Chapter XVI.--He Wishes to Have No Intercourse with Those Who Deny Divine Truth.
23. With such as grant that all these things which Thy truth indicates to my mind are true, I desire to confer a little before Thee, O my God. For let those who deny these things bark and drown their own voices with their clamour as much as they please; I will endeavour to persuade them to be quiet, and to suffer Thy word to reach them. But should they be unwilling, and should they repel me, I beseech, O my God, that Thou "be not silent to me." [1123] Do Thou speak truly in my heart, for Thou only so speakest, and I will send them away blowing upon the dust from without, and raising it up into their own eyes; and will myself enter into my chamber, [1124] and sing there unto Thee songs of love,--groaning with groaning unutterable [1125] in my pilgrimage, and remembering Jerusalem, with heart raised up towards it, [1126] Jerusalem my country, Jerusalem my mother, and Thyself, the Ruler over it, the Enlightener, the Father, the Guardian, the Husband, the chaste and strong delight, the solid joy, and all good things ineffable, even all at the same time, because the one supreme and true Good. And I will not be turned away until Thou collect all that I am, from this dispersion [1127] and deformity, into the peace of that very dear mother, where are the first-fruits of my spirit, [1128] whence these things are assured to me, and Thou conform and confirm it for ever, my God, my Mercy. But with reference to those who say not that all these things which are true and false, who honour Thy Holy Scripture set forth by holy Moses, placing it, as with us, on the summit of an authority [1129] to be followed, and yet who contradict us in some particulars, I thus speak: Be Thou, O our God, judge between my confessions and their contradictions.
[1123] Ps. xxviii. 1.
[1124] Isa. xxvi. 20.
[1125] Rom. viii. 26.
[1126] Baxter has a noteworthy passage on our heavenly citizenship in his Saints' Rest: "As Moses, before he died, went up into Mount Nebo, to take a survey of the land of Canaan, so the Christian ascends the Mount of Contemplation, and by faith surveys his rest....As Daniel in his captivity daily opened his window towards Jerusalem, though far out of sight, when he went to God in his devotions, so may the believing soul, in this captivity of the flesh, look towards Jerusalem which is above' (Gal. iv. 26). And as Paul was to the Colossians (ii. 5) so may the believer be with the glorified spirits, though absent in the flesh,' yet with them in the spirit,' joying and beholding their heavenly order.' And as the lark sweetly sings while she soars on high, but is suddenly silenced when she falls to the earth, so is the frame of the soul most delightful and divine while it keeps in the views of God by contemplation. Alas, we make there too short a stay, fall down again, and lay by our music!" (Fawcett's Ed. p. 327).
[1127] See ii. sec. 1; ix. sec. 10; x. sec. 40, note; ibid. sec. 65; and xi. sec. 39, above.
[1128] See ix. sec. 24, above; and xiii. sec. 13, below.
[1129] See p. 118, note 12, above.
Chapter XVII.--He Mentions Five Explanations of the Words of Genesis I. I.
24. For they say, "Although these things be true, yet Moses regarded not those two things, when by divine revelation he said, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' [1130] Under the name of heaven he did not indicate that spiritual or intellectual creature which always beholds the face of God; nor under the name of earth, that shapeless matter." "What then?" "That man," say they, "meant as we say; this it is that he declared by those words." "What is that?" "By the name of heaven and earth," say they, "did he first wish to set forth, universally and briefly, all this visible world, that afterwards by the enumeration of the days he might distribute, as if in detail, all those things which it pleased the Holy Spirit thus to reveal. For such men were that rude and carnal people to which he spoke, that he judged it prudent that only those works of God as were visible should be entrusted to them." They agree, however, that the earth invisible and formless, and the darksome deep (out of which it is subsequently pointed out that all these visible things, which are known to all, were made and set in order during those "days"), may not unsuitably be understood of this formless matter.
25. What, now, if another should say "That this same formlessness and confusion of matter was first introduced under the name of heaven and earth, because out of it this visible world, with all those natures which most manifestly appear in it, and which is wont to be called by the name of heaven and earth, was created and perfected"? But what if another should say, that "That invisible and visible nature is not inaptly called heaven and earth; and that consequently the universal creation, which God in His wisdom hath made,--that is, in the begining,'--was comprehended under these two words. Yet, since all things have been made, not of the substance of God, but out of nothing [1131] (because they are not that same thing that God is, and there is in them all a certain mutability, whether they remain, as doth the eternal house of God, or be changed, as are the soul and body of man), therefore, that the common matter of all things invisible and visible,--as yet shapeless, but still capable of form,--out of which was to be created heaven and earth (that is, the invisible and visible creature already formed), was spoken of by the same names by which the earth invisible and formless and the darkness upon the deep would be called; with this difference, however, that the earth invisible and formless is understood as corporeal matter, before it had any manner of form, but the darkness upon the deep as spiritual matter, before it was restrained at all of its unlimited fluidity, and before the enlightening of wisdom."
26. Should any man wish, he may still say, "That the already perfected and formed natures, invisible and visible, are not signified under the name of heaven and earth when it is read, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth;' but that the yet same formless beginning of things, the matter capable of being formed and made, was called by these names, because contained in it there were these confused things not as yet distinguished by their qualities and forms, the which now being digested in their own orders, are called heaven and earth, the former being the spiritual, the latter the corporeal creature."
[1130] Gen. i. 1.
[1131] See p. 165, note 4, above.