VALENTINIANUS: Yesterday toward evening, my friend, as I was walking along the seashore and gazing keenly upon it, I beheld a certain surpassing display of divine power and the artistry of a wise skill — if indeed one ought to call such a thing 'art.' For just as that Homeric verse declares, 'As when two winds stir up the fish-filled sea, the North Wind and the West, that blow from Thrace, coming suddenly; and together the dark wave is heaped high, and they pour much seaweed out beyond the brine' —
So it seemed to me also yesterday. For I saw waves like mountain peaks, and, so to speak, reaching to heaven itself. From then on I expected nothing else than that the whole earth would be flooded over, and in my mind I imagined a place of refuge, and pictured the ark of Noah. But it was not as I supposed.
But wherever the sea arched itself up, it again subsided back into itself, not overstepping its proper place, as if, so to speak, fearing some divine command.
And just as often happens with a household servant, when he is unwillingly compelled by his master to do something — he obeys the command out of fear, yet suffers in doing what he does not wish to do; he dares not speak, but within himself is filled with a certain anger — so too the sea appeared to me, as if angry and bottling up its wrath within itself, mastering itself, unwilling to make its anger manifest to its master.
Observing these things as they happened, I began to gaze upward, and wished to measure with my mind the heaven and its circle, and I inquired whence it begins and where it leaves off, and what kind of motion it has — whether the locomotive, that is, from place to place, or a revolving course — and how it has its abiding station.
But it seemed good to me also to inquire concerning the sun: what is the manner of its position in heaven, what is the circuit of its course, where it moves on after a little while, and that this too does not transgress its proper course, but it also, so to speak, keeps a certain command of a Higher One, and shines forth among us when it is permitted, and departs as if summoned.
Pursuing the examination of these matters, then, I saw the sun's light ceasing and the daylight failing, and darkness coming on at once, and the moon succeeding the sun — rising at first smaller, but afterward, as it advanced in its course, presenting the appearance of being larger. Nor did I cease inquiring about this also, and I searched out the cause of the waning and the waxing, and that it too keeps the cycle of the days.
And from this it seemed to me that there exists some divine ordering and a power of higher things which holds all things together, which we might justly call God. And for the rest I began to praise the Maker, seeing the earth firmly fixed, and the varieties of living creatures, and the manifold blossomings of plants.
But my mind did not rest in these things alone; rather, for the rest, I began to inquire whence these have their constitution — whether from something always coexisting with God, or from Him and Him alone, with nothing coexisting with Him. For that something should have come to be out of things that are not seemed to me not well — the argument being not wholly implausible to the many; for things that come to be are by nature constituted out of things that are. And it likewise seemed truly right to say that nothing else besides Him ever coexists with God, but that the things that are have come to be from Him alone; and somehow the orderly arrangement of the elements and the good order of nature about them persuaded me.