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13. Yet it is not on this account to be thought that the matter of
visible things is subservient to the bidding of those wicked angels;
but rather to that of God, by whom this power is given, just so far
as He, who is unchangeable, determines in His lofty and spiritual
abode to give it. For water and fire and earth are subservient even to
wicked men, who are condemned to the mines, in order that they may do
therewith what they will, but only so far as is permitted. Nor, in
truth, are those evil angels to be called creators, because by their
means the magicians, withstanding the servant of God, made frogs and
serpents; for it was not they who created them. But, in truth, some
hidden seeds of all things that are born corporeally and visibly, are
concealed in the corporeal elements of this world. For those seeds
that are visible now to our eyes from fruits and living things, are
quite distinct from the hidden seeds of those former seeds; from
which, at the bidding of the Creator, the water produced the first
swimming creatures and fowl, and the earth the first buds after their
kind, and the first living creatures after their kind. For neither at
that time were those seeds so drawn forth into products of their several
kinds, as that the power of production was exhausted in those
products; but oftentimes, suitable combinations of circumstances are
wanting, whereby they may be enabled to burst forth and complete their
species. For, consider, the very least shoot is a seed; for, if
fitly consigned to the earth, it produces a tree. But of this shoot
there is a yet more subtle seed in some grain of the same species, and
this is visible even to us. But of this grain also there is further
still a seed, which, although we are unable to see it with our eyes,
yet we can conjecture its existence from our reason; because, except
there were some such power in those elements, there would not so
frequently be produced from the earth things which had not been sown
there; nor yet so many animals, without any previous commixture of
male and female; whether on the land, or in the water, which yet
grow, and by commingling bring forth others, while themselves sprang
up without any union of parents. And certainly bees do not conceive
the seeds of their young by commixture, but gather them as they lie
scattered over the earth with their mouth. For the Creator of these
invisible seeds is the Creator of all things Himself; since whatever
comes forth to our sight by being born, receives the first beginnings
of its course from hidden seeds, and takes the successive increments of
its proper size and its distinctive forms from these as it were original
rules. As therefore we do not call parents the creators of men, nor
farmers the creators of corn, although it is by the outward application
of their actions that the power of God operates within for the creating
these things; so it is not right to think not only the bad but even the
good angels to be creators, if, through the subtilty of their
perception and body, they know the seeds of things which to us are more
hidden, and scatter them secretly through fit temperings of the
elements, and so furnish opportunities of producing things, and of
accelerating their increase. But neither do the good angels do these
things, except as far as God commands, nor do the evil ones do them
wrongfully, except as far as He righteously permits. For the
malignity of the wicked one makes his own will wrongful; but the power
to do so, he receives rightfully, whether for his own punishment,
or, in the case of others, for the punishment of the wicked, or for
the praise of the good.
14. Accordingly, the Apostle Paul, distinguishing God's
creating and forming within, from the operations of the creature which
are applied from without, and drawing a similitude from agriculture,
says, "I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase."
As, therefore, in the case of spiritual life itself, no one except
God can work righteousness in our minds, yet men also are able to
preach the gospel as an outward means, not only the good in sincerity,
but also the evil in pretence; so in the creation of visible things it
is God that works from within; but the exterior operations, whether
of good or bad, of angels or men, or even of any kind of animal,
according to His own absolute power, and to the distribution of
faculties, and the several appetites for things pleasant, which He
Himself has imparted, are applied by Him to that nature of things
wherein He creates all things, in like manner as agriculture is to the
soil. Wherefore I can no more call the bad angels, evoked by magic
arts, the creators of the frogs and serpents, than I can say that bad
men were creators of the corn crop, which I see to have sprung up
through their labor.
15. Just as Jacob, again, was not the creator of the colors in
the flocks, because he placed the various colored rods for the several
mothers, as they drank, to look at in conceiving. Yet neither were
the cattle themselves creators of the variety of their own offspring,
because the variegated image, impressed through their eyes by the sight
of the varied rods, clave to their soul, but could affect the body
that was animated by the spirit thus affected only through sympathy with
this commingling, so far as to stain with color the tender beginnings
of their offspring. For that they are so affected from themselves,
whether the soul from the body, or the body from the soul, arises in
truth from suitable reasons, which immutably exist in that highest
wisdom of God Himself, which no extent of place contains; and
which, while it is itself unchangeable, yet quits not one even of
those things which are changeable, because there is not one of them
that is not created by itself. For it was the unchangeable and
invisible reason of the wisdom of God, by which all things are
created, which caused not rods, but cattle, to be born from cattle;
but that the color of the cattle conceived should be in any degree
influenced by the variety of the rods, came to pass through the soul of
the pregnant cattle being affected through their eyes from without, and
so according to its own measure drawing inwardly within itself the rule
of formation, which it received from the innermost power of its own
Creator. How great, however, may be the power of the soul in
affecting and changing corporeal substance (although certainly it
cannot be called the creator of the body, because every cause of
changeable and sensible substance, and all its measure and number and
weight, by which are brought to pass both its being at all and its
being of such and such a nature, arise from the intelligible and
unchangeable life, which is above all things, and which reaches even
to the most distant and earthly things), is a very copious subject,
and one not now necessary. But I thought the act of Jacob about the
cattle should be noticed, for this reason, viz. in order that it
might be perceived that, if the man who thus placed those rods cannot
be called the creator of the colors in the lambs and kids; nor yet even
the souls themselves of the mothers, which colored the seeds conceived
in the flesh by the image of variegated color, conceived through the
eyes of the body, so far as nature permitted it; much less can it be
said that the creators of the frogs and serpents were the bad angel,
through whom the magicians of Pharaoh then made them.
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