Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit

For, as Moses says, "He judged according to the little and according to the great," [*](Deuteronomy L 17. ) engendering and fashioning everything, and not taking anything away from the display of his art by reason of the obscurity of his materials, not adding anything because of their brilliancy;

since all the artists who have any reputation wish to work up whatever materials they take in an admirable manner, whether they are costly or whether they are inexpensive. And before now, some persons, having even an extraordinary love of distinction, have even spent more skill in working up materials of little value, than they have devoted to those which are costly, wishing to make up for the deficiencies of the material by the additional display of their skill.

But there is no material which has any value in the eyes of God, because he has given all materials an equal share of his skill. In reference to which it is said in the sacred scriptures, "God saw all that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." [*](Genesis i. 31. ) But the things which receive an equal degree of praise, are by all means held in equal estimation by him who confers the praise;

and what God praised was not the materials which he had worked up into creation, destitute of life and of melody, and easily dissolved, and moreover in their own intrinsic nature perishable, and out of all proportion and full of iniquity, but rather his own skilful work, completed according to one equal and well-proportioned power and knowledge always alike and identical. In reference to which all things were also accounted equal and similar by all the rules of proportion, according to the principles of art and knowledge. [*](Deuteronomy L 17. ) [*](Genesis i. 31. )

And if there is any one in the world who is a praiser of equality, that man is Moses. In the first place composing hymns in its honour, and in every place, and calling it the especial property of justice, as in fact its very name to some degree shows, to divide [*](The Greek is δίχα τέμνειν, as if δικαιοσύνη, "justice," were derived from δίχα, " in two parts " ) bodies and things into two equal parts; and in the second place blaming injustice, the worker of the most disgraceful inequality;

and inequality has been the parent of two wars, foreign and civil war, as on the other hand equality is the parent of peace. And he also utters the most manifest panegyric on justice, and the most undeniable reproach of injustice when he says, "You shall not commit injustice in any judgment, nor in measures, or weights, or balances: a just balance, and just weights, and a just heap, shall be yours." [*](Leviticus xix. 35. ) And in Deuteronomy he says, "There shall not be a false weight in thy bag; thy weight shalt be true and just; there shall not be a little weight and a large one; that thy days may be multiplied upon the earth, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, because every one who committeth injustice is an abomination to the Lord." [*](Deuteronomy xxv. 13. )

Therefore God, who loveth justice, hates and abominates injustice, the begining of sedition and of evils; and in one passage the lawgiver represents equality as the muse of justice beginning with the creation of the entire heaven. For he says, "And God made a separation between the light and between the darkness, and he called the light day, and the darkness he called night." [*](Genesis i. 4. )

For it is equality which allotted night and day and light and darkness to existing things. It is equality also that divided the human race into man and woman, making two divisions, unequal in strength, but most perfectly equal for the purpose which nature had principally in view, the generation of a third human being like themselves. For, says Moses, "God made man; in the image of God created he him; male and female created them." [*](Genesis i. 26. )He no longer says "him," but "them," in the plural number, adapting the species to the genus, which have, as I have already said, been divided with perfect equality.

And he apportioned cold and heat, and summer [*](The Greek is δίχα τέμνειν, as if δικαιοσύνη, "justice," were derived from δίχα, " in two parts " ) [*](Leviticus xix. 35. ) [*](Genesis i. 4. ) [*](Deuteronomy xxv. 13. ) [*](Genesis i. 26. )

the one his beneficent power, in accordance with which he made the world, and in respect of which he is called God; the other his chastening power, according to which he rules and governs what he has created, in respect of which he is further denominated Lord, and these two he here states to be divided in the middle by him standing above them both. "For," says he, "I will speak to you from above the mercy-seat, in the midst, between the two cherubims;" [*](Exodus xxv. 22. ) that he might show that the most ancient powers of the living God are equal; that is to say, his beneficent and his chastising power, being both divided by the same dividing Word.

But what are the pillars of the ten generic laws which he calls tables? They are two; equal in number to the parts of the soul, the rational and irrational part, which must be instructed and corrected, being again divided by the Lawgiver; "for the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraven on the tables." [*](Exodus xxxii. 16. )

And, indeed, of the ten commandments engraved on these tables which are properly and especially laws, there is an equal division into two numbers of five; the first of which contains the principle of justice relating to God, and the second those relating to man.

Now of those principles of justice relating to God, the first law enunciated is one which opposes the polytheistic doctrine, and teaches us that the world is ruled over by one sole governor. The second is one forbidding men to make gods of things which are not the causes of anything, by means of the treacherous arts of painters and sculptors, whom Moses banished from his own constitution which he proposed to establish, condemning them to everlasting banishment, in [*](Exodus xxv. 22. ) [*](Exodus xxxii. 16. )

The third law is one about the name of the Lord, not about that name which has not yet reached his creatures; for that name is unspeakable, but about the name which is constantly applied to him as displayed in his powers; for it is commanded that we shall not take his name in vain. The fourth commandment is concerning the seventh day, always virgin, and without any mother, in order that creation, taking care that it may be always free from labour, may in this way come to a recollection of him who does everything without being seen.

The fifth commandment is about the honour due to parents. For this also is a sacred command; having reference not to men, but to him who is the cause of birth and existence of the universe, in accordance with whom it is that fathers and mothers appear to generate children; not generating them themselves, but only being the instruments of generation in his hands.

And this command is placed, as it were, on the borders between the two tables of laws relating to God and those relating to man, and so it bounds the five which concern piety, and that five also which comprehend a prevention of injury to one’s fellows. Since mortal parents are the boundaries of the immortal powers, which, generating everything according to nature, have permitted this lowest and mortal race to imitate their own powers of generation, and so to propagate its own seed; for God is the beginning of all generation, and the mortal species of mankind, being the lowest and least honoured of all, is the end.