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