Jerome : (Verse 6.) He who builds his ascent in heaven and establishes his foundation on earth: he who calls the waters of the sea and pours them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name. LXX: He who builds his ascent in heaven and establishes his promise on earth: he who calls the water of the sea and pours it out upon the face of the earth: The Lord Almighty is his name. The Lord God Almighty, who looks upon or touches the earth and moves it, is the one who daily builds his ascent in heaven and says in the Gospel: My Father is still working, and I am working as well (John 5:17). And not only did God build Eve from Adam's rib as a figure of the Church (Gen. II), but He daily builds believers and members of His body, and lifts them from the earth to heaven, so that He Himself may ascend in them. The Lord ascended into heaven with Enoch (Gen. V), ascended with Elijah (IV Kings II), ascended with Moses, whose burial place could not be found on earth because he had ascended to heaven (Deut. XXXIV). He ascended with Paul, who was a chosen vessel, and was transformed from a persecutor into an apostle (2 Cor. 12). He was caught up to the heights, so that he ascended to the third heaven, and through the Holy Spirit and the Son, he reached the Father, and heard unspeakable words, the mysteries of the Trinity, which are not lawful for humans to hear. Therefore, he who ascends daily in the holy ones, has established his bundle on the earth, of which it is said in the Gospel: Fear not, little flock, for it has pleased my Father to dwell in you (Luke 12:32). This bundle is bound together by the one religion of the Lord. From this, the religion itself received its name from being bound and united in the bundle of the Lord. Moreover, according to the Seventy, it founded its promise upon the earth so that all the promises that the holy prophets sang with their mouths may not be empty sounds and the mere names of tropology, but be poured out upon the earth. And when they have the foundations of history, then they may receive the summit of spiritual understanding: that truly Christ was born of the Virgin, truly raised Lazarus from the dead, truly healed the woman with a flow of blood at his touch, truly the blind saw upon the coming of the Lord, the lame ran, the contracted hands were extended, the leprosy was cleansed; even though according to tropology the divine word is born every day from the virginal soul, every day those dead to sin and bound by the cords of vices may be ordered to come forth from the tomb of their crimes, every day the works of blood may be restrained, the blind may see in the faith of Christ, the lame may run in the way of the Lord, and the withered hands of greed may be stretched out for almsgiving, and the leprosy of Mary, which contaminates whatever it touches, may receive its former purity (Num. 12). But this Lord also calls the most bitter waters of the sea, and pours them out upon those who have turned their faces to the Lord. He calls them bitter waters so that he may make them sweet and brings forth winds from his treasuries and commands the heavy waters to be suspended in the height with its saltiness, straining and boiling them with ethereal heat, and dispenses them as rain, and sends them down upon the face of the earth, so that dry things may be moistened by rains, and where sin has abounded, grace may superabound. — Commentary on Amos Tertullian : The heavenly intelligences gazed with admiration on "the Jerusalem that is above," and by the mouth of Isaiah said long ago, "Who are these that fly as clouds, and as doves with their young ones, unto me?" Now, as Christ has prepared for us this ascension into heaven, he must be the Christ of whom Amos spoke: "It is he who builds his ascent up to the heavens," even for himself and his people. — AGAINST MARCION 5.15