De creatione hominis sermo primus recensio C

I come to discharge an old debt, the payment of which I have deferred not through willful neglect but through bodily weakness—a debt most necessary and owed to your hearing. For it would be unjust that we, who have been taught about beasts and swimming creatures and cattle and birds, about the heaven and the things in heaven, about the earth and the things on the earth, should not also be enlightened concerning our own generation from the divinely inspired scripture. For just as our eyes, seeing outward things, do not see themselves unless they touch some smooth, solid surface and the vision, reflected from there as from a backflow, makes them see their own backs, so too our mind does not otherwise see itself unless it bends over the scriptures. For the light here, being reflected, becomes the cause of each of us being seen, since we are uncomprehending of ourselves and without vision, still ignorant of our own constitution—what we are and what we are. For we are most carelessly disposed toward ourselves, having no knowledge of the most obvious parts of creation and of the smallest things within us. And yet there are many treatises concerning our body, and not a few of those before us have spent their entire zeal on this, so that if you take up medicine, you will find how much it tells us about the use of our parts, how many hidden passages it has discovered in anatomical dissections concerning our internal constitution, passages coexisting in the unseen and diverse activities directed toward one common breath of the body.

channels of breath, aqueducts of blood, the drawing of respiration, the dwelling of the hearth of heat in the heart, the perpetual motion of the pericardial spirit. Countless other things have been philosophized by those men, of which none of us is experienced, because we have allotted no leisure to this part of inquiry, nor has each one known himself, what he is. We are more ready to know the heaven than ourselves. So do not despise the wonder in you; for you are small, as you think, but the word, coming upon you, will find you great. For this reason the wise David, knowing how to examine himself accurately, says, "Your knowledge has been made wonderful from me," that is, I was able to discover the knowledge concerning your wonders. From where? From me; for having contemplated the art in me, with how much wisdom my body was constructed, from this small but wonderful construction I conceived the great craftsman. "Let us make man according to our image and likeness." It was shown earlier in passing, and sufficiently shown, what the word is and to whom the word is addressed. The church has the proofs concerning these things, or rather, it has faith more secure than proof.

Let us make man. Learn yourself, beginning from this point. This utterance is not yet inscribed concerning any other creation. Light came to be, and it came forth by a simple command; for God said, "Let there be light." Heaven, and it subsisted without deliberation; luminaries, and he took no counsel concerning them; sea and boundless oceans were brought into being by the command. All kinds of fish came to be by the order. Wild beasts and cattle, swimming creatures and flying creatures: He spoke, and it came to be. Here, however, man is not yet, and there is deliberation concerning man. He did not say, as concerning all the others, "Let there be man." From this, learn your own worth: He did not cast your generation forth by a command, but a council was convened by God concerning you, how the precious living being was to be brought into life; for he says, "Let us make." The wise man deliberates, the craftsman ponders. Is something lacking in his art, so that he wishes from his concern to make his work of art perfect? No; but only to show you that you are perfect in the sight of God. You have learned, then, that there are for the present two persons in God, the speaker and the one to whom the word is addressed. But why did he not say, "I will make man," but "Let us make"? So that

you may understand the equal lordship, so that in knowing the father you may not be ignorant of the son, so that you may know that the father made through the son and the son created by the father's will, and you may glorify the father in the son and the son in the holy spirit. Thus you have become a common work, so that you may be a common worshiper of both, not dividing the worship but uniting the divinity. You see a history simple in form, but a theology pure in meaning. For after the "Let us make," it added: "And God made man." It did not say: "They made man," so that you might not take occasion for polytheism. For if the making had been introduced in the plural, men would have been reckless in ascribing to themselves many multitudes of gods. For first: "Let us make man," so that you may recognize father and son and holy spirit; then: "And God made man," so that you may understand the three persons as one God, not uniting the hypostases, but reckoning the one essence and power, and have one glory, not being divided in worship nor falling into polytheism. For it did not say: "And the gods made man," but: "God made." For even if there is a distinct hypostasis of the father, a distinct one of the son, and a distinct one of the holy spirit, yet there are not three gods, because the essential divinity conceived in the three is one and the same. For the divinity that I see in the father, this I see also in the son, and that which I see in the son, this also in the holy spirit; because the form observed in these is one and the same principle. Therefore by us also there is one worship and doxology to the three as to one God. So then the preamble of our generation has been understood as true theology.

Let us make man according to our image and likeness. That we have been made according to the image of God is quite clear from Scripture. But how is the phrase "according to the image of God" to be understood? One must conceive of nothing bodily or earthly. Let us cleanse our heart of vulgarity, of uneducated preconception, of ignorant notions about God. Such as some say: "If we have been made according to the image of God, then God is certainly of the same form as we are. And perhaps God has eyes and ears and a head and hands and a hip on which he sits (for it is also said in Scripture: God sits) and feet with which he walks." But God is not like that. Remove from your heart unseemly phantasms, cast out from yourself a thought unworthy of the greatness of God. God is formless and simple; do not imagine a shape around him. Do not belittle the great one in a Jewish manner, do not enclose God in bodily concepts, do not circumscribe him with your mind. He is incomprehensible in magnitude. Contemplate the great one, and to the great add more than what has been conceived, and to the more add yet more, and persuade your own reasoning that it cannot attain the infinite. Therefore do not conceive a shape; for God is conceived by power. Not magnitude; for he is everywhere and exceeds the whole, intangible, invisible, incomprehensible, neither encompassed by shape nor circumscribed by magnitude, nor measured by power, nor enclosed by time, nor bounded by any limits. For there is nothing at all about God such as there is about us or even about things that are only intelligible. How then did Scripture say that we have been made according to the image of God?

Let us recognize what we have that is proper to God, and that the phrase "according to the image" cannot possibly be understood in terms of bodily form. For the latter belongs to some visible body, but the invisible is not shaped in the visible. Nor, indeed, could anything perishable be an image of the imperishable. For the body increases, decreases, ages, changes; it is one thing in youth and another in old age, one thing when healthy and another when suffering, one thing when rejoicing and another when grieving, one thing when confident and another when afraid, one thing in peace and another in war, one thing in satiety and another in want. The color of one who is awake is one thing, and of one who is asleep another; for in the former it blooms and reddens as the heat moves to the outer surface, while in the latter it is chilled because the heat sinks into the depth. Hence the bodies of those who sleep are somewhat pale. How, then, can that which changes resemble the unchangeable? That which never stands still nor remains the same, resemble that which always is in the same way and according to the same state? What does it mean, "according to our image"? Is the fluid nature an image of the motionless nature, and the formed nature an image of the formless?

How then shall we find the "according to the image"? In that very thing which God said just now. For I am not inserting some extraneous thought of my own into the discourse. "Let us make man according to our image and likeness, and let them rule over the fish." Therefore, according to the pattern of rule or authority, our likeness to the divine is to be understood. But the ruling element is not at all in the body, nor in the reasoning, nor in the flesh, but in the soul. For the human body is weaker than that of many irrational animals, and our flesh could never be compared in strength to that of the camel, or the elephant, or the horse, or the ox, or of any of the largest beasts you might name. But our soul and the mind in it is able easily to subdue all these, and man moves great and unwieldy burdens by technical contrivances, not by bodily strength. So our ruling element and the "according to image and likeness of God" is to be contemplated in the constitution of the reasoning faculty, not in the form of the body. But perhaps you will say: How is it that God did not speak of the reasoning faculty, but says that man was made according to his own image? Because the reasoning faculty is also called man, and the soul is the inner man. Hear the apostle saying, "Even if the outer man in us is corrupted, yet the inner man is renewed." How then? Do we recognize two men in the same one? Yes, he says, one visible and one hidden beneath the visible, the more principal and truer man. For the man fashioned by God is in a sense twofold: one part visible, the other intelligible.

But by the greater and truer part, the inner and invisible man is rather constituted. For the inner part is myself, while the outer and bodily part is perhaps mine, but not I. For surely the hand and foot and the other parts of the body would not be I, but rather the intellectual and rational part of the soul, using the body as an instrument. Therefore, let us understand the "Let us make man according to our image and likeness" as meaning "we shall give him an abundance of reason"; and thus "Let them rule over the fishes and the beasts and all things." But it did not say, "Let us make man according to our image, and let them be angry and desire and experience passions." For the passions are not taken into the image of God, but rather the reasoning that is master of the passions, that rules over all bodily things and stands above the visible and deceptive. Now marvel at the care and providence of God concerning you from the very beginning, that you were immediately created as a ruler, and you hold your rule perpetually and without succession. For a man who receives some authority from another man, as a mortal from a mortal and as one who does not have it from one who does not have it (for what authority of the soul does a man have?), naturally and very quickly loses it again. But you received this authority from God himself, and you hold it ineradicable, not written on wooden tablets nor on perishable folds consumed by moths, but engraved upon nature itself from the first divine utterance: "Let them rule." For from that time and until the end, all these things are slaves to human rule.

Let them rule, he says, over the fish, the beasts of the earth, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the reptiles that creep upon the earth. He did not say, Let us make man according to our image and likeness, and let them eat every fruit-bearing tree that has fruit in itself. For these things come later, after the planting of paradise, so that you may learn that the necessities of the flesh are secondary to the priorities of the soul, since first the power to rule was conferred upon us, and then the enjoyment of paradise was also bestowed. You are a ruling creature, O man; why then do you serve the passions? Why do you cast down your own dignity and become a slave of sin? Why do you make yourself a captive of the devil? You were appointed ruler of creation; do not cast off the dignity of your own nature. You are placed in a certain cosmic order; it is your duty also to have reason as a co-ruler and master of the passions, so that you may not be a laughingstock and an object of mockery to those under your rule. Instead of a ruler and superior, they perceive you as subject and led, equal to a bound and worthless slave. Were you called a slave? Why does the slavery of the body grieve you? Why do you not take pride in the dominion given you by God, that you have reason as master of the passions? When, then, you see your master being a slave to pleasure, and yourself surpassing it by the power of reason, know that you are called a slave only in name, but are not; while he, even if he has dominion in name, has in reality drawn upon himself confirmed slavery.

For when that man, for instance, is dragged down by the passion of fornication, enslaving him, while you have risen above this through the mastery of your reason, how are you not properly the master, you who are superior to pleasure, while that man is rather the slave, subject to the passion trampled by you? Wherever, then, the power to rule exists, there is the image of God. And wherever the image of God exists, there is the man formed by him. First, he said that man rules over the fish, because these are more distant from him than the other animals, so that through the more remote and aquatic creatures, he might later include the nearer ones as well, namely the land animals and those that share his environment. How, then, do we seem to rule over the fish, we who do not live among them? If you ever saw yourself reflected in a lake and observed how your mere shadow put to flight all the little fish dwelling there, you would immediately recognize the nature of this rule. For what master of a house, when the house is in turmoil, suddenly appears and brings silence, transforming everything into order by his presence, as does the entire aquatic creation when a single man appears, changing its form and no longer maintaining its free behavior? It dares not swim on the surface of the lake or sea. The dolphin, when it perceives a man nearby, although it is the most kingly of swimmers, feels a kind of reverence and no longer moves or leaps as is its custom. Thus was given to man the rule over swimmers. And when you consider your own reason, penetrating through all things and enslaving everything by arts, how do you not rule even the great whales?

I have seen human ingenuity, how they make a construction of certain hooks and, attaching to these baits proportionate to the size of the devouring sea-monsters, then, at the other end of those ropes from which the hooks are suspended, after stretching skins with air and tying them off, they let them hang aloft over the sea. So the wild sea-monsters, drawn by these baits and having taken the hooks within themselves, drag the skins down into the depth, but the nature of the skins, being upward-bearing because of the lightness of the air enclosed within, draws them back up to the surface. And, pierced by their own food, they rage up and down, and, frantic, they search the depths and traverse sea after sea. And they endure much fruitless toil, and finally, by this small hook, the great and unwearied beast becomes catchable, tamed by toil and worn down by hunger, and, carried dead with the skins, becomes prey for the fisherman: the immense by the small, the invincible in strength by the weak. Why? Because, by the abundance of reason, having received the power to rule, man leads the most disobedient, like evil runaways, to obedience, and those who cannot be brought by gentleness, he enslaves through necessity. Thus everywhere the power to rule, implanted in man by the Creator, exists in him. Hence swordfish, hammerhead sharks, whales, sawfish, seals, and all those fearsome

The forms and names of sea-monsters have become subject to man. Let them rule the fish of the sea and the beasts of the land. Do you not see the lion, heavy and roaring, whose name is unbearable to the hearing and whose roar makes the earth tremble, whose onset who could endure? For no creature, even among the largest and most irrational animals, has such an abundance of natural power that it could withstand a charging lion. Yet you often see even this insufferable and fearsome beast shut up in a small cage. Who then confined it, who devised the small prison for the great beast and, by the thinness of those wooden bars, provided breathing for the confined creature so that it might not be suffocated by its own breath, and through free breathing secured its safety beforehand? Is it not man? Does not the same man also mock the leopard, when he stretches a paper shaped like a man, and the leopard tears the paper, while the man lying below laughs at the beast’s folly? Does he not also make the wildest and most invincible of the remaining beasts playthings by his own devices? Does he not rule all by the abundance of his intellect? How shall I speak of the flying creatures? That he himself does not ascend into the air with his body, yet he flies alongside the birds, using his reasoning as wings. For nothing restrains the mind of man. It explores things in the deep, hunts things on land, anticipates things in the air, and, dragging them down to earth, carries them off.

Have you ever seen a bird perched on the tip of a branch, mocking the men below who turn about on the earth, trusting in the lightness of its wing? Yet here again one may see a mischievous boy placing reeds beneath reeds, and attaching birdlime to the tip of the reeds, then secretly hiding the presence of the lime among the branches and leaves, and deceiving the eye of the bird, and thus, with a slight touch and hold, capturing the air-traveler and the winged creature formerly borne through the ether, carrying it off bound by the birdlime. For the man lies below, and his hands and feet are below, but his mind ascends to the heights with the birds, and through art the heavenly things become attainable to him, and the winged creatures become capturable. For nets are set for birds, and archers take aim at flying creatures, and the more gluttonous are hunted by baits of food. Have you never seen an eagle violently fall upon its prey, but quickly become entangled in the snares below? Thus the lofty is brought low, dragged down by human contrivances. For God has brought all things under the hand of man, and has filled creation and has not made man without a share in lordship over them. Do not say: How do the things borne in the air matter to me? For through reason even those become subject to you, along with the reptiles that creep upon the earth. Do you see how you ought to understand being made in the image of God? According to the ruling principle, and the intellectual and rational nature of the soul. And God made man.

Let us then define what a human being is, from what we have read and from what we have heard. For we no longer need to borrow definitions from others, nor to introduce into the reasoning of truth things derived from vanity. A human being, then, is a rational creation of God, made in the image of its creator. If anything is lacking in this account for a complete definition of the subject, let those who have labored much in the pursuit of perishable wisdom examine it. But let us hold to what follows: A human being was made in the image of God. And God blessed the human being and said: Increase and multiply and fill the earth. This is also the blessing of fish. For God said: Let the earth bring forth creeping things of living souls, and it was so. And God said: Increase and fill the waters. What then is the extra? Necessarily, he granted you these common things, and your own particular things await you. For you also increase, as do the other animals, and from a small beginning you come to completion by gradual additions. So too horses and dogs, so too eagles and swans, and everything you might name, through a small first conception, receiving completion of growth by gradual addition, then again through diminution return to the smaller. What therefore was common to nature, he also granted to us.

Grow, that is: be nourished, being born small you become large, and let there be an end to growth. For it is not because in the first seven-year period we are nourished and a change of age takes us to the second week of years that we ought likewise to undergo a change of age by weeks in every part of our life. The first seven-year period contains the age of childhood, and the boundaries of childhood are manifest: the change of teeth. For some have fallen out, others have grown in. A second beginning of growth takes place up to the end of the fourteenth year, which is the age of boys. For first it is an infant, then a child, then from fourteen years an ephebe, and thereafter a man. Here are the boundaries of growth. Grow, then, not indefinitely. For if one becomes a hundred years old, he does not admit growth from the first to the hundredth year, but this "Grow" is up to a point. For the limits of growth are not without measure. "Grow" is one word wisely spoken, providentially administered. For according to the first constitution laid down in the womb, the principles of growth were also laid down. But the gift of age does not come afterward as something newer, but from the beginning the maternal deposits have the aptitudes for growth co-deposited. The teeth fell out; we knew that it had grown that much. The father measured the three-year-old child. He knows that it will receive double this size at completion. For as much as the human appears in length at three years, it will be twice that at the completion of growth.

This measure of human nature passes from the first seven-year period to the second, until the end. There, then, the heat is greater; for the more rarefied formation of the body and the moisture fail, and the parts gradually begin to be strengthened, but have not yet attained perfection. For their flesh is still newly formed and unsuited for enduring labors, having received only lightness and agility. In the third seven-year period, then, it also attains the perfection of growth. Still, however, the extension or growth of the body in length occurs. But after the third seven-year period, when nature takes a rest from the toil of upward growth, it then begins to transfer growth into breadth and to add thickness to the elevated limbs of the body, and thus to solidify and strengthen them and to bring them to a more robust state. Nature does these things each time without fail according to its own sequence. But from the beginning this was given to it as an impulse from a word and a command of the Lord, and what was once spoken proceeds through all creation always and until the end. "Increase and multiply." Increase, so that the creation may not remain imperfect; multiply, so that creation may not be confined to one.

Fill it, then, not by habitation; for we would be cramped living if the earth were only as much as measures us. But fill it by the power of authority. The phrase "Fill the earth" means to become masters of the earth. For surely men do not inhabit and fill the earth even the burnt and uncultivated part and the frozen and impassable part. But we truly fill it when we know by reasoning how great is the measure of the burnt and uninhabitable part, how great the northern region, which due to excessive cold is uncultivated and useless, when we select its useful part and dismiss as much as is useless and unproductive for sustenance. So that "Fill the earth" is equivalent to "Become masters of the earth." For it is not because we do not have the use of all of it that we are not considered masters of all of it. For you, having bought the grain, are not for this reason master of the whole, since in the grain you find some edible part and some discardable part and you throw it away, and you pick out the little stones as useless from there, and if anything else is mixed with the grain that is unsuitable for food, and after blowing away the chaff and separating the tares, you select only the clean part for your own consumption. So then also the earth: some was granted to you as suitable for habitation, some as necessary for agriculture, another as set aside for pasture of four-footed livestock, and another for some other use that suits you in life. And you are to arrange it as you wish and in whatever way you wish concerning it, since the Master has established you as master of his own creation.

This, then, is the blessing of "Fill the earth," this is the legislation, this the dignity given to us by God. And God made man, he made him in the image of God. Did I not indicate that the result falls short of the original intention? There: "Let us make man in our image and likeness," here: "He made him in the image of God." The intention had two elements: "in the image" and "in likeness." The creation has only one, "in the image." Is the intention one thing and the product another? Did some repentance follow in the making, or a weakness of the maker, who purposed great things but accomplished small? Or might the earlier words be considered idle talk, and the addition of the second term superfluous, as if the two expressions have the same meaning and signify the same thing without difference? But whichever of these we might suspect and allege, it will end in no slight accusation against Scripture. For if one were to say that "in likeness" is something superfluous, as if saying the same thing twice, he convicts the word of being idle, and this is a terrible blasphemy against Scripture, which never speaks idly. Therefore both are necessary and have distinct meanings, both "in the image" and "in likeness." How then was it not said likewise after man came to be, "in the image and likeness"? God made him, but only "in the image." If because the maker happened to be weak, the word is impious and absurd; if because he repented, the thought is often more impious.

But if one were to think that God later corrected his earlier plan, which was not entirely correct, in the act of creation, this notion too is equally impious. For neither is the creator weak, nor does the good one, who knows all things, repent and delay his promises, nor does the wise one change his mind, nor does Scripture say any such thing. What then is the meaning of the fact that the divine Moses, in the account of creation, said only "in the image" concerning man, while remaining silent about "in the likeness," although in the earlier plan both were included together by him? The solution is easy for one who pays attention and wishes to understand. For "in the image" is given to us by nature and is unchangeable, present from the beginning to the end, while "in the likeness" we achieve later by choice and from our own resources. In the first plan, then, when God said, "Let us make man in our image," he added "and in the likeness," showing that he would implant in us a free will capable of making us like God; and indeed we were completed as such according to God's prediction. For many have become like him, and certainly many will become like him, even if not all of us hasten toward this but rather walk the opposite path out of willful evil. But in the later construction he said only "in the image," as having established this alone as complete and unalterable in human nature; as for "in the likeness," since he had only sown it in man as a potentiality, not yet manifested in actuality, but still requiring for its realization the action of the choice of the one who received it, he fittingly remained silent about it. If indeed

Therefore, since God had taken nothing beforehand in his deliberation when he said, "And according to the likeness," and through that first word he immediately granted us the power to become like God, we could not later have received this great gift from our own authority alone. And for this reason it was necessarily assumed at that time. But since we had already come into being and were receiving existence from non-existence, what was given to our nature by the creator as if consubstantial and from the outset completed—this we immediately had and were called from it, namely, "in the image of God." But what was not immediately completed with us nor naturally accompanied us from the formation, but was to be added to us later from our subsequent choice or activity—I mean the likeness to God—this we neither were nor could be said to be. For the creator deliberately left this incomplete, so that the work of the good might be accomplished by us and the good might seem to be our own, so that we might also have a reward owed to us from this; so that we might not remain like soulless images, completed by a painter but lying idle and contributing nothing from themselves to their own beauty—images which the beholder, observing them painted with precision, reasonably admires and praises the painter, but deems the colors themselves or the panels on which they are painted worthy of no account. Therefore, so that the wonder might also become mine and I might share with God the praise for the beautiful creation, he left to me the becoming "according to the likeness" of God.

Therefore, there is in me potentially the rational and intellectual element, which indeed shows that I have been made according to the image of God, but actually there is also the element of laying hold of virtue and accomplishing the good by action, and thus coming through the best way of life to the likeness of God. So the "according to the image of God" is the beginning and root of the good, which I have had from the moment of my creation, implanted in my nature, while the "according to the likeness of God" is the final result that accrues to me from my works, from my labors for the good, and from my virtuous conduct throughout my whole life. Reasonably, therefore, the Creator did not declare that I should become according to the likeness of God immediately at the moment of my creation. For listen to what he says in the Gospel: "Become perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect." That he makes his sun rise on the wicked and the good and rains on the just and the unjust. Do you see where and when the Lord grants us the "according to the likeness"? When you become a hater of evil, forgetful of wrongs, not avenging yourself against an enemy, when you become brother-loving, compassionate, you have become like God. If you become such as God is toward you, the sinner who opposes him daily, toward the brother who has offended you, then by perfect love and compassion for your neighbor you have become like God. Therefore, take up the bowels of pity, kindness, so that you may put on Christ. For through the very things by which you take up compassion, through them you put on Christ, and by your affinity with him you attain to the likeness of God. Thus the history of the creation of man is an instruction for our life.

Let us make man according to our image and likeness. He says that in the creation itself man should have the "according to the image," and that afterwards he should become "according to the likeness" through his own zeal, since he has received the capacity for this in his own nature. If He had made you according to the likeness of God from the beginning, where would your grace be? From where would you be crowned? If the Creator had given the whole to nature, how would the kingdom of heaven be opened to you? For this reason, one thing was given, the other was left incomplete, so that by perfecting yourself you might become worthy of the reward from God. How then do we become according to likeness? Through the Gospel. For what is Christianity but a likeness to God, as far as is possible for human nature? If you have undertaken to be a Christian, hasten to become like God, put on Christ. But how will one who has not yet received baptism put Him on? For he who has not received the garment of incorruption is set very far from likeness to God. If I said to you, "Come, become like a king," would you not judge me a benefactor and hasten with great speed to what is called? But since I wish to make you like God, do you flee from the word that deifies you, stopping up your ears so that you may not even hear the saving words? And God made man; He made him according to the image of God. Perhaps here the woman would say, "This speech has nothing to do with me; the man was made at that time." For He did not say "the woman" or simply "man," but revealed this with the insertion of the masculine article.

So that no one might ignorantly or maliciously suppose that the term "man" designates only the male, he immediately added, "Male and female he created them," so that you may know that the woman also has both been made according to the image of God and according to the likeness of God, just as the man has. For the natures of both were fashioned alike, of equal honor and equal in their deeds, equal in their rewards, equal in their condemnation. Let the woman not plead the weaker body as an excuse; for that is in the flesh. The soul, however, has its own power equally with the man's. Since, therefore, they have received the "according to the image of God" as of equal honor, they also have virtue and the display of good works of equal honor. And there is no excuse for one who might plead the weakness of the body. For even if it is by nature simply delicate, yet it is ready for sympathy, vigorous in endurance, strenuous in vigils. For the female nature far surpasses the male nature in steadfastness for the good and in endurance, and a man could never be equal to a woman either in the practice of fasting and other continence, or in abundance of tears, or in diligence in prayers, or in generosity in good works. I myself have seen a woman secretly taking away the household necessities from her husband, a praiseworthy and saving theft, and distributing them to the poor in secret, benefiting her husband and her household without his knowledge or awareness. For she performed this benefaction for his sake, for the increase of the household, and for the preservation of the children.

The female, therefore, no less than the male, possesses both the "according to the image" and the "according to the likeness," since these are not observed and constituted in the externally apparent human being, that is, in the body, but in the inner and more authoritative one. And for this reason we also address our discourse to both as to one, and we exhort with all zeal toward the "according to the likeness." This will certainly be yours through goodness, forbearance, fellowship, sharing, love of one another, brotherly love, hatred of evil, and mastery over the passions of sin. For from this follows also the rule over the irrational beings. "And let them rule," it says, "over the beasts." Perhaps, then, you will say: "And over what beasts am I to rule, and where are these present to me?" But are you unaware that countless beasts surround you and that you carry about within yourself a great multitude of such a kind, which dwells continuously inside you? Is anger not a small beast, when it barks in the heart and rages worse than any dog? And deceit, when it lurks in the soul and contrives plots, is it not a beast wilder than a fox and more untamable than a bear? And the one quick to insult, is he not outright a scorpion? And the one who retaliates secretly, is he not more dangerous than a viper? And the greedy and rapacious person, is he not a wolf outright? What beast do we not nurture within and in ourselves, since even the woman-mad man is a frenzied horse? "Horses," it says, "became woman-mad; each neighed after his neighbor's wife." For he transferred himself to the nature of the irrational beings through the passion to which he became attached. Many beasts, therefore, are in us; strive to rule over them.

For if you rule over the wild beasts outside but leave the inner ones unruled and unsubdued, consider what you will seem to those who see you: ruling over a brute lion and despising its roar, yet being overcome by the anger in your heart, and grinding your teeth, often uttering inarticulate speech under the madness that possesses you, and perhaps even stretching out your hands to defend yourself against the one standing by. Are you not then more wretched and more laughable than anyone who rules over what is orderly, because anger rules you, having thrust aside reason and seized the sovereignty of the soul, and leads you wherever it happens, like a captive, you whom God established as ruler over all? But do you, for me, guard the dignity given to you. You were created a ruler. Rule over passions, rule over wild beasts, rule over reptiles, rule over birds. Do not be lifted up by your thoughts, do not be light and unstable in mind. For you were judged to rule over birds, not to be like birds. Do not be puffed up, do not be exalted, do not think more highly than the earthly and human nature, do not be inflated when praised, do not glorify yourself or magnify your own things, lest you be counted among the birds, being lifted up like them and carried about here and there in flight. Rule over the thoughts within you, so that you may become ruler of all that exists. Thus the rule given through the animals disciplines us to rule over ourselves. For it is absurd to be ruled at home while ruling over nations, and to be controlled by a courtesan within the house while being a public protector of the city.

One must first set one's own affairs in good order and adorn the inner life with good discipline, and only then undertake the governance of external and alien matters; otherwise the reproach will be turned back from those under authority: "Physician, heal yourself." Therefore let us first be eager to heal ourselves. For no one has ever been blamed for not having hunted a lion, but if one has not mastered one's own anger, one is mocked by all. So the man who cannot overcome wild beasts is not yet worthy of blame, but the man who has failed to master the passion that troubles him is certainly condemned, because the former is not required of one who has been deemed worthy of rational rule, while the latter is necessary and obligatory. And the Lord who ordained that these things be written, and who prepared our small and weak tongue to speak to you thus far, who through our weak understanding sowed for you sufficient treasures in these brief shadows of the truth, may he give you through the small things the great, through the few seeds the perfection of knowledge, and to us the full reward for our intention, and to you the full fruit of the enjoyment of divine words. For to him is the glory and the power unto the ages. Amen.