Chapter III — Marvels of the Power of Divine Wisdom in the Creation of the World and of Man

1. In the Creation of the World

31. Eternal Wisdom first shone forth outside the bosom of God when, after a whole eternity, she made light, heaven, and earth. St. John says that all things were made through the Word, that is, Eternal Wisdom: Omnia per ipsum facta sunt. [Jn 1:3]

Solomon says that she is the mother and the maker of all things: Horum omnium mater est. Omnium artifex Sapientia. Note that he does not merely call her the maker of the universe, but its mother, because a maker does not love and care for his work as a mother does her child.

32. Eternal Wisdom, having created all things, remains in all things to contain, sustain, and renew them: omnia continet, omnia innovat. It is this sovereignly upright beauty who, after creating the world, established the beautiful order that is in it. She separated, she composed, she weighed, she added, she numbered everything in it.

She stretched out the heavens; she placed the sun, the moon, and the stars and planets in order; she laid the foundations of the earth; she set boundaries and laws for the sea and the depths; she formed the mountains; she weighed and balanced everything, even the fountains. In a word, she says, I was with God, and I arranged all things with such perfect precision and such delightful variety that it was a kind of game I played to delight myself and my Father: Cum eo eram cuncta componens; et delectabar per singulos dies, ludens coram eo omni tempore, ludens in orbe terrarum. [Wis 1:7]

33. This ineffable play of divine Wisdom is indeed visible in the different creatures she has made throughout the universe. For, without speaking of the different species of angels, who are, so to speak, infinite in number; without speaking of the different sizes of the stars, nor of the different temperaments of men, what admirable change do we not see in the seasons and in the times, what variety of instincts in the animals, what different species in the plants, what different beauties in the flowers, what different tastes in the fruits! Quis sapiens, et intelliget haec: Who is the man to whom Wisdom has communicated herself? He alone will have the understanding of these mysteries of nature.

34. Wisdom has revealed them to the saints, as we see in their lives; and they were sometimes so astonished to see the beauty, the sweetness, and the order of divine Wisdom in the smallest things — a bee, an ant, an ear of wheat, a flower, a little earthworm — that they fell into ecstasy and rapture.

2. In the Creation of Man

35. If the power and sweetness of Eternal Wisdom shone so brilliantly in the creation, the beauty, and the order of the universe, she shone far more brightly in the creation of man, since he is her masterpiece, the living image of her beauty and her perfections, the great vessel of her graces, the admirable treasury of her riches, and her sole viceroy on earth: Sapientia tua fecisti hominem, ut dominaretur omni creaturae quae a te facta est. Wis 9. [Wis 9:2]

36. Here, to the glory of this beautiful and powerful maker, one would need to explain the beauty and original excellence that man received from her when she created him; but the sin he committed, whose darkness and stains have spread even to me, wretched child of Eve, has so darkened my understanding that I can speak of it only very imperfectly.

37. She made, so to speak, brilliant copies and expressions of her understanding, her memory, and her will, and gave them to the soul of man to be the living portrait of the Divinity; she kindled in his heart a fire of pure love for God; she formed for him a body all luminous; and she enclosed in him, in miniature, all the different perfections of the angels, the beasts, and the other creatures.

38. Everything in man was luminous without darkness, beautiful without ugliness, pure without stain, ordered without disorder and without any blemish or imperfection. He had as his endowment the light of Wisdom in his mind, by which he knew his Creator and his creatures perfectly. He had the grace of God in his soul, by which he was innocent and pleasing in the eyes of the Most High. He had in his body immortality. He had the pure love of God in his heart, without fear of death, by which he loved him continually, without ceasing, and purely, for love of God himself. In a word, he was so divine that he was continually beside himself, transported in God, without having any passion to conquer or any enemy to fight.

O liberality of Eternal Wisdom toward man! O happy state of man in his innocence!

39. But, misery of miseries! Behold this all-divine vessel shattered into a thousand pieces; behold this beautiful star fallen; behold this beautiful sun covered with mud; behold man who sins, and who, in sinning, loses his wisdom, his innocence, his beauty, his immortality. In a word, he loses all the goods he had received, and is assailed by an infinity of evils. His mind is dulled and darkened: he sees nothing. His heart is frozen toward God: he loves him no more.

His soul is all black with sin: it resembles the devil. His passions are utterly disordered: he is no longer their master.

He has only the company of demons; he has become their dwelling-place and their slave. He is attacked by creatures: they wage war upon him. Behold man, in an instant become the slave of demons, the object of the wrath of God, and the victim of hell!

He appears so hideous to himself that he goes to hide in shame. He is cursed and condemned to death; he is driven from the earthly paradise and there is no place for him in heaven. He must lead, without any hope of happiness, a wretched life on the cursed earth. He must die as a criminal, and, after his death, be like the devil, forever damned in body and soul, he and all his children.

Such is the terrible misfortune into which man fell by sinning; such is the just sentence that the justice of God pronounced against him.

40. Adam, in this state, is as though in despair; he can receive no remedy from the angels or from any other creatures. Nothing is able to restore him, because he was too beautiful and too well made in his creation, and he is, through his sin, too hideous and too defiled. He sees himself driven from paradise and from the presence of God; he sees the justice of God pursuing him with all his posterity; he sees heaven closed and hell open, and no one to open the one and close the other for him.