VISIO QUINTA, cap. XLV
The Divine Command to the Earth
God commands the earth to bring forth living creatures of every kind, and it is accomplished.
God also said: "Let the earth bring forth living souls, each kind of beast of burden, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their own species."✦ And so it was done.✦
The Soul Taught by the Spirit
God speaks through the Holy Spirit to those who submit to divine instruction, teaching them to unite themselves to God with longing.
This is how you should understand it: God speaks to people through the Holy Spirit's prompting, and those who submit themselves to all the reasons just mentioned are taught how to unite themselves to God with longing in their souls.
The Human Soul Bearing Living Virtues
The human being, as earth, is called to bring forth living virtues through obedience and humility, which shame pride.
Now this earth — that is, the human being — is to bring forth living virtues of the soul, so that the outward person, carrying on the soul's work, always sighs toward God, so that soul and body may obey God in the strongest form of the virtue of obedience, which secretly removed its own power from death in God, just as beasts of burden are subjected to human beings through subjection, and so that even the creeping thing may be subject to that person in the office of lowliness, and just as the beasts of the earth serve that person, and so that a human being, for the sake of humble subjection, submits himself to another human being, because obedience is the punishment of pride, completely putting it to shame.
God's Work and the Origin of Fear
God made the beasts according to their kinds, and from God's work in the sinner fear arises, leading the person to seek God through the obedience first given to humanity.
And God made the beasts according to their species, and the beasts of burden, and every creeping thing of the earth in its own kind.✦ From almighty God, in the human being who had previously sinned freely through pride. Fear arises, so that the person themselves begins to seek God, as the first human being received the commandment of obedience from God.
Free Will Prostrated in Love
By free will a person prostrates themselves in subjection to others for the love of God, as beasts are caught and trained by their owners.
And so God brings it about in the human being that, by their own free will, they prostrate themselves in subjection to other people for the love of God, so that the beasts are caught by human beings, by whom they are also fed and trained, just as their owners wish.
Holy Humility Under the Yoke of Obedience
In holy humility people become like beasts of burden enslaved to obedience, and like worthless reptiles trampled according to their masters' will.
In the same way, people are regarded, in that subjection to masters under the appearance of holy humility, as enslaved to obedience in the manner of beasts of burden, and even in that worthlessness of a creeping nature, so that they are trampled in their own will according to the will of their masters, just as the worthless reptile nature is trampled in its own kind.✦
A Moral Review of the Sixth Day
A summary review of the moral sense of the sixth day's creation, with testimonies from the Psalm and the Gospel set side by side.
A review of everything written in Genesis about the work of the sixth day — how these things should be understood or held in their moral sense — and the placing side by side of two testimonies from the Psalm and the Gospel, and in which sense these too are to be received.
Read the original Latin
« Dixit quoque Deus: Producat terra animam viventem in genere suo, jumenta et reptilia et bestias terrae secundum species suas. Et factum est ita . » Hoc considerandum sic est: Deus in admonitione Spiritus sancti hominibus dicit, qui se omnibus praedictis causis subdunt, scilicet quomodo se Deo in desiderio animae suae diligenter adjungant. Nunc haec terra, id est homo, viventes virtutes animae producat, ita ut exterior homo negotium animae tenens, ad Deum semper suspiret, ut anima et corpus Deo in genere fortissimae virtutis obedientiae, quae morti vim suam in Deo occulte abstulit, obediant, quemadmodum jumenta per subjectionem homini subdita sunt, et ut etiam reptile in officio vilitatis illi subjacet, et sicut bestiae terrae ei serviunt, et ut homo propter subjectionem humilitatis homini se subdit, quia obedientia poena superbiae est omnino eam confundens. Et fecit Deus bestias juxta species suas, et jumenta, et omne reptile terrae in genere suo. Ab omnipotente Deo in homine, qui prius per superbiam libere peccaverat. timor surgit, ita ut ipse homo Deum requirere incipiat, ut primus homo praeceptum obedientiae a Deo suscepit. Et sic Deus in homine facit, quod seipsum sua propria voluntate in subjectionem hominum propter amorem Dei prosternit, ut bestiae ab hominibus comprehenduntur, a quibus etiam nutriuntur et instituuntur, sicut ipsi volunt.
Similiter homines in illam subjectionem magistrorum secundum speciem sanctae humilitatis computantur, mancipati obedientiae in forma jumentorum, ac etiam in illa vilitate reptantis naturae, ita ut in propria voluntate sua secundum voluntatem magistrorum suorum conculcentur, sicut vilis natura reptilis in genere suo conculcatur.
Repetitio omnium quae de opere sexti diei scripta sunt in Genesi, quomodo secundum moralitatem intelligi vel teneri debeant, et appositio duorum testimoniorum Psalmi et Evangelii, et quo sensu ipsa quoque accipienda sint.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Gen.1.24 — And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creeping things, and wild animals of the earth, each according to its kind." And it was so.
- ↩Gen.1.24-Gen.1.25 — And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creeping things, and wild animals of the earth, each according to its kind." And it was so. Gen.1.25 — And God made the living creatures of the earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
- ↩Gen.1.25 — And God made the living creatures of the earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
- ↩Gen.1.24-Gen.1.25 — And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creeping things, and wild animals of the earth, each according to its kind." And it was so. Gen.1.25 — And God made the living creatures of the earth according to their kinds, and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
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