What Lord may we say the prophet saw but Him Whom we have proved to have been seen and known by the fathers with Abraham in previous days? He, we have already learned, was both God and Lord, and Angel and Captain of the Lord's power as well. So then in approaching the account of His Coming to men the prophecy before us tells first of His divine kingdom, in which it says that the prophet saw Him sitting on a throne high and exalted. This is that throne which is mentioned in the Psalm of the Beloved, "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever," on which the Most High Creator of the Universe, His God and Father, bade his Only-begotten sit, saying, "Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool." John the Evangelist supports my interpretation of this passage, when he quotes the words of Isaiah, where it is said, "For this people's heart is become gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed," referring them to Christ, saying, "This said Isaiah, when he saw his glory, and bare witness of him." The prophet then seeing our Saviour sitting on His Father's throne in the divine and glorious kingdom, and moved by the Holy Spirit, and being about to describe next His coming among men and His Birth of a Virgin, foretells that His knowledge and praise would be over all the earth, by introducing the song of the Seraphim (311) round His throne: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of Sabaoth, the whole earth is full of his glory. And who are the Seraphim around the Christ of God? Perhaps the choirs of angels and divine powers, perhaps the prophets and apostles. For the translation of Seraphim is "Rule of His Mouth." The prophets and apostles would bear this name, because from their mouth were the firstfruits of the preaching of salvation. So also the powers of the Holy Spirit are called (b) "Wings," as hiding the beginning and the end of the knowledge of God, as being secret and inconceivable in nature, but they reveal the central parts of his dispensation, since these alone are knowable by men; that which is beyond and that which comes after them is left unsaid. And the divine and heavenly powers are signified by the Seraphim, according to another rendering of the word, as (c) "fires." As it is said, "He maketh his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire." These cry and shout one to another according to their power, shewing forth the holiness of the Being acclaimed as God, and, strangest of all, they do not acclaim His Godhead because heaven and the things of heaven alone are full of His glory, but because all the earth also shares in His power by His Coming from heaven to men as prophesied, in the prediction which follows, announcing His Birth of a Virgin and His glory spread through all the earth.