Chapter II.—Of the Double
Heaven,—The Visible, and the Heaven of Heavens.
2. The weakness of my tongue confesseth unto
Thy Highness, seeing that Thou madest heaven and earth. This heaven
which I see, and this earth upon which I tread (from which is this
earth that I carry about me), Thou hast made. But where is that
heaven of heavens,
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O Lord, of which we hear in the
words of the Psalm, The heaven of heavens are the Lord’s, but the
earth hath He given to the children of men?
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Where is the heaven, which we
behold not, in comparison of which all this, which we behold, is
earth? For this corporeal whole, not as a whole everywhere, hath
thus received its beautiful figure in these lower parts, of which
the bottom is our earth; but compared with that heaven of heavens,
even the heaven of our earth is but earth; yea, each of these great
bodies is not absurdly called earth, as compared with that, I know
not what manner of heaven, which is the Lord’s, not the sons’
of men.
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That is, not the atmosphere which surrounds the
earth, as when we say, “the birds of heaven” (
Jer. iv.
25
), “the dew of
heaven” (
Gen. xxvii. 28
); nor that “firmament of
heaven” (
Gen. i. 17
) in which the stars have their
courses; nor both these together; but that “third heaven” to
which Paul was “caught up” (
2 Cor. xii. 1
) in his rapture, and where God
most manifests His glory, and the angels do Him homage.
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Ps. cxv. 16
, after the LXX., Vulgate, and
Syriac.