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

The Germination of the Earth.black, as one can learn from its name. 1546 If a severe frost had burnt it, 1547 it would havehad another colour and a different flavour. They even pretend that, if it could find suitableearth and moderate temperature, it might return to its first form. Thus, you find nothingin nature contrary to the divine command. As to the darnel and all those bastard grainswhich mix themselves with the harvest, the tares of Scripture, far from being a variety ofcorn, have their own origin and their own kind; image of those who alter the doctrine ofthe Lord and, not being rightly instructed in the word, but, corrupted by the teaching of theevil one, mix themselves with the sound body of the Church to spread their pernicious errorssecretly among purer souls. The Lord thus compares the perfection of those who believein Him to the growth of seed, “as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and shouldsleep and rise, night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the fullcorn in the ear.” 1548 “Let the earth bring forth grass.” In a moment earth began by germinationto obey the laws of the Creator, completed every stage of growth, and brought germsto perfection. The meadows were covered with deep grass, the fertile plains quivered 1549with harvests, and the movement of the corn was like the waving of the sea. Every plant,every herb, the smallest shrub, the least vegetable, arose from the earth in all its luxuriance.There was no failure in this first vegetation: no husbandman’s inexperience, no inclemencyof the weather, nothing could injure it; then the sentence of condemnation was not fetteringthe earth’s fertility. All this was before the sin which condemned us to eat our bread by thesweat of our brow.6. “Let the earth,” the Creator adds, “bring forth the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind,whose seed is in itself.” 1550At this command every copse was thickly planted; all the trees, fir, cedar, cypress, pine,rose to their greatest height, the shrubs were straightway clothed with thick foliage. 1551 Theplants called crown-plants, roses, myrtles, laurels, did not exist; in one moment they cameinto being, each one with its distinctive peculiarities. Most marked differences separatedthem from other plants, and each one was distinguished by a character of its own. But then1546 πυρός=wheat. The root, which has nothing to do with πῦρ, is found by Curtius in the Slavonic pyro=rye,the Bohemian pyr=quitch grass, the Lettish purji=wheat, and the Lithuanian pyragas=wheaten bread. (L. & S.in loc.)1547 cf. Virg., Georg. i. 93: “Aut Boreæ penetrabile frigus adurat.” Ov. M. xiv. 763, Frigus adurat poma, andin Greek Arist., Meteor. iv. 5.1548 Matt. iv. 26–28.1549 cf. Horrescunt segetes. Virg.,Georg. iii. 39.1550 Gen. i. 11.1551 ἀμφίκομοι καὶ δασεῖς. cf. Milton, “With frizzled hair implicit.” P.L. vii.302