6.  Beasts bear witness to the faith.  Hast thou confidence in the Lord?  “Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk and thou shalt trample under feet the lion and the dragon.” cf. Ps. xci. 13.  With faith thou hast the power to walk upon serpents and scorpions.  Do you not see that the viper which attached itself to the hand of Paul, whilst he gathered sticks, did not injure him, because it found the saint full of faith?  If you have not faith, do not fear beasts so much as your faithlessness, which renders you susceptible of all corruption.  But I see that for a long time you have been asking me for an account of the creation of man, and I think I can hear you all cry in your hearts, We are being taught the nature of our belongings, but we are ignorant of ourselves.  Let me then speak of it, since it is necessary, and let me put an end to my hesitation.  In truth the most difficult of sciences is to know one’s self.  Not only our eye, from which nothing outside us escapes, cannot see itself; but our mind, so piercing to discover the sins of others, is slow to recognise its own faults. cf. St. Matt. vii. 3.  Thus my speech, after eagerly investigating what is external to myself, is slow and hesitating in exploring my own nature.  Yet the beholding of heaven and earth does not make us know God better than the attentive study of our being does; I am, says the Prophet, fearfully and wonderfully made; cf. Ps. cxxxix. 14. that is to say, in observing myself I have known Thy infinite wisdom. “E cœlo descendit γνῶθι σεαυτόν” (Juv. xi. 27).  Socrates, Chilo, Thales, Cleobulus, Bias, Pythagoras, have all been credited with the saying.  “On reconnaît ici le précepte fécond de l’école socratique.  L’église chrétienne s’en empara comme de tout ce qu’elle trouvait de grand et de bon dans l’ancienne Grèce.  Fialon. St. Basil has a Homily on the text πρόσεχε σεαυτῷ (Deut. xv. 9, lxx.)  And God said “Let us make man.” Gen. i. 26.  Does not the light of theology shine, in these words, as through windows; and does not the second Person show Himself in a mystical way, without yet manifesting Himself until the great day?  Where is the Jew who resisted the truth and pretended that God was speaking to Himself?  It is He who spoke, it is said, and it is He who made.  “Let there be light and there was light.”  But then their words contain a manifest absurdity.  Where is the smith, the carpenter, the shoemaker, who, without help and alone before the instruments of his trade, would say to himself; let us make the sword, let us put together the plough, let us make the boot?  Does he not perform the work of his craft in silence?  Strange folly, to say that any one has seated himself to command himself, to watch over himself, to constrain himself, to hurry himself, with the tones of a master!  But the unhappy creatures are not afraid to calumniate the Lord Himself.  What will they not say with a tongue so well practised in lying?  Here, however, words stop their mouth; “And God said let us make man.”  Tell me; is there then only one Person?  It is not written “Let man be made,” but, “Let us make man.”  The preaching of theology remains enveloped in shadow before the appearance of him who was to be instructed, but, now, the creation of man is expected, that faith unveils herself and the dogma of truth appears in all its light.  “Let us make man.”  O enemy of Christ, hear God speaking to His Co-operator, to Him by Whom also He made the worlds, Who upholds all things by the word of His power. cf. Heb. i. 2, 3.  But He does not leave the voice of true religion without answer.  Thus the Jews, race hostile to truth, when they find themselves pressed, act like beasts enraged against man, who roar at the bars of their cage and show the cruelty and the ferocity of their nature, without being able to assuage their fury.  God, they say, addresses Himself to several persons; it is to the angels before Him that He says, “Let us make man.”  Jewish fiction! a fable whose frivolity shows whence it has come.  To reject one person, they admit many.  To reject the Son, they raise servants to the dignity of counsellors; they make of our fellow slaves the agents in our creation.  The perfect man attains the dignity of an angel; but what creature can be like the Creator?  Listen to the continuation.  “In our image.”  What have you to reply?  Is there one image of God and the angels?  Father and Son have by absolute necessity the same form, but the form is here understood as becomes the divine, not in bodily shape, but in the proper qualities of Godhead.  Hear also, you who belong to the new concision Phil. iii. 2. and who, under the appearance of Christianity, strengthen the error of the Jews. The Arians.  To Whom does He say, “in our image,” to whom if it is not to Him who is “the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person,” Heb. i. 3. “the image of the invisible God”? Col. i. 15.  It is then to His living image, to Him Who has said “I and my Father are one,” John x. 30. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” John xiv. 9. that God says “Let us make man in our image.”  Where is the unlikeness τὸ ἀνόμοιον.  Arius had taught that the Persons are ἀνόμοιοι πάμπαν ἀλλήλων. in these Beings who have only one image?  “So God created man.” Gen. i. 27.  It is not “They made.”  Here Scripture avoids the plurality of the Persons.  After having enlightened the Jew, it dissipates the error of the Gentiles in putting itself under the shelter of unity, to make you understand that the Son is with the Father, and guarding you from the danger of polytheism.  He created him in the image of God.  God still shows us His co-operator, because He does not say, in His image, but in the image of God.