[4] “Throni elevantur ad hoc quod Deum familiariter in seipsis recipiant.”—Summa Theol., I, cviii. 6.
“The next triad that thus buds in this sempiternal spring which the nightly Aries despoils not,[1] perpetually sing their spring song of Hosannah with three melodies, which sound in the three orders of joy wherewith it is threefold. In this hierarchy are the three Divinities, first Dominations, and then the Virtues; the third order is of Powers. Then, in the two penultimate dances, the Principalities and Archangels circle; the last is wholly of Angelic sports. These orders are all upward gazing, and downward prevail, so that toward God they all are drawn, and they all draw. And Dionysius[2] with such great desire set himself to contemplate these orders, that he named and divided them, as I. But Gregory[3] afterward separated from him; wherefore, so soon as he opened his eyes in this Heaven, he smiled at himself. And if a mortal proffered on earth so much of secret truth, I would not have thee wonder, for he who saw it hereabove[4] disclosed it to him, with much else of the truth of these circles.”
[1] At the autumnal equinox, the time of frosts, Aries is the sign in which the night rises.
[2] The Areopagite. See Canto X.
[3] The Pope, St. Gregory, who differs slightly from Dionysius in his arrangement of the Heavenly host.
[4] St. Paul, supposed to have communicated to his disciple the knowledge which he gained when caught up to Heaven. See 2 Cor., xii. 2.
CANTO XXIX.
Discourse of Beatrice concerning the creation and nature of the Angels.—She reproves the presumption and foolishness of preachers.
When both the children of Latona, covered by the Ram and by the Scales, together make a zone of the horizon,[1] as long as from the moment the zenith holds them in balance, till one and the other, changing their hemisphere, are unbalanced from that girdle, soloing, with her countenance painted with a smile, was Beatrice silent, looking fixedly upon the Point which had overcome me. Then she began: “I speak, and I ask not what thou wishest to hear, for I have seen it where every WHERE and every WHEN are centred. Not for the gain of good unto Himself, which cannot be, but that His splendor might, in resplendence, say, Subsisto; in His own eternity, outside of time, outside of every other limit, as pleased Him, the Eternal Love disclosed Himself in new loves. Nor before, as if inert, did He lie; for the going forth of God upon these waters had proceeded neither before nor after.[2] Form and matter, conjoined and simple, came forth to existence which had no defect, as three arrows from a three-stringed bow; and as in glass, in amber, or in crystal a ray shines so that there is no interval between its coining and its complete existence, so the triform effect[3] rayed forth from its Lord into its. existence all at once, without discrimination of beginning. Order was concreate, and established for the substances, and those were top of the world in which pure act was produced.[4] Pure potency held the lowest part;[5] in the middle such a bond unites potency with act, that it is never unbound.[6] Jerome has written to you of the Angels, created a long tract of centuries before the rest of the world was made. But this truth[7] is written on many pages by the writers of the that Holy Spirit: and thou wilt thyself discover it, if thou watchest well for it; and even the reason sees it somewhat, for it would not admit that the motors could be so long without their perfection.[8] Now thou knowest where and when these loves were elected, and how; so that three flames of thy desire are already quenched.
[1] When at the spring equinox, the sun being in the sign of Aries or the Ram, and the moon in that of Libra or the Scales, opposite to each other on the horizon, the one just rising and the other setting, they seem as if held for a moment in a balance which hangs from the zenith.