NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

On the Firmament.or a third. Here we see what those imagine who put under the Creator’s hand uncreatedmatter; a lie that follows from the first fable. But we ask the Greek sages not to mock usbefore they are agreed among themselves. Because there are among them some who saythere are infinite heavens and worlds. 1463 When grave demonstrations shall have upsettheir foolish system, when the laws of geometry shall have established that, according to thenature of heaven, it is impossible that there should be two, we shall only laugh the more atthis elaborate scientific trifling. These learned men see not merely one bubble but severalbubbles formed by the same cause, and they doubt the power of creative wisdom to bringseveral heavens into being! We find, however, if we raise our eyes towards the omnipotenceof God, that the strength and grandeur of the heavens differ from the drops of water bubblingon the surface of a fountain. How ridiculous, then, is their argument of impossibility! Asfor myself, far from not believing in a second, I seek for the third whereon the blessed Paulwas found worthy to gaze. 1464 And does not the Psalmist in saying “heaven of heavens” 1465give us an idea of their plurality? Is the plurality of heaven stranger than the seven circlesthrough which nearly all the philosophers agree that the seven planets pass,—circles whichthey represent to us as placed in connection with each other like casks fitting the one intothe other? These circles, they say, carried away in a direction contrary to that of the world,and striking the æther, make sweet and harmonious sounds, unequalled by the sweetestmelody. 1466 And if we ask them for the witness of the senses, what do they say? That we,accustomed to this noise from our birth, on account of hearing it always, have lost the senseof it; like men in smithies with their ears incessantly dinned. If I refuted this ingenious671463 So Anaximander (Diog. Laert. ii. 1, 2) and Democritus (Diog. Laert. ix. 44). But, as Fialon points out,the Greek philosophers used κόσμος and οὐρανός as convertible terms: Basil uses οὐρανός of the firmamentor sky.1464 cf. 2 Cor. xii. 2.1465 Ps. cxlvii. 4.1466 “You must conceive it” (the whirl) “to be of such a kind as this: as if in some great hollow whirl, carvedthroughout, there was such another, but lesser, within it, adapted to it, like casks fitted one within another; andin the same manner a third, and a fourth, and four others, for that the whirls were eight in all, as circles onewithin another…and that in each of its circles there was seated a siren on the upper side, carried round, anduttering one voice variegated by diverse modulations; but that the whole of them, being eight, composed oneharmony.” (Plat., Rep. x. 14, Davies’ Trans.) Plato describes the Fates “singing to the harmony of the Sirens.”Id. On the Pythagorean Music of the Spheres, cf. also Cic., De Divin. i. 3, and Macrobius In Somn: Scip. cf.Shaksp., M. of Ven. v. 1: “There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st But in his motion like an angel sings,Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim.” And Milton, Arcades: “Then listen I To the celestial Sirens’ harmony,That sit upon the nine infolded spheres, And sing to those that hold the vital sheres, And turn the adamantinespindle round On which the fate of gods and men is wound.280