Can you fill his skin with harpoons? or his head with fish spears?
Read Chapter 41
Gregory The Dialogist
AD 604
34. What is designated by ‘nets,’ or a ‘cabin of fishes,’ except the churches of the faithful which make one Catholic Church? Whence it is written in the Gospel, The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net cast into the sea, and gathering of every kind of fishes. [Matt. 13, 47] The Church is in truth called the kingdom of heaven, for while the Lord exalts her conduct to things above, she already reigns herself in the Lord by heavenly conversation. And it is also rightly compared to a net cast into the sea, gathering of every kind of fishes; because when cast into this gentile world, it rejected no one, but caught the wicked with the good, the proud with the humble, the angry with the gentle, and the foolish with the wise. But by the ‘skin’ of this Leviathan we understand the foolish, and by his ‘head,’ the wise ones of his body. Or certainly by the ‘skin,’ which is outermost, are designated those who serve him as inferiors in these meanest offices, but by the ‘head’ those placed over them. And the Lord observing the proper order rightly declares that He will fill these ‘nets,’ or ‘cabin of fishes,’ that is, His Church, and the wishes of the faithful with his ‘skin’ first, and afterwards with his ‘head.’ Because, as we said before, He first chose the weak, that He might confound the strong afterwards. [l Cor. l, 27] He chose in truth the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise. For He gathered together the unlearned first, and philosophers afterwards; and He taught not fishermen by means of orators, but with wondrous power He subdued orators by means of fishermen. He says therefore, Wilt thou fill nets with his skin, or the cabin of fishes with his head? Thou understandest, As I, Who first gather within the Church of the faithful the most distant, and the lowest, as the ‘skin’ of the devil, and afterwards subdue to Myself his ‘head,’ that is, wise adversaries. It follows; Wilt thou lay thine hand upon him? That is, As I, Who restraining him by My mighty power, permit him not to rage more than is expedient, and Who, as far as I shall have permitted his cruelty, turn it to the benefit of My Elect. For certainly to lay a hand upon him, is to subdue him by the might of virtue.
