In the third letter Colet proceeds to speak of the third day—the separation of the waters from the dry land, and the creation of plants and herbs. Here again everything is explained on the principle of accommodation. ‘Since the untutored multitude, looking round them, saw nothing but the sky above, and land and water here below, and then the things which spring from land and water, and live in them, so Moses suits his order to their powers of observation.’
Colet believes in a sort of development of things.
The firmament or sky was spoken of in the second day; now, therefore, on the third day, Moses mentions land and water, and the things which spring from them. Plants and herbs are thus spoken of almost as though they were a part of land and water; and here Colet gives Radulphus what he speaks of as a notion of his own, hard, perhaps, for his friend to receive, but nevertheless his own conviction, that, [instead of each element being separately created, as it were, out of nothing] ‘fire springs from ether, air from fire, water from air, and from water, lastly, earth.’ And Moses probably in speaking of the creation of plants &c. on the third day, before he came to other things, intended thereby to show, Colet thought, that the earth is spontaneously productive of plants. He also thought that Moses mentioned the creation of plants before the heavenly bodies, in order to show that the germinating principle is in the earth itself, and not, according to the vulgar idea, in the sun and stars.
Moses divided the creation into six days, after the manner of a poet, by a useful and most wise poetic figment.
At the end of the third letter, Colet naturally stumbles on the difficulty of explaining how, if all things were created at once ‘in the beginning,’ before all time, Moses could say at the end of each stage of his description of the creation, ‘and the evening and the morning were the first, second, third, &c. day:’ and, after fairly losing himself in an attempt to solve this difficulty, he ends by urging Radulphus to leave these obscure points, which are practically beyond our range, and to bear in mind throughout what he had before spoken of, viz. that whilst Moses wished to speak in a manner not unworthy of God, he wished, at the same time, in matters within the knowledge of the common people, to satisfy the common people, and to keep to the order of things; above all things, to lead the people on to the religion and worship of the one God.[116] ‘The chief things known to the common people were sky, land and water, stars, fishes, beasts, and so he deals with them. He arranged them in six days; partly because the things which readily occur to men’s minds are six in number:[117]—(1) What is above the sky, (2) sky itself, (3) land, surrounded by water, and productive of plants, (4) sun and moon in the sky, (5) fish in the water, (6) beasts inhabiting earth and air, and man, the inhabitant of the whole universe;—and partly and chiefly, that he might lead the people on to the imitation of God, whom, after the manner of a poet, he had pictured as working for six days and resting the seventh, so that they also should devote every seventh day to rest and to the contemplation of God and to worship.’[118] ‘For, beyond all doubt,’ Colet proceeds to say, ‘Moses never would have put forward a number of days for any other purpose than that, by this most useful and most wise poetic figment, the people might be provoked to imitation by an example set before them, and so ending their daily labours on the sixth day, spend the seventh in the highest contemplation of God.’[119] Colet ends his third letter by saying, ‘Thus you have my notions upon the work of the third day, but what to make of it I know not. It is enough, as I have said, to have touched upon it lightly. Farewell.’
Fourth letter.
Colet confesses his uncertainty.
From the commencement of the fourth letter it would seem that Radulphus had been from home four days, and Colet jokingly tells him that he had spent all those four days in getting through one more of the Mosaic days. ‘And indeed whilst you have been working in the day under the sun, I, during this time, have been wandering about in the night and the darkness; neither did I see which way to go, nor do I know at what point I have arrived.’ And then he went on to tell Radulphus that, while in this perplexity himself, he seemed to have caught Moses also in a great mistake, for in concluding each day’s work with the words, ‘the evening and the morning were the second day, the third day,’ and so on, he ought not to have said day but night. What intervenes between the evening and the morning must of necessity be night! For a day begins in the morning and ends with the evening! And he went on jokingly to say that there was a still more pressing reason why Moses, dividing his subjects into days, might have rather called them nights; viz. that ‘they are so overwhelmed with darkness that nothing could be more like night than these Mosaic days!’ Then looking back upon his attempts to explain their obscurity, he was obliged to confess that ‘perhaps while he had been trying to throw some light upon them, he might, after all, have increased the darkness;’ and he entreated Radulphus ‘to pour into the darkness some of his light, that he might be enabled thereby to see Colet, and Colet together with him to see Moses.’[120]
All things must have been created at once.
Accommodation on the part of God to man.
Moses uses a most honest and pious poetic figure.
After this candid confession of uncertainty, Colet tried to explain the work of the fourth day, and the words, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven;’ but the only way he could do so was by resorting again to the principle of accommodation, which he did in these words: ‘As we have said, all these were created at once. For it is unworthy of God, and unbecoming in us, to think of any one thing as created after any other, as though He had been unable to create them all at once. Hence in Ecclesiasticus, “He who dwells in eternity created all things at once.” But Moses, after the manner of a good and pious poet,[121] as Origen (against Celsus) calls him, was willing to invent some figure, not altogether worthy of God, if only it might but be profitable and useful to men; which race of men is so dear to God, that God himself emptied himself of his glory, taking the form of a servant, that he might accommodate himself to the poor heart of man.[122] So all things of God, when given to man, must needs lose somewhat of their sublimity,[123] and be put in a form more palpable and more within the grasp of man. Accordingly, the high knowledge of Moses about God and Divine things and the creation of the world, when it came to be submitted to the vulgar apprehension, savoured altogether of the humble and the rustic, so that he had to speak, not according to his own power of comprehension, but according to the comprehension of the multitude. Thus, accommodating himself to their comprehension, Moses endeavoured, by this most honest and pious poetic figure, at once to allure them and draw them on to the worship of God.’[124]
Here the manuscript abruptly ends[125] in the middle of a reference to the works of Macrobius, whose sanction Colet was apparently about to quote in support of his attempt to explain the first chapter of Genesis by reference to the principle of accommodation.[126]