ce to his Creator
consist in the soul only, that is, in its moral virtues and God's grace;
which divine resemblance men most basely efface in themselves by sin. He
speaks of the dignity and spiritual nature of the soul, and the future
resurrection of the body, and concludes with an anatomical description
of it, which shows him to have been well skilled in medicine, and in
that branch of natural philosophy, for that age. The two homilies on the
words, _Let us make man_, are falsely ascribed to him. When {554}
desired by one Caesarius to prescribe him rules of a perfect virtue, he
did this by his Life of Moses, the pattern of virtue. He closes it with
this lesson, that perfection consists not in avoiding sin for fear of
torments, as slaves do, nor for the hope of recompense, as mercenaries
do; but in "fearing, as the only thing to be dreaded, to lose the
friendship of God; and in having only one desire, viz., of God's
friendship, in which alone man's spiritual life consists. This is to be
obtained by fixing the mind only on divine and heavenly things." We have
next his two treatises, On the Inscriptions of the Psalms, and An
Exposition of the sixth Psalm, full of allegorical and moral
instructions. In the first of these, extolling the divine sentiments and
instructions of those holy prayers, he says, that all Christians learned
them, and thought that time lost in which they had them not in their
mouths: even little children and old men sung them; all in affliction
found them their comfort sent by God those who travelled by land or sea,
those who were employed in sedentary trades; and the faithful of all
ages, sexes, and conditions, sick and well, made the Psalms their
occupation. These divine canticles were sung by them in all times of
joy, in marriages and festivals; by day, and in the night vigils, &c.
His eight homilies, On the three first Chapters of Ecclesiastes, are an
excellent moral instruction and literal explication of that book. He
addressed his fifteen homilies, On the Book of Canticles, which he had
preached to his flock, to Olympias, a lady of Constantinople, who, after
twenty months' marriage, being left a widow, distributed a great estate
to the church and poor, a great part by the hands of our saint, whom she
had settled an acquaintance with in a journey he had made to the
imperial city. St. Gregory extols the excellency of that divine book,
not to be read but by pure hearts, disengaged from all love of
cr