uption of the earth through the brackish waters.

283. We observe here the providence of God, by whose counsel the evil
are punished and the good saved. By a miracle God preserves a portion
of his creatures when he punishes the wicked and graciously makes
provision for their posterity.

284. It would have been an easy matter for God to preserve Noah and
the animals for the space of a full year without food, as he preserved
Moses, Elijah and Christ, the latter for forty days, without food. He
made everything out of nothing, which is even more marvelous. Yet God,
in his government of the things created, as Augustine learnedly
observes, allows them to perform their appropriate functions. In other
words, to apply Augustine's view to the matter in hand, God performs
his miracles along the lines of natural law.

285. God also requires that we do not discard the provisions of
nature, which would mean to tempt God; but that we use with
thanksgiving the things God has prepared for us. A hungry man who
looks for bread from heaven rather than tries to obtain it by human
means, commits sin. Christ gives the apostles command to eat what is
set before them, Lk 10, 7. So Noah is here enjoined to employ the
ordinary methods of gathering food. God did not command him to expect
in the ark a miraculous supply of food from heaven.

286. The life of the monks is all a temptation of God. They cannot be
continent and still they refrain from matrimony; likewise they abstain
from certain meats, though God has created them to be received with
thanksgiving by them that believe, and by those who know the truth,
that every creature of God is good, and nothing to be rejected, if it
be received with thanksgiving, 1 Tim 4, 3-4. The use of medicine is
legitimate; yea, it has been created as a necessary means to conserve
health. The study of the arts and of language is to be cultivated and,
as Paul says, "Every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be
rejected, if it be received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified
through prayer." 1 Tim 4, 4-5.

287. God was able to preserve Noah in the midst of the waters. They
fable of Clement that he had a cell in the middle of the sea. Yea, the
people of Israel were preserved in the midst of the Red Sea and Jonah
in the belly of the whale. But this was not God's desire. He rather
willed that Noah should use the aid of wood and trees, so that human
skill might thereby have a sphere for its exercise.