Bees, Locusts and Basilisks

It would be tedious, and almost childish, to say more on this subject. Still, to refute that folly and madness of yours in which you maintain that the one born must be of one substance with the one who bears him, that is, that nothing can produce something of a different nature from itself, I will bring forward some examples from earthly things. They will convince you that many creatures are produced from things of a different nature. Not that any comparison is possible or proper in a case like this; but I bring them so that you may not doubt that what you see happening in these frail earthly things could happen in the holy birth. [a]

Bees, the tiniest of creatures though they are, are so clever and skillful that we read they can be produced from, and spring from, things of an entirely different nature. These creatures of marvelous intelligence, well endowed not merely with sense but with foresight, are produced from the flowers they gather from plants. What greater example do you think could be produced and quoted? Living creatures are produced from lifeless things, creatures with feeling from things without feeling. What craftsman, what architect was there? Who formed their bodies? Who breathed their souls into them? Who gave them distinct sounds with which to talk to one another? Who fashioned and arranged the harmony of their feet, the skill of their mouths, the neatness of their wings? Their powers, anger, foresight, movements, calm, harmony, differences, wars, peace, arrangements, devices, business and government, all the things indeed which they have in common with men: from whose teaching or whose gift did they receive them? Who planted them or taught them? Did they gain this through being begotten? Did they learn it in their mother’s womb or from her flesh? They were never in a womb, and they had no experience of being begotten. It was only that the flowers they gathered were brought into the hive, and from these, by a marvelous device, bees came out. So the mother’s womb gave nothing to the offspring, and bees are not produced from bees. Bees are only their craftsmen, not their authors. Living creatures come from the blossoms of plants. What kinship is there between plants and animals? I think, then, that you see who is the designer of these things. Go now and ask whether the Lord could bring about in the case of his own birth what you see he brought about in the case of these tiniest of creatures.

Perhaps there is no need to add anything after this. Still, let us add, in support of the argument, what may not be needed to prove the point. We see how the air is suddenly darkened and the earth filled with locusts. Show me their seed, their birth, their mothers. For, as you see, they come from the place where they have their birth. Go on, assert in all these cases that the one who is born must be of one substance with the one who bears it! In these assertions you will be shown to be as silly as you are wild in your denial of the birth of the Lord. And what next? Do even you think we must go any further? Still, we will add something else. There is no doubt that basilisks are produced from the eggs of the bird which in Egypt they call the ibis. What kinship or relationship is there between a bird and a serpent? Why is the thing born not of one substance with what bears it? And yet those that bear are not the authors of any of these things, nor do those that are born understand them. They come about from hidden causes, and from some unexplainable and many-sided law of nature that produces them. And you bring your petty claims, drawn from earthly notions, as objections to his birth, while you cannot explain the origin of the things produced at his bidding and command: his, whose will does everything and whose rule causes everything; whom nothing can oppose or resist; and whose will is enough for everything that can possibly be done.