ys required for fasting. Forty, he reminds us, is four times
ten. Now, four, he says, is the number especially representing time, the
day and the year being each divided into four parts; while ten, being
made up of three and seven, represents knowledge of the Creator and
creature, three referring to the three persons in the triune Creator,
and seven referring to the three elements, heart, soul, and mind, taken
in connection with the four elements, fire, air, earth, and water, which
go to make up the creature. Therefore this number ten, representing
knowledge, being multiplied by four, representing time, admonishes us
to live during time according to knowledge--that is, to fast for forty
days. Referring to such misty methods as these, which lead the reader to
ask himself whether he is sleeping or waking, St. Augustine remarks
that "ignorance of numbers prevents us from understanding such things
in Scripture." But perhaps the most amazing example is to be seen in his
notes on the hundred and fifty and three fishes which, according to St.
John's Gospel, were caught by St. Peter and the other apostles. Some
points in his long development of this subject may be selected to show
what the older theological method could be made to do for a great
mind. He tells us that the hundred and fifty and three fishes embody
a mystery; that the number ten, evidently as the number of the
commandments, indicates the law; but, as the law without the spirit only
kills, we must add the seven gifts of the spirit, and we thus have the
number seventeen, which signifies the old and new dispensations; then,
if we add together every several number which seventeen contains from
one to seventeen inclusive, the result is a hundred and fifty and
three--the number of the fishes. With this sort of reasoning he finds
profound meanings in the number of furlongs mentioned in he sixth
chapter of St. John. Referring to the fact that the disciples had rowed
about "twenty-five or thirty furlongs," he declares that "twenty-five
typifies the law, because it is five times five, but the law was
imperfect before the gospel came; now perfection is comprised in six,
since God in six days perfected the world, hence five is multiplied by
six that the law may be perfected by the gospel, and six times five is
thirty."

But Augustine's exploits in exegesis were not all based on numerals; he
is sometimes equally profound in other modes. Thus he tells us that the
condemnation