7.  The season is winter Cf. Cat. iv. 30.  These passages shew that the Lectures were delivered in a year when Easter fell early, as was the case in 348 a.d., as thou seest; the trees now stand as if they were dead:  for where are the leaves of the fig-tree? where are the clusters of the vine?  These in winter time are dead, but green in spring; and when the season is come, there is restored to them a quickening as it were from a state of death.  For God, knowing thine unbelief, works a resurrection year by year in these visible things; that, beholding what happens to things inanimate, thou mayest believe concerning things animate and rational.  Further, flies and bees are often drowned in water, yet after a while revive In such cases there is, of course, no actual death.; and species of dormice The μυοξός is supposed by the Benedictine Editor to be the toad (“Inventusque cavis bufo,” Virg. Georg. i. 185), by others the marmot (mus Alpinus).  More probably it is the dormouse (myoxis glis), which stores up provisions for the winter, though it sleeps through much of that season., after remaining motionless during the winter, are restored in the summer (for to thy slight thoughts like examples are offered); and shall He who to irrational and despised creatures grants life supernaturally, not bestow it upon us, for whose sake He made them?