XII. (46) Such then are the trees which the only wise God has planted in rational souls. But Moses, pitying those who were exiled and compelled to quit the paradise of the virtues, addresses a prayer to the absolute authority of God and to his merciful and propitious powers, entreating that in the place from which the earthly mind, Adam, was banished, there a people capable of seeing the truth might be planted. (47) For he says, “Bring them in and plant them in the mountain of thy inheritance which thou dost give them; thou hast made them to sit in thy seat, O Lord; in the sanctuary, O Lord, which they hands have made. The Lord shall be king of ages, for ever and Ever.”{12}{#ex 15:17.} (48) Therefore he had learnt, as plainly as any man that ever lived, that God, having fixed the roots and seeds of everything down in the earth, is the cause also of the greatest of all plants, namely this world, shooting up; which world he here seems to speak of enigmatically in the song which I have just quoted, where he calls it the mountain of his inheritance; since that which is made is the most appropriate possession and inheritance, of him who has made it. (49) Therefore he prays that we may be planted in it, not in order that we may become irrational and unmanageable in our natures; but that, in due obedience to the arrangement of the all-perfect governor, imitating his perpetual and undeviating consistency, we may live a temperate and innocent life. For to be able to live in a strict uniformity with nature, is what the man of old have defined as the end of happiness. (50) And accordingly what is said afterwards is in strict agreement with what is said before, namely, that the world is the beautiful and properly prepared house of God, appreciable by the external senses; and that he himself made it and that it is not uncreated, as some persons have thought. And he uses the word “sanctuary,” as meaning a splendour emitted from holy objects, an imitation of the archetypal model; since those things which are beautiful to the external senses are to the intellectual senses models of what is beautiful. The expression that “it was prepared by the hands of God,” means that it was made by his worldcreating powers. (51) But in order that no one may suppose that the Creator had need of any one of the things which he created, he adds the most necessary assertion, “Being King of ages for ever and ever.” But a king is in need of nothing, but everything which is subject to him is inevitably in need of the king. (52) And some persons have said that God is and is properly called the inheritance of God, the use and enjoyment of which Moses has now prayed may be afforded to us. For, says he, representing us as children just beginning to learn by means of the doctrines and speculations of wisdom, and not leaving us destitute of the elements of knowledge, plant them in sublime and heavenly reason. (53) For this is the most thoroughly prepared inheritance; the house most completely ready, the abode most entirely suitable, which “thou hast made holy.” For, O master, thou art the maker of all good and holy things, as, on the other hand, corruptible creation is of what is evil and profane. Reign thou throughout infinite eternity over the suppliant soul; not leaving it for a single moment without a governor. For an uninterrupted service under them is not only better than freedom, but even than the most extensive dominion.
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