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| God Uses All Creatures as He Will, and Makes Visible Things for the Manifestation of Himself.
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Chapter 4.—God Uses All Creatures as He Will, and
Makes Visible Things for the Manifestation of Himself.
9. What, then, we have alleged by
way of example of a single wise man, although of one still bearing
a mortal body and still seeing only in part, may be allowably
extended also to a family, where there is a society of such men, or
to a city, or even to the whole world, if the chief rule and
government of human affairs were in the hands of the wise, and of
those who were piously and perfectly subject to God; but because
this is not the case as yet (for it behoves us first to be
exercised in this our pilgrimage after mortal fashion, and to be
taught with stripes by force of gentleness and patience), let us
turn our thoughts to that country itself that is above and
heavenly, from which we here are pilgrims. For there the will of
God, “who maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flaming
fire,”365
presiding
among spirits which are joined in perfect peace and friendship, and
combined in one will by a kind of spiritual fire of charity, as it
were in an elevated and holy and secret seat, as in its own house
and in its own temple, thence diffuses itself through all things by
certain most perfectly ordered movements of the
creature; first spiritual, then corporeal; and uses all according
to the unchangeable pleasure of its own purpose, whether
incorporeal things or things corporeal, whether rational or
irrational spirits, whether good by His grace or evil through their
own will. But as the more gross and inferior bodies are governed in
due order by the more subtle and powerful ones, so all bodies are
governed by the living spirit; and the living spirit devoid of
reason, by the reasonable living spirit; and the reasonable living
spirit that makes default and sins, by the living and reasonable
spirit that is pious and just; and that by God Himself, and so the
universal creature by its Creator, from whom and through whom and
in whom it is also created and established.366
And so it comes to pass that the
will of God is the first and the highest cause of all corporeal
appearances and motions. For nothing is done visibly or sensibly,
unless either by command or permission from the interior palace,
invisible and intelligible, of the supreme Governor, according to
the unspeakable justice of rewards and punishments, of favor and
retribution, in that far-reaching and boundless commonwealth of the
whole creature.
10. If, therefore, the Apostle
Paul, although he still bare the burden of the body, which is
subject to corruption and presseth down the soul,367
| 367 Wisdom 9.15" id="iv.i.v.v-p6.1" parsed="|Wis|9|15|0|0" osisRef="Bible:Wis.9.15">Wisd. ix. 15 | and although he still saw only in
part and in an enigma,368
wishing to depart and be with
Christ,369
and groaning
within himself, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of
his body,370
yet was able
to preach the Lord Jesus Christ significantly, in one way by his
tongue, in another by epistle, in another by the sacrament of His
body and blood (since, certainly, we do not call either the tongue
of the apostle, or the parchments, or the ink, or the significant
sounds which his tongue uttered, or the alphabetical signs written
on skins, the body and blood of Christ; but that only which we take
of the fruits of the earth and consecrate by mystic prayer, and
then receive duly to our spiritual health in memory of the passion
of our Lord for us: and this, although it is brought by the hands
of men to that visible form, yet is not sanctified to become so
great a sacrament, except by the spirit of God working invisibly;
since God works everything that is done in that work through
corporeal movements, by setting in motion primarily the invisible
things of His servants, whether the souls of men, or the services
of hidden spirits subject to Himself): what wonder if also in the
creature of heaven and earth, of sea and air, God works the
sensible and visible things which He wills, in order to signify and
manifest Himself in them, as He Himself knows it to be fitting,
without any appearing of His very substance itself, whereby He is,
which is altogether unchangeable, and more inwardly and secretly
exalted than all spirits whom He has created?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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