know that he does not know all these things; but in reality his body alone is situated and dwells in the state, while the man himself flies, according to Pindar, beneath the earth and above the sky, astronomizing, and exploring all nature on all sides.
Again, with the Lord's saying, "Let your yea be yea, and your nay nay," may be compared the following: "But to admit a falsehood, and destroy a truth, is in nowise lawful." With the prohibition, also, against swearing agrees the saying in the tenth book of the Laws: "Let praise and an oath in everything be absent."
And in general, Pythagoras, and Socrates, and Plato say that they hear God's voice while closely contemplating the fabric of the universe, made and preserved unceasingly by God. For they heard Moses say, " He said, and it was done," describing the word of God as an act.
And founding on the formation of man from the dust, the philosophers constantly term the body earthy. Homer, too, does not hesitate to put the following as an imprecation:
"But may you all become earth, and water."
As Esaias says, "And trample them down as clay." And Callimachus clearly writes:
"That was the year in which
Birds, fishes, quadrupeds,
Spoke like Prometheus' clay."
And the same again:
"If thee Prometheus formed,
And thou art not of other clay."
Hesiod says of Pandora:
"And bade Hephæstus, famed, with all his speed,
Knead earth with water, and man's voice and mind
Infuse."
The Stoics, accordingly, define nature to be artificial fire, advancing systematically to generation. And God and His Word are by Scripture figuratively termed fire and light. But how? Does not Homer himself, is not Homer himself, paraphrasing the retreat of the water from the land, and the
