Confessions

²² Thus, O Lord, thus, I beseech You, let there arise, as You make, as You give joy and ability—let “truth spring out of the earth, and righteousness look down from heaven,” and let there be “lights in the firmament.” Let us break our bread to the hungry, and let us bring the houseless poor to our house. Let us clothe the naked, and despise not those of our own flesh. The which fruits having sprung forth from the earth, behold, because it is good; and let our temporary light burst forth; and let us, from this inferior fruit of action, possessing the delights of contemplation and of the Word of Life above, let us appear as lights in the world, clinging to the firmament of Your Scripture. For therein You make it plain unto us, that we may distinguish between things intelligible and things of sense, as if between the day and the night; or between souls, given, some to things intellectual, others to things of sense; so that now not Thou only in the secret of Your judgment, as before the firmament was made, dividest between the light and the darkness, but Your spiritual children also, placed and ranked in the same firmament (Your grace being manifest throughout the world), may give light upon the earth, and divide between the day and night, and be for signs of times; because “old things have passed away,” and “behold all things have become new;” and “because our salvation is nearer than when we believed;” and because “the night is far spent, the day is at hand;” and because You will crown Your year with blessing, sending the labourers of Your goodness into Your harvest, in the sowing of which others have laboured, sending also into another field, whose harvest shall be in the end. Thus Thou grantest the prayers of him that asks, and blessest the years of the just; but You are the same, and in Your years which fail not Thou preparest a garner for our passing years. For by an eternal counsel Thou dost in their proper seasons bestow upon the earth heavenly blessings.

23. For, indeed, to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, as if the greater light, on account of those who are delighted with the light of manifest truth, as in the beginning of the day; but to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit, as if the lesser light; to another faith; to another the gift of healing; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another the discerning of spirits; to another various kinds of tongues. And all these as stars. For all these works the one and self-same Spirit, dividing to every man his own as He wills; and making stars appear manifestly, to profit withal. But the word of knowledge, wherein are contained all sacraments, which are varied in their periods like the moon, and the other conceptions of gifts, which are successively reckoned up as stars, inasmuch as they come short of that splendour of wisdom in which the fore-mentioned day rejoices, are only for the beginning of the night. For they are necessary to such as he Your most prudent servant could not speak unto as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal — even he who speaks wisdom among those that are perfect. But the natural man, as a babe in Christ—and a drinker of milk—until he be strengthened for solid meat, and his eye be enabled to look upon the Sun, let him not dwell in his own deserted night, but let him be contented with the light of the moon and the stars. Thou reasonest these things with us, our All-wise God, in Your Book, Your firmament, that we may discern all things in an admirable contemplation, although as yet in signs, and in times, and in days, and in years.