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For whereas there is one form which is given from without to every
bodily substance, such as the form which is constructed by potters and
smiths, and that class of artists who paint and fashion forms like the
body of animals, but another and internal form which is not itself
constructed, but, as the efficient cause, produces not only the
natural bodily forms, but even the life itself of the living
creatures, and which proceeds from the secret and hidden choice of an
intelligent and living nature, let that first-mentioned form be
attributed to every artificer, but this latter to one only, God, the
Creator and Originator who made the world itself and the angels,
without the help of world or angels. For the same divine and, so to
speak, creative energy, which cannot be made, but makes, and which
gave to the earth and sky their roundness, this same divine,
effective, and creative energy gave their roundness to the eye and to
the apple; and the other natural objects which we anywhere see,
received also their form, not from without, but from the secret and
profound might of the Creator, who said, "Do not I fill heaven and
earth? and whose wisdom it is that "reacheth from one end to another
mightily; and sweetly doth she order all things." Wherefore I know
not what kind of aid the angels, themselves created first, afforded to
the Creator in making other things. I cannot ascribe to them what
perhaps they cannot do, neither ought I to deny them such faculty as
they have. But, by their leave, I attribute the creating and
originating work which gave being to all natures to God, to whom they
themselves thankfully ascribe their existence. We do not call
gardeners the creators of their fruits, for we read, "Neither is he
that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth
the increase." Nay, not even the earth itself do we call a creator,
though she seems to be the prolific mother of all things which she aids
in germinating and bursting forth from the seed, and which she keeps
rooted in her own breast; for we likewise read, "God giveth it a
body, as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed his own body. " We
ought not even to call a woman the creatress of her own offspring; for
He rather is its creator who said to His servant, "Before I formed
thee in the womb, I knew thee." And although the various mental
emotions of a pregnant woman do produce in the fruit of her womb similar
qualities, as Jacob with his peeled wands caused piebald sheep to be
produced, yet the mother as little creates her offspring as she created
herself. Whatever bodily or seminal causes, then, may be used for
the production of things, either by the cooperation of angels, men,
or the lower animals, or by sexual generation; and whatever power the
desires and mental emotions of the mother have to produce in the tender
and plastic foetus corresponding lineaments and colors; yet the natures
themselves, which are thus variously affected, are the production of
none but the most high God. It is His occult power which pervades
all things, and is present in all without being contaminated, which
gives being to all that is, and modifies and limits its existence; so
that without Him it would not be thus, or thus, nor would have any
being at all. If, then, in regard to that outward form which the
workman's hand imposes on his work, we do not say that Rome and
Alexandria were built by masons and architects, but by the kings by
whose will, plan, and resources they were built, so that the one has
Romulus, the other Alexander, for its founder; with how much
greater reason ought we to say that God alone is the Author of all
natures, since He neither uses for His work any material which was
not made by Him, nor any workmen who were not also made by Him, and
since, if He were, so to speak, to withdraw from created things His
creative power, they would straightway relapse into the nothingness in
which they were before they were created? "Before," I mean, in
respect of eternity, not of time. For what other creator could there
be of time, than He who created those things whose movements make
time?
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