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.