Letter 16

16. Against Eunomius the heretic

The man who says that the discovery of beings is attainable has, of course, by some method and sequence, set his mind to range through the knowledge of beings; and, having trained himself by apprehension on the things that are easy to grasp and smaller, has thus advanced himself even to the apprehensive impression of what is beyond all conception.

Let him, then, who boasts that he has grasped the knowledge of beings explain what nature the smallest of the things that appear has, and let him tell what the nature of the ant is: whether its life is sustained by breath and respiration; whether its body is divided by bones; whether its frame is held together by sinews and ligaments; whether the position of the sinews is governed by an enveloping of muscles and glands; whether the marrow extends along the spinal vertebrae from the crown to the tail; whether, by the surrounding of the sinewy membrane, it gives the power of impulse to the moving limbs; whether there is in it a liver, and a gall-bladder upon the liver, and kidneys and heart and arteries and veins, membranes and diaphragms; whether it is smooth or covered with hair; whether it is single-hoofed, or has feet divided into many parts; how long a time it lives, and what is their manner of generation from one another; for how long the offspring is carried; and how it is that the ants are neither all on foot nor all winged, but some belong to those that go upon the ground, while others are borne through the air.

Let him, then, who vaunts the knowledge of beings first tell the nature of the ant; and then let him give the natural philosophy of the power that surpasses all mind. But if you have not yet grasped by knowledge the nature of the tiny ant, how do you boast that you can imagine the incomprehensible power of God?