heavenly bodies, how many there are—nothing so banal. He means the harmonies of their
188 The Literal Meaning of Genesis expertly and fluently on the "music of the spheres,"27 or on any questions you care to mention about the elements of this cosmos. They wilt and lose heart, putting these pundits before themselves, and while regarding them as great authorities, they turn back with a weary distaste to the books of salutary godli ness, and can scarcely bring themselves to touch the volumes they should be devouring with delight—shrinking from the roughness of the husks of the wheat and eagerly eyeing the flowers of the thistles. After all, they have no time to be still (Ps 46: 1 1 ), and to see how sweet is the Lord (Ps 34:8), nor are they hungry on the sabbath (Mt 1 2: 1 ); and that is why they are too lazy to use the authority they have received from the Lord to pluck the ears ofwheat and go on rubbing them in their hands until they come to what they can eat.
What have we gottenfrom his "rubbing the grain in his hands" like this?
21, 41. Someone is going to say, "What about you, with all this rubbing of corn in this essay, how much grain have you extracted? What have you winnowed? Why is practically everything hidden still in a heap of questions? Affirm some of the many meanings you have argued can be understood."
To which I reply that I have happily reached this very food: namely that l have learned that we should not hesitate to give the answers that have to be given, in line with the faith, to people who make every effort to discredit the books our salvation depends on. So we should show that whatever they have been able to demonstrate from reliable sources about the world of nature is not contrary to our literature, while whatever they may have produced from any of their volumes that is contrary to this literature of ours, that is, to the Catholic faith, we must either show with some ease, or else believe without any hesitation, to be entirely false. And we should so hold onto our mediator, in whom are stored up all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge (Col 2:3), that we are neither seduced by the chatter of false philosophy, nor frightened out of our wits by the superstitions of false religion.
And when we read in the divine books such a vast array of true meanings,28 which can be extracted from a few words, and which are backed by sound Cath olic faith, we should pick above all the one which can certainly be shown to have been held by the author we are reading; while if this is hidden from us, then surely one which the scriptural context does not rule out and which is agreeable to sound faith; but if even the scriptural context cannot be worked out and
27. Literally, "on the numbers of the heavenly bodies"; but 1 am sure he does not mean the count of heavenly bodies, how many there are—nothing so banal. He means the harmonies of their motions. 28. He actually writes, "when we read the divine books in such a vast array . . . ": 1 think 1 am justified in switching the preposition.