Gregory of Nyssa, on Ps 18:4

“There are no speeches nor languages, where their voices are not heard.”

“Yet, how can such declaring and showing forth be other than words, and how is it that no voice addresses itself to the ear? Is the prophet contradicting himself, or is he stating an impossibility, when he speaks of words without sound, and declaration without language and announcement without voice? Or, is there not rather the very perfection of truth in his teaching, which tells us, in the words that I have quoted, that the declaration of the heavens and the word shouted forth by the day, is no articulate voice or language of the lips but is a revelation of the power of God to those who are capable of hearing it, even though no voice is heard?… The very heavens, he says in displaying the wisdom of him who made them, all but shout aloud with a voice, and, though without voice, proclaim the wisdom of their Creator. For we can hear as it were words teaching us: "O mortals, when you gaze on us and behold our beauty and magnitude and this ceaseless revolution, with its well-ordered and harmonious motion, working in the same direction and in the same manner, turn your thoughts to him who presides over our system, and, by aid of the beauty that you see, imagine to yourselves the beauty of the invisible Archetype. For in us there is nothing without its Lord, nothing that moves of its own proper motion, but all that appears or that is conceivable in respect to us depends on a Power who is inscrutable and sublime." This is not given in articulate speech but by the things which are seen, and it instills into our minds the knowledge of divine power more than if speech proclaimed it with a voice.”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.