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22. although the name of prophets, too, is not altogether foreign
to their writings. But it makes the greatest possible difference,
whether things future are conjectured by experience of things past (as
physicians also have committed many things to writing in the way of
foresight, which they themselves have noted by experience; or as again
husbandmen, or sailors, too, foretell many things; for if such
predictions are made a long while before, they are thought to be
divinations), or whether such things have already started on their
road to come to us, and being seen coming far off, are announced in
proportion to the acuteness of the sense of those who see them, by
doing which the aerial powers are thought to divine (just as if a
person from the top of a mountain were to see far off some one coming,
and were to announce it beforehand to those who dwelt close by in the
plain); or whether they are either fore-announced to certain men, or
are heard by them and again transmitted to other men, by means of holy
angels, to whom God shows those things by His Word and His
Wisdom, wherein both things future and things past consist: or
whether the minds of certain men themselves are so far borne upwards by
the Holy Spirit, as to behold, not through the angels, but of
themselves, the immoveable causes of things future, in that very
highest pinnacle of the universe itself.
[And I say, behold,] for the aerial powers, too, hear these
things, either by message through angels, or through men; and hear
only so much as He judges to be fitting, to whom all things are
subject. Many things, too, are foretold by a kind of instinct and
inward impulse of such as know them not: as Caiaphas did not know what
he said, but being the high priest, he prophesied.
23. Therefore, neither concerning the successions of ages, nor
concerning the resurrection of the dead, ought we to consult those
philosophers, who have understood as much as they could the eternity of
the Creator, in whom "we live, and move, and have our being."
Since, knowing God through those things which are made, they have
not glorified Him as God, neither were thankful but professing
themselves wise, they became fools. And whereas they were not fit to
fix the eye of the mind so firmly upon the eternity of the spiritual and
unchangeable nature, as to be able to see, in the wisdom itself of the
Creator and Governor of the universe, those revolutions of the ages,
which in that wisdom were already and were always, but here were about
to be so that as yet they were not; or, again, to see therein those
changes for the better, not of the souls only, but also of the bodies
of men, even to the perfection of their proper measure; whereas then,
I say, they were in no way fit to see these things therein, they were
not even judged worthy of receiving any announcement of them by the holy
angels; whether externally through the senses of the body, or by
interior revelations exhibited in the spirit; as these things actually
were manifested to our fathers, who were gifted with true piety, and
who by foretelling them, obtaining credence either by present signs,
or by events close at hand, which turned out as they had foretold,
earned authority to be believed respecting things remotely future, even
to the end of the world. But the proud and deceitful powers of the
air, even if they are found to have said through their soothsayers some
things of the fellowship and citizenship of the saints, and of the true
Mediator, which they heard from the holy prophets or the angels, did
so with the purpose of seducing even the faithful ones of God, if they
could, by these alien truths, to revolt to their own proper
falsehoods. But God did this by those who knew not what they said,
in order that the truth might sound abroad from all sides, to aid the
faithful, to be a witness against the ungodly.
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