Tractatio verborum domini, in domo patris mei mansiones multae sunt, &c. ex XIIII. cap. Evang. secundum Ioannem

IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE. 4

of the Father is used by our Lord in the present context. Furthermore, heaven is also said to be the habitation, house, or seat of God our Father. Although God is not contained by any place, but extends through all things, as we shall say presently, yet Scripture speaks of God, according to human capacity, as of some king or greatest emperor, attributing to Him a seat and a kingdom. For kings are accustomed to have an excellent fortress or a very ample palace in which they sit, exercise judgments, and from whence they protect their own. Whence Scripture, through anthropopathia the attribution of human feelings or characteristics to God, attributes heaven to God as a fortress and a seat. For from there He reveals His judgments through oracles, and also exercises His judgments; from there He bestows goods; in that place He wishes to be sought and invoked; in that place He wishes to show Himself glorious to be beheld by His own. This heaven, I say, we call the house of the Father. We shall now discourse on this a little more fully, beseeching that the readers and listeners weigh these things diligently among themselves, and retain those things which are salutary.

Whether there are many heavens

John Chrysostom, in his third homily on Genesis, is vehemently angry with those who say there are many heavens. Who, he says, would tolerate those who speak from their own head and dare to say there are many heavens against divine Scripture? &c. Ambrose, however, and before him Basil in the work of the six days, contend that there are by all means many heavens. But Augustine, in De Genesi ad litteram On the literal interpretation of Genesis, book 2, chapter 9, judges that discussions about Heaven, its form and figure, are useless: Which our authors, he says, omitted with greater prudence, as they are not going to be profitable to learners for the blessed life. Since, therefore, we read in Job, chapter 38, "Who shall recount the account of the heavens?" whence also Damascenus in De Orthodoxa Fide On the Orthodox Faith, book 2, chapter 6, says, "It is not necessary to investigate the substance of heaven." It is unknown to us. We shall certainly omit those useless discussions about the substance and figure of heaven and similar things, and shall bring forth only those things which are consistent with the truth and handed down by the divine Scriptures, which undoubtedly no one will judge to be useless. Divine Scripture teaches us simply that one heaven was created by God, that very one, I say, which is expanded above us. But because this machine of heaven is truly very ample and most beautiful, and has regions, or orbs, or spheres, it is commonly said, and we read in Scripture, that there are many heavens. For there is the heaven near to us, the air surrounding us, the seat of birds, clouds,