Again note the true sense of holiness shown in the command to separate from what has been given us, not to bring all. For numberless are the gifts assigned by nature to mankind as their portion, in none of which does she herself participate. She is unborn yet gives birth, needs no nourishment yet gives it, changes not yet gives growth, admits neither of diminishment nor increase yet gives the ages of life in succession; she gives that bodily organization which has the power to take and give, advance, see, hear, absorb food, cast it forth when digested, distinguish flavours, utter speech, and do the many other things which belong to those offices which are at once useful and necessary. Perhaps it may be said that, while these are but indifferent things, nature must have taken for her own undoubted forms of good. Let us test then, among these truly named “good” things, those which in our judgement are most admired, all of which we pray to attain at their proper seasons, and whose attainment is counted our greatest happiness. Such are a happy old age and a happy death. We all know that they are the greatest blessings that can befall mankind, and yet in neither has nature any share, for she knows neither old age nor death. And why should we count it strange that the uncreated does not deign to use the good which belongs to the created, when even the created itself lays claim to virtues varying according to the different species into which it is divided? Men could not contest with women, nor women with men, the functions which fitly belong only to the other sex. If women should affect the practices of men, or men attempt those of women, they will in each case be held to belie their sex and win an ill name thereby. And some virtues and excellences nature has so discriminated, that not even long practice could make them common property. To sow and beget belongs to the man and is his peculiar excellence, and no woman could attain to it. Again welfare in child-bearing is a good thing belonging to women, but the nature of man admits not of it. Thus even the phrase “as a man” (cherisheth his son) (Deut. 1:31) is not used of God in its literal sense, but is a term used in figure, a word of help to our feeble apprehension. Separate, therefore, my soul, all that is created, mortal, mutable, profane, from thy conception of God the uncreated, the unchangeable, the immortal, the holy and solely blessed.
On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain 30
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