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Let us take, then, the case of a wise man, such that his rational
soul is already partaker of the unchangeable and eternal truth, so that
he consults it about all his actions, nor does anything at all, which
he does not by it know ought to be done, in order that by being subject
to it and obeying it he may do rightly. Suppose now that this man,
upon counsel with the highest reason of the divine righteousness, which
he hears with the ear of his heart in secret, and by its bidding,
should weary his body by toil in some office of mercy, and should
contract an illness; and upon consulting the physicians, were to be
told by one that the cause of the disease was overmuch dryness of the
body, but by another that it was overmuch moisture; one of the two no
doubt would allege the true cause and the other would err, but both
would pronounce concerning proximate causes only, that is, corporeal
ones. But if the cause of that dryness were to be inquired into, and
found to be the self-imposed toil, then we should have come to a yet
higher cause, which proceeds from the soul so as to affect the body
which the soul governs. Yet neither would this be the first cause,
for that doubtless was a higher cause still, and lay in the
unchangeable wisdom itself, by serving which in love, and by obeying
its ineffable commands, the soul of the wise man had undertaken that
self-imposed toil; and so nothing else but the will of God would be
found most truly to be the first cause of that illness. But suppose
now in that office of pious toil this wise man had employed the help of
others to co-operate in the good work, who did not serve God with the
same will as himself, but either desired to attain the reward of their
own carnal desires, or shunned merely carnal unpleasantnesses;
suppose, too, he had employed beasts of burden, if the completion of
the work required such a provision, which beasts of burden would be
certainly irrational animals, and would not therefore move their limbs
under their burdens because they at all thought of that good work, but
from the natural appetite of their own liking, and for the avoiding of
annoyance; suppose, lastly, he had employed bodily things themselves
that lack all sense, but were necessary for that work, as e.g.
corn, and wine, and oils, clothes, or money, or a book, or
anything of the kind; certainly, in all these bodily things thus
employed in this work, whether animate or inanimate, whatever took
place of movement, of wear and tear, of reparation, of destruction,
of renewal or of change in one way or another, as places and times
affected them; pray, could there be, I say, any other cause of all
these visible and changeable facts, except the invisible and
unchangeable will of God, using all these, both bad and irrational
souls, and lastly bodies, whether such as were inspired and animated
by those souls, or such as lacked all sense, by means of that upright
soul as the seat of His wisdom, since primarily that good and holy
soul itself employed them, which His wisdom had subjected to itself in
a pious and religious obedience?
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