Cosmic harmony

From Eusebius’s panegyric to Constantine: “as the many-stringed lyre is composed of different chords , both sharp and flat, some slightly, others tensely strained, and others intermediate between the two extremes, yet all attuned according to the rules of harmonic art; even so this material world, compounded as it is of many elements, containing opposite and antagonist principles, as moisture and dryness, cold and heat, yet blended into one harmonious whole, may justly be termed a mighty instrument framed by the hand of God : an instrument on which the Divine Word , himself not composed of parts or opposing principles, but indivisible and uncompounded , performs with perfect skill, and produces a melody at once accordant with the willof his Father the Supreme Lord of all, and glorious to himself.”

And this from the same oration, comparing Jesus with Orpheus:

“The Grecian myth tells us that Orpheus had power to charm ferocious beasts, and tame their savage spirit , by striking the chords of his instrument with a master hand: and this story is celebrated by the Greeks , and generally believed , that an unconscious instrument could subdue the untamed brute, and draw the trees from their places, in obedience to its melodious power. But he who is the author of perfect harmony , the all-wise Word of God , desiring to apply every remedy to the manifold diseases of the souls of men, employed that human nature which is the workmanship of his own wisdom, as an instrument by the melodious strains of which he soothed , not indeed the brute creation , but savages endued with reason ; healing each furious temper, each fierce and angry passion of the soul , both in civilized and barbarous nations, by the remedial power of his Divine doctrine . Like a physician of perfect skill, he met the diseases of their souls who sought for God in nature and in bodies, by a fitting and kindred remedy, and showed them God in human form .”