Teaching Christianity
Holy Spirit, having the Trinity itself added to complete the number, it can be referred to the mystery of the Church in its most purified state, and comes to the one hundred and fiftythree fishes, which the nets caught on being cast on the right hand side after the Lord's resurrection.[62] In the same sort of way hidden symbolic meanings are contained in several other numbers to be found in the sacred books, which are closed to readers unskilled in arithmology.[63]
26. Ignorance of various musical matters also closes off and veils understanding of not a few mysteries; thus one commentator[64] has not unsuitably derived some symbolic meanings from the difference between a psaltery and a guitar; and about the ten-stringed psaltery (Ps 33:2) the learned ask themselves reasonably enough whether it has any musical rationale which requires such a large number of strings, or whether, if it lacks this, the number is rather to be taken as having a sacred significance, either because of the ten commandments of the law, in which the number is again to be referred to creator and creature,[65] or because of the intepretation given above of the number ten.
And that number connected with the building of the temple which is mentioned in the gospel, namely forty-six years (Jn 2:20), has something or other musical about it,[66] and when referred to the structure of the Lord's body, on account of which mention is made of the temple, it obliges a number of heretics to confess that the Son of God clothed himself, not with a false, but a true body, and a human one. And in many, many passages in the holy scriptures we find numbers and music given an honorable place.
What use can be made of secular doctrines; the errors of pagan myths and superstitions
17, 27. So we should pay no attention to the errors of pagan superstition, which pretended that the nine Muses are daughters of Jupiter and Memory.[67] Varro himself refuted them, and I do not know if anyone more learned or curious about such matters can be found among the pagan authors. He tells us, you see, that some city or other, I forget the name of it, placed an order with three sculptors for three images of the Muses each, to place as a gift in the temple of Apollo, on the understanding that whichever of them produced the most beautiful statues, it would choose them and buy them from him. And what happened in fact was that the work of all three sculptors turned out to be equally beautiful, and that all nine images delighted the city, and it bought all nine, to be dedicated in the temple of Apollo; and the poet Hesiod later on gave them their names. So it was not Jupiter who begot the nine Muses, but three sculptors who created three each.
That city, however, had placed an order for three Muses, not because someone had seen them in a dream, or because they had revealed themselves to the eyes of some citizen as being that many, but because it was easy to observe that every sound which songs are made of can naturally take three forms. It is either produced by the voice, as with those who sing with their mouths without any instrument; or by wind, as with trumpets and pipes; or by beat, as with guitars and drums, and any other instruments that produce melodious sounds on being struck.[68]
18, 28. But whether or not it all occurred as Varro recorded, still we for our part should certainly not allow such heathen superstitions to make us shun all knowledge of music, if we can snatch anything from it that we can use for the understanding of the holy scriptures; nor on the other hand should we let ourselves be converted to their fondness for theatrical trifles, if we happen to discuss some points about guitars and other instruments which may help us to a better grasp of spiritual things. After all, it is no reason for us not to learn our letters, just because they say Mercury is their patron god;[69] nor, just because they have dedicated temples to Justice and Virtue, and have preferred to worship in stone images what should carried in the heart, is that any reason for us to shun justice and virtue.
On the contrary indeed, all good and true Christians should understand that truth, wherever they may find it, belongs to their Lord; then, after weighing it up and acknowledging it also in the sacred books, they should repudiate all superstitious fictions,[70] and grieve over and beware of people who, while knowing God, have not glorified him as God, or given thanks, but have faded away in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts have been darkened; for while calling themselves wise they became fools, and changed the glory of the imperishable God into the likeness of the image of a perishable man, and of birds and of four-footed beasts, and of reptiles (Rom 1:21–23).
19, 29. But it is of the utmost importance that we should go into this whole question much more thoroughly. So let us begin by saying that there are two kinds of teaching, which even govern the morals of the heathen. One is about those institutions which human beings have established, the other about things they have observed as having already occurred, or as having been established by God.[71] The kind concerning human institutions is partly superstitious, partly not.
20, 30. Superstition includes anything established by human beings which refers to the making and worshiping of idols, or the worshiping of creation or any part of creation as God; or to consultations and certain agreed codes of communication, settled in collusion with demons. This is the sort of thing the efforts of the magical arts are directed at, and these the pagan poets have been more in the habit of mentioning than of teaching. Of this sort too, but examples, so to say, of officially licensed futility, are the books of the soothsayers and augurs.[72] To this class also belong all amulets and remedial charms, which the medical profession frowns upon too; whether they consist of incantations, or