Genesis 8:21

And although the heavenly Scripture often turns the divine appearance into a human form, as when it says, “The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous;” or when it says, “The Lord God smelled the smell of a good savour;” or when there are given to Moses the tables “written with the finger of God;” or when the people of the children of Israel are set free from the land of Egypt “with a mighty hand and with a stretched out arm;” or when it says, “The mouth of the Lord hath spoken these things;” or when the earth is set forth as “God’s footstool;” or when it says, “Incline thine ear, and hear,”, we who say that the law is spiritual do not include within these lineaments of our bodily nature any mode or figure of the divine majesty, but diffuse that character of unbounded magnitude (so to speak) over its plains without any limit. …

Ver. 18 . “But I have all things and abound,” i.e. through this gift ye have filled up what was wanting, which would make them more eager. For benefactors, the wiser they are, the more do they seek gratitude from the benefited. That is, ye have not only filled up what was deficient in former time, but ye have gone beyond. For lest by these words he should seem to accuse them, see how he seals up all. After he had said, “Not that I seek for the gift,” and “Now at length”; and had shown that their deed was a debt, for this is meant by, “I have all,” then again he showeth, that they had acted above what was due, and saith, “I have all things and abound, I am filled.” I say not this at hazard, or only from the feeling of my mind, but why? “Having received of Epaphroditus the things that came from you, an odor of a sweet smell; a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God.” Lo, whither he hat …

“We must hold that men are by nature children of wrath because of this ‘body of humiliation’ and ‘body of death,’ and because ‘the heart of man is disposed to evil from his youth.’”

But if any one would give a more sensuous interpretation to the words “God said,” as proving that articulate speech was His creation, by a parity of reason he must understand by the words “God saw,” that He did so by faculties of perception like our own, through the organs of vision; and so again by the words “The Lord heard me and had mercy upon me,” and again, “He smelled a sweet savour,” and whatever other sensuous expressions are employed by Scripture in reference to head, or foot, or hand, or eyes, or fingers, or sandals, as appertaining to God, taking them, I say, in their plain literal acceptation, he will present to us an anthropomorphous deity, after the similitude of what is seen among ourselves. …

9. Take no well-curled steward to walk with you, no effeminate actor, no devilish singer of poisoned sweetness, no spruce and smooth-shorn youth. Let no theatrical compliments, no obsequious adulation be associated with you. Keep with you bands of widows and virgins; and let your consolers be of your own sex. The character of the mistress is judged by that of the maid. So long as you have with you a holy mother, so long as an aunt vowed to virginity is at your side, you ought not to neglect them and at your own risk to seek the company of strangers. Let the divine scripture be always in your hands, and give yourself so frequently to prayer that such shafts of evil thoughts as ever assail the young may thereby find a shield to repel them. …

15. So far I have dealt with the arguments and examples of philosophers. Now I will pass on to the beginning of the human race, that is, to the sphere which belongs to us. I will first point out that Adam received a command in paradise to abstain from one tree though he might eat the other fruit. The blessedness of paradise could not be consecrated without abstinence from food. So long as he fasted, he remained in paradise; he ate, and was cast out; he was no sooner cast out than he married a wife. While he fasted in paradise he continued a virgin: when he filled himself with food in the earth, he bound himself with the tie of marriage. …

Gen. viii. 21 . I will not curse the ground….for the mind of man is set on evil from his youth.

Twice I have been tripped up by you, and have been deceived (you know what I mean), and, if it was justly, may the Lord smell from you an odour of sweet savour; if unjustly, may the Lord pardon it. For so it is reasonable for me to speak of you, seeing we are commanded to be patient when injuries are inflicted on us. But as you are master of your own opinions, so am I of mine. That troublesome Gregory will no longer be troublesome to you. I will withdraw myself to God, Who alone is pure and guileless. I will retire into myself. This I have determined; for to stumble twice on the same stone is attributed by the proverb to fools alone.

Moreover the divine Scripture blames those who worship graven images, but also those who sacrifice to demons. The Greeks sacrificed and the Jews also sacrificed: but the Greeks to demons and the Jews to God. And the sacrifice of the Greeks was rejected and condemned, but the sacrifice of the just was very acceptable to God. For Noah sacrificed, and God smelled a sweet savour , receiving the fragrance of the right choice and good-will towards Him. And so the graven images of the Greeks, since they were images of deities, were rejected and forbidden.

68. For there are spiritual nostrils, as we read, which the spouse of the Word has, to whom it is said: “And the smell of thy nostrils;” and in another place: “The Lord smelled a smell of sweetness.” There are, then, as it were, inward members of a man, whose hands are considered to be in action, his ears in hearing, his feet in a kind of progress in a good work. And so from what is done we gather as it were figures of the members, for it is not suitable for us to imagine anything in the inner man after a fleshly manner.

At the return of light therefore, as the old man was forced by our intense urgency to investigate the depths of the Apostle’s subject, he spoke as follows: As for the passages by which you try to prove that the Apostle Paul spoke not in his own person but in that of sinners: “For I do not the good that I would, but the evil which I hate, that I do;” or this: “But if I do that which I would not, it is no longer I that do it but sin that dwelleth in me;” or what follows: “For I delight in the law of God after the inner man, but I see another law in my members opposing the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members;” these passages on the contrary plainly show that they cannot possibly fit the person of sinners, but that what is said can only apply to those that are perfect, and that it only suits the chastity of those who follow the good example …