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| Of the Lights and Stars of Heaven—Of Day and Night, Ver. 14.
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Chapter XVIII.—Of the Lights and
Stars of Heaven—Of Day and Night, Ver. 14.
22. Thus, O Lord, thus, I beseech Thee, let
there arise, as Thou makest, as Thou givest joy and ability,—let
“truth spring out of the earth, and righteousness look down from
heaven,” and let there be “lights in the firmament.”1294
Let us
break our bread to the hungry, and let us bring the houseless poor
to our house.1295
Let us
clothe the naked, and despise not those of our own flesh. The which
fruits having sprung forth from the earth, behold, because it is
good;1296
and let
our temporary light burst forth;1297
and let us, from this inferior
fruit of action, possessing the delights of contemplation and of
the Word of Life above, let us appear as lights in the world,1298
clinging
to the firmament of Thy Scripture. For therein Thou makest it plain
unto us, that we may distinguish between things intelligible and
things of sense, as if between the day and the night; or between
souls, given, some to things intellectual, others to things of
sense; so that now not Thou only in the secret of Thy judgment, as
before the firmament was made, dividest between the light and the
darkness, but Thy spiritual children also, placed and ranked in the
same firmament (Thy grace being manifest throughout the world), may
give light upon the earth, and divide between the day and night,
and be for signs of times; because “old things have passed
away,” and “behold all things are become new;”1299
and
“because our salvation is nearer than when we believed;”1300
and
because “the night is far spent, the day is at hand;”1301
and
because Thou wilt crown Thy year with blessing,1302
sending the labourers of Thy
goodness into Thy harvest,1303
in the sowing of which others have
laboured, sending also into another field, whose harvest shall be
in the end.1304
Thus Thou
grantest the prayers of him that asketh, and blessest the years of
the just;1305
but Thou
art the same, and in Thy years which fail not1306
Thou preparest a garner for our
passing years. For by an eternal counsel Thou dost in their proper
seasons bestow upon the earth heavenly blessings.
23. For, indeed, to one is given by the Spirit
the word of wisdom, as if the greater light, on account of those
who are delighted with the light of manifest truth, as in the
beginning of the day; but to another the word of knowledge by the
same Spirit, as if the lesser light;1307
| 1307 Compare his De Trin. xii. 22–55, where,
referring to 1 Cor. xii. 8, he explains that
“knowledge” has to do with action, or that by which we
use rightly things temporal; while wisdom has to do with the
contemplation of things eternal. See also in Ps. cxxxv.
sec. 8. | to another faith; to another the
gift of healing; to another the working of miracles; to another
prophecy; to another the discerning of spirits; to another divers
kinds of tongues. And all these as stars. For all these worketh the
one and self-same Spirit, dividing to every man his own as He
willeth;1308
and making
stars appear manifestly, to profit withal.1309
But the word of knowledge, wherein
are contained all sacraments,1310
| 1310 1 Cor. xiii. 2. The Authorized Version and
the Vulgate render more correctly, “mysteries.” From Palmer
(see p. 118, note 3, above), we learn that “the Fathers gave the
name of sacrament or mystery to everything which
conveyed one signification or property to unassisted reason, and
another to faith;” while, at the same time, they counted Baptism
and the Lord’s Supper as the two great sacraments. The
sacraments, then, used in this sense are “varied in their
periods,” and Augustin, in Ps. lxxiii. 2, speaks of
distinguishing between the sacraments of the Old Testament and the
sacraments of the New. “Sacramenta novi Testamenti” he says,
“dant salutem, sacramenta veteris Testamenti promiserunt
salvatorem.” So also in Ps. xlvi. he says: “Our Lord God
varying, indeed, the sacraments of the words, but commending unto
us one faith, hath diffused through the sacred Scriptures
manifoldly and variously the faith in which we live, and by which
we live. For one and the same thing is said in many ways, that it
may be varied in the manner of speaking in order to prevent
aversion, but may be preserved as one with a view to
concord.” | which are varied in their periods
like the moon, and the other conceptions of gifts, which are
successively reckoned up as stars, inasmuch as they come short of
that splendour of wisdom in which the fore-mentioned day rejoices,
are only for the beginning of the night. For they are necessary to
such as he Thy most prudent servant could not speak unto as unto
spiritual, but as unto carnal1311
—even he who speaketh wisdom
among those that are perfect.1312
But the natural man, as a babe in
Christ,—and a drinker of milk,—until he be strengthened for
solid meat,1313
| 1313 1 Cor. iii. 2, and
Heb. v. 12. The allusion in our text is
to what is called the Disciplina Arcani of the early Church.
Clement of Alexandria, in his Stromata, enters at large into
the matter of esoteric teaching, and traces its use amongst the
Hebrews, Greeks, and Egyptians. Clement, like Chrysostom and other
Fathers, supports this principle of interpretation on the authority
of St. Paul in Heb. v. and vi., referred to by Augustin above. He
says (as quoted by Bishop Kaye, Clement of Alexandria, ch.
iv. p. 183): “Babes must be fed with milk, the perfect man with
solid food; milk is catechetical instruction, the first nourishment
of the soul; solid food, contemplation penetrating into all
mysteries (ἡ ἐποπτικὴ θεωρία), the blood and flesh of the
Word, the comprehension of the Divine power and essence.”
Augustin, therefore, when he speaks of being “contented with the
light of the moon and stars,” alludes to the partial knowledge
imparted to the catechumen during his probationary period before
baptism. It was only as competentes, and ready for baptism,
that the catechumens were taught the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed.
We have already adverted to this matter in note 4 on p. 89, and
need not now do more than refer the reader to Dr. Newman’s
Arians. In ch. i. sec. 3 of that work, there are some most
interesting pages on this subject, in its connection with the
Catechetical School of Alexandria. See also p. 118, note 8, above;
Palmer, Origines Liturgicæ, iv. sec. 7: and note 1,
below. | and his
eye be enabled to look upon the Sun,1314
| 1314 Those ready for strong meat were called
“illuminated” (see p. 118, note 4, above), as their eyes were
“enabled to look upon the Sun.” We have frequent traces in
Augustin’s writings of the Neo-Platonic doctrine that the soul
has a capacity to see God, even as the eye the sun. In Serm.
lxxxviii. 6 he says: “Daretne tibi unde videres solem quem fecit,
et non tibi daret unde videres eum qui te fecit, cum te ad imaginem
suam fecerit?” And, referring to 1 John iii. 2, he tells us in
Ep. xcii. 3, that not with the bodily eye shall we see God,
but with the inner, which is to be renewed day by day: “We shall,
therefore, see Him according to the measure in which we shall be
like Him; because now the measure in which we do not see Him is
according to the measure of our unlikeness to Him.” Compare also
Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, c. 4: “Plato, indeed,
says, that the mind’s eye is of such a nature, and has been given
for this end, that we may see that very Being who is the cause of
all when the mind is pure itself.” Some interesting remarks on
this subject, and on the three degrees of divine knowledge as held
by the Neo-Platonists, will be found in John Smith’s Select
Discourses, pp. 2 and 165 (Cambridge 1860). On growth in grace,
see note 4, p. 140, above. | let him not dwell in his own
deserted night, but let him be contented with the light of the moon
and the stars. Thou reasonest these things with us, our All-wise
God, in Thy Book, Thy firmament, that we may discern all things in
an admirable contemplation, although as yet in signs, and in times,
and in days, and in years.
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