But firmly, within twice ten days, it grew there to an immense size, and touched heaven with its topmost peak, and at last hid its holy head on high, while yet it put forth twice six branches of vast weight, and, scattering, stretched them out over the whole world, that they might furnish to all nations sustenance and everlasting life, and teach how death itself could die. Then, when fifty days more were completed, from its highest crown the breeze of the heavenly Spirit brought down into the branches a draught of divine nectar: the heavy leaves dripped sweet dew on every side. Behold, beneath the vast shade of the branches' canopy there was a spring: here, with no mishap troubling its calm, clear and undefiled with pellucid waters, and the grasses round about poured forth glad colors from varied bloom.
Around this spring innumerable nations and peoples gathered together, how varied in kind, sex, age, and rank — the unwed and the wed alike, and widows and young wives, infants and boys, men and youths and old men. Here, when they saw the branches bending down with fruits of every kind, they rejoiced to touch with eager right hands the fruits dripping with heavenly nectar. Nor could they first pluck these with their eager palms until they had worn away the foul, muddy traces of their former way and had washed their body at the holy spring. Therefore, long walking about upon the soft grass, they gaze up at the fruits hanging on the lofty tree; then, if any husks and fruits sweet with abundant dripping nectar have fallen from those branches, they feed on them, longing to take the true fruits.
Therefore when their mouths have received the heavenly savor, they change their dispositions, and begin to lose their greedy minds, and to come to know the man with a sweet perception. We have seen that to many the unaccustomed savor moved the stomach, and the poison of gall stirred by honey, that with troubled mind they rejected the good savors; or, having taken it eagerly, did not love it, and long afterward, having drunk it ill, at last vomited up the savor. Often indeed many, with minds renewed, restored their sick souls, and endured what they denied they could do, and reaped the fruit of their toil. Many too, having dared to touch the holy springs, departed again suddenly, and, slipping back, are rolled once more in the same filth and mire. Many, truly, bearing the good with a good breast, receive it with their whole souls, and store it deep within their inmost parts.
3:42
ErgoquiquesacrospossuntaccederefontesSeptimaluxillosoptatassistitadundas, Tinguntinliquidisieiunosfontibusartus: SicdemuminluuiemmentisuitaequepriorisDeponuntlabempurasqueamortereducuntInlustresanimascaeliqueadlumenituras. Hinciteradramosetdulciapomasalutis, Indeiteradcaelumperramosarborisaltae. Hoclignumuitaecunctiscredentibus. amen. VI. ADFLAVIVMFELICEMDERESVRRECTIONEMORTVORVM.
Therefore all who are able to approach the sacred springs, the seventh light sets them at the longed-for waters: they dip their fasting limbs in the liquid springs. Thus at last they lay aside the defilement of the mind and the stain of their former life, and lead back from death their souls, made pure and shining and destined to go to the light of heaven. Hence the road leads to the branches and the sweet apples of salvation; thence the road leads to heaven by the branches of the lofty tree. This is the tree of life for all who believe. Amen. VI. TO FLAVIUS FELIX, ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD.
I who chose in song the country-dwelling Muses, and inscribed the breezes rosy with vernal flowers, and the heavy ears of summer's harvest, cut down the swelling grapes upon autumn's vines, and always praised winter's peaceful olives, and shut out the modulated waters from the springs, and sang the leafy woods amid the wandering grass —
Forthwith I shall sing the ethereal shores of light. Now may it be granted me to reach the light-bringing Muses, to disclose the hidden nymphs at the river's source, and the glad woods set beneath another star; and at once I shall recount in song the eternal flames, whence the immeasurable sea heaves in swelling waves, what power bids the solid lands to tremble, and whence the golden light first shone forth upon the new-made world, who could fashion man out of glad clay, whence the race could grow to fill the empty age, and what varied desire of living there is in a people, what propagation of dying was first created by evil, whence come the good scent and the modesty of rosy garlands, what makes the vine seethe with joyous grapes, and how the new barley grows milky in tender stalks, how the tree ripens into black olives against the frost, who gives increase of vigor to the varied buds, and shields the mother of her offspring with soft shade.
It is good to know all the beginnings of the branches, that through all things one may acknowledge the true God, who prepared the light, the seas, the heaven, and the earth, and adorned the ninth world with a varied constellation, and first bade the cattle and the birds come forth, and gave the watery waves to be filled with fishes, and drove the sands, made fruitful, with living creatures. Such songs I shall lead forth with well-ordered Muses, and set forth the wholesome water from the ninefold springs, and the glad rain coming from the gentle clouds, flowing deep and freely into the souls of men, which I shall catch with brimming streams into our fallows. Now come, touch the safe and living nymph, and swiftly draw the easy water of life.
If anyone would escape the punishments of the eternal flame and, ignorant of the day and unaware of the age to come, would rather attain the rewards of a righteous life, let him remember this one God, and that he alone must be entreated, who set the whole world in the balance beneath its threshold, abiding eternal and forever to be, holding all the ages, and alone before the ages, the unbegotten God without end, alone possessing the divine throne, who ever towers above the lofty heaven, alone almighty, whom all things obey, [Father, Son, Spirit, who are ever in one,] who fashioned man well-pleasing to himself in bronze, gave him to be shepherd of the flocks and lord of the wild beasts, and gave him the right to rule the birds, the sea, and the land alone; who by a mere word could stretch out the heaven, and by his word bade the solid earth to hang suspended, and quicker than speech divided the water of the sea; who loved to fashion this dear form with his hands, and willed his own comely figure to be in it, and breathed a life-giving breath of spirit upon its face.
Forgetful of God, lest he rashly commit such great things, and lest he touch anything beyond the warning — this one thing, whence he might know evil and discern the right — at once God forbade him to touch the unlawful apple. How great the gifts of the world God permitted to man, and signed the pledge most sweet of his own love, and granted him useful and dear commandments of salvation; under his dominion he gave the lands and the living soul, and the winged kind, the cattle, every kind of wild beast, and the watery kind, all creatures that swim. But since by his first transgression, in that first crime, the first man was even now altering the Lord's commandments, at his wife's persuasion he was perishing by death, with all evils. For the woman first committed the evil of sin, betrayed her husband, and deceived him against the law.
Eve, wickedly persuaded, opened the thresholds to death, and created funerals for herself along with her whole race. Hence (dire and ill-omened thing) death flowed forth into the ages. Thence the deep wickedness spread the more, easily and far, and the farmer's toil harried the year more savagely. The crafty serpent injected this with wicked envy. Thence the more, the many committed sins of evil peoples, and unspeakable seeds bore fruit through wicked deeds. And therefore God alone, whose is the highest power, and who, holding the topmost heights above the lofty heaven, dwelling on high in inaccessible light through the ages, mindful of the past and foreknowing what is to come, keeps his decree concerning the offspring of merit unto the age:
And all the souls that slowly govern their bodies and by reason move the man, wandering through his limbs — as soon as, the burden of the members laid aside, they depart, and, made light, loosed from earthly bonds, they will go, and seek their own shores in diverse regions: some straightway to be enclosed in hidden darkness, but others to be recalled at once to glad breezes, to be kept deep within for the rewards decreed by the law, until the bodies rise again with their members re-arisen. Now men must weigh the interest of their first life, and the judges, mindful of God, stand before those of former days, each awaiting his own punishment from his own crime; either that, or, like cattle, without name and without breath's weight, or, in vain, to pour out breath as the end appointed by God.
Or shall God almighty, under whose nod all things are ruled, not have power after death to restore life? Or does the Lord seem unable to do any of these things? If he could shut out the bright light with darkness, and by a word could compose the whole mass, and prepare all things from nothing with a mighty voice, why should he not be able to piece together from something the mark which once had been, the figure which had lived before, and bid it rise again like to its own form? Since all things are God's, the earth will rather render up all things when bidden; it will recall whatever it once covered over. If perhaps the flame has destroyed anyone, laid to rest on the pyre, or the sea has cast someone down into its blind waves, if the entrails of a fish have sated their hunger on anyone, or wild beasts have fixed cruel death upon his limbs, or, the body being snatched, the blood has lain for the birds —
The last funeral rites shall not deny anyone to the Lord: living men must appear before God out of death, and men must stand, having resumed their own figures. So the dry seeds are entrusted to the turned earth, and deep within the fixed furrows they rot away, dead; thence, the ears being restored, the stalk is animated, and again grows golden with living grains, and the new harvests rise up with varied increase. All the stars shall set, and, born again, shall shine; and the day dies, with its light, into the dense night; night falls, and, when the things are uncovered by light, into day, and the lofty day rises again among its stars. And the sun sets, splendor-bearing with its clear high light; the light perishes as evening comes over the shadowed world, and returns and renews joys for the whole age.
So the phoenix, cremated, lives on out of its own funeral, and forthwith the bird rises again from its own pyre. And the tree, stripped of its leaves, in its own season bears fruit, and again bends its boughs with the burgeoning of fruit. Therefore, as at the divine voice, with the world trembling, and the powers of the lofty air moved to their depths, there is then an unwonted crash and the mightiest murmurs of heaven, God setting it in motion, the Judge of the world coming — straightway the countless ministers rush to come, and encompass God with heavenly majesty; the angelic ranks descend far and wide in throngs. All are messengers of God, whose is a divine and preeminent power and form, all virtues of the Spirit. Fiery is their vigor, glowing their bodies; heaven's divine might flashes forth.
Hence the whole ether thunders, hence the trembling earth, wholly and to its depths, bellows in answer, giving birth to the men whom, as bidden, it must render up. The companions marvel, the clouds at last are thrown into turmoil, the stars, amazed, suddenly quake at the power from on high, hence with God commanding, easily, with the voice of the Almighty. Straightway, the sepulchers being broken open throughout all realms, the whole ground pours forth bones through its wide-gaping chasms, and the opening sand belches out living peoples. The limbs cling in a mass, the bones are knit with marrow, and the joined sinews govern the breathing bodies, and at once the veins, infused, are stirred with blood, and the souls, sent forth, are rendered back to the hollows laid open, and all things, rising, seek again each their own organs. (O wondrous faith!) hence every age sprouts forth, sprouts forth the ancient throng from the dust of the dead.
Mothers and men rise again in the recovered light, high-souled youths, boys and unwed girls, and the deceased old men stand with living souls, and the world resounds, groaning with the wailings of infants. Varied nations come from the lowest dwellings, both the band of the East and those whom the farthest land beholds, those who inhabit the middle zones in the sloping clime, and hold the Riphaean heights of the frosty constellation: every dweller of every region is present, trembling — the rustic and the soldier, kings with their diadems laid aside, the rich mingled with the poor in an equal throng. Everywhere is deep trembling; now the world groans with prayers, and the peoples, stretching out their hands, marvel with a clamor.
The Lord himself, seated, resplendent with towering light and mighty above all, flashes like fire in his powers, and on his lofty throne he gleams from the heavenly seat, girt about with martyrs, with a shining number of men, and attended by his blessed prophets he stands forth, men whose bright brows shine with snow-white fillets. And now the priests are present in gleaming garments, bearing the glowing crowns, the rewards of life, and all, with knees bowed and bent, adore him: 'Holy and sacred God alone' — there is one voice for all. Hence the Lord will bid the twofold people take their stand:
He commands the righteous to be separated in number from the wicked, and bids them, clothed in vigor with death vanquished, to have ever the never-extinguished radiance of light, to go through realms ever flowering with age, through rich groves and ever-pleasant green places, to lead a perpetual life in a glorious body. There is a place, dear to the Lord, on Aeolian shores, where clear light shines and a more wholesome breeze breathes, and eternal day and unchanging time, and a region most rich in fields, set apart for God, and a seat too blessed on its serene pole, air ever glad and ever destined to be in light, and a gentle wind breathing life-giving breezes. The all-bearing earth yields fair produce from its most wealthy soil; a flowery purple blazes on the balanced meadows.
All things, radiant, mingle their light without envy; the glad flower clothes its cloak with its own splendor. Hence the fields are dappled with rosy hue upon snow-white seed, and the snow-white meadows are curled with rosy flowers. You could not tell by which those fields are more beautifully fragrant, or by which the ethereal breeze breathes more happily, or which surpasses in beauty of form, which excels in honor. Never in flower-bearing gardens are the like of these born; nor did such lilies ever bloom in our fields, nor does the known rose so redden or the white rose spread open, nor is purple so steeped in Tyrian crimson. The gem gleams beautiful with colored stones; here the emerald-green shines, there the carbuncle burns, and the smaragdus-stone pours forth its glittering lights. Here too the cinnamon springs on fragrant twigs, and the amomum, joyous with green leaf, breathes its perfume abroad.
Here lies the inborn gold of radiant light, and the high groves, holding heaven with their flowering crown, and the most abundant buds weigh down the greening branches. No India has stretched forth groves like its own; not so does the green pine raise its dense summits, nor does the quivering cypress so curl its lofty foliage, nor does the vernal branch bloom better in its season. Here otherwise the lofty black woods flower at the crown, and alone are ever green without hail. No leaves fall, no flower fails in its season; the summits, compacted with hardwood, are green, the tree grows purple. But I think that flower is the rose, an equal redness in it; so does the fragrant one breathe such beauty upon its leaves. The tree stands, most beautiful, with flower and nine fruits, and the fertile hardwoods make dense the life-giving produce.
Honey rich and fragrant streams upon the greening branches, and milk too, fit to drink, flows in full-running streams. There whatever the holy earth makes green breathes forth life, and whatever blossoms from the bud gladdens all alike, and the healing soil of fair chalk smells sweet. There a spring floods the fields with a placid current; thence four rivers water the divided land. I think that spring, clad in flowers, ever keeps its day; no cold varies the breezes of the wintry star, nor does radiant summer glisten with oppressive heats; heaven tempers the serene breezes with its own light, and refreshes the teeming earth with a kindlier breath. There is no night: the stars ward off their own shadows; wraths and snares are absent, and dire desire, and fear is shut out, and cares are driven from the threshold.
Hence the evil one is banished, an exile, to the farthest shores, and toil is forbidden to touch those blessed bounds. Here ancient faith rests in its chosen seat; Justice, rejoicing, lives in an eternal covenant, and untroubled Salvation gladdens itself in the placid fields, ever destined to live and ever to be in the light.
Here whoever is a devoted cultivator of the just and the good, and who fears God the Thunderer with a harmless mind, and honored his own parents with holy piety, and always cultivated a holy life without crime; or as often as he consoled the needy with friendly wealth and greatly succored the laboring poor, a helper of the pauper, wont to save orphans, and rescued the injured, aided those pressed by accusation, gave to guests the pledges of a dear table as his own, performed all his duties by divine commands, harmed no one, coveted nothing of another's — all these, exulting in divine praises and at the same time praying, raise their voices to the stars, and, singing psalms to the Lord, celebrate thanks amid joys, and shall go the blessed way with attending messengers.
After the Lord had accomplished these happy gifts and likewise sent the righteous back into the eternal realms — lo, there comes, lamenting its crimes, a pitiable throng: there arises a groan, all mourn with burning tears, and attest their deeds with frequent howlings, and tremble at the fiery, impending weapons for their deserts. The angels seize them and now forbid them to pray, and forbid them to pour out the too-late voices of penitence, and now, with the flame coming on, the pardon of prayers is denied. O wretched ones, how often did the divine power make itself known to you, how often was the majesty of the true God recognized? You heard the sounds, you saw the lightnings of heaven, and constantly experienced the rains, the wraths of the winds and the hail, how often the serene nights and days.
The fruitful seasons gave you the gifts of God: spring rosy in abundance, nor did summer fail in fruits, autumn offered mellow apples in variety, ever-glacial winter broke the joyous olives. God bestowed all things, nor was any goodness lacking; yet through so many things the whole human race did not come to know God. The earth trembled at God, the sea hung suspended at God's nod, and the trembling river flowed back over its dry sands, and all creation gladly confesses God through all things. Yet you denied this Lord of heaven and earth, and rather slew the righteous with cruel slaughter, and often put to flight the heralds of God, most of them. The truth clung in you always as a crime. And therefore you shall reap the fruit of an unjust sowing: behold, you do not know the day at which you are wont to scoff.
You shall go into the deep darkness of fire and brimstone, doomed by burning to suffer savage wraths with torments. These the Lord bids depart to eternal punishment, to go beneath the burnings of Gehenna, ever without end, to be driven, a mass, through the seething pools of flame. He bids the elements be turned into the threatening flames, and the whole fire of heaven descend from the clouds. Then greedy Tartarus lets loose the rushing fires, and the waters shall billow with tempestuous flames, and the whole living earth shall be confounded with embers, and the wrathful air shall brandish fiery furrows, and the world, a torrent, shall be armed with every firebrand; with hellish onset the conflagrations shall seize the world. They are driven and lifted headlong into the surging heat; hence they flee, thence they are driven back with a sharp course.
The savage wrath of the flame meets those who flee, and now, now they recognize their punishment from their crime. And now, where the earth is possessed by no husbandman and, at the sea's extremities, is pressed beneath the deep's end, where the sun, its beam run out, marks the limit of Olympus, and the risen stars are hidden as the world is done — there the air grows dense with darkness, its light shut away, the last pools flaming in secret channels. Such is the fiery nature of the place, marked out for punishments, and the marsh of hell, glowing white at its lowest depths with burnings, thunders with horrific sounds — a penal strait, a furnace — and seethes and is churned with a rapid whirl of flame, a river rushing into torments with its billowing flood; the scorched sand is all mingled with mire. Hither, groaning, the captive throng of the wicked shall be sent, and the band of the guilty body doomed to burn (O horror!).
There is a great wailing, with weeping joining the outcry, and a swift gnashing; then the howling of the grieving shall rise from the flame afar, and the lofty groan of the burning fire shall mount up into the sounding air. Then the human offspring of evil pays for its deeds, and shall begin to stretch too-late prayers toward heaven, and shall now wish to know God, whom they refused to know.
There each one shall confess the savagery of his own life, his guilty hands and minds savage with crime, and shall testify to the monstrous savagery of his own life. First of all, whoever had ill-conceived thoughts of God before, and had worshipped the wandering rocks with a lying godhead, and had consecrated bloodstained altars with images, and feared the painted figures without voice, and adored the thin shadows of a false divinity, and whomever wicked error at once led astray — if anyone was an adulterer, whoever had slain his own children, if by whatever evil anyone lived with a guilty conscience, or had gone plundering by robbery or by a client's fraud, if anyone stained his palms with human blood, and mingled poisons with hidden death, then if anyone concealed thefts in an empty breast, or rejoiced in the wicked gain of another's misfortune — whoever committed any wickedness of evils.
A towering blaze shall torment them with bitter fire, and all together shall pay their penalty in a living death, thus mourning as they preserve the whole multitude of men. How often did the holy prophets sing of these things, warned again and again by the Spirit of God, and foretell what was to come? Yet no one, alas, wretched man, no one lent his ears. Thus did God almighty will that his rewards should be known, and the threats laid down through such a law, by sending many to cry aloud his heavenly words. At length, at God's command, a prophet joined bones together, and the graves stood astonished, moved suddenly and not of their own accord, that bodies once fallen might rise as dust that had been strewn; then he marveled to see the dead rise as their soul returned, and stretch their palms toward heaven with their own voice.
And they give thanks to God and to Christ the victor for such things. They indeed sought again their silent tombs and yielded, to be kept by God for the day to come: he commanded that they be held a little while in the depths of their resting-places, until that great day should arrive when the appointed time is fulfilled. All of you, acknowledge the true Lord, who alone can make the soul strive toward the light, and the same can thrust it down into the punishment of hell, and to whom all power of life and death lies open. For God, to be able is but to will, and to speak is to have done it. He alone, my God, is to be feared with the deepest of our senses. And since every course is shut off by death, whoever a man is today, his own life shall be borne away with him.
And therefore, while life remains, while it is still permitted to enjoy the light, while there is yet room for repentance, before the boundary of your age overtakes the unwary and that last day of death, which is held fast by law, looses your unknowing eyes: what is first and paramount, keep watch over your dear salvation, and bend willingly and surely your course toward the good. After your errings, and the expiations pressed upon you by his holy rites, and after the roving storms that have tossed you all too fiercely, enter the straight ways and hold to the joyful breezes. First, then, with glad hearts drive out your sin, and let the guilt long hardened be washed from your breast; then, being gentle, blot out the wicked deeds you have committed, and appease with eternal prayers the God who is to be dreaded. Let all worst things give way to good, mortal things to the living. Preserve now, now at last, a ninth life free of crime, and keep your minds devout and in the true Name.
And humbly beg pardon for your first offenses. Now, now let hearts grown pure ripen for devout husbandmen, and lift up innocent hands in righteous prayers, and readily render your voices to divine praises. Let minds begin to grow accustomed to good and true things, and let the gifts of the divine law be the more celebrated; call to mind good things and at once press on to good deeds. Let the foul deeds once committed by the wicked grow cheap, and all better things shall blaze for you who are devout; at once your life is freed from dreadful perils and shall come to eternal rewards according to its vows.