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And now, to begin to go over those works of the one true God, on
account of which these have made to themselves many and false gods,
whilst they attempt to give an honorable interpretation to their many
most abominable and most infamous mysteries, We worship that God who
has appointed to the natures created by Him both the beginnings and the
end of their existing and moving; who holds, knows, and disposes the
causes of things; who hath created the virtue of seeds; who hath given
to what creatures He would a rational soul, which is called mind; who
hath bestowed the faculty and use of speech; who hath imparted the gift
of foretelling future things to whatever spirits it seemed to Him
good; who also Himself predicts future things, through whom He
pleases, and through whom He will, removes diseases who, when the
human race is to be corrected and chastised by wars, regulates also the
beginnings, progress, and ends of these wars who hath created and
governs the most vehement and most violent fire of this world, in due
relation and proportion to the other elements of immense nature; who is
the governor of all the waters; who hath made the sun brightest of all
material lights, and hath given him suitable power and motion; who
hath not withdrawn, even from the inhabitants of the nether world,
His dominion and power; who hath appointed to mortal natures their
suitable seed and nourishment, dry or liquid; who establishes and
makes fruitful the earth; who bountifully bestows its fruits on animals
and on men; who knows and ordains, not only principal causes, but
also subsequent causes who hath determined for the moon her motion; who
affords ways in heaven and on earth for passage from one place to
another; who hath granted also to human minds, which He hath
created, the knowledge of the various arts for the help of life and
nature; who hath appointed the union of male and female for the
propagation of offspring; who hath favored the societies of men with
the gift of terrestrial fire for the simplest and most familiar
purposes, to burn on the hearth and to give light. These are, then,
the things which that most acute and most learned man Varro has labored
to distribute among the select gods, by I know not what physical
interpretation, which he has got from other sources, and also
conjectured for himself. But these things the one true God makes and
does, but as the same God, that is, as He who is wholly
everywhere, included in no space, bound by no chains, mutable in no
part of His being, filling heaven and earth with omnipresent power,
not with a needy nature. Therefore lie governs all things in such a
manner as to allow them to perform and exercise their own proper
movements. For although they can be nothing without Him, they are
not what He is. He does also many things through angels; but only
from Himself does He beatify angels. So also, though He send
angels to men for certain purposes, He does not for all that beatify
men by the good inherent in the angels, but by Himself, as He does
the angels themselves.
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