Paradiso: Canto VII

"Hosannah! Holy God of Sabaoth! making lustrous by thy brightness from above the blessed fires of these kingdoms!"

So, revolving to its own note, I saw that being sing, on whom the twin lights double one another:

and it and the others entered on their dance, and like most rapid sparks, veiled them from me by sudden distance.

I, hesitating, said, "speak to her, speak to her," within myself, "speak to her," I said, "to my lady who slaketh my thirst with the sweet drops;"

but that reverence which all o'ermastereth me, though but by Be or Ice, again down-bowed me, as a man who slumbers.

Short time Beatrice left me thus; and began, casting the ray upon me of a smile such as would make one blessed though in the flame:

"According to my thought that cannot err, how just vengeance justly was avenged, hath set thee pondering;

but I will speedily release thy mind; and do thou hearken, for my words shall make thee gift of an august pronouncement.

Because he not endured for his own good a rein upon the power that wills, that man who ne'er was born, as he condemned himself, condemned his total offspring;

wherefore the human race lay sick down there for many an age, in great error, till it pleased the Word of God to descend

where he joined that nature which had gone astray from its Creator to himself, in person, by sole act of his eternal Love,

Now turn thy sight to what I now discourse: This nature, so united to its Maker, as it was when created was unalloyed and good;

but by its own self had it been exiled from Paradise, because it turned aside from the way of truth, and from its proper life.

As for the penalty, then, inflicted by the cross, — if it be measured by the Nature taken on, never did any other bite as justly;

and, in like manner, ne'er was any so outrageous if we look to the Person who endured it, in whom this nature was contracted.

So from one act issued effects apart; God and the Jews rejoiced in one same death; thereat shuddered the earth and heaven opened.

No more, now, should it seem hard saying to thee that just vengeance was afterward avenged by a just court.

But now I see thy mind from thought to thought entangled in a knot, from which, with great desire, it release awaiteth.

Thou sayest, Yea, what I hear I understand; but why God willed for our redemption this only mode, is hidden from me.

This decree, my brother, is buried from the eyes of everyone whose wit is not matured within love's flame.

But since this target much is aimed at, and discerned but little, I will declare why such mode was more worthy.

The divine excellence, which spurns all envy from it, burning within itself shooteth such sparkles out as to display the eternal beauties.

That which distilleth from it without mean, thereafter hath no end; because its imprint may not be removed when it hath stamped the seal.

That which down raineth from it without mean, is all free, because not subject to the power of changing things.

It is more close conformed to it, therefore more pleasing to it; for the sacred glow that rayeth over everything, in that most like itself is the most living.

All these points of vantage hath the human creature, and should one fail, needs must it fall from its nobility.

Sin only is the thing that doth disfranchise it, and maketh it unlike to the highest good, so that its light the less doth brighten it;

and to its dignity it ne'er may come again, except it fill again where fault hath made a void, against the ill delight setting just penalty.

Your nature, when it sinned in its totality in its first seed, from these dignities, even as from Paradise, was parted;

nor might they be recovered, if thou look right keenly, by any way save passing one or the other of these fords:

either that God, of his sole courtesy, should have remitted; or that man should of himself have given satisfaction for his folly.

Fix now thine eye within the abyss of the eternal counsel, as close attached as e'er thou mayest to my discourse.

Man had not power, within his own boundaries, ever to render satisfaction; since he might not go in humbleness by after-obedience so deep down

as in disobedience he had framed to exalt himself on high; and this the cause why from the power to render satisfaction by himself man was shut off.

Wherefore needs must God with his own ways reinstate man in his full life, I mean with one way or with both the two.

But because the doer's deed is the more gracious the more it doth present us of the heart's goodness whence it issued,

the divine Goodness which doth stamp the world, deigned to proceed on all his ways to lift you up again;

nor between the last night and the first day was, nor shall be, so lofty and august a progress made on one or on the other;

for more generous was God in giving of himself to make man able to uplift himself again, than had he only of himself granted remission;

and all other modes fell short of justice, except the Son of God had humbled him to become flesh.

Now, to fill full for thee every desire, I go back to explain a certain passage, that thou may'st there discern e'en as do I.

Thou sayest; I see the water, I see the fire, the airy the earthy and all their combinations come to corruption and endure but little;

and yet these things were creatures, so that if that which I have said to thee be true, they ought to be secure against corruption.

The Angels, brother, and the unsullied country in which thou art, may be declared to be created, even as they are, in their entire being;

but the elements which thou hast named and all the things compounded of them, have by created virtue been informed.

Created was the matter which they hold, created was the informing virtue in these stars which sweep around them.

The life of every brute and of the plants is drawn from compounds having potency, by the ray and movement of the sacred lights.

But your life is breathed without mean by the supreme beneficence who maketh it enamoured of itself, so that thereafter it doth ever long for it.

And hence thou further may'st infer your resurrection, if thou think again how was the making of the human flesh then when the first parents both of them were formed."