But a deeper meaning leads us to believe that the strength of the mind in the soul and the soul in the body is what the father of a family is in his house. What the mind is in the soul, the soul is in the body. If the mind is certain, the house is safe; the soul is safe if the soul is uninjured; the flesh also is uninjured. A temperate mind restrains every passion, controls the senses, rules the words. Therefore God justly says to the righteous, Go into, that is, go into yourself, into your mind, in the ruling part of your soul. Salvation is there, the rudder is there; outside the deluge rages, outside there is danger. In truth if you have been inside, you are safe outside too, because when the mind is the straightforward guide of the self, the thoughts are righteous, the actions are righteous. If no vice obscures the mind, the thoughts are trustworthy.

Let us see now why it was ordered that seven males and seven females of clean animals and two males and two females of unclean ones were received into the ark, so that the seed all over the earth might be nourished. And, as I believe, it is said that a clean week begins, since pure and holy is number seven. In fact it is united to no number and generated by no number. Therefore it is said to be virgin, because it generates nothing from itself, and we may add that this is said with good reason, since it is lacking and immune from maternal childbirth and from intercourse with female. The number two, on the other hand, is not full because it is divided; and what is not full has some void in itself. But the number seven is full, because the week is like the decade and is similar to that principal number, because the alpha is similar to that One who always exists. From him the virtues that are in every species take their origin, and by him they are moved.

Let us recognize that the ark prefigured the church. Let us be the clean beasts in it. Yet let us not refuse to allow the unclean ones to be carried in it with us until the end of the deluge. They were together in the ark, but they were not equally pleasing to the Lord as a savor of sacrifice, for after the deluge, Noah offered sacrifice to God of the clean, not of the unclean. But the ark was not on that account abandoned before the time by any of the clean because of the unclean.

By this prefiguration it is prophesied that in the church there will be the impure by reason of tolerance, not because of corruption of doctrine or dissolution of discipline. Furthermore, the unclean animals did not break their way into the ark through any part of the structure, but because the ark was an integral whole, they entered by the one and only entrance that the architect had made.

God granted one hundred years while the ark was being made to that generation, and still they did not repent. God summoned beasts that they had never seen and still they showed no remorse. He established a state of peace between the predatory animals and those who are preyed upon, and still they had no awe. God delayed yet seven more days for them, even after Noah and every creature had entered the ark, leaving the gate of the ark open to them. This is a wondrous thing that no lion remembered its jungle and no species of beast or bird visited its customary haunt! Although those of that generation saw all that went on outside and inside the ark, they were still not persuaded to renounce their evil deeds.

Christ was also represented in Noah, and the world, in that ark. For why were all living creatures shut up in that ark except to signify all the nations? For God did not lack the capability of creating anew every species of living things. For when no creatures were in existence, did he not say, Let the earth bring forth^[1] and the earth brought forth? So from the same source as he made them then, he could remake them. God made them by a word, so God could remake them by a word.

Was not Noah a holy man, who alone in the whole human race together with his whole house deserved to be delivered from the flood? And is not the church prefigured by Noah and his sons? They escape the flood, with wood (which symbolizes the cross) carrying them.

During the actual exorcism, while waiting for the others, let men be with men and women with women. For now I need Noah’s ark that I may have Noah and his sons together, separate from his wife and his sons’ wives. For although the ark was one and the door was closed, yet decorum was observed. So now, though the church doors are barred and you are all inside, let distinctions be kept: men with men, women with women. Let not the principle of salvation be made a pretext for spiritual license. Keeping close together is a good rule, provided that passion is kept at a distance.

And then what? All the foun-tains of the great deep were broken up, and the flood gates of heaven were opened. And the rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. And a little later: And all flesh was destroyed that moved upon the earth.^[1] And again, And Noah only remained alive and they that were with him in the ark.^[2] Here and now I wish to ask them who call God indifferent to human affairs whether they believe that at that time he either cared for earthly affairs or intervened in them.

The fact, too, that he brought on the deluge for forty days and nights is a further wonderful sign of his loving kindness. His purpose in his great goodness was that at least some of them might come to their senses and escape that utter ruin, having before their eyes the annihilation of their peers and the destruction about to overwhelm them. I mean, the likelihood is that on the first day some proportion were drowned, an additional number on the second day, and likewise on the third day and so on. His reason for extending it for forty days was that he might remove from them any grounds for excuse. You see, had it been his wish and command, he could have submerged everything in one downpour. Instead, out of fidelity to his characteristic love he arranged for a stay of so many days.

It is now time to examine the evidence that proves convincingly that the biblical years, so far from being only one-tenth as long as ours, were precisely as long as the present solar years. This is true of the years used in giving those extremely long life spans. It is said, for example, that the flood occurred in the six hundredth year of Noah’s life. But notice the full text: The waters of the flood overflowed the earth in the six hundredth year of the life of Noah, in the second month, in the twenty-seventh day of the month. Now those words are inexplicable if a year was so short that it took ten of them to make one of ours. That would mean that a year had only thirty-six days. For so short a year (if it was actually called a year in ancient usage) either had no months at all, or if it had twelve months, then each month could have had but three days. How, then, [can we] explain the words of the text, in the six hundredth year . . . in the second month, in the twenty-seventh day of the month, unless the months then were the same as they are now? There is no other way of explaining how the flood could be said to have had a beginning on the twenty-seventh day of the second month.

The text goes on, The Lord God shut the ark from the outside. Notice in this place too the considerateness in the expression God shut the ark from the outside, to teach us that he had ensured the good man’s complete safety. The reason for adding from the outside to he shut was that the good man might not be in the position of seeing the disaster occur and suffering even greater distress. I mean, if he brooded over that terrible flood and set indelibly in his mind the destruction of the human race, the complete annihilation of all brute beasts and the disappearance, as it were, of people, animals and the earth itself, he would have been disturbed and anguished.

The Lord shut the door before Noah, lest those left behind come at the time of the floods and break down the gate of the ark. The deluge came and God blotted out all flesh. Only Noah was left and those that were with him in the ark. The springs of the abyss and the floodgates of heaven were open forty days and forty nights, and the ark was afloat for one hundred fifty days.^[1]

God closed the ark of Noah from without.^[1] You should not imagine that the unbegotten God himself descended or ascended from any place. For the ineffable Father and Lord of all neither comes to any place, nor walks, nor sleeps, nor arises, but always remains in his place, wherever it may be, acutely seeing and hearing, not with eyes or ears but with a power beyond description.

[We see that] certain psalms are titled for the octave. This is the day on which the synagogue comes to an end and the church is born.^[1] This is the day in the number of which eight souls were preserved in the ark of Noah, and its counterpart, the church, says Peter, now saves you.^[2]