertheless are not usually called by the name of animal. But the life of animals, and their soul, surpasses plants by so many degrees that in comparison with them plants seem to have only a shadow of life and certain outlines of it. For to the beasts, as Cicero notes, book 2 De natura Deorum, nature gave both sense and motion, and with a certain appetite an approach to things wholesome and a withdrawal from things pestiferous: but to those things which are born of the earth she gave nothing more than that they should be nourished and grow, by an implanted vital heat, in which is the power of procreation and the cause of generation. Although therefore everything that lives, whether an animal or a thing brought forth by the earth, lives on account of the heat enclosed within it, as Zeno rightly concluded: yet the animal has within itself a certain principality, on account of which it is both moved and senses; neither of which can be attributed to trees and plants. From this it must be understood that animals have a life and soul far more excellent than these: although the rational soul with which man is endowed is far more inward still, for the soul of brutes differs from the human by many degrees and marks: for this is spiritual, that wholly corporeal; the one mortal, the other immortal; the human is endowed with reason, but the bestial is utterly devoid of all reason, whatever Lactantius may protest, who, in book 3 De falsa sapientia, chapter 10, in order to prove that the highest good of man consists in the highest religion, contends that the other things which are thought to be proper to man are found also in the other animals.

For when, he says, they discern and distinguish their own voices by proper signs, they seem to converse, and some appearance of understanding is seen in them; with ears smoothed down, jaws contracted, and eyes relaxed into wantonness, they either sport with man, or each with his own mates and proper offspring. Do they not impart something like mutual love and indulgence? And that by which they provide for themselves for the future, and store up food, surely has providence. Signs of reason also are detected in many of them, for when they seek what is useful to themselves, guard against harms, avoid perils, prepare hiding places for themselves, opening into many exits, they certainly understand something. Can anyone deny that reason is in them, when they often make sport of man himself? For those to whom the office of generating honey belongs, when they inhabit assigned abodes, fortify camps, construct dwellings with unspeakable art, and serve their king — I know not whether perfect prudence has been given to these. It is uncertain therefore whether those things which are attributed to man are common with other living things. They are certainly devoid of religion. For my part, I judge that reason has been given to all living things, but to brutes only for preserving life, to man for propagating it. Thus Lactantius.

But that all these things can be done by brutes without reason, mind, and intellect, is taught, with Thomas Willis, part 1, chapter 6, of the book De anima brutorum, by very many most subtle observers of nature, affirming that beasts execute all these things by inborn natural notions impressed by God, by which they are led to the conservation of their species and of their own individual, as we have taught more fully in the Philosophical works. But that a plainer understanding may be had of the aforesaid words of Moses,

You ask 1. Whether Moses in the aforesaid words sufficiently expressed all the species of land animals without exception as created by God?

I affirm, with the Seraphic Doctor, dist. 15, doubt 2; and he proves it by a twofold argument drawn from the side of motion, and from the side of the end of animals. From the side of motion thus: for every animal that moves is either moved by dragging, and so is a creeping thing; or by impulse, and so is a walking animal; and this is twofold: either it is an animal born to be savage, or to be tame. In the first way it is called a beast; in the second way it is called a beast of burden, and under beasts of burden are comprehended cattle. — From the side of the end: for animals were made on account of man: therefore either they are ordered to the aid of man, as are beasts of burden, as it were aiding: or they are ordered to the exercise of man: and this can be twofold, because they either exercise harm by harming openly, and so are beasts, as it were devastations: or they harm secretly, and so are creeping things, which harm secretly and lie in wait for the heel. And although they would not have these ends in act if man had not sinned, they would nevertheless have them in aptitude; and from that very aptitude man would then have been better instructed in the state of innocence than he is instructed now from act in the state of guilt: and so is manifest the difference and sufficiency of these three.

You ask 2. Whether the most minute animals, and those which are accustomed to be formed from putrid matter, did God also create on the very sixth day?

St. Augustine answers, book 3, De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 11, that they can indeed be said to have been then formed by God on that day. Those most minute things, he says, which arise either from waters or from lands, can indeed be said to have been created then: among which also those are not absurdly understood which are born from those things which arose from the earth when it germinated. And because they had preceded in condition not only the animals but also the lights, and because they are continued with the earth by the connection of roots, whence on that day on which the dry land appeared they arose, they were to be understood as pertaining rather to the supplement of habitation than to the number of inhabitants. But the other things which are generated from the bodies of animals, especially dead ones, it is most absurd to say were created then, since the animals themselves were created; unless because there was already in all animate bodies a certain natural power, and a matter as it were pre-seeded, and, in a certain manner, initiated beginnings of future animals, which were to arise from the corruptions of such bodies, each according to its own kind and differences, through the ineffable administration of the immutable Creator moving all things. — St. Basil answers that the imperfect animals, and those which have their origin from putrescent matter, were brought forth by God in the beginning of the world, in these words: For not in the sea or in rivers were the more perfect fishes generated by the command of God, but also in muddy and marshy places: for frogs, mice, and gnats emerged from the very mud itself, doubtless from the mire. — I answer, with the common opinion of the Interpreters, that this difficulty is to be solved with a distinction: for there are certain animals of this kind which are born most easily, and without any trouble, from excrementitious matter adhering to animals, or from a certain slight corruption, such as lice, fleas, caterpillars, and the like; and these are not seen to have been procreated by God: for otherwise it would have to be said that already then, in the state of innocence, man was beset with lice, since these are born only in the flesh of man, and draw nourishment from the same. But others which require a certain industry, that they may be elicited from putrid matter, such as bees or wasps, and which are not born so easily from corruption, such as wasps, mice, dormice, many serpents, and a great multitude of insects; and these were produced by God.

You ask 3. Whether hybrids, or animals which are generated from the commixture of diverse species, were also produced by God on this day, such as the mule from the mare and the ass, the leopard from the lion and the pard, the lynx from the wolf and the stag?

I answer, that it seems more probable that all animals were in fact created then; both because, although in Africa new species of monsters arise daily, and more may thereafter arise, and can arise, from a new commixture of one species or of other animals; nevertheless this commixture of animals of diverse species is beside nature and altogether adulterine. Whence it was forbidden to the Jews, Leviticus 19, verse 19; because these animals are judged to have been created sufficiently when the other species were created, from whose commixture they were afterwards to be born.

You ask 4. Whether, as animals were produced which live in the other elements, some were also produced in fire?

I answer, that they were not: for no inhabitants were given to fire: for that neither the Salamander nor any other animal can live or endure in fire, Galen teaches, book 3, De temperamentis, and Dioscorides, book 2, chapter 56, where Matthiolus says that he himself tried the very same thing, and cast many Salamanders into the fire, which were quickly consumed. So the Pyraustae, the lampyrides, which are somewhat larger than flies, live in fire only for a brief time. For they are born in the copper furnaces in Cyprus, and in these they leap and walk about through the fire, and soon, flying away from the flame, they die, as Aristotle testifies, book 5, Historia animalium, chapter 19.

You will ask: why did God not bestow His blessing upon land animals, as He did upon fishes and fowl? — The Hebrews answer that the blessing was not given to land animals because among them was the serpent, who a little later was to seduce man, and for that reason was to be cursed by God. But Pererius judges it more probable that Moses wished what he had said concerning the blessing of the fishes to be understood also of land animals, and not only in this, but in other things also, of those which were produced by Moses in some one kind: similar things also must be understood in the others, which were not handed down for the sake of brevity. But the blessing was to be attributed to man properly and separately, because in man there is a certain proper and singular manner of generation and multiplication: namely, not only for the conservation of the species, but chiefly for the completing of the number of the Elect; and lest anyone should think that in the office of generating no sin could be on the part of man. For although the power of generating is altogether natural in the other animals, in man nevertheless it is in part natural, and in part voluntary; and what in others is capable neither of vice nor of virtue can in man be turned either to praise or to crime. But a blessing did not befit plants, since they have no sense, and no affection for propagating offspring.

You ask 5. Whether God could have made, or created, things better than He made, or created, them?

Guillaume of Paris answers, book 1 of De Universo, first part, chapter 23.

That some things, as far as the amplitude and copiousness of His power went, He could have created greater and better than He created them: but those things were not receptive of greater goodness, nor could they be created better, just as perhaps He could not have created the Moon luminous of itself, in like manner as neither the earth: for it would not be earth if it were luminous; nor would the moon be the moon if it had been created luminous of itself; nor would the ass be an ass unless God had made it an irrational animal: nor would the flea be a flea if the Creator had given to it the magnitude of a Whale or of an Elephant. Moreover, the things themselves cannot sustain such mutations and augmentations mutually: for if He had made man of the magnitude of the Sun, the whole earth would not have sufficed him for habitation, nor all the grains and fruits of it for his nourishment; nor all the wools and linens for his clothing; and so this is easy for you to see in the other animals, because in no wise can they endure one another. For if He had made serpents in the likeness of Elephants and Whales, the other animals would not have sustained them. Similarly, if flies had the magnitude of eagles, the whole habitation of the air, which is assigned to birds, would have been occupied and filled by flies alone. Manifest therefore it is to you from these things, that the most wise and best Creator so tempered the whole, that is, the world, or universe, and so regulated the several genera and species, that their magnitudes and smallnesses not only endure one another, but help one another, and can be safe, and be saved together, that is, in the whole itself, or world. But if anyone should say, that it did not befit the infinite power of the Creator, and His infinite goodness, and the immense riches of the same goodness, to have created all things which He created so small, neither the Heavens, nor the world itself: but rather that it was becoming to have created a world incomparably greater, and likewise the Heavens; and, for that magnitude, to have created men and the other animals in the world great; here then you must remember, that bodies and animals could neither be created infinite, nor be so: for elsewhere you have learned that every body, and everything corporeal, is of necessity finite. Therefore, since they had of necessity to be created finite, and to be finite, this question would be the same if the Creator had created all things far greater than they are; for however much greater He had created them, they would nevertheless have been finite; and on this account it could always be asked why He had not created them greater. That measure, therefore, of magnitude and of the other things in created things was not from any defect of power or of goodness in the Creator; but the things themselves, as I have shown you by a few examples, rather required this measure; although it could be said most truly, that by the election and providence of the most wise Giver things were created in these measures and dispositions.

You ask 6. Whether God truly, after the production of the Universe, ceased from all work, as Moses seems to signify, chapter 2, in these words: And God completed the work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all the work which He had accomplished.

The Seraphic Doctor answers, dist. 15, question 3.

First indeed, presupposing that every perfect workman begins a work in order to bring it to perfection: and as he intends, so he does, if the virtue of the agent suffice him throughout; but when he has brought it to perfection, he has what he intends; and every agent acting for an end, that end being obtained for which he acts, rests: therefore every perfect Workman so works that at some time he may rest. Since therefore God is the most perfect agent in producing the Universe itself, it is necessary therefore that He at some time rest. But since the agent is twofold — a certain one that is moved and labors in its operation, and another which is neither changed nor varied: that which acts in the first manner will rest by a quietation which is a privation of motion and labor, as is the created agent: but that which acts in the second manner will rest by a quietation which is not a privation of labor or of fatigue, but which is a cessation from work on account of its own perfection: and thus God is said to have rested from all work, when He had produced the Universe to perfect being; and so He rested when He had brought it to perfect being. These things premised, He answers, secondly, that since the perfection of the Universe is twofold — one according to permanent being, the other according to running being. The first, he says, is attended to in the complete existence of principles, and in the complete number of species, by which species indeed participate of the nature of genus according to the right and ordered intention of nature. But the second perfection consists in the production of those things which run through times, and consequently succeed one another, from whose ordering of succession results a certain beauty and perfection of unity. Since therefore, according to the first perfection, God produced the Universe to being in six days, namely, as to the complete existence of principles, and as to the complete number of species: therefore He is said to have rested from all the work which He had accomplished. But because He works continually for the succession of things by propagation and the multiplication of individuals: therefore He is said to work even until now. From these things the answer to the proposed question is manifest: for it must be conceded that, at the production of animals, especially of man, rest followed on the seventh day; not because a termination of labor had been made, but because a completion of the work begun had been made.

— St. Augustine explains the same question a little otherwise, book 1, De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 12. God, he says, can be understood to have rested from creating the kinds of creatures, because He created no new kinds thereafter: but thereafter, even until now, He works the administration of the same kinds which have now been instituted; not so that on the seventh day itself the power of His Heaven and Earth, and of all things which He had created, should cease from their governance; otherwise they would straightway fall away. For the power of the Creator, and the virtue of the Omnipotent and All-sustaining, is the cause of subsisting for every creature: which virtue, if it should ever cease from governing those things which have been created, the species of those same things would at the same time cease, and all nature would collapse. For not as, when one has built a structure of houses, he departs, and his work stands while he ceases and departs; so the world could fall by the blink of an eye, if God should withdraw from it the governance of itself. Wherefore also what the Lord says, My Father worketh until now, shows a certain continuation of His work, which contains and administers the whole creature. — He adds, ch. 15, that God was indeed said to have rested from work, but not in work. Doubtless, he says, because it is a vice and an infirmity of the soul to be so delighted with its own works that it rests in them rather than in itself: whereas without doubt there is something better in Him by whom they were made than the things themselves which were made: God intimates to us by this Scripture, in which He is said to have rested from all His works which He made, that He was so delighted with none of His works as though He had need of making them, or would have been less had He not made them, or more blessed when He had made them. For because from Him is whatever is from Him, so that it owes to Him what it is, but He owes to no one what He is from Himself, in that He is blessed, He preferred Himself to the things which He made by loving them: not sanctifying the day on which He devised that they should be made, nor that on which He perfected them, lest His joy should seem to be in them, whether making or made: but that on which He rested in Himself from them. And He Himself indeed never lacked that rest, but He showed it to us by the seventh day: whence also He signified that His rest is not attained except by the perfect, since He did not depute to it the day except him who followed the perfection of all things. For He who is always at rest, then rested for us, when He showed that He had rested. — The Cabbalists think that, as God spent a hexaemeron of days in the creation of the world, so He ought to spend a hexaemeron of millenary days in the conservation of the world, so that the world ought to last and be consummated in the space of six millennia, but in the following millennium God will rest. This was the opinion of almost all the Fathers, to which the Platonists and Pythagoreans seemed to come nearest. That they drew this their doctrine from the Hebrews themselves, no one who is at all humane, and imbued with Jewish and cabbalistic literature, will not easily persuade himself. Which can be confirmed by the testimony of Menasseh Ben Israel: The divine theological Cabbalists, whom Plato followed in the Timaeus, think that the inferior world is to last six thousand years, the heaven fifty thousand years, God being about to make a new world and heaven. This, they say, Adam handed on to Seth, he to Henoch, Henoch to Noe, he to Sem, he to Heber and to the Patriarchs of the Hebrews; afterwards it was confirmed to them by Moses, and is signified by those divine six days of creation which represent six thousand years, because the Psalmist also says: A day of the Lord is a thousand years; a thousand years in thy sight are as one day. Thus he, the Conciliator, p. 39. But such was the acumen of Manasseh, that he seeks mysteries in the six days of creation, and they believe who answer with six millenary days, in which this inferior world ought to last. On the first day, says he, Problematum, p. 46, light was made, and darkness came forth: this answers to Adam, who was the light of the world, and to Cain as the symbol of darkness; or to Adam innocent, and Adam a sinner; or to Seth and Enos, in whose time the darkness of idolatry began. On the second day the firmament was expanded, dividing the waters from the waters, which answers to Noe in the second millennium, who by the waters of the deluge divided between the good and the wicked. On the third day the earth emerged from the waters, and plants were created, which answers to the Jewish people in the third millennium, emerging from the Egyptian captivity, and flourishing as the tree of the law.

On the fourth day were created the two great lights: these designate the two temples founded in the fourth millennium. On the fifth day birds and fishes were created; they represent the Israelites who, after the destruction of the temple, at the beginning of the fifth millennium, in the greatest multitude, like fishes, occupied the land of Israel, and the Roman Eagles, birds which also invaded the land of Israel. On the sixth day were created quadrupeds and man, by whom are designated the princes and kings who in the sixth millennium are to be freed from the yoke of the Roman empire, and the Messiah, man, of whom Adam was the type. Inasmuch as He shall not otherwise than did Adam of old rule over all fishes, birds, and quadrupeds, by which all the princes of the world are figured. Finally, on the seventh day there was rest, because in the seventh millennium there will be rest, and the chaos, fertile through the continual germination of six millennia, will cease to germinate. Such are his words.