Origen however is dissatisfied with any view of the extent of the garden of Eden, corresponding to that which I have taken. His opinion is that the distance of the rivers ought by no means to determine the dimensions of the garden. But he is thinking all the time about such gardens as we now generally cultivate. Hence he has recourse in his usual way to an allegory. He makes paradise to represent heaven; the trees, angels; and the streams of rivers, wisdom. But these triflings are unworthy a divine. They may perhaps not be unbecoming an imaginative poet; but they are out of place in a theologian. Origen bears not in mind that Moses is here writing a history; and that, too, a record of things, now long ago passed away. After this same fashion do our adversaries absurdly dispute at the present day holding that the image and similitude of God still remain, even in a wicked man. They would, in my judgment speak much nearer the truth, if they were to say that the image of God in man has perished and disappeared; just as the original world and paradise have done. Man in the beginning was righteous; the world in the beginning was most beautiful. Eden was in truth a garden of delight and of pleasure. But all these things were deformed by sin and remain deformed still. All creatures, yea even the sun and the moon, have as it were put on sackcloth. They were all originally "good," but by sin and the curse they became defiled and noxious. At length came the greater curse of the Flood, which destroyed paradise and the whole human race, and swept them from the face of the earth. For if at this day rivers, bursting their banks, inflict by their floods such mighty calamities on men, beasts and fields, what must we suppose to have been the awfulness and horror of the calamities brought upon the earth by the universal Deluge! Whenever therefore we would speak of paradise, since the Flood, let us speak of that now historical paradise, which was once, but now has no longer existence in any trace. Let us speak of it just as we are compelled to speak of the original innocence of man. In doing so our utmost effort can effect no more than to reflect with a sigh that it is lost, and that we never can repair or regain it in this life. But further, as Moses had before distinguished man in various ways from the brutes, which nevertheless have the same origin as we have, brutes being formed like us from the earth; so the divine historian in this place distinguishes man from every other creature by giving a description of that peculiarly delightful garden, and that superb dwelling-place, which God had planted with great care and culture, and prepared with magnificent splendor, far beyond anything of the kind which he had bestowed on any other spot upon the face of the earth at that time.