“The three nymphs,
  Whom at the right wheel thou beheld’st advancing,
  Were sponsors for him, more than thousand years
  Before baptizing.  O how far removed,
  Predestination! is thy root from such
  As see not the First Cause entire:  and ye,
  O mortal men! be wary how ye judge: 
  For we, who see our Maker, know not yet
  The number of the chosen; and esteem
  Such scantiness of knowledge our delight: 
  For all our good is, in that primal good,
  Concentrate; and God’s will and ours are one.”

Canto XXI. Meantime Beatrice, who has grown more and more beautiful as they rise, explains, when Dante again gazes upon her, that she no longer dares smile, lest he be consumed like Semele when she beheld Jove.  The magnetic power of her glance suffices again, however, to transfer him to the seventh heaven, that of Saturn (revolved by Thrones).  This sphere is the abiding place of contemplative and abstinent hermits and monks.  There our poet beholds a ladder, up whose steps silently ascend those whose lives were spent in retirement and holy contemplation.  Amazed by all he sees, and conscious he no longer hears the music of the spheres, Dante wonders until informed by one of the spirits, coming down the steps to meet him, that at this stage the heavenly music is too loud and intense for human ears.  Seeing his interlocutor suddenly become a whirling wheel of light, Dante inquires what this may mean, only to be told spirits obscured on earth by fleshly garments shine brightly in heaven.  The spirit then gives his name (St. Peter Damian), vividly describes the place where he built his hermitage, and declares many modern prelates have sinned so grievously through lechery or avarice that they are now detained in Inferno or Purgatory.  As he speaks, spirit after spirit flits down the stairs, each bound on some errand of charity to the spheres below.

Canto XXII. Startled by a loud cry, Dante is reassured by St. Damian’s statement that no harm can befall him in heaven.  Next Beatrice directs his attention to some descending spirits, the most radiant of which is St. Benedict, who explains how blissful spirits often leave the heavenly abode “to execute the counsel of the Highest.”  He adds that Dante has been selected to warn mortals, none of whom will ever be allowed to venture hither again.  Then St. Benedict describes his life on earth and inveighs against the corruption of the monks of Dante’s time.

His speech ended, St. Benedict vanishes, and Beatrice wafts Dante up the mystic stairs, through the constellation of the Gemini, to the eighth heaven, that of the Fixed Stars (revolved by the Cherubim).  Declaring he is so near “the last salvation” that his eyes should be unclouded, Beatrice removes the last veil from his sight, and bids him gaze down at the spheres through which they have passed, and “see how vast a world thou hast already put beneath thy feet.”  Smiling at the smallness of the earth left behind him, Dante, undazzled by the mild light of the moon or the glow of the sun, gazes at the seven revolving spheres until all the scheme of creation is “made apparent to him.”