Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| But why do I stain my tongue with defiled words when I am about to sing the praise of the God who truly is? I want first to rinse my mouth, briny as it were, with a pure draught. And that pure draught pours from the ever-flowing spring of the virtues of the God whom we praise; and my own proper task is to praise Christ throughout my life, and with the thanksgiving we owe him for his many and great benefits.
2| I say, then, that he fixed the first principles of this universe, and by his Word, as lawgiver, devised the existence of human beings. At once he settled those newly born in a blessed region, rich in flowers and laden with every kind of fruit, and willed that at the beginning they should be ignorant of good and evil. In the end he assigned them the earth as their dwelling, the only one fit for a rational creature; and then at last, as was fitting at that time, he commanded the race to increase, so that the whole world, bounded by the circling ocean, might one day be inhabited.
3| As the human race multiplied in this way, arts useful for life were discovered; and no less did the brood of irrational animals multiply, each kind found to possess some distinctive natural power: in tame animals, gentleness and readiness to obey human beings; in wild ones, strength and speed and a kind of natural foresight for escaping danger.
4| He laid it down as law that human beings should exercise a certain care over all the tame animals, and should contend with the wild ones. After this he established the race of birds, numerous in count and varied in nature and habits, striking in the diversity of their colors and sharing in an inborn musical harmony. He sorted out everything else that the cosmos embraces and holds together, and, having fixed for all these things an ordained law of life, he adorned the whole with its most perfect completion.
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