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But we must now contemplate the rich and countless blessings with which
the goodness of God, who cares for all He has created, has filled
this very misery of the human race, which reflects His retributive
justice. That first blessing which He pronounced before the fall,
when He said, "Increase, and multiply, and replenish the earth,"
He did not inhibit after man had sinned, but the fecundity originally
bestowed remained in the condemned stock; and the vice of sin, which
has involved us in the necessity of dying, has yet not deprived us of
that wonderful power of seed, or rather of that still more marvellous
power by which seed is produced, and which seems to be as it were
inwrought and inwoven in the human body. But in this river, as I may
call it, or torrent of the human race, both elements are carried along
together, both the evil which is derived from him who begets, and the
good which is bestowed by Him who creates us. In the original evil
there are two things, sin and punishment; in the original good, there
are two other things, propagation and conformation. But of the
evils, of which the one, sin, arose from our audacity, and the
other, punishment, from God's judgment, we have already said as
much as suits our present purpose. I mean now to speak of the
blessings which God has conferred or still confers upon our nature,
vitiated and condemned as it is. For in condemning it He did not
withdraw all that He had given it, else it had been annihilated;
neither did He, in penally subjecting it to the devil, remove it
beyond His own power; for not even the devil himself is outside of
God's government, since the devil's nature subsists only by the
supreme Creator who gives being to all that in any form exists.
Of these two blessings, then, which we have said flow from God's
goodness, as from a fountain, towards our nature, vitiated by sin and
condemned to punishment, the one, propagation, was conferred by
God's benediction when He made those first works, from which He
rested on the seventh day. But the other, conformation, is conferred
in that work of His wherein "He worketh hitherto." For were He to
withdraw His efficacious power from things, they should neither be
able to go on and complete the periods assigned to their measured
movements, nor should they even continue in possession of that nature
they were created in. God, then, so created man that He gave him
what we may call fertility, whereby he might propagate other men,
giving them a congenital capacity to propagate their kind, but not
imposing on them any necessity to do so. This capacity God withdraws
at pleasure from individuals, making them barren; but from the whole
race He has not withdrawn the blessing of propagation once conferred.
But though not withdrawn on account of sin, this power of propagation
is not what it would have been had there been no sin. For since "man
placed in honor fell, he has become like the beasts," and generates
as they do, though the little spark of reason, which was the image of
God in him, has not been quite quenched. But if conformation were
not added to propagation, there would be no reproduction of one's
kind. For even though there were no such thing as copulation, and
God wished to fill the earth with human inhabitants, He might create
all these as He created one without the help of human generation.
And, indeed, even as it is, those who copulate can generate nothing
save by the creative energy of God. As, therefore, in respect of
that spiritual growth whereby a man is formed to piety and
righteousness, the apostle says, "Neither is he that planteth
anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the
increase," so also it must be said that it is not he that generates
that is anything, but God that giveth the essential form; that it is
not the mother who carries and nurses the fruit of her womb that is
anything, but God that giveth the increase. For He alone, by that
energy wherewith "He worketh hitherto," causes the seed to develop,
and to evolve from certain secret and invisible folds into the visible
forms of beauty which we see. He alone, coupling and connecting in
some wonderful fashion the spiritual and corporeal natures, the one to
command, the other to obey, makes a living being. And this work of
His is so great and wonderful, that not only man, who is a rational
animal, and consequently more excellent than all other animals of the
earth, but even the most diminutive insect, cannot be considered
attentively without astonishment and without praising the Creator.
It is He, then, who has given to the human soul a mind, in which
reason and understanding lie as it were asleep during infancy, and as
if they were not, destined, however, to be awakened and exercised as
years increase, so as to become capable of knowledge and of receiving
instruction, fit to understand what is true and to love what is good.
It is by this capacity the soul drinks in wisdom, and becomes endowed
with those virtues by which, in prudence, fortitude, temperance, and
righteousness, it makes war upon error and the other inborn vices, and
conquers them by fixing its desires upon no other object than the
supreme and unchangeable Good. And even though this be not uniformly
the result, yet who can competently utter or even conceive the grandeur
of this work of the Almighty, and the unspeakable boon He has
conferred upon our rational nature, by giving us even the capacity of
such attainment? For over and above those arts which are called
virtues, and which teach us how we may spend our life well, and attain
to endless happiness, arts which are given to the children of the
promise and the kingdom by the sole grace of God which is in Christ,
has not the genius of man invented and applied countless astonishing
arts, partly the result of necessity, partly the result of exuberant
invention, so that this vigor of mind, which is so active in the
discovery not merely of superfluous but even of dangerous and
destructive things, betokens an inexhaustible wealth in the nature
which can invent, learn, or employ such arts? What wonderful, one
might say stupefying, advances has human industry made in the arts of
weaving and building, of agriculture and navigation! With what
endless variety are designs in pottery, painting, and sculpture
produced, and with what skill executed! What wonderful spectacles are
exhibited in the theatres, which those who have not seen them cannot
credit! How skillful the contrivances for catching, killing, or
taming wild beasts! And for the injury of men, also, how many kinds
of poisons, weapons, engines of destruction, have been invented,
while for the preservation or restoration of health the appliances and
remedies are infinite! To provoke appetite and please the palate,
what a variety of seasonings have been concocted! To express and gain
entrance for thoughts, what a multitude and variety of signs there
are, among which speaking and writing hold the first place! what
ornaments has eloquence at command to delight the mind! what wealth of
song is there to captivate the ear! how many musical instruments and
strains of harmony have been devised! What skill has been attained in
measures and numbers! with what sagacity have the movements and
connections of the stars been discovered! Who could tell the thought
that has been spent upon nature, even though, despairing of recounting
it in detail, he endeavored only to give a general view of it? In
fine, even the defence of errors and misapprehensions, which has
illustrated the genius of heretics and philosophers, cannot be
sufficiently declared. For at present it is the nature of the human
mind which adorns this mortal life which we are extolling, and not the
faith and the way of truth which lead to immortality.
And since this great nature has certainly been created by the true and
supreme God, who administers all things He has made with absolute
power and justice, it could never have fallen into these miseries, nor
have gone out of them to miseries eternal,, saving only those who are
redeemed, had not an exceeding great sin been found in the first man
from whom the rest have sprung.
Moreover, even in the body, though it dies like that of the beasts,
and is in many ways weaker than theirs, what goodness of God, what
providence of the great Creator, is apparent! The organs of sense
and the rest of the members, are not they so placed, the appearance,
and form, and stature of the body as a whole, is it not so fashioned,
as to indicate that it was made for the service of a reasonable soul?
Man has not been created stooping towards the earth, like the
irrational animals; but his bodily form, erect and looking
heavenwards, admonishes him to mind the things that are above. Then
the marvellous nimbleness which has been given to the tongue and the
hands, fitting them to speak, and write, and execute so many duties,
and practise so many arts, does it not prove the excellence of the soul
for which such an assistant was provided? And even apart from its
adaptation to the work required of it, there is such a symmetry in its
various parts, and so beautiful a proportion maintained, that one is
at a loss to decide whether, in creating the body, greater regard was
paid to utility or to beauty. Assuredly no part of the body has been
created for the sake of utility which does not also contribute something
to its beauty. And this would be all the more apparent, if we knew
more precisely how all its parts are connected and adapted to one
another, and were not limited in our observations to what appears on
the surface; for as to what is covered up and hidden from our view,
the intricate web of veins and nerves, the vital parts of all that lies
under the skin, no one can discover it. For although, with a cruel
zeal for science, some medical men, who are called anatomists, have
dissected the bodies of the dead, and sometimes even of sick persons
who died under their knives, and have inhumanly pried into the secrets
of the human body to learn the nature of the disease and its exact
seat, and how it might be cured, yet those relations of which I
speak, and which form the concord, or, as the Greeks call it,
"harmony," of the whole body outside and in, as of some instrument,
no one has been able to discover, because no one has been audacious
enough to seek for them. But if these could be known, then even the
inward parts, which seem to have no beauty, would so delight us with
their exquisite fitness, as to afford a profounder satisfaction to the
mind, and the eyes are but its ministers, than the obvious beauty
which gratifies the eye. There are some things, too, which have such
a place in the body, that they obviously serve no useful purpose, but
are solely for beauty, as e.g. the teats on a man's breast, or the
beard on his face; for that this is for ornament, and not for
protection, is proved by the bare faces of women, who ought rather,
as the weaker sex, to enjoy such a defence. If, therefore, of all
those members which are exposed to our view, there is certainly not one
in which beauty is sacrificed to utility, while there are some which
serve no purpose but only beauty, I think it can readily be concluded
that in the creation of the human body comeliness was more regarded than
necessity. In truth, necessity is a transitory thing; and the time
is coming when we shall enjoy one another's beauty without any lust, a
condition which will specially redound to the praise of the Creator,
who, as it is said in the psalm, has "put on praise and
comeliness,"
How can I tell of the rest of creation, with all its beauty and
utility, which the divine goodness has given to man to please his eye
and serve his purposes, condemned though he is, and hurled into these
labors and miseries? Shall I speak of the manifold and various
loveliness of sky, and earth, and sea; of the plentiful supply and
wonderful qualities of the light; of sun, moon, and stars; of the
shade of trees; of the colors and perfume of flowers; of the multitude
of birds, all differing in plumage and in song; of the variety of
animals, of which the smallest in size are often the most wonderful,
the works of ants and bees astonishing us more than the huge bodies of
whales? Shall I speak of the sea, which itself is so grand a
spectacle, when it arrays itself as it were in vestures of various
colors, now running through every shade of green, and again becoming
purple or blue? Is it not delightful to look at it in storm, and
experience the soothing complacency which it inspires, by suggesting
that we ourselves are not tossed and shipwrecked? What shall I say of
the numberless kinds of food to alleviate hunger, and the variety of
seasonings to stimulate appetite which are scattered everywhere by
nature, and for which we are not indebted to the art of cookery? How
many natural appliances are there for preserving and restoring health!
How grateful is the alternation of day and night! how pleasant the
breezes that cool the air! how abundant the supply of clothing
furnished us by trees and animals! Who can enumerate all the blessings
we enjoy? If I were to attempt to detail and unfold only these few
which I have indicated in the mass, such an enumeration would fill a
volume. And all these are but the solace of the wretched and
condemned, not the rewards of the blessed. What then shall these
rewards be, if such be the blessings of a condemned state?
What will He give to those whom He has predestined to life, who has
given such things even to those whom He has predestined to death?
What blessings will He in the blessed life shower upon those for
whom, even in this state of misery, He has been willing that His
only-begotten Son should endure such sufferings even to death? Thus
the apostle reasons concerning those who are predestined to that
kingdom: "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up
for us all, how shall He not with Him also give us all things?"
When this promise is fulfilled, what shall we be? What blessings
shall we receive in that kingdom, since already we have received as the
pledge of them Christ's dying?
In what condition shall the spirit of man be, when it has no longer
any vice at all; when it neither yields to any, nor is in bondage to
any, nor has to make war against any, but is perfected, and enjoys
undisturbed peace with itself? Shall it not then know all things with
certainty, and without any labor or error, when unhindered and
joyfully it drinks the wisdom of God at the fountain-head? What
shall the body be, when it is in every respect subject to the spirit,
from which it shall draw a life so sufficient, as to stand in need of
no other nutriment? For it shall no longer be animal, but spiritual,
having indeed the substance of flesh, but without any fleshly
corruption.
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