On the Trinity 8

This God, then, leaving aside the fables and fabrications of the heretics, the church knows and worships. To him all nature, invisible as well as visible, always bears witness; him the angels adore, the stars marvel at, the seas bless, the lands revere, and all the regions of the underworld look up to; him every human mind perceives, even if it does not express him. At his command all things are set in motion: springs gush, rivers glide, waves rise, all things bring forth their young, the winds are made to blow, rains come, the seas are stirred, all things everywhere pour out their fruitfulness. He established for the first-formed a special world of eternal life, a paradise in the East; he planted the tree of life, and likewise set another tree, of the knowledge of good and evil; he gave a command; he fixed a sentence against transgression. He preserved Noah, most righteous, from the dangers of the flood because of his innocence and faith; he translated Enoch; he chose Abraham into the fellowship of friendship; he protected Isaac; he increased Jacob; he set Moses as leader over the people; he rescued the groaning children of Israel from the yoke of slavery; he wrote the Law; he led the offspring of the fathers into the land of promise; he instructed the prophets by the Spirit; and through all these he promised his Son, Christ; and when he had pledged that he would give him, he sent him. Through him he willed to come to our knowledge, and he poured out upon us the wide bosom of his mercy, conferring the rich Spirit on the needy and the outcast. And because he is, of his own accord, both generous and good, lest this whole world, turned away, should dry up without the rivers of his grace, he willed that apostles, the instructors of our race, should be sent into the whole world through his Son, so that the human creation might recognize its Establisher, and, if it chose to follow, might have one whom, instead of “God,” it could now call Father in its prayers.

His providence has run, and runs, not only through individual men, but also through cities and states themselves, whose end was foretold by the voices of the prophets; indeed, even through the whole world itself, whose end, plagues, diminishings, and punishments he has described because of its unbelief. And lest anyone should think that this untiring providence of God does not reach even to the smallest things: “Of two sparrows,” says the Lord, “one will not fall without the Father's will; and even the hairs of your head are all numbered.” His care and providence did not allow the clothes of the Israelites to wear out, nor even the cheapest shoes on their feet to be worn through, nor even the trousers of the captive youths to be burned. And not without reason: for if he, containing all things, has embraced all things (and all things and the whole consist of individual parts), then his care must consequently reach to each single thing, since his providence reaches to the whole, whatever it is.

Hence it is that he sits above the Cherubim, that is, he presides over the variety of his works, the living creatures set beneath his throne holding rule above the rest, with a crystal covering everything above, that is, with the heaven overspreading all things. This, at God's command, had been made solid into a firmament from the flowing matter of the waters, so that as strong ice, dividing the middle of the waters that once covered the earth, it might bear on a kind of back the weight of the upper water, its forces strengthened by the frost. For wheels also lie beneath, that is, the seasons, by which all the members of the world are always turning; such feet were added so that these things do not stand forever but pass away. And they are studded with eyes over all their limbs: for the works of God must be contemplated with a watchful gaze. In their bosom there is fire in the midst of coals: either because this world hastens to the fiery day of judgment; or because all the works of God are fiery, not dark, but full of vigor; or also lest, since they had arisen from earthly beginnings, they should grow sluggish by nature from the stiffness of their origin, the warm nature of an inner spirit was added to all, which, joined with cold bodies, might show an equal balance in all for the enjoyment of life. This, then, according to David, is the chariot of God. “For the chariot of God,” he says, “is multiplied ten thousandfold”, that is, innumerable, infinite, immeasurable. For under the yoke of the natural law given to all, some things are drawn back as if reined in by bridles, others urged on as if spurred with loosened reins. For this world is God's chariot, which the angels themselves and the stars draw together with all things; and we see them, though their courses vary, yet bound by fixed laws, drawing toward the goals of the time appointed for them: so that we too, marveling at both the Artisan and his works, may rightly be glad now to cry out with the Apostle: “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out!” and the rest.