Confessions

²⁶ Let the sea also conceive and bring forth your works, and let the waters bring forth the moving creatures that have life. For you, who “take forth the precious from the vile,” have been made the mouth of God, through which He says, “Let the waters bring forth,” not the living creature which the earth brings forth, but the moving creature having life, and the fowls that fly above the earth. For Your sacraments, O God, by the ministry of Your holy ones, have made their way amid the billows of the temptations of the world, to instruct the Gentiles in Your Name, in Your Baptism. And among these things, many great works of wonder have been wrought, like as great whales; and the voices of Your messengers flying above the earth, near to the firmament of Your Book; that being set over them as an authority, under which they were to fly wherever they were to go. For “there is no speech, nor language, where their voice is not heard;” seeing their sound “has gone through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world,” because Thou, O Lord, hast multiplied these things by blessing.

27. Whether do I lie, or do I mingle and confound, and not distinguish between the clear knowledge of these things that are in the firmament of heaven, and the corporeal works in the undulating sea and under the firmament of heaven? For of those things whereof the knowledge is solid and defined, without increase by generation, as it were lights of wisdom and knowledge, yet of these self-same things the material operations are many and varied; and one thing in growing from another is multiplied by Your blessing, O God, who hast refreshed the fastidiousness of mortal senses; so that in the knowledge of our mind, one thing may, through the motions of the body, be in many ways set out and expressed. These sacraments have the waters brought forth; but in Your Word. The wants of the people estranged from the eternity of Your truth have produced them, but in Your Gospel; because the waters themselves have cast them forth, the bitter weakness of which was the cause of these things being sent forth in Your Word.

28. Now all things are fair that You have made, but behold, You are inexpressibly fairer who hast made all things; from whom had not Adam fallen, the saltness of the sea would never have flowed from him—the human race so profoundly curious, and boisterously swelling, and restlessly moving; and thus there would be no need that Your dispensers should work in many waters, in a corporeal and sensible manner, mysterious doings and sayings. For so these creeping and flying creatures now present themselves to my mind, whereby men, instructed, initiated, and subjected by corporeal sacraments, should not further profit, unless their soul had a higher spiritual life, and unless, after the word of admission, it looked forwards to perfection.