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11. For since the divine power administers the whole spiritual and
corporeal creature, the waters of the sea are summoned and poured out
upon the face of the earth on certain days of every year. But when
this was done at the prayer of the holy Elijah; because so continued
and long a course of fair weather had gone before, that men were
famished; and because at that very hour, in which the servant of God
prayed, the air itself had not, by any moist aspect, put forth signs
of the coming rain; the divine power was apparent in the great and
rapid showers that followed, and by which that miracle was granted and
dispensed. In like manner, God works ordinarily through thunders and
lightnings: but because these were wrought in an unusual manner on
Mount Sinai, and those sounds were not uttered with a confused
noise, but so that it appeared by most sure proofs that certain
intimations were given by them, they were miracles. Who draws up the
sap through the root of the vine to the bunch of grapes, and makes the
wine, except God; who, while man plants and waters, Himself giveth
the increase? But when, at the command of the Lord, the water was
turned into wine with an extraordinary quickness, the divine power was
made manifest, by the confession even of the foolish. Who ordinarily
clothes the trees with leaves and flowers except God? Yet, when the
rod of Aaron the priest blossomed, the Godhead in some way conversed
with doubting humanity. Again, the earthy matter certainly serves in
common to the production and formation both of all kinds of wood and of
the flesh of all animals: and who makes these things, but He who
said, Let the earth bring them forth; and who governs and guides by
the same word of His, those things which He has created? Yet, when
He changed the same matter out of the rod of Moses into the flesh of a
serpent, immediately and quickly, that change, which was unusual,
although of a thing which was changeable, was a miracle. But who is
it that gives life to every living thing at its birth, unless He who
gave life to that serpent also for the moment, as there was need.
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