1. HAVING read my work on the six days of creation, you have thought
good to enquire whether I have added ought concerning Paradise, and to
express your strong desire to know what opinion I hold concerning it.
I have, in truth, written on this subject, though not yet a veteran
priest.
2. The opinions about it I have found to be many and various. Josephus,
as an historian, tells us it is a place filled with trees and thick
shrubs, and that it is watered by a river which divides itself into
four streams. Its waters being thus gathered into one, this region
does not entirely empty and deprive itself of its feeders, but up to
this day bursts out into fountains and sends forth its winding streams,
nourishing by them her offspring as from the full breasts of a pious
mother.
3. Others expound it differently, but all agree that in Paradise is
the deep rooted Tree of life, and the Tree of Knowledge whereby good
and evil are discerned, the other trees also, full of vigor, and life,
endued both with breath and reason. Wherefore we conclude that the
real Paradise is no earthly one which can be seen; that it is placed
in no spot of ground, but in the highest part of our own nature, which
receives animation and life from the powers of the soul, and from the
communication of the Spirit of God.
Sidenote: 2 Cor. xi. 2.
Sidenote: Cant. iv. 12.
4. Moreover, Solomon by inspiration of the Spirit has plainly shown
that Paradise is in man himself. And seeing that he declares the
mysteries either of the soul and the Word, or of Christ and the Church,
he says of the virgin soul, or of the Church which he wished _to
present as a chaste virgin to Christ, A garden enclosed is my sister,
my spouse, a spring sealed up, a fountain closed_.
5. ‘Paradisus’ is the Greek, ‘hortus’ the Latin name. And in the
Latin text we read that Susannah was in a paradise. Adam too was in a
paradise. Let it not trouble you then that some Latin manuscripts have
the word ‘hortus,’ others ‘paradisus.’
6. Where the chaste wife is, there also is the virgin; the chosen
virgin has indeed her barriers and enclosures, but both are in a garden,
that thus by the shade of virtue they may be shielded from the heats of
the body and concupiscence of the flesh.
7. Hence also Paradise is in our highest part, thick set with the
growth of many opinions, and wherein chiefly God hath placed the Tree
of life, that is, the root of piety, for this is the true substance of
our life, that we should offer due service to our Lord and God.
8. He has likewise planted within us a seed-plot of the knowledge of
good and evil; for man alone of all creatures of the earth possesses
the knowledge of good and evil. Divers other plants are also there,
whose fruits are virtues.
Sidenote: Gen. iii. 2, 3.
9. Now since God knew that man’s affections, once endued with knowledge,
would more readily incline towards craft than towards perfect prudence,
(for how could the qualities of His work be concealed from His
discerning eye, Who had set up certain boundaries in our soul?) He
desired to cast out craft from Paradise, and as the provident Author of
our salvation, to place therein the desire of life and the discipline
of piety. Wherefore He commanded man to eat of every tree which is in
Paradise, but that of the tree of knowledge of good and evil he should
not eat.
10. But since all creatures are subject to passions, lust, with the
stealth of a serpent, has crept over man’s affections: well therefore
has holy Moses represented lust under the similitude of a serpent;
for it creeps upon its belly like a serpent, not walking on foot, nor
raised up on legs, gliding along by the sinuous contortions, as it were,
of its whole body. Its food, as that of the serpent, is earthly, for it
knows not heavenly food, but feeds on carnal things, and changes itself
into various kinds of desire, and bends to and fro in tortuous wreaths.
It has poison in its fangs, whereby the belly of every luxurious man is
ripped up, the glutton is slain, the licker up of dishes perishes. How
many have been burst by wine, weakened by drunkenness, distended by
gluttony.
11. Now I understand why the Lord God breathed on the face of man;
for there is the seat and there are the incitements to lust, the eyes,
the ears, the nose and the mouth; it was to fortify our senses against
lust. Now it was this lust, which, as a serpent, inspired us with craft,
for it is not lust but labour and constant meditation, which, by God’s
grace, gives perfect wisdom.
Sidenote: 1 Cor. xi. 3.
Sidenote: Eccles. vii. 11.
12. Now since the posterity of Adam are involved in the snares of the
serpent, let us imitate herein the fraud of the serpent, and not run
our head into danger, but be careful of its security beyond that of our
other members, for _the head of every man is Christ_. Let this remain
safe, that the poison of the serpent may not harm us. For _Wisdom
is good with an inheritance_, that is, with faith, for there is an
inheritance to them that believe in God.
13. But if that first man, who, dwelling in Paradise, conversed with
God, could fall so easily, though made of that virgin clay which had
lately been formed and created by the word of God, nor as yet clotted
with gore and the murder of kindred, nor polluted by iniquity and shame;
nor condemned in our flesh to the curse of a guilty posterity; how much
more easily afterwards did the smooth-worn path of sin lead the human
race to a greater fall, when, one after another, generations more and
more depraved succeeded others less wicked?
14. For if the magnet has such natural power as to attract iron to it,
and transfuse itself into the character of iron, so that often when
persons, wishing to try the experiment, apply iron rings to the same
stone, it retains all equally firmly: whereas, if to that ring to which
the stone adheres you add another, and so on in succession, although
the natural power of the magnet reaches through all in succession, it
binds the first with a firm, the hindermost with a slighter bond: if
such be the case, how much more must the condition and nature of the
human race have fallen from a pure state into one less pure, seeing
that it was always attracted to a generation more wicked than itself?
Sidenote: Ps. xiv. 3.
Sidenote: Rom. v. 20.
Sidenote: 1 Cor. viii. 5, 6.
15. For if the power of nature is diminished even by passing through
those substances which are not capable of sin, how much more must its
vigour be abated by minds and bodies polluted by the stain of crime?
Wherefore, seeing that wickedness had increased, that innocence had
decayed, that _there was no one that did good, no, not one_; the Lord
came in order to form anew, nay to augment, the grace of nature; _that
where sin had abounded, grace might much more abound_. It is plain then
both that God is the Creator of man, and that there is one God not many
gods; but that there is one God Who made the world, and one world, not
many worlds, as the philosophers assert.
16. First therefore He created the world, and then its inhabitant,
man, that the whole world might be his country. For if, up to this day,
wherever the wise man goes, he finds himself a citizen, he understands
his own position, he considers himself no where as a stranger or
sojourner, how much more was that first man an inhabitant of the whole
world, and, as the Greeks say, a cosmopolite, he who was the recent
creation of God, conversing continually with Him, the fellow-citizen
of the saints, the seed-plot of virtue, set over all creatures in the
earth sea and air, who considered the whole world to be his dominion;
whom the Lord defended as His own work, and as a loving Father and
Maker never deserted? In fine He so cherished this His creation, as to
redeem him when lost, to receive him when banished, when dead to raise
him to life by the passion of His Only-begotten Son. Wherefore God is
the Author of man, and, as a good Creator, loves His own work, as a
gracious Father, abandons not him, whom, in the character of a rich
householder, He has redeemed at the cost of His own possessions.
17. Let us be on our guard therefore that this man, that is, our
understanding[224] be not enervated by that woman, that is passion,
who was herself deceived and beguiled by the pleasure of our senses;
that she do not circumvent and draw him over to her own maxims and
opinions. Let us fly pleasure as a serpent; it has many allurements,
and especially as regards man. For other animals are captivated by
greediness after food; man, in that the powers of his eyes and ears
are more varied, is exposed to greater dangers.
Farewell; love me, as you indeed do, for I love you.
LETTER XLVI.
A.D. 389.
SABINUS, who was Bishop of Placentia, had written to S. Ambrose
to tell him of an Apollinarian heretic, who appears, after being
condemned at Placentia, to have gone to Milan. S. Ambrose in
this reply states how he had answered him from Holy Scripture,
and refuted his false interpretations, especially of the passage
in the Epistle to the Philippians and announces that he has
baffled him, and that he is ‘preparing to flee.’