文集（天主之城·論三位一體等） 第 26 章

Let those who wish believe that I would rather labor by reading than by dictating things to be read. But those who are unwilling to believe this, yet both can and will make trial of it — let them furnish something that may be answered by my reading, whether to my own inquiries or to the questionings of others which, for the sake of the office I bear in the service of Christ and for the zeal wherewith I burn to have our faith fortified against the error of carnal and animal men, I must needs endure; and let them see how easily I would refrain from this toil, and with how great joy I could keep my pen idle.

But if the things we might read on these matters, sufficiently set forth in the Latin tongue, either do not exist, or are not found, or at least can be found by us only with difficulty; and if we have not so great a command of the Greek language that we should in any way prove fit for reading and understanding books on such subjects — of which kind of literature I do not doubt that, from the few things translated for us, all that we can usefully seek is contained; and if I cannot resist the brethren, by the right whereby I have been made their servant, when they entreat that I should, chiefly with my tongue and pen, serve their laudable studies in Christ — the twin steeds which charity drives within me — and if I myself confess that by writing I have learned much which I did not know;

this labor of mine ought not to seem superfluous to anyone slothful or very learned, since it is necessary to many diligent and many unlearned men, among whom in no small part it is necessary even to me. From those things, therefore, which we have already read written by others on this matter, being greatly propped up and aided, I have undertaken to seek out — He Himself exhorting — those things which can be piously sought and discussed concerning the Trinity, the one supreme and supremely good God, and to discuss them with His help: so that, if there be no other writings of this kind, there may be something we have, and let those read who will and who are able; but if there already are such, so much the more easily will some be found, the more of such kind there may prove to be.

Truly, since in all my writings I desire not only a pious reader but also a free corrector, most of all in these where the very magnitude of the question — would that it might have as many discoverers as it has gainsayers! Nevertheless, just as I do not wish my reader to be devoted to me, so I do not wish my corrector to be devoted to himself. Let the one not love me more than the catholic faith; let the other not love himself more than the catholic truth. As I say to the former: Do not be enslaved to my writings as though to canonical Scriptures, but in the former, when you find even what you did not believe, believe without hesitation; in the latter, however, hold fast firmly to nothing you did not hold as certain unless you have understood it to be certain — so I say to the latter:

Do not correct my writings out of your own opinion or contention, but out of the divine reading or unshaken reason. If you comprehend anything true in them, by its existing it is not mine, but by your understanding and loving it, let it be both yours and mine; but if you convict anything of falsity, by my erring it will have been mine, but now, by taking heed, let it be neither yours nor mine. Hence, then, this third book takes its beginning, up to the point where the second had reached.

For when we had come to the point of wishing to show that the Son is not on that account less than the Father because the one sent and the other was sent, nor the Holy Spirit less than both because He is read in the Gospel to have been sent both by the one and by the other, we undertook to inquire this: since the Son was sent thither where He was — because He came into this world and was in this world — and since the Holy Spirit likewise was sent thither where He too was, seeing that the Spirit of the Lord filled the world, and that which contains all things has knowledge of the voice, whether the Lord was for this reason said to be sent, because from what was hidden He was born in the flesh, and from the bosom of the Father appeared, as it were coming forth, to the eyes of men in the form of a servant;

and the Holy Spirit likewise, because He too was seen in bodily form as a dove and in cloven tongues as it were of fire; so that to be sent was for them to proceed forth from spiritual secrecy into some bodily form to the sight of mortals — which, because the Father did not do, He was said only to have sent and not also to have been sent. Then it was asked why the Father too was not at some time said to be sent, if He Himself was shown through those bodily forms which appeared to the eyes of the ancients. But if the Son was then shown, why was He said to be sent so long afterward, when the fullness of time came that He should be born of a woman, seeing that even before He was sent when He appeared bodily in those forms.

Or if He could not rightly be said to be sent except when the Word was made flesh, why is the Holy Spirit read to have been sent, whose incarnation of such a kind did not take place? But if through those ancient manifestations neither the Father nor the Son but the Holy Spirit was shown, why is He too now said to be sent, when He was sent even before in those manners? Then we subdivided the matter, that these things might be handled most diligently, and we made the question threefold, one part of which has been unfolded in the second book, while two remain, of which I shall next proceed to discourse.

For it has already been inquired and treated that in those ancient bodily forms and visions there appeared neither the Father alone, nor the Son alone, nor the Holy Spirit alone, but either indifferently the Lord God, who is understood as the Trinity itself, or whichever person of the Trinity the text of the reading might signify by the surrounding indications. Now, therefore, we first inquire what follows. For in the second place in that division it was set down: whether for this work alone a creature was formed in which God, as He then judged fitting, might be shown to human sight;

or whether angels who already existed were so sent that they spoke in the person of God, taking on a bodily form from bodily creation for the use of their ministry; or whether it was their very own body — to which they are not subject but which they rule as subject — that they changed and turned into such forms as they willed, accommodated and fitted to their actions, according to the power attributed to them by the Creator. When this part of the question has been thoroughly treated, so far as the Lord shall grant, it will finally remain to be seen what we had set out to inquire: whether the Son and the Holy Spirit were also sent before, and if so, what difference there is between that sending and the one we read of in the Gospel;

or whether none of them was sent except when either the Son was made of the Virgin Mary or the Holy Spirit appeared in a visible form, whether in the dove or in the fiery tongues. But I confess that it exceeds the strength of my purpose to determine whether the angels, while the spiritual quality of their body remains, working more hiddenly through it, take on from the lower and grosser elements something fitted to themselves, which they change and turn, as though some garment, into whatever bodily forms — even true ones, just as true water was turned into true wine by the Lord — or whether they transform their own proper bodies into whatever they will, adapted to what they do. But whichever of these it be, it does not pertain to the present question.

And although, since I am a man, I can grasp these things by no experiment, as the angels do who work them, and they know them better than I know to what extent my body is changed by the affection of my will, whether from what I have experienced in myself or from others — yet which of these I should believe on the authority of the divine Scriptures there is now no need to say, lest I be compelled to prove it, and the discourse become longer concerning a matter which the present question does not require. This now must be seen: whether the angels were then acting both those bodily forms appearing to the eyes of men and those voices sounding in their ears, while the very sensible creature, serving at the nod of its Creator, was turned for the time into whatever work was needful, as is written in the book of Wisdom:

'For the creature serving Thee its Maker is strained to torment against the unjust, and grows gentler to do good to those who trust in Thee. For this cause, even then, transforming itself into all things, it served Thy grace, the nurse of all, according to the will of those who longed for Thee.' For the power of God's will reaches through the spiritual creature even unto the visible and sensible effects of the bodily creature. For where does not that wisdom of God almighty work what it wills, which reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly?

But there is another natural order in the conversion and mutability of bodies, which, although it too serves at the nod of God, yet by the constancy of custom has lost its power to cause wonder — such as those things which are changed at very brief, or at least not long, intervals of time in heaven, on earth, and in the sea, whether as things come to birth or perish, or appear now in one way, now in another;

but others, though coming from that same order, yet on account of longer intervals of time are less familiar, which, though many are amazed at them, have been grasped by the investigators of this age, and by the progress of generations, whereby they are more often repeated and known by more people, become the less wondrous — such as the eclipses of the luminaries, and certain rarely occurring appearances of the stars, and earthquakes, and monstrous births of living things, and whatever else is similar, none of which happens except by the will of God, though to most people this does not appear.

And so it has been permitted to the vanity of the philosophers to attribute these things also to other causes — either true but proximate ones, since they could by no means see the cause superior to all others, that is, the will of God — or false ones, and brought forth not even from any investigation of bodily things and motions, but from their own conjecture and error. I shall say, if I can, something by way of example, whereby these matters may be clearer. There is certainly in the human body a certain mass of flesh, and a shapeliness of form, and an order and distinction of members, and a due proportion of health.

A soul inbreathed governs this body — a soul also rational, and therefore, though changeable, yet such as can be a partaker of that unchangeable Wisdom, so that there may be a participation of it in the selfsame, as is written in the Psalm concerning all the saints, of whom, as of living stones, is built that Jerusalem our eternal mother in the heavens. For thus it is sung: 'Jerusalem, which is builded as a city, whose participation is in the selfsame.' For the selfsame in this place is understood as that supreme and unchangeable good which is God, and His Wisdom and Will, to whom it is sung in another place: 'Thou shalt change them and they shall be changed; but Thou art the selfsame.'

Let us, then, set before our mind such a wise man, whose rational soul is already a partaker of the unchangeable and eternal truth, which he consults concerning all his actions, and does nothing at all which he has not recognized in it as needing to be done, so that, subject to it and obeying it, he may act rightly. If this man, having consulted the supreme reason of divine justice — which he heard in secret with the ear of his heart — and at its bidding wearied his body with labor in some office of mercy and contracted an illness, and, the physicians having been consulted, it were said by one that the cause of the disease was a dryness of the body, but by another an excess of humor;

one of them would state the true cause, the other would err, yet both would pronounce concerning proximate, that is, bodily, causes. But if the cause of that dryness were sought and found to be voluntary labor, one would already have come to a higher cause, which proceeds from the soul to affect the body which it rules; yet not even this would be the first. For that first cause was without doubt higher still, in the very unchangeable Wisdom, which the soul of the wise man, serving it in love and obeying it as it ineffably commanded, had undertaken the voluntary labor. Thus nothing but the will of God would most truly be found to be the first cause of that illness.

But now, if in this dutiful and pious labor that wise man had employed helpers laboring together with him in the good work, yet not serving God with the same will, but desiring to attain the reward of their carnal lusts, or to avoid carnal discomforts; and had employed also beasts of burden, if the management of accomplishing that work so required — which beasts of burden would surely be irrational animals, and would not therefore move their limbs under their loads because they thought anything of that good work, but by the natural appetite of their own pleasure and the avoidance of trouble; and finally had employed even those bodies wholly lacking all sensation which were necessary to that work, namely grain, wine, oil, clothing, money, a book, and whatever is of this kind.

In all these bodies engaged in that work, whether animate or inanimate — whatever were moved, worn away, repaired, destroyed, reformed, affected and changed in one way or another in places and times — surely there would be no other cause of all these visible and changeable deeds than that invisible and unchangeable will of God, using through the just soul, as the seat of Wisdom, all things — even evil and irrational souls, and lastly bodies, whether those breathed into and animated, or those lacking all sensation — since it first used that very soul, good and holy, which it had subjected to itself for pious and religious obedience?

What, therefore, we have set down by way of example concerning one wise man — though still bearing a mortal body, though seeing but in part — this it is permitted to think concerning some household where there is a society of some such men, this concerning a city, or even concerning the whole world, if the sovereignty and governance of human affairs be in the hands of men wise and holy and perfectly subject to God. But since this is not yet the case (for it is fitting that we should first be exercised mortally in this pilgrimage, and be instructed under scourges through the strength of meekness and patience), let us think upon that supernal and heavenly fatherland itself, whence we are on pilgrimage.

For there the will of God — who maketh His angels spirits and His ministers a flaming fire — presides, in spirits joined together in supreme peace and friendship, and fused into one will by a certain spiritual fire of charity, as in a lofty and holy and secret seat, as it were in His own house and in His own temple. Thence, by certain most well-ordered motions of the creature — first spiritual, then bodily — He diffuses Himself through all things and uses all for the unchangeable decision of His judgment, whether incorporeal or corporeal things, whether rational or irrational spirits, whether good ones through His grace or evil ones through their own will.

But just as grosser and lower bodies are governed in a certain order through the more subtle and more powerful, so all bodies are governed through the spirit of life, and the spirit of irrational life through the spirit of rational life, and the deserting and sinning spirit of rational life through the pious and just spirit of rational life, and that one through God Himself; and thus the whole creation through its Creator, from whom and through whom and in whom it was also founded and established. And through this, the will of God is the first and supreme cause of all bodily forms and motions.

For nothing happens visibly and sensibly which is not either commanded or permitted from the inner, invisible, and intelligible court of the supreme Emperor, according to the ineffable justice of rewards and punishments, of graces and requitals, in this most ample and immense commonwealth, as it were, of the whole creation.

If, therefore, the Apostle Paul — although he still bore the burden of the body which is corrupted and weighs down the soul, although he still saw in part and in an enigma, longing to be dissolved and to be with Christ, and groaning within himself, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of his body — could nevertheless proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ by signifying, in one way through his tongue, in another through his epistle, in another through the sacrament of His body and blood;

for indeed we call neither his tongue, nor the parchments and ink, nor the significant sounds uttered by the tongue, nor the signs of letters written on little skins, the body and blood of Christ; but only that which, taken from the fruits of the earth and consecrated by mystic prayer, we rightly receive unto spiritual salvation in memory of the Lord's passion for us — which, though it be brought by the hands of men to that visible form, is not sanctified so as to be so great a sacrament except by the Spirit of God working invisibly, since God works all these things which are done by bodily motions in that work, moving first the invisible things of the ministers, whether the souls of men or the hidden services of spirits subject to Him;

what wonder is it if also in the creature of heaven and earth, of sea and air, God works what He wills — things sensible and visible, for the signifying and showing of Himself in them as He Himself knows it ought to be done — not by that substance of His own whereby He is appearing, which is altogether unchangeable and more inwardly and secretly sublime than all the spirits He created? For by the divine power administering the whole spiritual and bodily creation, on certain days of every year the waters of the sea are summoned and poured out over the face of the earth.

But when this happened at the prayer of holy Elijah — because there had preceded so continuous and so long a fair weather that men were failing from famine, nor at the very hour when that servant of God prayed had the air itself borne any moist appearance as a sign of rain soon to come — when such great and so swiftly following downpours ensued, the divine power appeared, by which that miracle was dispensed and granted. Thus God works the ordinary lightnings and thunders. But because on Mount Sinai they were happening in an unusual manner, and those voices were uttered not with a confused din, but it appeared by most certain indications that certain signs were being given by them, they were miracles. Who draws the moisture through the root of the vine to the grape-cluster and makes wine, but God, who gives the increase even while man plants and waters?

But when at the Lord's nod water was turned into wine with unwonted swiftness, the divine power was declared, even the foolish confessing it. Who solemnly clothes the shrubs with leaf and flower, but God? Yet when the priestly rod of Aaron flowered, the divinity conversed in a certain manner with doubting humanity. And certainly, for the begetting and forming of all woods and of the flesh of all animals, the earthly matter is common; and who makes these things, but He who said that this earth should bring them forth, and by that same word of His governs and drives what He created? But when He turned that same matter, from the rod of Moses, into the flesh of a serpent, closely and swiftly, it was a miracle — a change indeed of a changeable thing, yet an unwonted one.

But who gives life to each living thing at its birth, save he who also for that hour gave life to that serpent, just as the work required? And who restored to the corpses their own souls when the dead rose again, save he who gives life to flesh in the wombs of mothers, that they may be born who are destined to die? Yet when these things come to pass by a certain continuous flow, as it were, of things slipping and streaming past, passing from the hidden into the open and from the open into the hidden by their accustomed course, they are called natural; but when, for the admonishing of men, they are pressed upon us with an unaccustomed mutability, they are named mighty works. Here I see what may occur to a weak understanding, namely, why these miracles should also be wrought by magic arts. For the magicians of Pharaoh likewise made serpents and other like things.

But this is the more to be marveled at: how that power of the magicians, which was able to make serpents, utterly failed when it came to the tiniest of flies. For the sciniphes are the smallest of little gnats, by which as a third plague the proud Egyptian people were smitten. There indeed the magicians, failing, said: 'This is the finger of God.' Whence we are given to understand that not even those transgressor angels and airy powers—thrust down into this lowest darkness as into a prison of their own kind, from that dwelling of the sublime, ethereal purity, and through whom the magic arts can do whatever they can do—have any power at all except by power granted from above.

And this power is granted either to deceive the deceitful, as it was granted against the Egyptians and even against the magicians themselves, so that in the seduction of those spirits they might seem admirable to those by whom the works were done, while being condemned by the truth of God; or to admonish the faithful not to desire to do any such thing as a great matter—for which reason these things too have been handed down to us by the authority of Scripture; or to exercise, prove, and make manifest the patience of the just. For it was by no small power over visible things that Job lost all that he had, both his sons and the very health of his body.

Nor is it therefore to be supposed that this matter of visible things serves those transgressor angels at their nod, but rather God, by whom this power is granted so far as, in his sublime and spiritual and unchangeable seat, he judges fit. For to the condemned wicked, even in the mine, water and fire and earth serve, that they may make thereof what they will—yet only so far as it is permitted. Nor indeed are those evil angels to be called creators because through them the magicians, resisting the servant of God, made frogs and serpents; for they did not themselves create these. For of all things that are born corporeally and visibly, certain hidden seeds lie concealed in these bodily elements of this world. These are one thing—already visible to our eyes in fruits and living creatures;

but another thing are those hidden seeds of these seeds, from which, at the Creator's command, the waters first brought forth the swimming and flying creatures, and the earth first brought forth its shoots and the first living things of their kind. For they were not then so produced into offspring of this sort that in the things produced that power was consumed; but for the most part the fitting occasions of the temperatures are wanting whereby they might break forth and carry out their species. For behold, the tiniest twig is a seed; for, suitably committed to the earth, it makes a tree. But a subtler seed of this twig is some grain of the same kind, and thus far it is visible to us.

But now the seed even of this grain, though we cannot see it with our eyes, we can nevertheless conjecture by reason; for unless there were some such power in these elements, there would not for the most part be born from the earth things that had not been sown there, nor so many animals with no prior mingling of male and female, whether in earth or in water, which yet grow and by coupling bring forth others, though they themselves arose from no coupling parents. And certainly bees do not conceive the seeds of their offspring by coupling, but gather them with their mouth, as though scattered abroad over the lands.

For the Creator of the invisible seeds is himself the Creator of all things, since whatever things by being born come forth to our eyes receive from hidden seeds the beginnings of their coming-forth, and take their increases of due magnitude and the distinctions of their forms from those original, as it were, rules.

Just as, therefore, we do not call parents the creators of men, nor farmers the creators of the crops—although it is by their motions applied from without that God's inward power works to create these things—so it is not lawful to think either the evil angels, or even the good angels, creators, if by the subtlety of their sense and body they have come to know the seeds of these things, more hidden to us, and secretly scatter them through fitting temperings of the elements, and thus afford occasions both for the generating of things and for the hastening of their increases. But neither do the good do these things except so far as God commands, nor do the evil do them unjustly except so far as he himself justly permits. For the wicked have in their malice a will that is unjust;

but power they receive only justly, whether for their own punishment, or for the punishment of others among the wicked, or for the praise of the good. And so the Apostle, distinguishing the God who inwardly creates and forms from the works of the creature which are applied from without, and taking a similitude from agriculture, says: 'I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.' Just as, therefore, in our very life it is God alone who can form the mind by justifying it, but to preach the Gospel outwardly men also can do—not only the good through the truth, but even the evil through occasion;

so God inwardly works the creation of visible things, but the outward operations—whether of good or of evil angels or men, or even of whatever animals—according to his command and the distributions of powers imparted by him and the appetites for advantages, he thus applies to the nature of things, in which he creates all things, even as he applies the tillage to the land. Wherefore I can no more say that the evil angels summoned by magic arts were the creators of frogs and serpents than I can say that evil men are the creators of the crop which I shall have seen springing up by their labor. Just as neither was Jacob the creator of the colors in the flocks, because he set before the mothers, as they drank at conception, the variegated rods for them to gaze upon.

But neither were the flocks themselves the creators of the variegation of their own offspring, because there had clung to their soul a many-colored fancy, impressed through the eyes from the sight of the variegated rods—a fancy which could affect nothing except the body, which was animated by the spirit so affected, through a sympathy of their commingling, whence the tender beginnings of the young might be tinged, as far as color, with it. For that they should be thus affected from themselves—either the soul from the body or the body from the soul—the fittingnesses of reason bring this about, which live unchangeably in that supreme Wisdom of God whom no spaces of places contain; and while it is itself unchangeable, it forsakes none of the things that exist even changeably, because none of them has been created except through it.

For that from the flocks not rods but flocks should be born, this the unchangeable and invisible reason of the Wisdom of God brought about, through which all things were created; but that from the variegation of the rods the color of the conceived flocks should draw something, this the soul of the pregnant beast brought about, affected outwardly through the eyes and inwardly drawing with it, according to its own measure, a rule of forming which it had received from the innermost power of its Creator.

But how great is the power of the soul to affect and change corporeal matter—although it cannot be called the creator of the body, since every cause of a changeable and sensible substance, and its every measure and number and weight, whereby it comes about that it both exists and that its nature is thus or thus, arises from the intelligible and unchangeable Life that is above all things, and reaches even to the uttermost and earthly things—this is a long discourse, and not now necessary.

But I thought Jacob's deed concerning the flocks worth mentioning for this reason: that it might be understood that if the man who so placed those rods cannot be called the creator of the colors in the lambs and kids, nor can the very souls of the mothers—which, as far as nature allowed, sprinkled the color, conceived through the bodily eyes, upon the fancy of variegation over the seeds conceived in the flesh—much less can the evil angels, through whom the magicians of Pharaoh then made those things, be called the creators of frogs and serpents. For it is one thing to found and administer the creature from the inmost and highest hinge of causes, which he who does is alone the Creator, God;

but it is another thing, according to the powers and faculties distributed by him, to apply from without some operation, so that at this time or that, in this way or that, what is created may come forth. For these things have all already been created originally and primordially in a certain texture of the elements, but they come forth when the occasions are received. For as mothers are pregnant with their young, so the world itself is pregnant with the causes of things that come to be—things which are not created in it except by that supreme Essence, where nothing arises nor dies, nor begins to be nor ceases to be.

But to apply from without approaching causes, which, though they are not natural, yet are applied according to nature, so that the things which lie hidden and enclosed in the secret bosom of nature may in a certain manner break forth and be created outwardly by unfolding their own measures and numbers and weights, which they received in secret from him who has disposed all things in measure and number and weight—this not only evil angels but even evil men can do, as I have shown above by the example of agriculture.

But lest a seemingly different reasoning should trouble anyone concerning animals, on the ground that they have a spirit of life with a sense of desiring what is according to nature and of avoiding what is contrary, this too may be observed: how many men have come to know from what herbs or flesh, or from what juices and humors of various things—thus placed, or thus buried, or thus crushed, or thus mingled—which animals are wont to be born. Of these, who would be so mad as to dare to call himself the creator?

What wonder, then, if, just as any most worthless man can know whence this or that worm or fly is born, so the evil angels, by the subtlety of their sense, know in the more hidden seeds of the elements whence frogs and serpents are born, and by applying these through certain and known opportunities of the temperings, by hidden motions, cause them to be created—but do not create them? Yet the things which men are wont to do are not marveled at by men. And if anyone perchance marvels at the swiftness of the increases, because those living creatures were made so quickly, let him consider how these things too are procured by men according to the measure of human capacity.

For whence comes it that the same bodies breed worms sooner in summer than in winter, sooner in warmer than in colder places? But these things are applied by men with all the more difficulty in proportion as the subtleties of the senses and the mobilities of bodies are wanting in earthly and sluggish limbs. Hence, by how much easier it is for angels of whatever sort to draw the neighboring causes from the elements, by so much the more marvelous do the swiftnesses in works of this kind of theirs prove to be.

But there is no creator except him who principally forms these things, nor can anyone do this except him with whom are, first of all, the measures, numbers, and weights of all things that exist; and he himself is the one Creator God, from whose ineffable power it comes to pass even that what these angels could do, if they were permitted, they therefore cannot do, because they are not permitted. For no other reason presents itself why those who made frogs and serpents could not make the tiniest flies, except that a greater dominion of the prohibiting God, through the Holy Spirit, was present—which even the magicians themselves confessed, saying: 'This is the finger of God.'

But what they can do by nature and cannot do by prohibition, and what by the very condition of their nature they are not suffered to do, is difficult—nay rather impossible—for a man to explore, save through that gift of God which the Apostle mentions when he says: 'To another, the discerning of spirits.' For we know that a man can walk, and yet cannot even do this if he is not permitted, but cannot fly even if he is permitted. So too those angels can do certain things if they are permitted by more powerful angels at God's command; but certain things they cannot do even if permitted by them, because he does not permit from whom is such a measure of their nature—who also, through his own angels, for the most part does not permit even those things which he granted them the power to do.

Setting aside, then, those things which by the most customary passage of times come to pass corporeally in the order of nature—such as the risings and settings of the stars, the births and deaths of animals, the innumerable diversities of seeds and shoots, mists and clouds, snows and rains, lightnings and thunders, thunderbolts and hailstorms, winds and fires, cold and heat, and all such things; setting aside also those which in the same order are rare, such as eclipses of the luminaries and unaccustomed appearances of the stars and monsters and earthquakes and the like; setting aside, therefore, all these—whose first and highest cause is none other than the will of God—whence also in the psalm, when certain things of this kind had been recounted:

'fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy wind'—lest anyone should believe these to be driven either by chance, or by merely corporeal causes, or even by spiritual ones yet existing apart from the will of God, it straightway added: 'which do his word.' But, as I had begun to say, setting these aside, there are others which, although from the same corporeal matter, are yet applied to our senses for the announcing of something from God, and these are properly called miracles and signs; nor in all the things that are announced to us by the Lord our God is the person of God himself assumed. But when it is assumed, sometimes it is displayed in an angel, sometimes in that form which is not what an angel is—although arranged and ministered through an angel;

again, when it is assumed in that form which is not what an angel is, sometimes that very body already existed and is taken up into some change for this displaying, sometimes it arises for this purpose and, the matter accomplished, is again dissolved. Just as also when men announce, sometimes they speak the words of God from their own person, as when it is prefaced: 'The Lord said,' or 'Thus says the Lord,' or something of the kind; but sometimes, prefacing nothing of the sort, they assume the very person of God in themselves, as: 'I will give you understanding, and I will set you in this way in which you shall walk.'

Thus not only in words but also in deeds the person of God, to be signified, is imposed upon the prophet, that he may bear it in the ministry of prophecy—just as he bore his person who divided his garment into twelve parts and gave ten of them to the servant of King Solomon, the future king of Israel; sometimes too a thing which was not what the prophet was, and already existed among earthly things, was taken up into a signification of this kind, as, waking from a dream he had seen, Jacob did with the stone which as he slept he had at his head; sometimes for this purpose the same form is made, or one destined to remain for a while, as could be that bronze serpent lifted up in the wilderness, or as letters can;

or destined to pass away when the ministry is accomplished, as bread made for this purpose is consumed in the receiving of the sacrament. But because these things are known to men—since indeed they are done through men—they can have honor as religious things, but they cannot have amazement as marvelous things. And so the things which are done through angels, by how much the more difficult and unknown they are, by so much the more marvelous they are to us, but to them are as it were their own known and easy actions. An angel speaks from the person of God to a man, saying: 'I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,' although Scripture had foretold: 'An angel of the Lord appeared to him'; a man too speaks from the person of God, saying: 'Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify to you: God, I am thy God.'

A rod was taken up for a signification and by angelic power was changed into a serpent; and since this faculty is wanting to a man, yet a stone too was taken up by a man for some such signification. Between the deed of an angel and the deed of a man there is a very great distance. The former is both to be marveled at and to be understood, but the latter only to be understood. What is understood from both is perhaps one thing, but the things from which it is understood are diverse—as if the Lord's name were written both in gold and in ink. The one is more precious, the other cheaper; yet what is signified by both is the very same thing. And although the serpent from Moses' rod signified the same as the stone of Jacob, yet the stone of Jacob signified something better than the serpents of the magicians.

For as the anointing of the stone signified Christ in the flesh, in which he was anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows, so Moses' rod turned into a serpent signified Christ himself made obedient even unto the death of the cross. Whence he says: 'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life'—just as those who gazed upon that serpent lifted up in the wilderness did not perish from the bites of the serpents. For our old man is nailed to the cross with him, that the body of sin may be done away. And by the serpent is understood death, which was wrought by the serpent in paradise, according to that manner of speech which points to the effecting cause by that which is effected.

Therefore the rod into a serpent is Christ into death, and the serpent again into a rod is Christ into the resurrection, whole together with his body, which is the Church—which shall be at the end of time, signified by the serpent's tail, which Moses held that it might be brought back into a rod. But the serpents of the magicians, as it were the dead of this world, unless by believing in Christ they enter, as it were devoured, into his body, cannot rise again in him. The stone of Jacob, therefore, as I have said, signified something better than the serpents of the magicians; and yet the deed of the magicians was far more marvelous. But these things thus prejudge nothing regarding the matters to be understood—just as if a man's name were written in gold and God's in ink.

Those clouds too, and fires—how the angels made or assumed them to signify what they announced, even if the Lord or the Holy Spirit was shown in those corporeal forms—what man knows? Just as infants do not know what is placed upon the altar and consumed when the celebration of piety is accomplished—whence or how it is prepared, whence it is taken up for the use of religion.

And if they should never learn by experience, whether their own or others', and should never see that kind of thing except during the celebration of the sacraments, when it is offered and given, and it should be told them, on the weightiest authority, whose body and blood it is, they will believe nothing else than that the Lord appeared altogether in that form to the eyes of mortals, and that from his side, thus smitten, that liquid altogether flowed. But it is profitable for me to remember my own strength, and to admonish my brethren to remember theirs, lest human weakness advance beyond what is safe.

For how the angels do these things—or rather how God does these things through his angels, and how far he wills them to be done even through evil angels, whether by permitting, or commanding, or compelling, from the hidden seat of his most high dominion—I am able neither to penetrate with the keenness of my eyes, nor to lay bare by the confidence of reason, nor to comprehend by the advance of my mind, so as to speak thereon with such certainty concerning all that can be asked about these matters as if I were an angel or a prophet or an apostle. For 'the thoughts of mortals are timid, and our providences uncertain. For the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly habitation presses down the mind that muses on many things.'

'And we scarcely conjecture the things that are upon earth, and the things that are in our sight we find with labor. But who has searched out the things that are in the heavens?' Yet because it follows and says: 'And who shall know thy mind, unless thou give wisdom and send thy Holy Spirit from the highest?'—the things that are in the heavens we indeed do not search out, by what kind of thing both angelic bodies according to their proper dignity, and a certain corporeal action of theirs, are contained;

yet according to the Spirit of God sent to us from the highest, and his grace imparted to our minds, I dare to say with confidence that neither God the Father, nor his Word, nor his Spirit—which is one God—is in any way mutable through that which is, and is very selfsame; and for this reason much less is he visible. For there are certain things which, though mutable, are yet not visible, such as our thoughts and memories and wills, and every incorporeal creature; but nothing whatever is visible that is not mutable.

Wherefore the substance—or if it is better said, the essence—of God, wherein, according to our own measure, from however small a particle, we understand the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, since it is in no way mutable, can in no way be visible in and through itself. Accordingly all those things that were seen by the fathers, when God was presented to them at times suited to his dispensation, it is manifest were done through the creature.

And if it is hidden from us how he did them through the ministering angels, yet that they were done through angels we say not from our own sense, lest we should seem to anyone to be wise beyond what it behooves to be wise, but 'we are wise unto soberness, as God has distributed to us the measure of faith,' and 'we believe, for which cause also we speak.' For the authority of the divine Scriptures stands forth, from which our mind ought not to deviate, nor, forsaking the firm ground of the divine oracle, to be hurled headlong through the precipices of its own surmises, where neither the sense of the body governs, nor the clear reason of truth shines forth.

For it is most plainly written in the Epistle to the Hebrews, when the dispensation of the New Testament was being distinguished from the dispensation of the Old Testament according to the fitness of ages and times, that not only those visible things, but even the very discourse itself, was made through angels. For thus it says: 'To which of the angels did he ever say: Sit at my right hand, until I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet? Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for the sake of those who shall inherit salvation?' Hence it shows that all those things were done not only through angels but also for our sake, that is, for the people of God to whom the inheritance of eternal life is promised. As it is also written to the Corinthians:

'Now all these things happened to them in a figure; and they were written for our correction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.' Then, because at that time the discourse was made through angels, but now through the Son, consequently and plainly showing this, he says: 'Therefore we ought the more abundantly to give heed to the things which we have heard, lest perhaps we should let them slip. For if the word spoken through angels was firm, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?' And as if you were asking what salvation—that he might show he was now speaking of the New Testament, that is, of the discourse made not through angels but through the Lord:

'which, having taken its beginning to be declared by the Lord,' he says, 'was confirmed unto us by those who heard, God bearing witness with them by signs and wonders and various powers and by distributions of the Holy Spirit according to his own will.' 'But,' someone says, 'why then is it written: The Lord said to Moses, and not rather: The angel said to Moses?' Because, when a herald pronounces the words of a judge, it is not written in the records: 'That herald said,' but: 'That judge.' So too, when a holy prophet speaks, even if we say: 'The prophet said,' we mean nothing else to be understood than that the Lord said. And if we say: The Lord said, we do not withdraw the prophet, but we call to mind who spoke through him.

And indeed that Scripture often reveals that it is an angel of the Lord, at whose speaking it is repeatedly said: 'The Lord said,' as we have already shown. But on account of those who, when Scripture there names an angel, wish the Son of God himself in his own person to be understood—because for the announcing of the Father's will and his own he was by the prophet called an angel—for this reason I wished to give a more manifest testimony from this Epistle, where it is not said 'through an angel,' but 'through angels.' For Stephen too, in the Acts of the Apostles, narrates these things in that same manner in which they are also recorded in the ancient books: 'Men, brethren, and fathers, hear,' he says: 'The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia.'

But lest anyone should suppose that the God of glory then appeared, through that which He is in Himself, to the eyes of any mortal, Stephen in what follows says that it was an angel who appeared to Moses. 'Moses,' he says, 'fled at this word, and became a sojourner in the land of Midian, where he begot two sons. And when forty years were fulfilled there, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the desert of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush. And Moses, seeing it, marvelled at the sight. And as he drew near to consider it, the voice of the Lord came: I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. And Moses, trembling, dared not consider it. And the Lord said to him: Loose the sandal from thy feet,' and so forth.

Here surely he calls Him both an angel and the Lord, and the same the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, just as it is written in Genesis. Or will anyone perhaps say that the Lord appeared to Moses through an angel, but to Abraham through Himself? Yet let us not seek this from Stephen. Let us question the very book from which Stephen narrated these things. For is it the case that, because it is written, 'And the Lord God said to Abraham,' and a little later, 'And the Lord God was seen by Abraham,' therefore these things were not done through angels? Since in another place it likewise says, 'And God appeared to him by the oak of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent at noon,' and yet consequently it adds:

'And lifting up his eyes he looked, and behold, three men stood over him,' of whom we have already spoken. For how will those be able—who either will not rise up from the words to the understanding, or else easily hurl themselves down from the understanding into the words—how will they be able to explain that God was seen in three men, unless they confess, as the subsequent context also teaches, that these were angels? Or because it is not said, 'An angel spoke to him' or 'appeared,' will they on that account dare to say that in Moses' case indeed that vision and voice were effected through an angel, because it is so written, but in Abraham's case, because no mention of an angel is made, that God appeared and spoke through His own substance? What of the fact that even in Abraham's case an angel is not passed over in silence?

For it is thus read, when his son was required to be sacrificed: 'And it came to pass after these words that God tempted Abraham, and said to him: Abraham, Abraham. And he said: Behold, here am I. And He said to him: Take thy beloved son whom thou lovest, Isaac, and go into the high land, and offer him there for a holocaust upon one of the mountains which I shall tell thee.' Certainly here God, not an angel, is mentioned. Yet a little later the Scripture stands thus: 'And Abraham stretching out his hand took the sword to slay his son. And an angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said to him: Abraham, Abraham. And he said: Behold, here am I. And He said: Lay not thy hand upon the boy, neither do thou anything to him.' What is answered to these things?

Will they say that God commanded Isaac to be slain, and an angel forbade it; and further, that the father himself, against the command of the God who had ordered that he be slain, obeyed the angel so as to spare him? Ridiculous and to be cast away is this notion. But Scripture allows no place even for this so gross and abject an interpretation, straightway subjoining: 'For now I know that thou fearest God, and hast not spared thy beloved son for my sake.' What is 'for my sake,' if not for the sake of Him who had commanded that he be slain? Therefore the same God of Abraham is the angel, or rather it is God through the angel. Take what follows; certainly here now an angel is most plainly expressed. Note nevertheless what is woven in:

'And Abraham lifting up his eyes looked, and behold, a single ram was held in the thicket by its horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up for a holocaust instead of Isaac his son. And Abraham called the name of that place: the Lord hath seen, so that they say to this day, In the mountain the Lord was seen.' Just as a little before, that which God said through the angel:

'For now I know that thou fearest God'—not that God is to be understood as having then come to know, but as having brought it about that through God Abraham himself might come to know how great strength of heart he had for obeying God even to the sacrifice of his only son; by that manner of speech in which the cause is signified through the effect it produces—just as cold is called 'sluggish' because it makes men sluggish—so that He was said to have come to know, because He had made Abraham himself come to know, the firmness of whose faith could have lain hidden from himself had it not been proved by such a trial. So also here 'Abraham called the name of that place: the Lord hath seen,' that is, He who caused Himself to be seen. For immediately he goes on and says, 'So that they say to this day, In the mountain the Lord was seen.' Behold, the same angel is called the Lord.

Why, unless because it is the Lord through the angel? Now indeed in what follows the angel speaks altogether prophetically and openly discloses that God speaks through the angel. 'And the angel of the Lord,' he says, 'called Abraham a second time from heaven, saying: By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, because thou hast done this thing and hast not spared thy beloved son for my sake,' and so forth. These words, that he through whom the Lord speaks may say, 'Thus saith the Lord,' the prophets too are wont to have. Or does the Son of God say concerning the Father, 'Saith the Lord,' and is He Himself that angel of the Father? What then of those three men? Do they not see how they are pressed—those who were seen by Abraham, when it had been foretold, 'The Lord was seen by him'? Or, because they were called men, were they not angels?

Let them read Daniel saying, 'And behold the man Gabriel.' But why do we delay any longer to stop their mouths with another most evident and most weighty proof, where neither an angel in the singular nor men in the plural, but angels absolutely, are spoken of—through whom it is shown most plainly that not just any word was uttered, but the very Law itself was given, which surely no believer doubts that God gave to Moses for subjugating the people of Israel, yet gave through angels? Thus Stephen speaks: 'Stiff-necked,' he says, 'and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit, as also your fathers did. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?

And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom ye have now been the betrayers and murderers—ye who received the Law by the ordinances of angels, and have not kept it.' What is more evident than this? What more firmly established by so great an authority? By the ordinances of angels indeed was the Law given to that people, but through it the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ was being ordered and foretold; and He Himself, as it were the Word of God, was in a marvellous and ineffable manner in the angels, by whose ordinances the Law was being given. Whence He says in the Gospel, 'If ye believed Moses, ye would believe me also; for he wrote of me.'

Through angels therefore did the Lord then speak; through angels the Son of God, the Mediator of God and men, who was to come from the seed of Abraham, was ordering His own coming, that He might find those by whom He would be received, confessing themselves guilty whom the Law, unfulfilled, had made transgressors. Whence also the Apostle says to the Galatians: 'What then is the Law? It was set forth for the sake of transgression, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made, being ordained through angels in the hand of a mediator,'—that is, ordained through angels in His own hand. For He was born not by the condition [of nature] but by power. But that he means not any one of the angels as mediator, but the Lord Jesus Christ Himself insofar as He deigned to be made man, you have in another place:

'There is one God,' he says, 'and one Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.' Hence that Passover in the slaying of the lamb; hence all those things which are figured in the Law—the Law that was given by the ordinances of angels—concerning Christ who was to come in the flesh, and to suffer, but also to rise again. In which angels were assuredly both the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; and sometimes the Father, sometimes the Son, sometimes the Holy Spirit, sometimes without any distinction of person, God was figured through them—appearing indeed in visible and sensible forms, yet through His own creature, not through His own substance, for the seeing of which hearts are cleansed by means of all these things that are seen with the eyes and heard with the ears.

But now enough, as I judge, according to our capacity, has been disputed and demonstrated of what in this book we had undertaken to show; and it has been established both by the probability of reason, as far as a man, or rather as far as I, was able, and by the firmness of authority, as far as the divine oracles of the Holy Scriptures lay open—namely, that to our ancient fathers, before the incarnation of the Saviour, when God was said to appear, those voices and bodily appearances were effected through angels: whether by the angels themselves speaking or doing something in the person of God, as we have shown the prophets also are wont to do, or by their assuming from the creature that which they themselves were not, in order that God might be figuratively displayed to men—which kind of significations Scripture teaches by many examples that not even the prophets omitted.

It remains therefore that we now consider how, when the Lord had been born of a virgin, and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form like a dove, and fiery tongues were seen with a sound made from heaven on the day of Pentecost after the Lord's ascension—it was not the very Word of God through the substance by which He is equal and co-eternal to the Father, nor the Spirit of the Father and the Son through the substance by which He too is co-equal and co-eternal to both, but assuredly a creature which could be formed and made to exist in those modes, that appeared to bodily and mortal senses; and what difference there is between those [Old Testament] manifestations and these proper manifestations of the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit, although they too were effected through a visible creature—a matter which we shall more conveniently begin from another volume.