On First Principles

I know that a great many of the brethren, moved by the desire for knowledge of the Scriptures, have asked various learned men skilled in Greek letters to make Origen a Roman and to present him to Latin ears. Among them our brother and colleague, when asked by Bishop Damasus, translated two homilies on the Song of Songs from Greek into Latin, and he prefaced that work so elegantly and splendidly as to stir in anyone the desire to read Origen and to search him out most eagerly. He said that the saying “The king has brought me into his chamber” fits Origen's soul, asserting that “while in his other books he surpasses everyone, in the Song of Songs he has surpassed even himself.” In that same preface he promises that he will give to Roman ears both those books on the Song of Songs and a great many other works of Origen. But he, as I see, taking pleasure in a style of his own, pursues something of greater glory, to be “the father of the word” rather than a translator. We, then, follow a task that he began and approved, but we cannot adorn the words of so great a man with equal powers of eloquence. Hence I fear that by my fault it may come about that the man whom he rightly showed, by his knowledge and wisdom, to be “the second teacher of the church after the apostles” may appear, through the poverty of our language, far inferior to himself.

I often considered this and kept silent, and did not assent to the brethren who frequently asked me for this work. But your force, most faithful brother Macarius, is so great that not even lack of skill can withstand it. Therefore, so as not to endure you any longer as so stern an exactor, I yielded even against my intention, but on this condition and in this manner: that as far as possible I follow in translating the rule of my predecessors, and especially of the man I mentioned above. When he had translated into Latin more than seventy of Origen's treatises, which he called homilies, and some of his tomes on the Apostle as well, in which a number of stumbling-blocks are found in the Greek, he so polished and purged everything in translating that the Latin reader finds nothing in them that disagrees with our faith. Him, then, we too follow, if not with his powers of eloquence, yet with his rules of method as far as we can, taking care, that is, not to bring forward whatever is found in Origen's books that is inconsistent with itself and contradictory.

The cause of this inconsistency I have set out for you more fully in the Apology that Pamphilus wrote for the books of Origen, to which I added a very short booklet of my own, in which I showed, by proofs that are, I think, clear, that his books have been corrupted in a great many places by heretics and ill-wishers, and especially these books which you now require me to translate, namely the Περὶ ἀρχῶν, which may be rendered either “On Principles” or “On Principalities”; and they are in fact, apart from this, very obscure and very difficult. For in them he discusses matters in which the philosophers, though they spent their whole lives on them, were able to find nothing. But our author did what he could to turn to piety the faith in the Creator and the account of created things which they had dragged into impiety. Wherever, then, we have found in his books anything contrary to what he had elsewhere piously defined concerning the Trinity, we have either passed it over as corrupted and foreign to him, or rendered it according to the rule which we frequently find affirmed by him. If, indeed, speaking as to people already expert and knowledgeable, and wishing to pass over a point briefly, he has expressed something rather obscurely, we, to make the passage clearer, have added what we had read more plainly on the same subject in his other books, aiming at explanation; yet we have said nothing of our own, but have given back to him his own words, even though they were said in other places.

I have given this warning in the preface for this reason, so that slanderers may not perhaps think they have once again found material for accusation. But let perverse and contentious people look to what they are doing. For our part, this great labour has been undertaken, if only God helps us in answer to your prayers, not to shut the mouths of slanderers, which cannot be done (though perhaps God will do even this), but to provide material for those who wish to advance in the knowledge of things. This indeed I charge and adjure everyone who will copy or read these books, in the sight of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, by the faith in the kingdom to come, by the mystery of the resurrection from the dead, by the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels (so may he not possess as his eternal inheritance that place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and where their fire shall not be quenched and their worm shall not die): that he add nothing to the writing, take nothing away, insert nothing, change nothing, but compare it with the copies from which he has written, correct it to the letter and punctuate it, and not keep an uncorrected or unpunctuated copy, lest the difficulty of the meaning, if the copy is not punctuated, cause readers greater obscurity.

All who believe and are convinced that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, and who know that Christ is the truth, according to his own saying, “I am the truth,” receive the knowledge that calls people to live well and happily from no other source than the very words and teaching of Christ. And by the words of Christ we mean not only those which he taught when he had become man and was placed in the flesh; for even before that, Christ, the Word of God, was in Moses and the prophets. For without the Word of God how could they have prophesied of Christ? To prove this it would not be difficult to show from the divine Scriptures how Moses and the prophets, filled with the Spirit of Christ, both spoke and did all that they did, were it not our aim to compress the present work into the greatest brevity we can. I therefore think it sufficient to use this one testimony of Paul, from the Epistle that he writes to the Hebrews, in which he says: “By faith Moses, when he had grown great, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be afflicted with the people of God than to have the temporary pleasure of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of the Egyptians.” And that after his ascension into heaven he spoke in his apostles, Paul shows in this way: “Or do you seek a proof of him who speaks in me, Christ?”

Since, then, many of those who profess to believe in Christ disagree not only in small and very minor matters but also in great and very great ones, that is, about God, or the Lord Jesus Christ, or the Holy Spirit, and not only about these but also about other created beings, that is, about the dominions and the holy powers, it seems necessary first to lay down a definite line and a clear rule about each of these, and only then to inquire into the rest. For just as, when many among Greeks and barbarians promised the truth, we ceased to seek it among all who claimed it with false opinions, once we had believed that Christ is the Son of God and had become persuaded that we must learn it from him, so, since there are many who think they hold the things of Christ, and some of them think differently from their predecessors, while the church's preaching, handed down from the apostles through the order of succession and remaining in the churches to the present day, is preserved, that alone is to be believed as truth which in no way departs from the church's and the apostles' tradition.

It should be known, however, that the holy apostles, when preaching the faith of Christ, delivered with the utmost clarity to everyone, even to those who seemed rather slow in the investigation of divine knowledge, certain things which they believed to be necessary, leaving the grounds of their statements to be investigated by those who should merit the excellent gifts of the Spirit, and especially by those who should receive through the Holy Spirit himself the grace of speech, of wisdom and of knowledge. About other things they said that they are, but were silent as to how or whence they are, certainly so that the more studious among their successors, who should be lovers of wisdom, might have an exercise in which to show the fruit of their ability: those, that is, who should prepare themselves to be worthy and capable of receiving wisdom.

The particular points clearly handed down through the apostolic preaching are these. First, that there is one God, who created and arranged all things, and who, when nothing existed, made all things to be: God from the first creation and foundation of the world, the God of all the righteous, of Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the twelve patriarchs, Moses and the prophets; and that this God in the last days, as he had promised beforehand through his prophets, sent our Lord Jesus Christ, first to call Israel, and secondly also the Gentiles after the unfaithfulness of the people of Israel. This God, just and good, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, himself gave the law and the prophets and the Gospels; he is also the God of the apostles and of both the Old and the New Testament. Then, that Jesus Christ himself, who came, was born of the Father before all creation. Having served the Father in the founding of all things (for through him all things were made), in the last times he emptied himself and became man; he was made flesh although he was God, and when he was made man he remained what he was, God. He took a body like our body, differing only in that it was born of the Virgin and the Holy Spirit. And since this Jesus Christ was born and suffered in truth and not in appearance, he truly died this common death; for he truly rose from the dead, and after the resurrection, having spent time with his disciples, he was taken up. Next, they handed down that the Holy Spirit is associated in honour and dignity with the Father and the Son. In his case it is not yet clearly determined whether he is to be regarded as begotten or unbegotten, or whether he too is to be considered a Son of God or not. But these things are to be inquired into from holy Scripture as far as our powers allow, and investigated with careful search. That this Spirit inspired each of the saints, whether prophets or apostles, and that there was not one Spirit in those of old and another in those who were inspired at the coming of Christ, is most clearly preached in the churches.

Next, that the soul, having its own substance and life, will be dealt with according to its merits when it departs from this world: either it will obtain the inheritance of eternal life and blessedness, if its deeds have earned this for it, or it will be delivered over to eternal fire and punishments, if the guilt of its crimes has turned it that way; and also that there will be a time of the resurrection of the dead, when this body which is now “sown in corruption will rise in incorruption,” and what “is sown in dishonour will rise in glory.” This too is defined in the church's preaching: that every rational soul has free choice and will; that it also has a struggle against the devil and his angels and the opposing powers, because they strive to burden it with sins, while we, if we live rightly and prudently, try to free ourselves from such a burden. It follows that we are to understand that we are not subject to necessity, so as to be compelled in every way, even against our will, to do either evil or good. For if we are masters of our own choice, some powers may perhaps assail us toward sin and others help us toward salvation; yet we are not compelled by necessity to act either rightly or wrongly. That is what those think who say that the course and movements of the stars are the cause of human deeds, not only of those which happen outside the freedom of choice but also of those which are placed in our power. But concerning the soul, whether it is derived by transmission from the seed, so that its principle or substance is held to be implanted in the bodily seeds themselves, or whether it has some other beginning, and whether this beginning is begotten or not begotten, or at least whether it is put into the body from outside or not: this is not distinguished with sufficiently clear preaching.

Concerning the devil and his angels and the opposing powers, the church's preaching has taught that these exist; but what they are, or how they exist, it has not set out clearly enough. Among very many, however, the opinion is held that the devil was an angel and, having become an apostate, persuaded as many of the angels as he could to fall away with him, and these even now are called his angels.

This too is in the church's preaching: that this world was made and began at a certain time, and is to be dissolved because of its own corruption. But what existed before this world, or what will exist after it, has not yet become clearly known to many. For no clear statement about these things is set out in the church's preaching.

Then, finally, that the Scriptures were written through the Spirit of God and have not only the meaning that is obvious but also another, hidden from most. For the things that are written are the forms of certain mysteries and the images of divine things. On this the whole Church is of one mind: that the whole law is indeed spiritual, but that what the law breathes is not known to all, but only to those to whom the grace of the Holy Spirit is given in the word of wisdom and knowledge. The term ἀσώματος, that is, “incorporeal,” is unusual and unknown not only among many other writers but also in our Scriptures. If anyone should wish to bring against us from that little book called the Teaching of Peter the passage where the Saviour seems to say to his disciples, “I am not an incorporeal demon,” the first answer to him is that that book is not counted among the church's books, and it must be shown that the writing is neither Peter's nor that of anyone else who was inspired by the Spirit of God. And even if this were conceded, the sense indicated there by the word ἀσώματος is not the same as that which Greek and Gentile authors intend when the philosophers discuss incorporeal nature. For in that little book he said “incorporeal demon” because the form or outline of a demonic body, whatever it is, is not like this grosser and visible body of ours; but what he said must be understood according to the meaning of the one who composed that writing, namely, that he did not have such a body as demons have, which is naturally fine and thin like air, and for this reason is either thought by many or called incorporeal, but that he had a solid and palpable body. In ordinary human usage everything that is not of this kind is called incorporeal by the simpler or less learned, as if someone were to call this air that we enjoy incorporeal, since it is not a body of a kind that can be grasped and held and resists pressure.

We shall, however, inquire whether the thing itself which the Greek philosophers call ἀσώματον, that is, incorporeal, is found in the holy Scriptures under another name. It must also be inquired how God himself is to be understood: whether as corporeal and fashioned in some shape, or as of another nature than bodies, a point which is certainly not clearly indicated in our preaching. The same questions are also to be asked about Christ and the Holy Spirit, and they must likewise be asked about every soul and every rational being.

This too is in the church's preaching: that there are certain angels of God and good powers who serve him in accomplishing the salvation of human beings; but when they were created, or of what kind they are, or how they exist, is not stated clearly enough. Concerning the sun, moon and stars, whether they are living beings or without soul, nothing is clearly handed down. Everyone, therefore, who desires to construct out of the reasoning of all these things a connected series and a body must use points of this kind as elements and foundations, according to the command that says, “Enlighten yourselves with the light of knowledge,” so that by clear and necessary statements he may search out the truth about each particular, and form, as we have said, one body by examples and affirmations, whether those which he finds in the holy Scriptures or those which he discovers by tracing their consequences and by right reasoning.

I know that some will try to say, even on the basis of our Scriptures, that God is a body, because they find it written in Moses, “Our God is a consuming fire,” and in the Gospel according to John, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” Fire and spirit, in their view, will be thought to be nothing other than body. I want to ask them what they say about the statement that God is light, as John says in his Epistle: “God is light, and in him there is no darkness.” This is indeed the light that illuminates the whole understanding of those who can receive the truth, as is said in the thirty-fifth Psalm: “In your light we shall see light.” For what else is to be called the light of God, in which one sees light, but the power of God, by which a person, once illuminated, either sees through to the truth of all things or knows God himself, who is called the truth? Such, then, is the meaning of “In your light we shall see light”: that is, in your Word and Wisdom, who is your Son, in him we shall see you, the Father. Because he is called light, will he be thought similar to the light of this sun? And how could anyone gain even the slightest understanding, so as to derive the cause of knowledge from this bodily light and find an understanding of the truth?

If, then, they accept this assertion of ours, which reason itself has demonstrated about the nature of light, and admit that God cannot be understood to be a body on the understanding of light, a similar account will be given of the consuming fire. For what will God consume in being fire? Will he be thought to consume bodily matter, such as wood or hay or stubble? And what is said in this that is worthy of the praises of God, if God is a fire consuming materials of this kind? Let us rather consider that God does indeed consume and destroy; but he consumes the evil thoughts of minds, consumes shameful deeds, consumes the desires of sin, when he enters the minds of believers; and those souls which are made capable of his Word and Wisdom, dwelling in them together with his Son according to the saying, “I and the Father will come and make our abode with him,” he makes a pure temple for himself and one worthy of him, when all their vices and passions have been consumed. To those who think, because of the saying “God is spirit,” that God is a body, I think the answer should be this. It is the custom of holy Scripture, when it wishes to designate something contrary to this grosser and more solid body, to call it spirit, as when it says, “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.” There, without doubt, by “the letter” it means bodily things, and by “the spirit” intellectual things, which we also call spiritual. The Apostle also says: “Even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but when anyone turns to the Lord, the veil will be taken away; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” For until someone turns to spiritual understanding, a veil lies over his heart; and by this veil, that is, by a grosser understanding, Scripture itself is said or thought to be veiled. This is what is meant by the veil laid over Moses' face when he spoke to the people, that is, when the law was read publicly. But if we turn to the Lord, where the Word of God also is, and where the Holy Spirit reveals spiritual knowledge, then the veil will be taken away, and then with unveiled face we shall behold the glory of the Lord in the holy Scriptures.

Again, although many saints share in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit certainly cannot be understood as some body, divided into bodily parts, of which each of the saints receives a part; rather he is a sanctifying power, in which all are said to have a share who have merited to be sanctified by his grace. And so that what we say may be more easily understood, let us take an example from things that are, however, unequal. There are many who share in the discipline or art of medicine: are we then to think that all who share in medicine take for themselves particles of some body called medicine, placed in their midst, and so receive a share in it? Or are we rather to understand that whoever with ready and prepared minds grasp an understanding of the art and discipline itself are said to share in medicine? But these examples from medicine, compared with the Holy Spirit, are not to be thought wholly similar; they serve only to prove that what is shared by many is not on that account to be thought a body. For the Holy Spirit differs greatly from the principle or discipline of medicine, inasmuch as the Holy Spirit is an intellectual subsistence and properly subsists and exists, whereas medicine is nothing of the kind.

But now we must pass to the very saying of the Gospel where it is written that “God is spirit,” and show how it should be understood consistently with what we have said. Let us ask when our Saviour said this, to whom, and what was being asked. We find without doubt that he said this when speaking to the Samaritan woman, who thought, according to the opinion of the Samaritans, that God ought to be worshipped on Mount Gerizim: to her he said that God is spirit. For the Samaritan woman, thinking him to be one of the Jews, asked him whether God ought to be worshipped in Jerusalem or on this mountain, and said: “Our fathers all worshipped on this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.” To these opinions of the Samaritan woman, then, who thought that God was worshipped less rightly or properly either by the Jews in Jerusalem or by the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim, because of the privilege of bodily places, the Saviour replied that whoever wishes to follow the Lord must give up presumption about bodily places, and said: “The hour is coming when the true worshippers will worship the Father neither in Jerusalem nor on this mountain. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” And see how fittingly he has joined truth to spirit, naming spirit by way of distinction from bodies, and truth by way of distinction from shadow or image. For those who worshipped in Jerusalem, serving the shadow and image of heavenly things, will not worship God in truth or in spirit; and likewise neither will those who worship on Mount Gerizim.

Having refuted, as far as we could, every notion which suggests that anything corporeal is to be understood of God, we say that in truth God is incomprehensible and beyond measure. For whatever it is that we have been able to perceive or understand about God, we must believe that he is better by many degrees than what we have perceived. Suppose we saw someone who could barely look at a spark of light or the light of a very small lamp, whose eyesight could not take in more light than we have said, and we wished to teach him about the brightness and splendour of the sun: should we not have to tell him that the splendour of the sun is unspeakably and immeasurably better and more excellent than all this light which you see? So our mind, when it is shut within the barriers of flesh and blood and made duller and more obtuse by its sharing in such matter, although it is held to be far superior in comparison with bodily nature, yet when it strives toward incorporeal things and seeks to gaze upon them, scarcely holds the place of a spark or a lamp. And what among all intellectual, that is, incorporeal, beings is so surpassing all, so unspeakably and immeasurably excellent, as God? His nature certainly cannot be grasped or beheld by the sight of the human mind, even the purest and clearest mind.

It does not seem absurd, however, if for a clearer demonstration of the matter we also use another comparison. Sometimes our eyes cannot look at the nature of light itself, that is, at the substance of the sun; but by looking at its brightness, or at its rays shining in, perhaps, through windows or any small openings for light, we can consider how great is the source and fountain of bodily light itself. In the same way, then, the works of divine providence and the art of this universe are like rays of the nature of God, in comparison with his very substance and nature. Since, therefore, our mind cannot by itself behold God himself as he is, it understands the parent of the universe from the beauty of his works and the comeliness of his creatures. God, therefore, is not to be thought either a body or in a body, but a simple intellectual nature, admitting in himself no addition whatever, so that he may not be believed to have in himself a greater and a lesser, but is in every respect a unity (μονάς) and, so to speak, a oneness (ἑνάς), and mind, and the fountain from which all intellectual nature, or mind, takes its beginning. Now mind, in order to move or operate, needs no bodily place, nor sensible magnitude, nor bodily shape or colour, nor does it need at all any of the other things that are proper to body or matter. For this reason that simple nature, wholly mind, can have no delay or hesitation in moving or operating anything, lest by an addition of this kind the simplicity of the divine nature should seem to be in some measure circumscribed or hindered, and lest what is the beginning of all things should be found composite and diverse, and be many, not one; for, being foreign to all bodily admixture, it must consist of one sole form, so to speak, of deity. That mind does not need place in order to move according to its own nature is certain also from the contemplation of our own mind. For if it remains within its own measure and no dullness comes upon it from any cause, it will never be slowed by difference of place from acting by its own movements; nor again does it gain any increase or growth of mobility from the quality of a place. And if anyone objects, for instance, that in those who sail and are tossed by the waves of the sea the mind is somewhat less vigorous than it usually is on land, it must be believed that it suffers this not from the difference of place but from the agitation or disturbance of the body to which the mind is joined or in which it is implanted. For the human body seems to live at sea as though against nature, and therefore, through a kind of unevenness of its own, to receive the movements of the mind in a disorderly and irregular way and to convey the strokes of its sharpness through a duller service; no less than happens to people on land who are gripped by fevers. In their case it is certain that if the mind, through the force of the fevers, performs its function less well, the cause must be laid not to the place but to the disease of the body, by which the body, disturbed and confused, by no means renders to the mind its usual services along its known and natural lines, since we human beings are a living creature composed of the meeting of body and soul; for in this way it was possible for us to dwell upon the earth. But God, who is the beginning of all things, must not be thought composite, lest perhaps elements should be found prior to the beginning itself, from which everything is composed that is called composite, whatever it may be. Nor does mind need bodily magnitude in order to do anything or to move, as the eye does, which in looking at larger bodies is spread out, but is narrowed and contracted for seeing small and tiny things. Mind does indeed need intelligible magnitude, because it grows not bodily but intelligibly. For the mind is not increased by bodily growth together with the body up to the twentieth or thirtieth year of age; rather, when instruction and exercises are applied, the sharpness of the intellect is polished, the powers implanted in it are called out toward understanding, and it is made capable of greater understanding, not enlarged by bodily growth but polished by the exercises of learning. It cannot receive these at once from boyhood or from birth, because the frame of the limbs, which the mind uses as instruments for its own exercise, is still weak and feeble, and can neither bear the force of working nor supply the capacity for receiving instruction.

But if there are any who think that the mind itself and the soul are a body, I wish they would answer me how it receives the reasons and proofs of matters so great, so difficult and so subtle. Whence does a body have the power of memory, whence the contemplation of invisible things, whence indeed the understanding of incorporeal things? How does a bodily nature investigate the disciplines of the arts and the contemplations and reasons of things? How, too, can it perceive and understand divine teachings, which are clearly incorporeal? Unless perhaps someone should think that, just as this bodily form and the very shape of the ears or eyes contribute something to hearing and seeing, and the individual members formed by God have some fitness, from the very quality of their form, for what they were naturally appointed to do, so too the shape of the soul or mind should be understood as aptly and suitably formed for perceiving or understanding particular things and for being moved by vital movements. But what colour of mind anyone could describe or name, in so far as it is mind and moves intelligibly, I do not see. Further, to confirm and explain what we have said about the mind or soul, that it is superior to the whole bodily nature, the following may also be added. Underlying each bodily sense there is a certain sensible substance proper to it, toward which the bodily sense itself is directed. For example, colours, shape and size underlie sight; voices and sound, hearing; smells, good or bad, the sense of smell; flavours, taste; hot or cold, hard or soft, rough or smooth, touch. That the sense of the mind is much better than these senses we have mentioned is clear to all. How then does it not seem absurd that substances should underlie these inferior senses for them to be directed toward, while to this power, which is better, that is, to the sense of the mind, nothing substantial at all is subject, but the power of an intellectual nature is something that befalls bodies or follows from them? Those who say this without doubt say it to the insult of the substance which is the better part in themselves; indeed, by this an injury is done even to God himself, when they think that he can be understood through a bodily nature, so that according to them he is a body, and that which can be understood or perceived through a body; and they are unwilling to have it understood that there is a certain kinship of the mind with God, of whom the mind itself is an intellectual image, and that through this it can perceive something of the nature of the Godhead, especially if it is more purified and separated from bodily matter.

But perhaps these assertions may seem to have less authority with those who wish to be instructed about divine things from the holy Scriptures, and who seek to have it proved to them from there how the nature of God surpasses the nature of bodies. See, then, whether the Apostle does not say the same when he speaks of Christ, saying: “who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” For it is not the case, as some think, that the nature of God is visible to some and invisible to others; for the Apostle did not say “the image of God invisible to human beings” or “invisible to sinners,” but pronounces with great firmness about the very nature of God, saying, “the image of the invisible God.” John too, by saying in the Gospel, “No one has ever seen God,” clearly declares to all who can understand that there is no nature to which God is visible: not as though he were visible by nature and escaped and exceeded the sight of a frailer creature, but because by nature it is impossible for him to be seen. And if you ask me what I think also about the Only-begotten himself, whether I say that the nature of God, which is naturally invisible, is not visible even to him, do not let this seem to you at once either impious or absurd; for we shall give the reason in due course. It is one thing to see, another to know. To be seen and to see belong to bodies; to be known and to know belong to intellectual nature. Whatever, therefore, is proper to bodies is not to be thought of either the Father or the Son; but what belongs to the nature of the Godhead holds between the Father and the Son. Indeed, even in the Gospel he did not say, “No one has seen the Father except the Son, nor the Son except the Father,” but said, “No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son.” From this it is clearly indicated that what among bodily natures is called seeing and being seen is, between the Father and the Son, called knowing and being known, by the power of knowledge, not by the frailty of visibility. Since, then, of an incorporeal and invisible nature neither seeing nor being seen is properly said, therefore in the Gospel the Father is not said to be seen by the Son, nor the Son by the Father, but known.

If anyone puts to us the question why it is said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” our assertion will, in my opinion, be strengthened all the more by it. For what else is seeing God with the heart but, as we have explained above, understanding and knowing him with the mind? For the names of the bodily members of sense are often applied to the soul, so that it is said to see with the eyes of the heart, that is, to infer something intellectual by the power of intelligence. So too it is said to hear with the ears when it perceives the sense of a deeper understanding. So too we say that it can use teeth when it chews and eats the bread of life which comes down from heaven. In the same way it is said to use the services of the other members, which are transferred from their bodily meaning and fitted to the powers of the soul, as Solomon also says: “You will find a divine sense.” For he knew that there are two kinds of senses in us: one kind mortal, corruptible, human; the other immortal and intellectual, which he here called “divine.” By this divine sense, then, not of the eyes but of a “pure heart,” which is the mind, God can be seen by those who are worthy. You will indeed find the heart named for the mind, that is, for the intellectual power, abundantly in all the Scriptures, new and old. In this way, then, having understood the nature of God, though far below what is fitting, as the weakness of human understanding allows, let us now see what the name of Christ means.

First we must know that the nature of his deity in Christ, which is the only-begotten Son of the Father, is one thing, and the human nature which he took up in the last times for the sake of the dispensation is another. Therefore we must first see what the only-begotten Son of God is, who is called by many different names according to circumstances or the views of those who name him. For he is called Wisdom, as Solomon said: “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways, and for his works; before he made anything, before the ages he established me. In the beginning, before he made the earth, before he brought forth the springs of waters, before the mountains were made firm, and before all the hills, he begets me.” He is also called firstborn, as the Apostle said: “who is the firstborn of all creation.” Yet the firstborn is not by nature another than Wisdom, but one and the same. Indeed the apostle Paul also says: “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Let no one think, however, that we are saying something without substance when we name him the Wisdom of God: that is, to give an example, that we understand Wisdom not as some wise living being but as something that makes people wise, offering and implanting itself in the minds of those who become capable of its powers and understanding. If, then, it has once been rightly accepted that the only-begotten Son of God is his Wisdom subsisting substantially, I do not know whether our mind ought to wander any further into suspecting that perhaps this very hypostasis (ὑπόστασις, that is, substance) of his has something bodily, since everything bodily is marked out by shape or colour or size. And who of sound mind ever looked for shape or colour or measurable size in wisdom by reason of its being wisdom? And how can anyone who knows how to understand or feel anything reverent about God think or believe that God the Father ever existed, even for a single moment, without the generation of this Wisdom? For he will say either that God was unable to beget Wisdom before he begot it, so that he afterwards begot into being what previously was not, or that he was able and, what it is impious to say of God, was unwilling to beget. Both are plainly absurd and impious to all: either that God advanced from being unable to being able, or that, though able, he held back and delayed begetting Wisdom. Therefore we know God as always the Father of his only-begotten Son, who is born of him and draws what he is from him, yet without any beginning: not only such a beginning as can be marked off by intervals of time, but not even that which the mind alone is accustomed to contemplate within itself and to behold, so to speak, with bare intellect and spirit. We must believe, therefore, that Wisdom was begotten beyond every beginning that can be spoken of or understood. In this very subsistence of Wisdom was present the whole power and shaping of the creation to come, both of the things that exist primarily and of those that follow as consequences, formed beforehand and arranged by the power of foreknowledge. On account of these very creatures, which had been as it were outlined and prefigured in Wisdom herself, Wisdom says through Solomon that she was created the beginning of the ways of God, since she contains in herself the beginnings, forms and species of the whole creation.

In the same way as we have understood Wisdom to be the beginning of the ways of God, and how she is said to be created, namely as forming beforehand and containing in herself the species and beginnings of the whole creation, in this way too she is to be understood to be the Word of God, because she discloses to all others, that is, to the whole creation, the meaning of the mysteries and secrets which are contained within the Wisdom of God; and she is called the Word because she is, as it were, the interpreter of the secrets of the mind. Hence that saying written in the Acts of Paul also seems to me rightly spoken, that “this is the Word, a living being.” But John, more loftily and gloriously, at the beginning of his Gospel, defining the Word as God by a proper definition, says: “And the Word was God, and this was in the beginning with God.” Let him who assigns a beginning to the Word of God or the Wisdom of God take care that he does not rather hurl his impiety against the unbegotten Father himself, since he denies that he was always Father, always begot the Word, and always had Wisdom, in all preceding times or ages or whatever else can be named.

This Son, then, is also the truth and the life of all things that are; and rightly. For how could the things that were made live except from life? Or how could the things that are exist in truth unless they came down from the truth? Or how could there be rational beings unless the Word or reason preceded them? Or how could they be wise unless there were wisdom? But since it was going to happen that some would fall away from life and bring death upon themselves by the very fact of falling away from life (for death is nothing other than departing from life), and since it would certainly not be fitting that those who had once been brought into being by God to live should perish utterly, there had to be, before death, a power such as would destroy the death to come; there had to be a resurrection, which was formed in our Lord and Saviour, a resurrection consisting in the very Wisdom and Word and life of God. Then, since it was going to happen that some of those who were created, because good was present in them not naturally, that is, substantially, but accidentally, would not be willing to remain always unchangeable and immutable and to continue always in the same goods with an even and measured balance, but would turn and change and fall from their state, the Word and Wisdom of God became the way. It is called the way because it leads to the Father those who walk along it. Whatever, then, we have said of the Wisdom of God will be fittingly applied and understood also of the Son of God as life, as the Word, as the truth, as the way and as the resurrection; for all these names are given from his works and powers, and in none of them can anything bodily be understood, even in the slightest notion, that might seem to denote size or shape or colour. For the children of human beings or of other animals that we see among us correspond to the seed of those by whom they were begotten, or of the mothers in whose womb they are formed and nourished, and have from them whatever it is that they take up and carry into this light when they come forth. But it is monstrous and unlawful to make God the Father, in the generation of his only-begotten Son and in the Son's subsistence, equal to any human being or other creature that begets; rather there must be something exceptional and worthy of God, to which no comparison at all can be found, not only among things but not even in thought or imagination, such that human thought could grasp how the unbegotten God becomes Father of the only-begotten Son. For his generation is as eternal and everlasting as the brightness that is generated from light. For he does not become Son from outside, through an adoption of the Spirit, but is Son by nature.

Let us see, however, how what we say is supported also by the authority of divine Scripture. The apostle Paul says that the only-begotten Son is “the image of the invisible God” and “the firstborn of all creation”; and writing to the Hebrews he says of him that he is “the brightness of the glory and the express figure of his substance.” We also find in the book called the Wisdom of Solomon a certain description of the Wisdom of God, written in this way: “For she is,” it says, “a vapour of the power of God, and a most pure emanation (ἀπόρροια) of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled can fall into her. For she is the brightness of eternal light, and the spotless mirror of the working of God, and the image of his goodness.” We say, then, as we said above, that Wisdom has her subsistence nowhere else than in him who is the beginning of all things, from whom she was also born. And this Wisdom, because he is the one who alone is Son by nature, is therefore also called only-begotten.

Let us now see what is to be understood also by his being called the image of the invisible God, so that through this too we may observe how God is rightly called the Father of his Son; and let us first consider those things which in human usage are commonly called images. Sometimes that is called an image which is painted or carved on some material, such as wood or stone. Sometimes the one who is born is called the image of the one who begot him, when the features of the begetter are in no way falsely reproduced in the likeness of the one born. I think, then, that the first example may be applied to the man who was made in the image and likeness of God, whom we shall consider more carefully, God willing, when we come to expound that passage in Genesis. With the second comparison may be compared the image of the Son of God, of whom we are now speaking, also in this respect, that he is the invisible image of the invisible God, just as according to the history we say that Seth his son is the image of Adam. For so it is written: “And Adam begot Seth according to his own image and according to his own form.” This image also contains the unity of nature and substance of the Father and the Son. For if whatever the Father does, the Son also does likewise, then in that the Son does all things just as the Father does, the image of the Father is formed in the Son, who is certainly born of him like an act of will proceeding from the mind. And therefore I think that the will of the Father ought to be sufficient for what the Father wills to subsist. For in willing he uses no other way than that which is brought forth by the counsel of the will. In this way, then, the subsistence of the Son also is begotten by him. This must be accepted above all by those who confess that nothing is unbegotten, that is, unborn, except God the Father alone. For care must be taken that no one fall into the absurd fables of those who picture to themselves certain emanations, so as to divide the divine nature into parts and, as far as in them lies, to divide God the Father; for even to suspect this lightly of an incorporeal nature is not only the height of impiety but also the extreme of folly, and it is not at all consistent with reason that a substantial division of an incorporeal nature could be conceived. Rather, then, as will proceeds from mind, and neither cuts off any part of the mind nor is separated or divided from it, in some such way is the Father to be thought to have begotten the Son, his image, so that, as he himself is invisible by nature, so he begot an image that is also invisible. For the Son is the Word, and therefore nothing perceptible to the senses is to be understood in him. He is Wisdom, and in wisdom nothing bodily is to be suspected. He is the true light, which enlightens every human being coming into this world, but he has nothing in common with the light of this sun. Our Saviour, therefore, is the image of the invisible God the Father: with respect to the Father himself he is the truth, but with respect to us, to whom he reveals the Father, he is the image through which we come to know the Father, whom no one knows except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him. And he reveals him by being himself understood; for by whomever he himself has been understood, the Father too is consequently understood, according to what he himself said: “He who has seen me has seen the Father also.”

But since we have introduced the saying of Paul about Christ, where he says that he is “the brightness of the glory of God and the express figure of his substance,” let us see what is to be understood from this. “God is light,” according to John. The brightness, then, of this light is the only-begotten Son, proceeding from him inseparably as brightness from light and enlightening the whole creation. For in accordance with what we have set out above, how he is “the way” and leads to the Father, how he is “the Word” interpreting and bringing forth to the rational creation the secrets of wisdom and the mysteries of knowledge, and how he is also “the truth” or “the life” or “the resurrection,” we ought consequently to understand also the work of the brightness; for through the brightness what light itself is, is understood and perceived. This brightness, offering itself more gently and softly to the frail and weak eyes of mortals, and gradually, as it were, teaching and accustoming them to bear the brightness of the light, when it has removed from them everything that clouds and hinders their sight, according to the Lord's saying, “Cast out the beam from your eye,” makes them capable of receiving the glory of the light, becoming in this too a kind of mediator between human beings and the light.

But since he is said by the Apostle to be not only the brightness of glory but also the express figure of his substance or subsistence, it does not seem to me an idle exercise of the understanding to consider how something other than the very substance of God, whatever that substance and subsistence is called, can be said to be the figure of his substance. See, then, whether perhaps the Son of God, who is called his Word and Wisdom, and who alone knows the Father and reveals him to whom he wills, that is, to those who are capable of his Word and Wisdom, may be said to express the figure of his substance and subsistence precisely in that he makes God understood and known; that is, when Wisdom first outlines in herself the things she wishes to reveal to others, by which God is known and understood by them, this may be called the express figure of the substance of God. And so that it may be understood still more fully how the Saviour is the figure of the substance or subsistence of God, let us also use an example which, although it does not fully or properly signify the matter we are treating, may be taken up for this one purpose only: to show that the Son, who was in the form of God, emptying himself, seeks through this very self-emptying to show us the fullness of the Godhead. Suppose, for instance, that a statue were made of such size as to fill the whole world, so that because of its immensity it could be seen by no one; and suppose another statue were made, similar in every respect in the shape of its limbs and the features of its face, in form and material, but without the immensity of size, so that those who could not view and behold the immense one might, on seeing this one, be confident that they had seen the other, because it preserved all the features of the limbs and face, and the very form and material, with a likeness entirely indistinguishable. By some such likeness the Son of God, emptying himself of equality with the Father and showing us the way to know him, is made the express figure of his substance, so that we who were unable to look upon the glory of pure light set in the greatness of his Godhead may, through his becoming brightness for us, find the way to behold the divine light by looking at the brightness. The comparison of the statues, since it belongs to material things, is admitted for no other purpose than this: that the Son of God, placed in the very small form of a human body, showed by the likeness of his works and power the immense and invisible greatness of the Father in himself, when he said to his disciples, “He who sees me sees the Father also,” and “I and the Father are one.” With these is also to be understood the similar saying, “The Father is in me, and I in the Father.”

Let us now see also how we should understand what we read written in the Wisdom of Solomon, who says this of wisdom: that she is “a kind of vapour of the power of God, and a most pure emanation (aporrhoea) of the glory of the Almighty, and the brightness of eternal light, and the spotless mirror of the working or power of God, and the image of his goodness.” In defining these things about God, he indicates by each of them certain things that are present in the Wisdom of God: for he names the power of God, and glory, and eternal light, and working, and goodness. He says, however, that wisdom is a vapour not of the glory of the Almighty, nor of eternal light, nor of the working of the Father, nor of his goodness, for it was not fitting that vapour be ascribed to any of these; but with complete propriety he says that wisdom is the vapour of the power of God. We must therefore understand the power of God, by which he is strong, by which he establishes or holds together or governs all things visible and invisible, which is sufficient for all things whose providence he exercises, to all of which he is present as if to one. Of this whole power, so great and so immeasurable, the vapour and, so to speak, the very vigour comes to be in its own subsistence; and although it proceeds from the power itself as will from mind, yet the will of God itself nonetheless becomes a power of God. There comes to be, then, another power subsisting in its own property, as the word of Scripture says, a kind of vapour of the first and unbegotten power of God, drawing from there what it is; and there is no time when it was not. For if anyone should wish to say that it did not exist before but came into subsistence afterwards, let him say why the Father who made it subsist did not do so before. And if he gives some beginning once for all, from which beginning this vapour proceeded from the power of God, we shall ask again why not even before that which he called the beginning; and so, always inquiring about what is earlier and ascending by the word of questioning, we shall arrive at this understanding: that since God was always able and willing, it was never fitting, nor could any reason exist, that he should not always have had the good that he willed. From this it is shown that this vapour of the power of God always existed, having no beginning but God himself. Nor was it fitting that there be any other beginning than God himself, from whom it both is and is born. And according to the Apostle, who says that “Christ is the power of God,” he is to be called not only the vapour of the power of God but power from power.

Let us look also at the saying that she is “a most pure emanation (aporrhoea) of the glory of the Almighty”; and let us first consider what “the glory of the Almighty” is, and then we shall perceive what its emanation is. Just as no one can be a father if there is no son, nor a lord without a possession or a servant, so neither can God be called almighty if there are none over whom he may exercise his power; and therefore, for God to be shown almighty, all things must subsist. For if anyone would have it that some ages or periods, or whatever else he wishes to call them, passed when the things that have been made were not yet made, he will undoubtedly show that in those ages or periods God was not almighty and afterwards became almighty, from the time when he began to have those over whom to exercise power; and in this way he will seem to have received some advance and to have come from worse to better, since there is no doubt that it is better for him to be almighty than not to be. And how will it not seem absurd that God, when he did not have some of those things which it was fitting for him to have, should afterwards through some advance have come to have them? But if there is never a time when he was not almighty, then the things through which he is called almighty must also necessarily subsist, and he must always have had those over whom he exercised power and which were governed by him as king or ruler. Of these we shall speak more fully in their proper places, when we come to discuss his creatures. But I think it necessary to give a warning now, even if briefly, since the question of wisdom is being discussed by us, how wisdom is the most pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty: lest anyone think that the title “Almighty” is prior in God to the birth of Wisdom, through which he is called Father, since Wisdom, which is the Son of God, is said to be the most pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty. Let anyone who would like to suspect this hear what Scripture most clearly declares, saying, “In wisdom you have made all things,” and what the Gospel teaches, that “all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made”; and let him understand from this that the title “Almighty” cannot be older in God than that of “Father,” for it is through the Son that the Father is almighty. But since he said that it is the glory of the Almighty of which Wisdom is the emanation, we are given to understand that Wisdom also has a share in the glory of omnipotence, Wisdom through whom God is called almighty. For through Wisdom, which is Christ, God holds power over all things, not only by the authority of one who rules but also by the willing service of his subjects. And so that you may know that the omnipotence of the Father and of the Son is one and the same, just as he is one and the same God and Lord with the Father, hear how John speaks in the Apocalypse: “These things says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” For who else is he who is to come but Christ? And just as no one ought to be offended that, though the Father is God, the Saviour is also God, so too, when the Father is called almighty, no one ought to be offended that the Son of God is also called almighty. For in this way what he himself says to the Father will be true: “All mine are yours and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.” If, then, all things that are the Father's are Christ's, and among all things that are, the Father is also almighty, without doubt the only-begotten Son also must be almighty, so that the Son may have all that the Father has. “And I am glorified,” he says, “in them.” For “at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father.” The emanation of the glory of God, then, in so far as he is almighty, is Wisdom herself, pure and clear, glorified as the emanation of omnipotence or of glory. And so that what the glory of omnipotence is may be more clearly understood, we add this as well. God the Father is almighty because he holds power over all things, that is, over heaven and earth, sun, moon and stars, and all that is in them. And he exercises power over them through his Word, since at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, on earth and under the earth. And if every knee bows to Jesus, without doubt it is Jesus to whom all things are subjected, and he it is who exercises power in all things and through whom all things are subjected to the Father; for it is through wisdom, that is, by word and reason, not by force and necessity, that all things are subjected. And therefore his glory lies in the very way he holds all things; and this is the most pure and clear glory of omnipotence, that all things are subjected by reason and wisdom, not by force and necessity. The “most pure and clear glory” of wisdom is said fittingly enough to distinguish it from that glory which is not purely or sincerely called glory. For every nature which is changeable and mutable, even if it is glorified in works of righteousness or wisdom, yet, by the very fact that it has righteousness or wisdom as an accident, and what is accidental can also fall away, its glory cannot be sincere and most clear. But the Wisdom of God, which is his only-begotten Son, since it is in all respects unchangeable and immutable, and every good in it is substantial and can never be changed or altered, therefore its glory is proclaimed pure and sincere.

Thirdly, wisdom is said to be the brightness of eternal light. The force of this we have already explained in what precedes, when we introduced the comparison of the sun and the brightness of its rays and showed, as far as we could, how this should be understood. We will add, however, this one point as well. That is properly called everlasting or eternal which neither had a beginning of its existence nor can ever cease to be what it is. This is indicated in John when he says that “God is light.” And his Wisdom is the brightness of his light, not only in that he is light but also in that he is everlasting light, so that his Wisdom is the eternal and everlasting brightness. If this is fully understood, it clearly declares that the subsistence of the Son comes down from the Father himself, but not in time, nor from any other beginning except, as we have said, from God himself.

Wisdom is also named the spotless mirror of the ἐνέργεια, that is, of the working, of God. We must first understand, then, what the working of the power of God is: it is a kind of vigour, so to speak, by which the Father works, whether when he creates, or provides, or judges, or disposes and dispenses each thing in its own time. Just as in a mirror the image formed through the mirror moves or acts with the very same acts and movements, deviating in nothing, as all the movements by which the one who looks into the mirror moves or acts, so too Wisdom wishes to be understood of herself, when she is named the spotless mirror of the Father's power and working; just as the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Wisdom of God, declares of himself the works, saying, “Whatever the Father does, these the Son also does likewise”; and again he says that “the Son can do nothing of himself, except what he sees the Father doing.” Since, then, the Son in no way at all differs or varies from the Father in the power of his works, and the work of the Son is not other than the Father's, but one and the same movement, so to speak, is in all, therefore he named him a spotless mirror, so that by this no dissimilarity whatever of the Son to the Father may be understood. How, indeed, can the things said by some about the likeness or imitation of a disciple to his master, or that the Son makes in bodily matter what had first been formed by the Father in spiritual substances, be consistent with this, when in the Gospel the Son is said to do not similar things, but the same things in like manner?

It remains to inquire what the image of his goodness is. In this, I think, it is fitting to understand the same things that we expressed above about the image formed through a mirror. For the original goodness is without doubt the Father, from whom the Son is born; and he, being in all respects the image of the Father, will without doubt fittingly be called also the image of his goodness. For there exists in the Son no other, second goodness besides that which is in the Father. Hence the Saviour himself also rightly says in the Gospel that “No one is good but one, God the Father,” so that by this it may be understood that the Son is not of another goodness but of that alone which is in the Father, of which he is rightly called the image, because he is from nowhere else than from that original goodness itself, lest another goodness than that which is in the Father should seem to be in the Son. Nor is there any dissimilarity or difference of goodness in the Son. Therefore it should not be thought a kind of blasphemy that it is said, “No one is good but one, God the Father,” as if it were thought that either Christ or the Holy Spirit is therefore denied to be good; but, as we said above, the original goodness is to be understood in God the Father, from whom the Son is born and the Holy Spirit proceeds; and they without doubt reproduce in themselves the nature of his goodness, which is in that fountain from which the Son is born and the Holy Spirit proceeds. Now if any other things are called good in the Scriptures, whether an angel, or a man, or a servant, or a treasure, or a good heart, or a good tree, all these are said by an extended use, since they contain in themselves a goodness that is accidental, not substantial. It would be a great task, and one for another work or time, to gather all the names of the Son of God: for example, how he is the true light, or the door, or righteousness, or sanctification, or redemption, and countless others, and to explain for what reasons, or from what powers or dispositions, each of them is given. But content with what we have discussed above, let us go on to investigate the rest as well.

It follows now that we should inquire, as briefly as we can, about the Holy Spirit. All who in any way perceive that there is a providence confess that God is unbegotten, who created and arranged all things, and they acknowledge him as the parent of the universe. That he has a Son, however, we are not the only ones to declare, although this seems quite astonishing and incredible to those who are regarded as philosophers among Greeks and barbarians; yet some even of them seem to have held this opinion, when they confess that all things were created by the Word or reason of God. We, however, according to the faith of his teaching, which we hold for certain to be divinely inspired, believe that it is possible to set out and bring to human knowledge the higher and more divine account of the Son of God by no other means than by that Scripture alone which was inspired by the Holy Spirit, that is, the Gospels and the apostolic writings, and also the law and the prophets, as Christ himself asserted. But concerning the subsistence of the Holy Spirit no one could have had even a suspicion except those who were versed in the law and the prophets, or those who profess to believe in Christ. For about God the Father, although no one is able to speak [worthily], it is possible to gain some understanding from the visible creatures and from what the human mind perceives by nature; and it is possible, moreover, for this to be confirmed from the holy Scriptures. And about the Son of God, although no one knows the Son except the Father, yet from the divine Scriptures the human mind is taught how it ought to think of him too, and not only from the New but also from the Old Testament, through the deeds of the saints which are referred figuratively to Christ, from which both his divine nature and the human nature taken up by him can be discerned.

As to what the Holy Spirit is, many passages of Scripture have taught us, as David says in the fiftieth Psalm, “And do not take your Holy Spirit from me”; and in Daniel it is said, “the Holy Spirit who is in you.” In the New Testament we are taught by abundant testimonies, when the Holy Spirit is described as descending upon Christ, and when the Lord himself breathed on the apostles after the resurrection, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” And the angel says to Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you.” And Paul says that “no one can say ‘Lord Jesus’ except in the Holy Spirit.” And in the Acts of the Apostles the Holy Spirit was given in baptism through the laying on of the apostles' hands. From all these we have learned that the substance of the Holy Spirit is of such authority and dignity that saving baptism is not completed except by the authority of the most excellent Trinity of all, that is, by naming the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that the name of the Holy Spirit is joined to the unbegotten God the Father and his only-begotten Son. Who, then, is not amazed at how great is the majesty of the Holy Spirit, when he hears that one who has spoken a word against the Son of Man may hope for forgiveness, but that one who has blasphemed against the Holy Spirit has no forgiveness either in the present age or in the age to come?

That all things were created by God, and that there is no creature which has not received from him its very existence, is proved by many statements of Scripture, which reject and refute what is falsely alleged by some, whether about matter coeternal with God or about unbegotten souls, in whom they would have it that God implanted not so much the nature of subsisting as equality and order. For in the little book called the Shepherd, the book of the angel of repentance, which Hermas wrote, it is said: “First of all believe that there is one God, who created and arranged all things; who, when nothing existed before, made all things to be; who contains all things, but is himself contained by none.” Similar things are also written in the book of Enoch. Yet up to the present we have been able to find no statement in the holy writings by which the Holy Spirit is said to be a thing made or a creature, not even in the way in which we showed above that Solomon speaks of Wisdom, or in which we discussed how the names of Life or Word and the other titles of the Son of God are to be understood. The Spirit of God, therefore, who was borne upon the waters, as is written at the beginning of the making of the world, I think is none other than the Holy Spirit, as far as I am able to understand, as we also showed when we were expounding those very passages, not according to the history, however, but according to the spiritual understanding.

Some of our predecessors have indeed observed that in the New Testament, wherever the Spirit is named without an addition indicating what kind of spirit it is, it should be understood of the Holy Spirit; for example, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy and peace,” and so on; and likewise, “Having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect in the flesh?” We, however, think that this distinction can be kept also in the Old Testament, as when it says: “He who gives spirit to the people that is upon the earth, and spirit to those who tread on it.” For without doubt everyone who “treads on the earth,” that is, on earthly and bodily things, is a partaker of the Holy Spirit, receiving him from God. My Hebrew teacher also used to say that the two seraphim in Isaiah, who are described with six wings each, calling to one another and saying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord of hosts,” were to be understood of the only-begotten Son of God and of the Holy Spirit. And we think that what is said in the song of Habakkuk, “In the midst of the two living creatures” (or “of the two lives”) “you will be known,” is also to be understood of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. For all knowledge of the Father is gained through the Son's revelation in the Holy Spirit, so that both of these, which according to the prophet are called either living creatures or lives, are the cause of the knowledge of God the Father. For just as it is said of the Son that “no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him,” the Apostle says the same of the Holy Spirit when he says, “But God has revealed it to us through his Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.” And again in the Gospel the Saviour, mentioning the divine and deeper teachings which his disciples could not yet grasp, says to the apostles: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; but when the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father, comes, he will teach you all things and remind you of all that I have said to you.” And so we must think that just as the Son, who alone knows the Father, reveals him to whom he wills, so the Holy Spirit, who alone searches even the depths of God, reveals God to whom he wills. “For the Spirit breathes where he wills.” Nor are we to think that the Spirit, too, knows through the Son's revealing. For if the Holy Spirit knows the Father through the Son's revealing, he has then come from ignorance to knowledge; and it is surely as impious as it is foolish to confess the Holy Spirit and to ascribe ignorance to him. For it is not that he was something else before he was the Holy Spirit, and came by advancement to be the Holy Spirit, so that one might dare to say that when he was not yet the Holy Spirit he did not know the Father, but after he received knowledge he was made the Holy Spirit. If that were so, the Holy Spirit himself would never be reckoned in the unity of the Trinity, that is, with the unchangeable God the Father and his Son, unless he too had always been the Holy Spirit. Of course, when we say “always” or “was,” or adopt any other such term of temporal meaning, it must be taken simply and with allowance; for the meanings of these terms are temporal, but the things of which we speak, though they are named in temporal terms in the course of discussion, by their nature surpass every understanding of temporal sense.

It seems right, however, to inquire what the reason is why one who is regenerated by God unto salvation has need of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and will not receive salvation unless the Trinity is complete; and why it is not possible to become a partaker of the Father or of the Son without the Holy Spirit. In discussing these things it will undoubtedly be necessary to describe the special working of the Holy Spirit, and the special working of the Father and the Son. I think, then, that the working of the Father and the Son is both in saints and in sinners, in rational human beings and in dumb animals, and also in things without soul, and in absolutely all things that exist; but that the working of the Holy Spirit by no means extends to things without soul, nor to those that are living but dumb; nor is it found even in those who are rational but are set in wickedness and not at all converted to better things. But I think that the work of the Holy Spirit is in those alone who are already turning to better things and walking in the ways of Christ Jesus, that is, who are engaged in good actions and abide in God.

That the working of the Father and the Son is both in saints and in sinners is shown by the fact that all who are rational are partakers of the Word, that is, of reason, and by this they bear implanted in themselves certain seeds, as it were, of wisdom and righteousness, which is Christ. And all things that exist share in him who truly is, who said through Moses, “I am who I am”; and this participation in God the Father reaches all, both righteous and sinners, rational and irrational, and absolutely all things that exist. The Apostle too shows that all have a share in Christ, saying: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down), or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to call Christ back from the dead). But what does Scripture say? ‘The word is near, in your mouth and in your heart.’” By this he signifies that Christ is in the heart of all, in so far as he is the Word or reason, by sharing in whom they are rational. And the saying in the Gospel, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin,” makes clear to those who understand reason up to what time a person does not have sin and from what age he is liable to sin, and it is plain and evident how people are said to have sin from their participation in the Word or reason: that is, from the time they have been made capable of understanding and knowledge, when the reason implanted within has suggested to them the distinction between good and evil; and when they have begun to know what evil is, if they do it, they become liable to sin. And this is what he means by saying that people have no excuse for their sin, from the time when the divine word or reason has begun to show them in their heart the distinction between good and evil, so that by it they ought to flee and beware of what is evil; for “to one who knows the good and does not do it, it is sin.” Again, that all human beings are not outside communion with God, the Gospel teaches in this way, when the Saviour says: “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘Look, here,’ or ‘there’; but the kingdom of God is within you.” But we must also see whether perhaps the same thing is meant by what is written in Genesis, where it says: “And he breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” If this is understood to have been given generally to all human beings, then all human beings have a share in God. But if this is to be understood as said of the Spirit of God, since Adam too is found to have prophesied about some things, then it can be taken as given not generally but to the saints.

Indeed, at the time of the flood, when all flesh had corrupted the way of God, it is written that God said, as of the unworthy and sinners, “My Spirit shall not remain in these men for ever, because they are flesh.” By this it is clearly shown that the Spirit of God is taken away from all who are unworthy. In the Psalms also it is written: “You will take away their spirit, and they will fail and return to their earth. You will send forth your Spirit, and they will be created, and you will renew the face of the earth.” This is clearly said of the Holy Spirit, who, when sinners and the unworthy have been taken away and destroyed, himself “creates” a new people for himself and “renews the face of the earth,” when through the grace of the Spirit they put off the old man with his deeds and begin to walk in newness of life. And therefore it is fittingly said of him that the Holy Spirit will dwell not in all, nor in those who are flesh, but in those whose earth has been renewed. For this reason, indeed, the grace and revelation of the Holy Spirit was given after baptism through the laying on of the apostles' hands. And our Saviour, too, after the resurrection, when the old things had passed away and all things had been made new, himself the new man and the firstborn from the dead, said to the apostles, who had also been renewed through faith in his resurrection, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This, no doubt, is what the Saviour and Lord himself indicated in the Gospel when he denied that new wine could be put into old wineskins and commanded that new wineskins be made, that is, that people should walk in newness of life, so that they might receive the new wine, that is, the newness of the grace of the Holy Spirit. In this way, then, the working of the power of God the Father and of the Son extends without distinction over every creature, but we find that participation in the Holy Spirit is held by the saints alone. Therefore it is said, “No one can say ‘Lord Jesus’ except in the Holy Spirit.” And even the apostles themselves are scarcely at last thought worthy to hear, “You shall receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you.” For this reason I think it also follows that one who has sinned against the Son of Man is worthy of forgiveness, because one who is a partaker of the Word or reason of God, if he ceases to live according to reason, seems to have fallen into ignorance or folly and on this account to deserve forgiveness; but one who has already been counted worthy of participation in the Holy Spirit and has turned back is said, by this very fact and deed, to have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit. Let no one think, indeed, that because we have said that the Holy Spirit is granted to the saints alone, while the benefits or workings of the Father and the Son reach the good and the bad, the just and the unjust, we have by this preferred the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son, or are asserting a greater dignity for him; that would certainly be quite inconsistent. For we have described the particular character of his grace and work. Further, nothing in the Trinity is to be called greater or less, since the fountain of the one Godhead holds all things together by his Word and reason, and sanctifies by the spirit of his mouth those things that are worthy of sanctification, as is written in the Psalm: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all their power by the spirit of his mouth.” There is also a special working of God the Father, besides that by which he naturally granted existence to all things. There is also a special ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ toward those on whom he naturally confers rationality, by which it is granted to them, in addition to their being, to be well. There is also another grace, that of the Holy Spirit, which is granted to the worthy, ministered through Christ but worked by the Father, according to the merit of those who become capable of it. This the apostle Paul most clearly indicates when, setting forth the one and the same power of the Trinity, he says: “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of workings, but the same God who works all in all. But to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable.” From this it is most clearly indicated that there is no separation in the Trinity, but that what is called the gift of the Spirit is manifested through the Son and worked by God the Father. “But all these are worked by one and the same Spirit, dividing to each as he wills.”

Having thus declared these things about the unity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, let us now return to the order we had begun to discuss. God the Father grants to all that they exist; participation in Christ, in so far as he is the Word or reason, makes them rational. From this it follows that they are worthy either of praise or of blame, because they are capable of virtue and wickedness. Consequently, therefore, the grace of the Holy Spirit is also present, so that those beings which are not holy in substance may be made holy by participation in him. Since, then, they have first their existence from God the Father, secondly their rationality from the Word, and thirdly their holiness from the Holy Spirit, those which have previously been sanctified through the Holy Spirit are again made capable of Christ, in so far as he is the righteousness of God; and those who have merited to advance to this degree through the sanctification of the Holy Spirit will nonetheless obtain the gift of wisdom according to the power and working of the Spirit of God. And this I think Paul means when he says that to some is given the word of wisdom, to others the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit. And indicating each distinction of gifts, he refers them all to the fountain of the universe, and says: “There are varieties of workings, but one God, who works all things in all.” Hence the working of the Father, which grants existence to all, is found the more glorious and magnificent when each one, through participation in Christ as wisdom, as knowledge and as sanctification, advances and comes to higher degrees of progress; and through being made purer and more sincere by participation in the Holy Spirit, he is made worthy and receives the grace of wisdom and knowledge, so that, all the stains of pollution and ignorance being driven out and cleansed, he may receive so great an advance in sincerity and purity that what he received from God, his existence, may be such as is worthy of God, who granted him existence purely and perfectly, so that what exists may be as worthy as he who made it exist. For in this way the one who is such as he who made him wished him to be will receive from God the power to exist always and to remain for ever. And so that this may happen, and that the things made by him may be present unceasingly and inseparably to him who is, it is the work of Wisdom to instruct and train them and bring them to perfection by the strengthening and unceasing sanctification of the Holy Spirit, through which alone they can receive God. Thus, by the unceasing work of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit towards us, renewed at every stage of progress, we may perhaps at last, with difficulty, behold the holy and blessed life; and when after many struggles we have been able to reach it, we ought so to continue in it that no satiety of that good ever takes hold of us; but the more we perceive of that blessedness, the more our desire for it is enlarged and increased, as we ever more ardently and more capaciously receive and hold the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. But if satiety ever takes hold of any of those who have stood on the highest and perfect step, I do not think that he is suddenly emptied and falls away; rather he must slip down gradually and by degrees; so that it may sometimes happen that, if a brief lapse occurs and he quickly comes to his senses and returns to himself, he does not fall utterly but can draw back his foot and return to his position, and again make firm what had slipped through negligence.

To show this diminution or falling away of those who have acted rather carelessly, it does not seem absurd to use the comparison of an example. Suppose, then, there is someone who has been gradually trained in some skill or art, for instance geometry or medicine, until he has come to perfection, having shaped himself over a long time by instruction and exercises so as to take on the discipline of that art completely: to such a one it can certainly never happen that he falls asleep skilled and wakes up unskilled. For it is not fitting now to bring forward or mention what happens through some injury or weakness, since these do not suit the comparison and example proposed. According to what we have proposed, then, so long as that geometer or physician exercises himself in the study of his art and in its rational principles, the knowledge of the discipline remains with him. But if he neglects the exercises and abandons his diligence, at first, through negligence, a few things gradually slip away, then more, and so over a long time everything passes into oblivion and is entirely erased from memory. It can indeed happen that, when he has only begun to fall away and is still being corrupted by a small negligence, if he is roused and quickly returns to himself, he may restore what has only recently been lost and recover what had been taken from him by an erasure still slight. Let us now transfer this to those who have devoted themselves to the knowledge and wisdom of God, whose learning and diligence surpass all other disciplines in incomparable ways, and let us consider, according to the form of the comparison proposed, what the acquisition of knowledge is and what its erasure; especially since we hear from the Apostle what is said of the perfect, that face to face they behold the glory of the Lord through the revelation of mysteries.

But in our wish to show the divine benefits bestowed on us through the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, which Trinity is the fountain of all holiness, we have said these things by way of a digression, and we thought we should touch, if only briefly, on the subject of the soul, since it had come up, as we were discussing the neighbouring subject of rational nature. More fittingly, however, we shall discuss in its proper place, God granting it to us through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, the whole of rational nature, which is distinguished into three kinds and species.

This blessed and ruling (ἀρχική) power, then, that is, the power that holds rule over all things, we call the Trinity. This is the good God and kindly Father of all, at once the beneficent power (εὐεργετικὴ δύναμις) and the creative (δημιουργική), that is, the power of doing good, of creating and of providing. It is both absurd and impious to suppose that these powers of God were ever idle, even for a moment. For it is unlawful even to suspect lightly that these powers, through which God is chiefly understood, as is fitting, ever ceased from works worthy of them and were inactive. For we must not think that they were hindered from outside, since they are in God, or rather are God; nor again must we believe that, when nothing stood in their way, they were reluctant to act and to do what was worthy of them, or neglected to do it. And therefore no moment at all can be conceived in which that beneficent power did not do good. Hence it follows that there always existed those to whom it did good, namely its works or creatures, and that, doing good, it dispensed its benefits among them in due order and according to merit by the power of its providence. And through this it seems to follow that there was never a time when God was not creator, benefactor and provider.

But here again human understanding is dulled and hemmed in: how can it be understood that, for as long as God has existed, creatures too have always existed and have subsisted, so to speak, without beginning, when they must without doubt be believed to have been created and made by God? Since, then, there is this conflict of human thoughts and understandings with one another, very strong arguments meeting and resisting on both sides and each pulling the mind of the one who considers them over to its side, this occurs to us, within the slight and very narrow grasp of our mind, as something that can be confessed without any danger to piety: that God the Father always existed, always having his only-begotten Son, who, according to what we set out above, is also called Wisdom. This, then, is the Wisdom in whom God always “rejoiced when the world was completed,” so that by this God may be understood always to rejoice. In this Wisdom, then, who was always with the Father, the creation was always present, outlined and formed, and there was never a time when the prefiguration of the things that were to be was not with Wisdom.

In this way, perhaps, we shall seem, within our weakness, to think something reverent about God: neither calling creatures unbegotten and coeternal with God, nor, on the other hand, saying that God, having done nothing good before, turned to doing it; since that word is true which is written, “In wisdom you have made all things.” And if “all things” were made “in wisdom,” then, since Wisdom always existed, the things which were afterwards also made in substance were always “in Wisdom” by way of prefiguration and preformation. And I think that Solomon, perceiving or understanding this, says in Ecclesiastes: “What is it that has been made? The very thing that is to be. And what is it that has been created? The very thing that is to be created. And there is nothing new under the sun. If anyone speaks and says, ‘See, this is new,’ it has already been in the ages that were before us.” If, then, the individual things that are “under the sun” already existed in those “ages that were before us,” since “there is nothing new under the sun,” then without doubt all things, whether genera or species, always existed, and perhaps even individually. In any case, what is shown is this: that God did not begin to be creator at some point, not having been so before.

After the discussion of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, which we have briefly set out as far as we were able, it follows that we should also say a little about rational natures, their species and orders, and the offices both of the holy and of the evil powers, and also about those who are in some way intermediate between these good and evil ones and are still placed in the contest and struggle. For we find in the holy Scriptures a great many names of certain orders and offices, both of holy beings and of their opposites; we shall first set these out, and then try, as far as we can, to discuss what they mean. There are certain holy angels of God, whom Paul calls ministering spirits, appointed for service for the sake of those who inherit salvation. In the same holy Paul we find, drawn I know not from where, the naming of certain thrones, dominions, principalities and powers; and after listing these, as though perceiving that there are still other rational offices and orders besides those he had mentioned, he says of the Saviour: “who is above every principality and power and virtue and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.” By this he plainly shows that there are certain others besides those he mentioned, which are named in this age, though they were not enumerated by him now and perhaps not understood by anyone else; and that there are others which are not named in this age, but will be named in the age to come.

Next, it must be known that every rational being which departs from the limits and ordinances of reason is without doubt in sin, through transgression of what is right and just. Every rational creature, then, is capable of praise and blame: of praise if, in accordance with the reason it has in itself, it advances to better things; of blame if it departs from the reason and course of what is right; for which reason it is also rightly subject to pains and punishments. And this is to be thought also of the devil himself and of those who are with him and are called his angels. Their titles, however, must also be explained, so that we may know what these beings are of whom we must speak. The name of devil, then, and Satan, and the evil one is indicated in many passages of Scripture, and he is described as the enemy of God. Certain angels of the devil are also named, and also the prince of this world, who, whether he is the devil himself or someone else, has not yet been clearly declared. Certain princes of this world are also said to have a kind of wisdom that will be destroyed; but whether these princes are the same as those principalities against whom we wrestle, or others, does not seem to me easy for anyone to pronounce. After the principalities, powers also are named, against whom we wrestle and the struggle is waged, and also against the princes of this world and the rulers of this darkness; and certain spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places are named by Paul himself. And what are we to say of the evil spirits and unclean demons who are named in the Gospels? Then certain heavenly beings, too, are called by a similar name, but they are said to bow the knee, or to be about to bow it, at the name of Jesus; and also things on earth and under the earth, which Paul enumerates in order. In a place where we are discussing rational natures, it is not fitting to be silent even about ourselves, human beings, who are called a rational animal; nor should we idly pass over the fact that among us human beings too certain different orders are named, when it is said: “The portion of the Lord is his people Jacob, Israel the line of his inheritance.” The other nations are called the portion of the angels, since “when the Most High divided the nations and scattered the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God.” And therefore, together with the other rational natures, the account of the human soul too must be examined.

Since, then, so many and such great names of orders and offices have been mentioned, under which it is certain that there are substances, we must ask whether God, the founder and creator of all things, made some of them so holy and blessed that they can receive nothing at all of the contrary; and whether he made some such that they could become capable of both virtue and wickedness; or whether we are to think that he made some so that they are wholly incapable of virtue, and others wholly unable to receive wickedness but able only to remain in blessedness, and others such as can receive either. And so that our first inquiry may arise from the names themselves, let us consider whether the holy angels, from the time they have existed, were always holy, are holy and will be holy, and have never received nor been able to receive any occasion of sin. Then let us also consider whether those who are called holy principalities began, as soon as they were created by God, to exercise rule over some who were subject to them, and whether those were created such and made for this, to be subordinate and subject. Likewise also those which are called powers: whether they were created such and for this very purpose, to exercise power, or whether this is a merit and reward of virtue by which they came to that power and dignity. And also those who are called thrones or seats: whether they merited that seat and stability of blessedness at the same time as their substance was brought forth, so that they possess it by the Creator's will alone; or whether in those called dominions their dominion was not added to them for the merit of their progress but given as a privilege of their creation, and is therefore in a certain way inseparable from them and natural. If we accept this, so that the holy angels and holy powers and blessed seats and glorious virtues and magnificent dominions are thought to possess those powers and dignities and glories substantially, it will undoubtedly seem to follow that those named in the contrary offices must be understood in the same way: so that those principalities against whom we wrestle are thought not to have later taken on that purpose of struggling against and resisting all good by turning away from the good through freedom of choice, but to have had it substantially from the moment they existed; and likewise the powers and virtues, and that wickedness in them is not younger and later than their substance. Those also whom he called rulers of the world of darkness and princes are said to derive their ruling and holding of darkness not from perversity of purpose but from the necessity of their creation. The very logic of consequence will compel us to understand the same about the spiritual forces of wickedness, the evil spirits and the unclean demons. But if it seems absurd to understand this so of the evil and opposing powers, as it certainly is absurd, that the cause of their wickedness should be removed from the purpose of their own choice and necessarily ascribed to their creator, how are we not compelled to confess similar things about the good and holy powers also, namely, that the good is not substantial in them, which we have shown to be clearly so only in Christ and in the Holy Spirit, and certainly also in the Father? For the nature of the Trinity has been shown to have nothing composite, such that these things should seem to happen to it as consequences. It remains, therefore, that in every creature it was a result of its own work and its own movements that those powers which appear to hold rule over others, or to exercise power or dominion, were preferred and set over those whom they are said to rule or over whom they exercise power by merit, and not by the privilege of their creation.

But so that we may not seem to assert such great and difficult matters prompted only by the logic of consequence, and to compel our hearers' assent merely by conjectures, let us see whether we can also take some support from the holy Scriptures, by whose authority these things may be established more credibly. First we shall set out what holy Scripture contains about the evil powers; then we shall investigate the others too, as far as the Lord deigns to enlighten us, so that in matters so difficult [readers] may attain what is nearer the truth, or what ought to be held according to the rule of piety. We find, then, in the prophet Ezekiel two prophecies written to the prince of Tyre, the first of which might perhaps seem to someone, before he hears the second as well, to be said of some man who was prince of the Tyrians. So for the present we shall take nothing from that first one; but since the second is most evidently such that it must be understood not at all of a man but of some higher power which fell from higher places and was cast down to lower and worse ones, we shall take our example from it. By it may be most clearly shown that these opposing and evil powers were not founded or created such by nature, but came from better to worse and were turned to the worse; and that those blessed powers, too, are not of such a nature that they cannot receive the contrary if they so will and become negligent and do not guard the blessedness of their state with all care. For if he who is called the prince of Tyre is related to have been among the saints, and to have been spotless, and placed in the paradise of God, and adorned also with a crown of comeliness and beauty, how is one who was such to be thought inferior to any of the saints? For he is described as having himself been a crown of comeliness and beauty and as having walked spotless in the paradise of God; and how can anyone think that such a one was not one of those holy and blessed powers which, being placed in blessedness, must be believed to be endowed with no other honour than this? But let us see at last what the words of the prophecy themselves teach us. “And the word of the Lord came to me,” it says, “saying: Son of man, take up a lament over the prince of Tyre, and say to him: Thus says the Lord God: You were the seal of likeness and a crown of comeliness in the delights of paradise; you were adorned with every good stone or gem, and clothed with sardius and topaz and emerald and carbuncle and sapphire and jasper, set in silver and gold, and agate and amethyst and chrysolite and beryl and onyx; and you filled your treasuries and your storehouses within yourself with gold. From the day you were created with the cherubim, I placed you on the holy mountain of God. You were in the midst of the fiery stones, you were spotless in your days, from the day you were created, until iniquities were found in you; by the multitude of your trading you filled your storehouses with iniquity, and you sinned and were wounded from the mountain of God. And the cherub cast you out from the midst of the fiery stones; and your heart was lifted up in your comeliness; your discipline was corrupted with your beauty. Because of the multitude of your sins I cast you to the earth before kings; I gave you up to be a spectacle and a mockery, because of the multitude of your sins and your iniquities; by your trading you polluted your holy things. And I will bring fire from the midst of you, and it shall devour you, and I will make you ashes and cinders upon the earth in the sight of all who see you; and all who knew you among the nations shall mourn over you. You have become destruction, and you shall not exist any more for ever.” Since these things are said so, who, hearing “You were the seal of likeness and a crown of comeliness in the delights of paradise,” or hearing that “from the time you were created with the cherubim I placed you on the holy mountain of God,” could weaken their meaning so far as to suspect that they were said of some human being or saint, not to speak of the prince of Tyre? Or what fiery stones will he think there are, in the midst of which a human being could live? Or who could be understood to have been spotless from the very day he was created, in whom afterwards at some time iniquities were found, and who is then said to have been cast down to the earth? This certainly signifies that it is said of one who, not being on the earth, was cast down to the earth; and his holy things too are said to have been polluted. These things about the prince of Tyre from the prophet Ezekiel, which refer to an opposing power, we have set out; by them it is most clearly demonstrated that this power was formerly holy and blessed, and fell from that blessedness from the time iniquity was found in it, and was sunk to the earth, and was not such by nature and creation. They think, then, that these things are said of a certain angel who was allotted the office of governing the Tyrian nation, to whom the care of their souls also seems to have been entrusted. But what Tyre, or what souls of Tyrians, we ought to understand, whether this city situated in the regions of the province of Phoenicia or some other of which this one we know on earth is a figure, and whether the souls of the Tyrians are those of this city or of those who belong to that Tyre which is understood spiritually, does not seem to be a question for this place, lest we seem to inquire in passing into matters so great and so hidden, which certainly require a work and labour of their own.

Again, from the prophet Isaiah we are taught similar things about another opposing power. For he says: “How has Lucifer fallen from heaven, who rose in the morning! He who sent forth to all the nations has been broken and dashed to the ground. But you said in your mind: I will ascend into heaven; above the stars of heaven I will set my throne; I will sit on a lofty mountain above the lofty mountains that are toward the north; I will ascend above the clouds; I will be like the Most High. But now you shall be sunk into the underworld and into the foundations of the earth. Those who see you shall wonder at you and say: This is the man who provoked the whole earth, who shook kings, who made the whole world a desert, who destroyed cities, and did not release those who were in chains. All the kings of the nations have slept in honour, each in his own house; but you shall be cast out on the mountains like a loathsome corpse, with the many dead who were pierced with swords and went down into the underworld. As a garment clotted and stained with blood will not be clean, so neither shall you be clean, because you have ruined my land and killed my people; you shall not remain for ever, most evil seed. Prepare your sons for slaughter for the sins of your father, lest they rise and possess the earth as an inheritance and fill the earth with wars; and I will rise up against them, says the Lord of hosts, and I will cause their name to perish, and their remnant and their seed.” By these words it is most clearly shown that he fell from heaven who was formerly Lucifer and who rose in the morning. For if, as some think, he was of the nature of darkness, how is he said to have formerly been Lucifer? Or how could he rise in the morning who had nothing of light in himself? The Saviour, too, teaches us about the devil, saying: “Behold, I saw Satan fallen from heaven like lightning.” For he was once light. And our Lord, who is the truth, also compared the power of his own glorious coming to lightning, saying: “For as the lightning shines from the height of heaven to its height, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” And yet he compares this one too to lightning and says that he fell from heaven, to show by this that he too was once in heaven, and had a place among the saints, and shared in this light in which all the saints share, by which angels become angels of light and the apostles are called by the Lord the light of the world. In this way, then, this one too was once light, before he transgressed and fell to this place, and his glory was turned into dust, which is properly the lot of the impious, as the prophet also says; from this he was also called the prince of this world, that is, of the earthly dwelling. For he exercised rule over those who followed his wickedness, since “this whole world” (and by world I now mean this earthly place) “lies in the evil one,” and in this apostate. That he is an apostate, that is, a runaway, the Lord also says in Job: “You will draw out with a hook the dragon, the apostate,” that is, the runaway. It is certain that the dragon is understood to be the devil himself. If, then, the opposing powers are named and said once to have been spotless, and to be spotless belongs substantially to none except the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but holiness in every creature is an accidental thing, and what is accidental can also fall away; and if these opposing powers were once spotless and were among those which still remain spotless: by this it is shown that no one is either substantially or naturally spotless, nor substantially polluted. And from this it follows that it lies with us and with our own movements whether we are blessed and holy, or through sloth and negligence turn from blessedness to wickedness and perdition, to such a degree that an excessive progress, so to speak, in wickedness, if someone neglects himself so far, may bring him to the state of becoming what is called an opposing power.

An end or consummation seems to be the mark of things perfected and completed. This reminds us at this point that anyone who has conceived the desire to read and understand such matters must bring a mature and trained mind to understanding things so arduous and difficult; lest, if he has had no practice in questions of this kind, they seem to him vain and superfluous; or, if he bears a mind already prejudiced and preoccupied with other views, he think them heretical and contrary to the church's faith, not so much convinced by reason as deciding by the prejudice of his own mind. These things are indeed said by us with great fear and caution, as discussing and examining rather than laying down as certain and defined. For we have indicated above which matters must be settled by clear doctrine, which I think we have done as far as we could when we spoke of the Trinity. But now we are exercising ourselves, as best we can, in the manner of discussion rather than of definition. The end and consummation of the world, then, will come when each one is subjected to punishments according to the merit of his sins, a time which God alone knows, when each will pay what he deserves. We think, indeed, that the goodness of God through his Christ will call back the whole creation to one end, even his enemies being subdued and subjected. For so holy Scripture says: “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.” And if what the prophetic word means by this is not clear enough to us, let us learn from the apostle Paul, who says more openly that Christ must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. And if not even this so clear statement of the Apostle has sufficiently taught us what it is for the enemies to be put under his feet, hear him further in what follows: “For all things must be subjected to him.” What, then, is the subjection by which all things must be subjected to Christ? I think it is that very subjection by which we too desire to be subject to him, by which the apostles and all the saints who have followed Christ are subject to him. For the term subjection, by which we are subjected to Christ, indicates the salvation, which is from Christ, of those who are subjected; as David also said: “Shall not my soul be subject to God? For from him is my salvation.”

Looking, then, to such an end, when all enemies will be subjected to Christ, and when the last enemy, death, will be destroyed, and when the kingdom will be handed over to God the Father by Christ, to whom all things are subjected, let us, I say, from such an end of things contemplate their beginnings. For the end is always like the beginning; and therefore, as there is one end of all things, so one beginning of all things must be understood; and as there is one end of many things, so from one beginning come many differences and varieties, which in turn, through the goodness of God, the subjection of Christ and the unity of the Holy Spirit, are called back to one end, which is like the beginning: namely all those who, bending the knee at the name of Jesus, have by this very act declared the signs of their subjection, those of things in heaven, on earth and under the earth, in which three terms the whole universe is indicated; those, that is, who from that one beginning were arranged, each according to his own movements and varieties, in different orders according to merit. For goodness was not present in them substantially, as in God and his Christ and in the Holy Spirit. In this Trinity alone, which is the author of all things, goodness is present substantially; the others have it as accidental and liable to fall away, and they are in blessedness only when they share in holiness and wisdom and in the Godhead itself. But if they neglect and disregard such participation, then, by the fault of their own sloth, one more quickly and another more slowly, one more and another less, each becomes himself the cause of his own slip or fall. And since, as we have said, this slip or fall, by which each one declines from his state, contains very great diversity according to the movements of mind and purpose, so that one declines more lightly, another more gravely, to lower things, herein lies the just judgment of God's providence, that to each one there comes, according to the diversity of his movements, what is deserved by his departure and disturbance. Of those, indeed, who remained in that beginning which we have described as like the end to come, some in the ordering and arrangement of the world are allotted the angelic order, others that of virtues, others of principalities, others of powers, so that they may exercise power over those who need to have a power over their head; others the order of thrones, having the office of judging or ruling those who need this; others dominion, no doubt over servants; all of which divine providence conferred on them according to their merit and the progress by which they had advanced in the participation and imitation of God, by a fair and just judgment. Those, however, who have been moved from their state of first blessedness, yet not moved beyond remedy, have been made subject to be arranged and ruled by the holy and blessed orders we described above; and by their help, reformed by salutary instructions and disciplines, they may return and be restored to the state of their blessedness. From these, I think, as far as I am able to perceive, this order of the human race was established, which in the age to come, or in the ages that follow, when there will be a new heaven and a new earth according to Isaiah, will certainly be restored to that unity which the Lord Jesus promises when he says to God the Father about his disciples: “I do not pray for these only, but also for all who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be one, as I am in you, Father, and you in me, so also they may be one in us”; and again where he says: “that they may be one, as we also are one, I in them and you in me, that they too may be perfected in one.” As the apostle Paul also confirms, saying: “Until we all attain to the unity of the faith, to the perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” And as the same Apostle exhorts us, placed even in the present life in the Church, in which there is certainly a figure of the kingdom to come, to this same likeness of unity, saying: “That you all say the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfected in one and the same mind and in one and the same judgment.”

It must be known, however, that some who fell from that one beginning of which we spoke above have given themselves up to such unworthiness and wickedness that they have been judged unworthy of this instruction or training by which the human race in the flesh is instructed and trained with the help of the heavenly powers; on the contrary, they are even the adversaries and opponents of those who are being trained and instructed. Hence all this life of mortals has its contests and struggles, since those who have fallen without any regard from a better state, who are called the devil and his angels, and the other orders of wickedness which the Apostle named among the opposing powers, struggle and fight against us. Now whether any of these orders that act under the rule of the devil and obey his wickedness will at some time in the ages to come be able to be converted to goodness, because there is in them the faculty of free choice, or whether a persistent and inveterate wickedness is turned by habit into a kind of nature, you yourself who read must judge: whether this part will be utterly at odds with that final unity and harmony, both in these temporal ages which are seen and in those which are not seen and are eternal. Meanwhile, however, both in these temporal ages which are seen and in those which are not seen and are eternal, all these beings are arranged according to order, reason, measure and the worth of their merits: so that some in the first, others in the second, and some even in the last times, through greater and heavier punishments, long ones endured, so to speak, for many ages, are renewed and restored by harsher corrections, first by the instructions of angels, then also by the powers of higher ranks; and so, advanced step by step to higher things, they reach those things that are invisible and eternal, having passed through, in a kind of course of instruction, each of the offices of the heavenly powers. From this, I think, the logic of the matter itself seems to show that each rational nature can, passing from one order to another, go through each to all and from all to each, while each one undergoes various movements of progress or decline according to its own movements and efforts, by the faculty of free choice.

Since Paul says that some things are visible and temporal, and others besides these invisible and eternal, we ask how these things that are seen are temporal: whether because there will be nothing at all after these in all those periods of the age to come in which that dispersion and division of the one beginning is restored to one and the same end and likeness; or because the outward form of the things seen passes away, though their substance is not wholly destroyed. And Paul seems to confirm what we said second, when he says, “For the form of this world is passing away.” David too seems to show the same when he says: “The heavens will perish, but you will remain; and they will all grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you will change them, and like a garment they will be changed.” For if the heavens will be changed, what is changed certainly does not perish; and if the form of the world passes away, it is not a total extermination or destruction of the material substance that is indicated, but a certain change of quality and transformation of form. Isaiah too, when he says in prophecy that there will be a new heaven and a new earth, undoubtedly suggests a similar understanding. For the renewal of heaven and earth, the transformation of the form of this world, and the change of the heavens will undoubtedly be prepared for those who, walking by that way which we showed above, are making for that end of blessedness to which even the enemies themselves are said to be subjected, the end in which God is said to be all in all. If anyone thinks that at this end material, that is, bodily, nature will perish entirely, I can in no way conceive how so many and so great substances could live and subsist without bodies, since it is proper to the nature of God alone, that is, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, to be understood to subsist without material substance and without any association of bodily addition. Another will perhaps say that at that end all bodily substance will be so pure and cleansed that it can be thought of as like the ether and of a kind of heavenly purity and clearness. But how the matter will be, God alone knows for certain, and any who are his friends through Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Let what we have discussed above about rational natures stand as set out in general terms, treated and discussed by way of inference rather than as defined doctrine, following the place in which we expounded, as far as we could, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Let us now see, then, what we ought to discuss next according to our doctrine, that is, according to the faith of the Church. All souls and all rational natures were made or created, whether they are holy or wicked; all of these according to their own nature are incorporeal; but even in being incorporeal they were nonetheless made, since all things were made by God through Christ, as John teaches in a general way in the Gospel, saying: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” The apostle Paul, describing the things that were made by species, numbers and order, discusses them in this way, to show that all things were made through Christ, saying: “And in him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and in him, and he is before all, and he is the head.” He clearly declares, then, that all things were made and created in Christ and through Christ, whether visible, which are bodily, or invisible, which I think are none other than the incorporeal and spiritual powers. Of those which he had spoken of generally as bodily or incorporeal, he then, as it seems to me, enumerates the species: thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, virtues.

These things have been said by us in advance because we wish to come in due order, by inference, to the inquiry about the sun and moon and stars: whether they too should be reckoned among the principalities, because they are said to have been made for ἀρχάς, that is, for the rule of the day or of the night; or whether they are to be thought to hold only this rule of day and night, which they exercise by giving light, and yet not to be princes of that order of principalities. Yet when it is said that all things were made through him and all things were created in him, whether things in heaven or things on earth, there can be no doubt that those things which are in the firmament, which is certainly called heaven, in which these luminaries are said to be set, are also numbered among heavenly things. Then, since the course of our discussion has clearly found that all things were made or created, and that among the things made there is nothing that does not admit good and evil and is not capable of both, how will it be thought consistent, what some even of our own people think about the sun and moon and stars, that they are unchangeable and incapable of the contrary? Some have thought this even of the holy angels, and the heretics also of souls, which among them are called spiritual natures. First, then, let us see what reason itself finds about the sun, moon and stars, whether what some think is right, that they are strangers to change; and as far as possible let the statement of the holy Scriptures be brought in first. For Job seems to show that not only can the stars be subject to sins, but that they are in fact not clean from the contagion of sin. For it is written thus: “Even the stars are not clean in his sight.” This is certainly not meant of the brightness of their body, as if we were to say, for example, “the garment is not clean”; for if it were so understood, it would undoubtedly redound to the injury of the Creator, if anything unclean were charged in the brightness of their body. For if they can neither take on a brighter body for themselves by their own diligence nor a less pure one by sloth, why should the stars be blamed as not clean, when they will not be praised for being clean?

But so that these things may be understood more clearly, we must first inquire whether it is right to understand them to be living and rational beings; then whether their souls came into existence together with their bodies or seem to be prior to their bodies; and also whether after the consummation of the age they are to be understood to be released from their bodies, and whether, as we cease from this life, so they too will cease from illuminating the world. Although to inquire into this may seem a kind of boldness, yet since we are provoked by zeal to grasp the truth, it does not seem absurd to search out and test what is possible for us according to the grace of the Holy Spirit. We think, then, that they can be shown to be living beings by this, that they are said to receive commandments from God, which is certainly done only to rational living beings. He says, therefore: “I have given a command to all the stars.” And what are those commands? Namely, that each star in its own order and its own courses should give the world the amount of brightness granted to it. For those called planets move in some orders, and those called ἀπλανεῖς (fixed) in others. In this it is most clearly shown that the movement of no body can be effected without a soul, and that things that are living can never be without movement. And since the stars move with such order and such reason that their course has never at any time been seen to be hindered in any way, is it not beyond all stupidity to say that so great an order, so great an observance of discipline and reason, is required of or fulfilled by irrational things? In Jeremiah, indeed, the moon is even called the queen of heaven. If, then, the stars are living and rational beings, there will undoubtedly seem to be among them some progress and decline. For what Job says, “The stars are not clean in his sight,” seems to me to indicate some such understanding.

Now as to those beings which the course of the discussion has found to be living and rational, we must examine whether they seem to have been given souls together with their bodies at the time when Scripture says that “God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars,” or whether he implanted the spirit not with the bodies themselves but from outside, after the bodies had been made. I indeed suspect that the spirit was implanted from outside, but it will seem worth the effort to show this from the Scriptures. For by conjecture the assertion will seem easy, but by the testimonies of the Scriptures it is certainly more difficult to affirm. By conjectures, then, it can be shown thus. If the soul of a human being, which is certainly inferior while it is a human soul, is shown to have been not formed with the body but properly implanted from outside, much more is this so of those living beings that are called heavenly. For as regards human beings, how will the soul of him who supplanted his brother in the womb, that is, Jacob, seem to have been formed together with the body? Or how was the soul formed or moulded together with the body of him who, while still in his mother's womb, was filled with the Holy Spirit? I mean John, leaping in his mother's womb and stirring with great exultation because the voice of Mary's greeting had come to the ears of his mother Elizabeth. How was the soul of that one too formed and moulded together with the body, who is said to have been known to God before he was formed in the womb, and to have been sanctified by him before he came forth from the womb? Otherwise God might seem to fill some with the Holy Spirit not by judgment and according to merit, and to sanctify them undeservedly. And how shall we escape that saying, “Is there injustice with God? By no means”? Or that one: “Is there respect of persons with God?” For this follows from that defence which asserts that souls come into existence together with bodies. As far, then, as can be conceived from comparison with the human condition, I think it follows that this must be held much more of the heavenly beings, which both reason itself and the authority of Scripture seem to show even in the case of human beings.

But let us see whether we can find in holy Scripture any indication properly concerning these heavenly beings themselves. The apostle Paul speaks thus: “For the creation was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope, because the creation itself will be set free from the bondage of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” To what vanity, I ask, was the creation subjected, or what creation, or how unwillingly, or in what hope? And in what way will the creation itself be set free from the bondage of corruption? Elsewhere too the Apostle himself says: “For the expectation of the creation waits for the revelation of the children of God.” And again elsewhere he says: “And not only we, but the creation itself groans and is in pain until now.” So we must inquire what its groaning is, and what its pains are. First, then, let us see what is the vanity to which the creation was subjected. I think that the vanity is nothing other than bodies; for although the body of the stars is ethereal, it is still material. Hence Solomon too, it seems to me, addresses the whole bodily nature, as in a way burdensome and as retarding the vigour of spirits, in this way: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, said the Preacher; all is vanity. For I looked,” he says, “and saw all things that are under the sun, and behold, all is vanity.” To this vanity, then, the creation was subjected, especially that creation which holds the greatest and most distinguished rule of its work in this world: that is, the sun, moon and stars are said to be subjected to vanity, being placed in bodies and assigned the office of giving light to the human race. “And not willingly,” he says, “was this creation subjected to vanity.” For it did not undertake by its own will to render service to vanity, but because he who subjected it willed it, because of him who subjected it, who promised those who were subjected to vanity not by their own will that, when the service of his magnificent work is completed, they will be set free from this bondage of corruption and vanity, when the time of the redemption of the glory of the children of God has come. Having received this hope, and hoping for the fulfilment of this promise, the whole creation meanwhile groans now, as having affection for those whom it serves, and suffers patiently, hoping for what has been promised. Consider also whether perhaps that saying of Paul can be applied to those who, though unwillingly, yet by the will of him who subjected them and in the hope of the promises, were subjected to vanity, where he says: “For I would desire to be dissolved, or to return, and to be with Christ; for it is far better.” For I think that the sun too might similarly say, “I would desire to be dissolved, or to return, and to be with Christ; for it is far better.” And Paul indeed adds, “But to remain in the flesh is more necessary for your sake”; while the sun may say, “But to remain in this heavenly and shining body is more necessary for the sake of the revelation of the children of God.” The same is to be thought and said of the moon and the stars. Let us now see what the freedom of the creation is, or its release from bondage. When Christ has handed over the kingdom to God the Father, then these living beings too, having first become the kingdom of Christ, will be handed over together with the whole kingdom to be ruled by the Father; so that when God is all in all, these too, since they are among all, may have God in them as in all.

I think the same reasoning must be applied to the angels also, and we must not suppose that it happens by chance that this office is assigned to this angel: for example, to Raphael the work of curing and healing, to Gabriel the oversight of wars, to Michael the care of the prayers and supplications of mortals. For we must not think that they merited these offices otherwise than that each received them by his own merits, according to the zeal and virtues which they displayed before the framing of this world; and that then in the archangelic order this or that kind of office was assigned to each, while others merited to be enrolled in the order of angels and to act under this or that archangel, or this or that leader or chief of his order. All these things, as I have said, were ordered not by chance and without discrimination but by the most fitting and just judgment of God, and arranged according to merit, he himself judging and approving: so that to one angel the church of the Ephesians should be entrusted, to another that of the Smyrnaeans; that one angel should be Peter's, another Paul's; and then, for each of the least who are in the Church, which angels should be assigned to each, who also daily behold the face of God; and also which angel should be the one who encamps round about those who fear God. All these things, certainly, must not be thought to be done by accident or by chance, nor because they were made such by nature, lest in this too the Creator be accused of unfairness; but we must believe that they are conferred according to merits and virtues, and according to each one's vigour and ability, by God, the most just and most fair governor of all.

… lest we fall into the foolish and impious fables of those who imagine spiritual natures to be different, and for this reason founded by different founders, both among the heavenly beings and among the souls of human beings; since it seems absurd to them, as it truly is absurd, that different natures of rational creatures should be ascribed to one and the same Creator, and yet they do not know the cause of that diversity. For they say it does not seem consistent that one and the same Creator, with no cause of merits existing, should impose on some the power of dominion and subject others to those who rule, give rule to some and make others subjects of rulers. All of this, as I think, the logic of the reasoning we have set out above refutes and confutes, by which it is shown that the cause of the diversity and variety in each of the creatures arises from their own movements, more ardent or more sluggish, toward virtue or toward wickedness, and not from unfairness in the one who arranges them. But so that this may more easily be recognized to be so among the heavenly beings, let us bring forward examples from what has been done or is done among human beings, so that from things visible we may consequently contemplate also things invisible. They affirm that Paul and Peter were without doubt of the spiritual nature. Since, then, Paul is found to have acted against piety in persecuting the Church of God, and Peter committed so grave a sin that, when the maid at the door questioned him, he affirmed with an oath that he did not know who Christ was, how did these men, who according to them are spiritual, fall into sins of this kind? Especially since they are accustomed often to assert and say that a good tree cannot bear bad fruit. And if a good tree certainly cannot bear bad fruit, while according to them Peter and Paul were from the root of a good tree, how are they to be thought to have borne such very bad fruits? And if they reply with what they usually invent, that it was not Paul who persecuted but someone else, I know not who, who was in Paul, and that it was not Peter who denied but another who denied in Peter, why then did Paul, if he had not sinned at all, say, “I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God”? And why did Peter himself weep most bitterly, if another had sinned? By this all their absurdities are refuted.

According to us, however, there is nothing in any rational creature that is not capable of both good and evil. But because we say that there is no nature that cannot receive evil, we do not therefore affirm that every nature has received evil, that is, has been made evil; just as one may say that the nature of every human being has received the capacity to sail, yet it does not follow that every human being will sail; and again, it is possible for every human being to learn the art of grammar or medicine, yet it is not thereby shown that every human being is a physician or a grammarian. So if we say that there is no nature which cannot receive evil, it is not thereby indicated that it has in fact received evil; and again, there is no nature which does not receive good, and yet not every nature is therefore proved to have received what is good. For according to us not even the devil himself was incapable of good; but because he could receive good, it does not follow that he also willed it or applied himself to virtue. For, as we are taught by the examples we brought forward from the prophets, he was once good, when he dwelt in the paradise of God in the midst of the cherubim. Just as he, then, had in himself the faculty of receiving either virtue or wickedness, and, turning away from virtue, turned with his whole mind to evil, so also the other creatures, since they have the faculty of either, flee evil by freedom of choice and cleave to the good. There is, therefore, no nature which does not admit good or evil, except the nature of God, which is the fountain of all good things, and of Christ; for he is wisdom, and wisdom certainly cannot admit folly; and he is righteousness, and righteousness will certainly never admit unrighteousness; and he is the Word or reason, which certainly cannot be made irrational. He is also light, and it is certain that darkness does not comprehend the light. Likewise the nature of the Holy Spirit, which is holy, does not admit pollution; for it is holy naturally or substantially. But if any other nature is holy, it has its sanctification from the reception or inspiration of the Holy Spirit, not possessing this from its own nature but as something accidental to it, and for this reason what is accidental can also fall away. So too one can have righteousness as an accident, and therefore it is possible for it to fall away. And one has wisdom likewise as an accident, although it is placed in our power, by our zeal and the merit of our life, to become wise if we devote ourselves to wisdom; and if we always keep up that zeal, we always share in wisdom, and it comes to us more or less, according either to the merit of our life or the measure of our zeal. For the goodness of God, as befits him, calls and draws all things to that blessed end where all pain and sorrow and sighing fall away and flee.

I think, then, as it seems to me, that the preceding discussion has sufficiently shown that it is not without discrimination or by some chance that the principalities hold their rule or the other orders each obtain their office, but that they have attained the rank of this dignity according to their merits, although it is not for us either to know or to ask what those acts were by which they merited to come into that order. But it is enough to know this much to demonstrate the fairness and justice of God, that, according to the statement of the apostle Paul, “there is no respect of persons with God,” who rather dispenses all things according to the merits and progress of each. Neither, then, does the office of angels exist except from merit, nor do the powers exercise power except from their progress, nor do those which are called seats, that is, powers of judging or ruling, administer except from merit, nor do dominions rule contrary to merit. And this is the one supreme and most excellent order of rational creatures in the heavenly places, arranged in a glorious variety of offices. In the same way we must also think of the opposing powers, which have given themselves to that place and office, so that their being principalities or powers or rulers of the world of darkness or spiritual forces of wickedness or evil spirits or unclean demons they have not substantially, nor because they were created such, but they have obtained these ranks of wickedness according to their movements and the progress by which they advanced in crime. And this is the second order of rational creatures, which has given itself so headlong to wickedness that it is unwilling rather than unable to be recalled, since the madness of crime is now a passion and gives delight. The third order of rational creatures is that of those who are judged fit by God to replenish the human race, that is, the souls of human beings, which through progress are also taken up into that order of angels; and we see some of them taken up, namely those who have been made sons of God or sons of the resurrection, or those who have left darkness and loved light and been made sons of light; or those who, overcoming every battle and made peacemakers, have become sons of peace and sons of God; or those who, putting to death their members which are on earth, and transcending not only bodily nature but even the uncertain and frail movements of the soul itself, have joined themselves to the Lord, made wholly spirit, so as to be always one spirit with him, discerning each thing with him, until they come to this, that having been made perfectly spiritual they discern all things, in that, illumined in mind in all holiness through the Word and Wisdom of God, they can be discerned by no one at all. We think that those things are by no means to be accepted which some are accustomed needlessly to inquire into or assert, namely that souls come to such a decline that, forgetting their rational nature and dignity, they sink even into the order of irrational living beings, either wild beasts or cattle. For these views they are accustomed to bring certain invented supports from the Scriptures: namely that the beast to which a woman has unnaturally submitted herself is held equally guilty with the woman and is commanded to be stoned equally; or that the goring bull is likewise ordered to be stoned; and also that Balaam's ass, when God opened its mouth, spoke, and the dumb beast of burden, answering with a human voice, rebuked the madness of the prophet. These views we not only do not accept, but we refute and reject all these assertions of theirs as contrary to our faith. Nevertheless, in its proper place and time, when this perverse doctrine has been refuted and driven off, we shall explain how the passages which they bring forward from the holy Scriptures ought to be understood.

It now seems to follow, although all that was discussed in the preceding book concerned the world and its arrangement, that we should repeat a few things specifically about the world itself, that is, about its beginning and end, or the things dispensed by divine providence between its beginning and end, or the things thought to have been done before the world or to be done after it. In this the first thing that clearly appears is that its whole condition, which is varied and diverse, consists not only of rational and diviner natures and of diverse bodies, but of dumb living things, that is, wild animals, beasts, cattle and birds, and all things that live in the waters; then of places, that is, of heaven or the heavens, and of earth or water; and also of the air, which is in the middle, or what they call ether, and of all things that come forth or are born from the earth. Since, then, there is so great a variety in the world, and so great a diversity among rational living beings themselves, on account of which all the rest of the variety and diversity must be thought to have come into existence, what other cause must be named for the world's coming into existence, especially if we look to that end, discussed in the preceding book, through which all things are to be restored to the state of their beginning? If this seems to have been said consistently, what other cause, as we have said, shall we suppose for so great a diversity of this world, except the diversity and variety of the movements and falls of those who fell away from that unity and harmony of the beginning in which they were first created by God, and who, disturbed and drawn away from that state of goodness, and then driven by the different movements and desires of their minds, drew that one undivided good of their nature into various qualities of mind according to the diversity of their purpose?

But God, by the ineffable art of his wisdom, transforming and repairing all things, in whatever way they come about, to some useful purpose and to the common advance of all, calls back these very creatures, which differed so much from one another in variety of minds, into a single agreement of work and purpose, so that, though with different movements of mind, they nevertheless complete the fullness and perfection of one world, and the very variety of minds tends to one end of perfection. For there is one power which binds and holds together all the diversity of the world and leads its various movements to one work, lest so immense a work as the world should be dissolved by the dissensions of minds. And for this reason we think that God, the parent of all, for the salvation of all his creatures, through the ineffable reason of his Word and Wisdom, so arranged each of these things that each spirit or soul, or whatever rational subsistences are to be called, should not be compelled by force, against the freedom of choice, to anything other than the movement of its own mind led it to (by which the faculty of free choice would seem to be taken from them, which would certainly change the quality of their very nature), and that the different movements of their purpose should be suitably and usefully fitted to the harmony of one world, while some need to be helped, others can help, and others again stir up contests and struggles for those who are making progress, in which their diligence might be more highly proven, and the station of the rank recovered after victory might be held more securely, having been established through the difficulties of those who laboured.

Although, then, the world is ordered in different offices, the state of the whole world is not, however, to be understood as discordant and at variance with itself; but as our body, though one, is fitted together of many members and held together by one soul, so I think the whole world too should be thought of as a kind of immense and enormous living being, held together as by one soul, the power and reason of God. This I think is indicated also by holy Scripture in what is said through the prophet: “Do I not fill heaven and earth, says the Lord?” and again: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet”; and by what the Saviour said when he said we should not swear by heaven, because it is the throne of God, nor by the earth, because it is the footstool of his feet; and also by what Paul said when he spoke to the Athenians, saying, “In him we live and move and are.” For how do we live and move and are in God, unless he binds and holds together the whole world by his power? And how is heaven the throne of God and the earth the footstool of his feet, as the Saviour himself declares, unless his power fills all things both in heaven and on earth, as the Lord also says: “Do I not fill heaven and earth, says the Lord?” I do not think anyone will find it difficult, from what we have shown, to agree that God, the parent of all, fills and holds together the whole world with the fullness of his power. And now, since the course of the preceding discussion has shown that the different movements and various intentions of rational creatures gave this world the cause of its diversity, we must see whether perhaps an end like its beginning befits this world too. For there is no doubt that its end must still be found in much diversity and variety; and this variety, found at the end of this world, will in turn furnish the causes and occasions of the diversities of another world to come after this one, so that the end of this world will be the beginning of the one to come.

If the order of the discussion has found that these things are so, it now seems to follow, since the diversity of the world cannot subsist without bodies, that we should discuss the nature of body. It appears from the facts themselves that bodily nature admits diverse and varied change, so that it can be transformed from all things into all things: as, for example, wood is turned into fire, fire into smoke, and smoke into air. Oil too, a liquid, is changed into fire. Do not the foods of human beings or animals show the same principle of change? For whatever we take as food is turned into the substance of our body. And how water is changed into earth or into air, and air again into fire, or fire into air, or air into water, although it would not be difficult to explain, yet in the present place it is enough merely to mention, since we wish to discuss the nature of bodily matter. By matter, then, we understand that which underlies bodies, that is, that from which bodies subsist when qualities are put in and implanted. We say there are four qualities: hot, cold, dry, wet. These four qualities, implanted in ὕλη, that is, matter (for matter by its own account is found to be apart from these qualities we have mentioned), produce the different kinds of bodies. Yet this matter, although, as we said above, by its own account it is without qualities, is never found to subsist apart from quality. This matter, then, which is so great and of such a kind that it can suffice for all the bodies of the world which God willed to exist, and which serves and obeys the Creator in all things for whatever forms and species he wishes, receiving in itself the qualities he wished to impose: I do not know how such and so great men have thought it unbegotten, that is, not made by God himself, the Creator of all, and have said that its nature and power are a matter of chance. And I am amazed how these men blame those who deny either a craftsman God or the providence of this universe, and accuse them of impiety for thinking that so great a work as the world exists without a craftsman or provider, when they themselves incur a similar charge of impiety, saying that matter is unbegotten and coeternal with the unbegotten God. According to this reasoning, then, if we suppose, for example, that matter had not existed, then, as these men assert, saying that God could not make anything when nothing existed, he would undoubtedly have been idle, having no matter from which to work, matter which they think was present to him not by his own provision but by chance; and it seems to them that what was found by chance could have sufficed him for the mass of so great a work and for the might of his power, so as to receive the whole plan of his wisdom and be distinguished and formed into a world. This seems to me utterly absurd, and to belong to men who are entirely ignorant of the power and intelligence of unbegotten nature. But so that we may see the reason of things more clearly, let it be granted for a moment that matter did not exist, and that God, when nothing existed before, made to exist the things he wished to exist. What shall we think? That God would have made a better or greater matter, or one of another kind, than that which he brought forth by his power and wisdom, so that what had not been before might exist? Or an inferior and worse one? Or one similar and the same as that which these men call unbegotten? I think it is very easily evident to anyone that neither a better nor an inferior one could have received the forms and species of the world unless it had been such as this is which received them. How then will it not seem impious to call that unbegotten which, if it is believed to have been made by God, is undoubtedly found to be such as that which is called unbegotten?

And so that we may believe on the authority of the Scriptures too that these things are so, hear how this doctrine is confirmed in the books of the Maccabees, where the mother of the seven martyrs exhorts one of her sons to endure torments; for she says: “I beg you, my son, look at heaven and earth and at all that is in them, and seeing these things, know that God made all these things when they did not exist.” And in the book of the Shepherd, in the first commandment, it says: “First of all believe that there is one God, who created and arranged all things, and made them to be out of what was not.” Perhaps what is written in the Psalms also refers to this: “He spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.” For in saying “He spoke, and they were made,” it seems to indicate the substance of the things that are; and in saying “He commanded, and they were created,” it seems to speak of the qualities by which the substance itself was formed.

Here some are accustomed to ask whether, just as the Father begets the only-begotten Son and brings forth the Holy Spirit, not as though they did not exist before, but because the Father is the origin and fountain of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and nothing earlier or later can be understood in them, so too a similar association or kinship can be understood between rational natures and bodily matter. To investigate this more fully and intently, they are accustomed to turn the beginning of their discussion to this point, inquiring whether this very bodily nature, which bears the lives and contains the movements of spiritual and rational minds, will endure for ever equally with them, or whether, released, it will pass away and perish. So that this may be grasped more carefully, it seems we must first ask whether it is possible for rational natures to remain wholly incorporeal when they have come to the summit of holiness and blessedness, which seems to me very difficult and almost impossible, or whether they must always be joined to bodies. If, then, anyone could show a reason by which it would be possible for them to be entirely without bodies, it will seem to follow that bodily nature, created out of nothing over intervals of time, just as it was made when it did not exist, so would cease to exist when the use of its service had passed.

But if this cannot in any way be affirmed, namely that any other nature besides the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit can live without a body, the necessity of logic and reason compels us to understand that rational natures were indeed created primarily, but that material substance is separated from them only in thought and understanding, and seems to have been made for them or after them, but that they have never lived nor live without it; for the life of the Trinity alone will rightly be thought to exist incorporeally. As we said above, then, this material substance of the world, having a nature which is transformed from all things into all things, when it is drawn down to lower beings is formed into a grosser and more solid state of body, so as to distinguish these visible species of the world in their variety; but when it serves the more perfect and the more blessed, it shines in the splendour of heavenly bodies and adorns either the angels of God or the sons of the resurrection with the garments of a spiritual body; and from all these the diverse and varied state of the one world will be completed. But if we wish to discuss these things more fully, we shall have to search the divine Scriptures more attentively and diligently, with all fear and reverence of God, to see whether perhaps a secret and hidden sense about such things may be revealed in them, whether anything can be found in obscure and hidden sayings, the Holy Spirit showing it to those who are worthy, when more testimonies about this very matter have been gathered.

It remains, after this, to inquire whether before this world which now exists there was another world; and if there was, whether it was such as this one which now exists, or somewhat different, or inferior; or whether there was no world at all, but something such as we understand will be after the end of all things, when the kingdom will be handed over to God the Father; which would nevertheless have been the end of another world, namely of that after which this world began; and whether the varied fall of intellectual natures moved God to this varied and diverse condition of the world. And this too I think must likewise be inquired: whether after this world there will be some healing and correction, harsher indeed and full of pain for those who were unwilling to obey the word of God, but through instruction and rational training by which they might advance to a richer understanding of the truth, like those who in the present life have devoted themselves to these studies and, made purer in mind, have already from here become capable of divine wisdom; and whether after this the end of all things will follow at once, or whether, for the correction and amendment of those who need such things, there will again be another world, either similar to this one which now exists, or better than it, or much worse; and how long that world after this one, whatever it will be, will last; and whether there will ever be a time when there is no world at all, or whether there was ever a time when there was no world at all; or whether there have been or will be several; or whether it may ever happen that one world turns out equal and similar to another in all respects and indistinguishable from it.

So that it may appear more clearly whether bodily matter subsists only at intervals, and, just as it did not exist before it was made, is dissolved again so as not to exist, let us first see whether it is possible for anyone to live without a body. For if anyone can live without a body, all things too can be without a body; for the preceding treatise has taught that all things tend to one end. But if all things can lack bodies, there will undoubtedly be no bodily substance, since there will be no use for it. And how shall we understand what the Apostle said in those passages where he discusses the resurrection of the dead, when he says: “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. And when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory; where, O death, is your victory? Your sting, O death, is swallowed up; the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.” The Apostle seems to suggest some such understanding as this. For when he says “this corruptible” and “this mortal,” with the gesture, as it were, of one touching and pointing, to what else does it apply but bodily matter? This matter of the body, then, which is now corruptible, will put on incorruption when a perfected soul, instructed in the teachings of incorruption, has begun to use it. And do not be surprised if we call the perfected soul the clothing of the body, the soul which, on account of the Word of God and his wisdom, is now called incorruption; since Jesus Christ himself, who is the Lord and creator of the soul, is said to be the clothing of the saints, as the Apostle says: “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” As Christ, then, is the clothing of the soul, so by a certain intelligible reasoning the soul too is said to be the clothing of the body. For it is its adornment, veiling and covering its mortal nature. Such, then, is the meaning of “This corruptible must put on incorruption”: as if he said, this corruptible nature of the body must receive the clothing of incorruption, a soul which has incorruption in itself, because it has put on Christ, who is the Wisdom and Word of God. And when this body, which we shall at some time have in a more glorious state, has shared in life, then it will attain to what is immortal, so as to become incorruptible as well. For whatever is mortal is by that very fact also corruptible; but not everything corruptible can be called mortal. We call a stone or wood corruptible, but we shall not therefore call it mortal. The body, however, since it shares in life, we consequently call mortal, because life can be and is separated from it; and in another sense we also call it corruptible. With wonderful reasoning, then, the holy Apostle, looking first to the general cause of bodily matter (a matter which the soul always uses, set in whatever quality, now fleshly, afterwards finer and purer, which is called spiritual), says, “This corruptible must put on incorruption”; and secondly, looking to the special cause of the body, says, “This mortal must put on immortality.” And what else will incorruption and immortality be but the Wisdom and Word and righteousness of God, which form and clothe and adorn the soul? So it comes about that it is said that the corruptible will put on incorruption, and the mortal immortality. For now, even if we make great progress, yet since we know only in part and prophesy in part, and see through a mirror in an enigma those very things which we seem to understand, this corruptible has not yet put on incorruption, nor is the mortal surrounded by immortality; and since this training of ours in the body is undoubtedly drawn out at length, namely until our very bodies with which we are surrounded merit incorruption and immortality on account of the Word of God and his wisdom and perfect righteousness, therefore it is said: “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”

Those, however, who think that rational creatures can at some time lead their life outside bodies may raise some such points as these at this place. If it is true that “this corruptible will put on incorruption, and this mortal will put on immortality,” and that “death is swallowed up at the end,” this declares that nothing other than material nature is to be destroyed, in which death could do something, while in those who are in the body the sharpness of the mind seems to be blunted by the nature of bodily matter. But if they are outside the body, then they will escape altogether the trouble of disturbance of this kind. But since they will not be able suddenly to escape all bodily clothing, they must be thought first to dwell in finer and purer bodies, which can no longer be overcome by death nor pricked by the sting of death; so that thus at last, as material nature gradually ceases, death may be swallowed up and even exterminated at the end, and all its sting entirely blunted by the divine grace, of which the soul has been made capable, and by which it has merited to obtain incorruption and immortality. And then it will rightly be said by all: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin.” If, then, these things seem to follow, it remains that our condition is to be believed to be at some time incorporeal; and if this is accepted, and all are said to be subjected to Christ, this must also be granted to all to whom the subjection of Christ extends; since all who are subject to Christ will at the end also be subject to God the Father, to whom Christ is said to be about to hand over the kingdom; and so it seems that then the use of bodies too will cease. And if it ceases, it returns to nothing, as it also did not exist before. But let us see what confronts those who so assert. For it will seem necessary that, if bodily nature has been destroyed, it must be restored and created a second time; for it seems possible that rational natures, from whom the faculty of free choice is never taken away, may again be subject to some movements, the Lord himself allowing this, lest perhaps, if they always held an unmoving state, they should not know that it was by the grace of God and not by their own power that they were set in that final blessedness; and those movements will undoubtedly again be followed by variety and diversity of bodies, by which the world is always adorned; nor can a world ever consist except of variety and diversity, which can in no way be brought about apart from bodily matter.

Now as for those who affirm that worlds sometimes come about that are not unlike one another and are equal in all respects, I do not know by what proofs they can assert this. For if a world is said to be similar in every respect, it will follow that Adam and Eve will again do the same things they did; there will again be the same flood, and the same Moses will again lead out of Egypt a people numbering about six hundred thousand; Judas too will twice betray the Lord; Paul will a second time keep the garments of those who stoned Stephen; and everything that has been done in this life will be said to be done again. I do not think this can be established by any reasoning, if souls are moved by freedom of choice and undergo their progress or decline according to the power of their own will. For souls are not driven by some course revolving into the same circles after many ages, so as to do or desire this or that; but wherever the freedom of their own minds has aimed, there they direct the course of their deeds. What these people say is as if someone were to assert that if a bushel of grain is poured out on the ground, it could happen that the grains fall a second time in the same and completely indistinguishable way, so that each grain, poured out a second time, would lie next to the one beside which it was once thrown down the first time, and be scattered in the same order and with the same marks as when it was first poured out; which is certainly utterly impossible for the countless grains of a bushel, even if they were poured out unceasingly and continually for immeasurable ages. So it seems to me impossible that a world should be restored a second time with the same order and in the same ways of being born and dying and acting; but that different worlds can exist with no small changes, so that for certain clear causes the state of one world is better, for others worse, and for others in between. But what their number or measure is, I confess I do not know. If anyone could show it, I would gladly learn.

Yet this world, which is itself also called an age, is said to be the end of many ages. The holy Apostle teaches that Christ did not suffer in the age that was before this one, nor even in the one before that; and I do not know whether I am able to count how many earlier ages there were in which he did not suffer. I shall set out from which words of Paul I came to the occasion of this understanding. For he says: “But now once at the consummation of the ages he has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” For he says that he became a sacrifice once, and was manifested at the consummation of the ages to put away sin. And that after this age, which is said to have come about for the consummation of other ages, there will be other ages to come, we have learned plainly from Paul himself, who says: “That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us.” He did not say “in the age to come,” nor “in two ages,” but “in the ages to come”; from this I think that many ages are indicated by what he says. But if there is something greater than the ages (so that ages are understood among created things, but in others, which exceed and surpass visible creatures, …), which will perhaps be in “the restoration of all things,” when all things reach their perfect end, that perhaps is to be understood as something more than an age, in which the consummation of all things will be. I am moved in this by the authority of holy Scripture, which says “for an age, and still further.” For when it says “and still further,” it undoubtedly wishes something more than an age to be understood. And see whether what the Saviour says, “I will that where I am these too may be with me; and as I and you are one, so they too may be one in us,” does not seem to indicate something more than an age and ages, perhaps even more than the ages of ages, namely when all things are no longer in an age, but God is in all.

Having discussed, as far as we could, the account of the world, it seems not unfitting also to inquire what the name “world” itself means; for this name is often shown in the holy Scriptures to signify different things. What we call mundus in Latin is called κόσμος in Greek; and κόσμος means not only world but also ornament. Indeed in Isaiah, where a word of rebuke is directed to the chief daughters of Zion, it says: “Instead of an ornament of gold on your head you shall have baldness because of your works”; there it called “ornament” by the same name as “world”, that is, κόσμος. The plan of the world is also said to be contained in the vesture of the high priest, as we find in the Wisdom of Solomon, when it says that “on the long robe was the whole world.” This globe of the earth with its inhabitants is also called our world, as when Scripture says: “The whole world lies in the evil one.” Clement, the disciple of the apostles, indeed mentions those whom the Greeks called ἀντίχθονες, and other parts of the globe of the earth which none of our people can reach and from which none of those who are there can cross to us; and these too he called worlds, when he says: “The ocean is impassable to human beings, and the worlds that are beyond it, which are governed by these same arrangements of God the ruler.” This universe too, which is contained by heaven and earth, is called the world, as Paul says: “For the form of this world will pass away.” Our Lord and Saviour also indicates another world besides this visible one, which is truly difficult to describe and indicate; for he says, “I am not of this world.” He says “I am not of this world” as though he were from some other world. We have said beforehand that the explanation of this world is difficult for us, lest occasion be given to some for the understanding by which they think we affirm certain images which the Greeks call ἰδέαι: for it is certainly foreign to us to speak of an incorporeal world existing only in the fantasy of the mind or the slipperiness of thoughts; and how they will be able to affirm that the Saviour comes from there, or that the saints too will go there, I do not see. Yet there is no doubt that something more glorious and splendid than this present world is indicated by the Saviour, toward which he calls and urges those who believe in him to strive. But whether that world which he wishes to be understood is separate from this one and far divided from it, whether in place or quality or glory, or whether it excels in glory and quality but is contained within the bounds of this world, which seems to me more likely, is still uncertain and, as I think, as yet unfamiliar to human thoughts and minds. Yet from what Clement seemed to indicate when he says, “The ocean is impassable to human beings, and the worlds that are beyond it,” naming the worlds beyond it in the plural, which he signifies are driven and ruled by the same providence of the most high God, he seems to scatter for us some seeds of an understanding of this kind: that the whole universe of things that are and subsist, heavenly and super-heavenly, earthly and infernal, may be called in general one perfect world, within which, or by which, the others, if there are any, are to be thought to be contained. Hence some wished the globe of the moon, or of the sun, and of the others which they call planets, each to be called a world. And they wish the very globe which surpasses them, which they call ἀπλανής (fixed), to be properly called a world as well. Indeed they also call the book of the prophet Baruch to witness to this assertion, because in it seven worlds or heavens are more clearly indicated. Yet above that sphere which they call ἀπλανής they hold that there is another, which, just as with us the heaven contains all things that are under heaven, so, they say, by its immense magnitude and ineffable embrace binds together the spaces of all the spheres with a more magnificent circuit; so that all things are within it as this earth of ours is under heaven. This too is believed to be called in the holy Scriptures the good land and the land of the living, having its own heaven, the higher one, in which heaven the names of the saints are said by the Saviour to be written or to have been written; by which heaven that land is held in and enclosed which the Saviour in the Gospel promises to the meek and gentle. For they hold that this earth of ours, whose name at first was “dry land”, was named after that land, just as this firmament was called heaven after the name of that heaven. But we have treated opinions of this kind more fully in the place where we inquired what it means that in the beginning God made heaven and earth. For another heaven and another earth is indicated than that firmament which is said to have been made after two days, or the dry land which was afterwards called earth. Indeed, what some say of this world, that it is corruptible because it was made, and yet is not corrupted because the will of God, who made it and holds it together so that corruption may not rule it, is stronger and more powerful than corruption, could more rightly be held of that world which we called above the ἀπλανής sphere, since by the will of God it is in no way subject to corruption, because it has not received the causes of corruption. For that world belongs to the saints and to those who have been thoroughly purified, and not to the impious, as this one of ours does. We must see whether the Apostle had this in view when he said: “While we look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. For we know that if our earthly house of this dwelling is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” For when he says elsewhere, “For I will see the heavens, the works of your fingers,” and God said through the prophet of all visible things, “For my hand has made all these things,” he declares that this eternal house which he promises to the saints in the heavens is not made with hands, showing without doubt a difference of creation between the things that are seen and the things that are not seen. For “the things that are not seen” and “the things that are invisible” do not mean the same. The things that are invisible are not only not seen but do not even have a nature such that they can be seen; these the Greeks called ἀσώματα, that is, incorporeal. But those of which Paul said, “which are not seen,” have a nature such that they can be seen, but he explains that they are not yet seen by those to whom they are promised.

These three opinions, then, about the end of all things and the supreme blessedness having been sketched as far as we were able to perceive, let each reader judge for himself more carefully and scrupulously whether any of them can be approved or chosen. For it has been said either that an incorporeal life is to be thought possible after all things have been subjected to Christ, and through Christ to God the Father, when God will be all and in all; or that, when all things have nonetheless been subjected to Christ, and through Christ to God, with whom they also become one spirit, in so far as rational natures are spirits, then bodily substance itself too, united to the best and purest spirits and changed into an ethereal state according to the quality or merits of those who take it on, will shine, as the Apostle says, “And we shall be changed”; or certainly that, when the form of the things that are seen passes away, all corruptibility being shaken off and purged, and this whole state of the world in which the spheres of the planets are said to be having been passed beyond and surmounted, the dwelling of the pious and blessed is placed above that sphere which is called ἀπλανής (fixed), as in a good land and a land of the living, which the meek and gentle will receive as an inheritance; to which belongs that heaven which with a more magnificent circuit surrounds and contains that very land, and which is truly and principally called heaven. In this heaven or land the end and perfection of all things can rest in a safe and most sure station: so that those who, after the correction and chastisement which they have endured for their sins by way of purification, have fulfilled and paid everything, may merit the dwelling of that land; while those who have been obedient to the word of God and have already from here shown themselves capable of his wisdom and obedient to it are said to merit the kingdom of that heaven or heavens; and so what was said may be more worthily fulfilled: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth as an inheritance,” and “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall receive the kingdom of heaven as an inheritance”; and what he says in the Psalm: “He will exalt you, and you shall receive the land as an inheritance.” For one is said to go down to this land, but to be exalted to that which is on high. In this way a kind of path seems to be opened for the progress of the saints from that land to those heavens, so that they seem not so much to remain in that land as to dwell there, being about to pass on, when they have made progress in this too, to the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven.

That the God of the law and the prophets is one, and is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. These things having been briefly set out in order as far as we could, it follows, according to what we proposed at the beginning, that we should also refute those who think that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is another God besides him who gave Moses the answers of the law or sent the prophets, who is the God of the fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For we must first be made firm in this article of faith. We must consider, then, what is frequently said in the Gospels and added to each of the deeds of our Lord and Saviour: “That what was spoken by this or that prophet might be fulfilled,” since it is plain that the prophets belong to the God who made the world. From this very sequence it is concluded that he who sent the prophets himself foretold what was to be foretold about Christ. And there is no doubt that it was not someone foreign to him, but his own Father, who foretold these things. And what else does the fact that examples from the Old Testament are frequently brought forward by the Saviour or by his apostles indicate but that authority is given to the ancient writings by the Saviour and his disciples? And also what the Saviour says to his disciples when calling them to kindness, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect, who makes his sun rise on the good and the evil, and sends rain on the just and the unjust,” suggests a most evident understanding even to a person of slight intelligence: that he proposes to his disciples for imitation no other God than the maker of heaven and the giver of rain. And when he says that those who pray should say, “Our Father who art in heaven,” what else does it seem to show but that God is to be sought in the better parts of the world, that is, of his creation? And when, laying down excellent rules about oaths, he says that one should not swear by heaven, because it is the throne of God, nor by the earth, because it is the footstool of his feet, does he not seem most plainly to agree with the prophetic words, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet”? And also when he cast out of the temple those who sold sheep and oxen and doves, and overturned the tables of the money-changers, saying, “Take these things away from here, and do not make my Father's house a house of trade,” he undoubtedly called his Father him to whose name Solomon had built the magnificent temple. And what he says, “Have you not read what was said by God to Moses: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; he is not the God of the dead but of the living?” teaches us most plainly that he called the God of the patriarchs, because they were holy and living, the God of the living, namely him who had said in the prophets, “I am God, and there is no God besides me.” For if the Saviour, knowing that the God of Abraham is he who is written in the law, and that he is the same who says, “I am God, and there is no God besides me,” acknowledges as his Father that very one who does not know of another God above him, as the heretics think, he absurdly declares to be his Father one who does not know a higher God. But if he does not indeed fail to know, but deceives in saying that there is no other God besides him, it is much more absurd if he acknowledges his Father to be a liar. From all this the mind is led to this conclusion, that he knows no other Father than God, the founder and creator of all things.

It would take long to gather testimonies from all the passages of the Gospels by which one and the same God of the law and the Gospels is taught. We shall touch briefly, however, on the Acts of the Apostles also, where Stephen and the apostles direct their prayers to the God who made heaven and earth and who spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets, calling him the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who led his people out of the land of Egypt. These statements undoubtedly direct our mind most evidently to faith in the Creator, and implant love for him in those who have learned these things about him piously and faithfully; as the Saviour himself, when he was asked which was the greatest commandment of all in the law, answered, saying: “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” And he added that on these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets. How, then, does he commend this commandment above all commandments to the one whom he was instructing and bringing into discipleship, a commandment by which love would undoubtedly be won for the God of his law, since these things had been proclaimed by the law in these very words? But let it be granted, against all these most evident proofs, that the Saviour says of some other God, I know not who, “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart,” and the rest that was said. Then how, if the law and the prophets belong to the Creator, as they say, that is, to another God than the one he calls good, will what he added seem consistent, that the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments? For how will what is alien and foreign to God hang on God? And Paul, saying, “I thank my God, whom I serve in my spirit from my forefathers with a pure conscience,” shows clearly that he came not to some new God but to Christ. For what other forefathers of Paul must be understood but those of whom he himself says, “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I”? And does not the very opening of his Epistle to the Romans carefully show the same to those who know how to understand Paul's letters, namely which God Paul preaches? For he says: “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God, which he had promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was made to him of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestined Son of God in power according to the spirit of sanctification by the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,” and so on. And there is what he says: “You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain. Is it for oxen that God cares? Or does he say it entirely for our sake? For it was written for our sake, because he who ploughs should plough in hope, and he who threshes in hope of receiving the fruit.” In this he shows evidently that the God who gave the law says for our sake, that is, for the apostles' sake, “You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain,” since his care was not for oxen but for the apostles who preached the Gospel of Christ. Elsewhere too Paul himself, embracing the promise of the law, says: “Honour your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it may be well with you and you may live long upon the earth, the good land which the Lord your God will give you.” By this he undoubtedly declares that the law, the God of the law, and his promises are pleasing to him.

But since the defenders of this heresy are sometimes accustomed to deceive the hearts of the simpler by certain deceptive sophisms, I think it not absurd also to set out what they are accustomed to bring forward in their assertions, and to refute their trickery and lies. They say, then: It is written, “No one has ever seen God”; but that God whom Moses preaches was seen both by Moses himself and before him by his fathers; whereas he who is proclaimed by the Saviour has been seen by no one at all. Let us, then, ask them in our turn whether they say that this one whom they confess as God, and say is other than the creator God, is visible or invisible. And if they say that he is visible, besides being shown to contradict the statement of Scripture which says of the Saviour that he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, they will also fall into the absurdity of saying that God is corporeal. For nothing can be seen except through shape, size and colour, which are the special properties of bodies. And if God is declared to be a body, then, since every body is from matter, God too will be found to be from matter; and if he is from matter, and matter is undoubtedly corruptible, then according to them God will be corruptible. Again we shall ask them: Was matter made, or is it unbegotten, that is, unmade? And if they say that it is unmade, that is, unbegotten, we shall ask them whether one part of matter is God and another part the world. But if they reply that matter was made, it will undoubtedly follow that they confess that he whom they call God was made, which neither their reasoning nor ours admits. But they will say: God is invisible. And what will you do? If you say that he is invisible by nature, he will not be visible to the Saviour either. Nay rather, God the Father of Christ is said to be seen, since “He who sees the Son,” he says, “sees the Father also.” This certainly presses you hard, but by us it is more rightly understood not of seeing but of understanding. For he who has understood the Son will understand the Father also. In this way, then, Moses too must be thought to have seen God, not beholding him with fleshly eyes but understanding him with the sight of the heart and the perception of the mind, and this only in some part. For it is plain that he who gave the answers to Moses says, “You shall not see my face, but my back parts.” These words are certainly to be understood with that mystery with which divine sayings ought to be understood, the old wives' fables being rejected and despised which are invented by the ignorant about the front and back parts of God. Let no one think that we have held anything impious in saying that the Father is not visible even to the Saviour: let him consider what distinction we use in dealing with the heretics. For we have said that it is one thing to see and be seen, and another to know and be known, or to recognize and be recognized. To see and to be seen belongs to bodies; and this will certainly not be fittingly applied to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in relation to one another. For the nature of the Trinity exceeds the mode of vision, while granting to those who are in a body, that is, to all the other creatures, the quality of seeing one another; but to incorporeal and principally intellectual nature nothing else belongs but to know and be known, as the Saviour himself also declares, saying: “No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” It is plain, then, that he did not say, “No one has seen the Father except the Son,” but “No one knows the Father except the Son.”

But if, because of what is said in the Old Testament, that God is angry or repents, or where any other passion of human feeling is indicated, they think material is offered them to refute us, affirming that God is to be thought wholly impassible and free of all such feelings, it must be shown to them that similar things are found also in the parables of the Gospel, when it says that he who planted a vineyard and leased it to tenants, who killed the servants sent to them and at last killed even the son sent to them, is said in his anger to have taken the vineyard from them, to have given the wicked tenants over to a wicked destruction, and to have handed the vineyard over to other tenants who would render him the fruit in its season. And also those citizens who, when the master of the house had set out to receive a kingdom for himself, sent envoys after him saying, “We do not want him to reign over us”: the master of the house, having obtained the kingdom, returned and in anger ordered them to be killed before him, and burned their city with fire. But we, whether in the Old Testament or in the New, when we read of the anger of God, do not take what is said according to the letter, but seek the spiritual understanding in such things, so as to think as it is worthy to understand of God. We showed, as far as we could, according to the smallness of our understanding, how this ought to be understood when we were expounding that little verse of the second Psalm in which it says: “Then he will speak to them in his anger, and in his fury he will trouble them.”

But since some are also troubled by this, that the leaders of this heresy seem to themselves to have made a certain division, by which they said that the just is one thing and the good another, and have applied this division even to the Godhead, affirming that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is a good God but not just, and that the God of the law and the prophets is just but not good, I think it necessary to reply to this question as briefly as I can. They think, then, that goodness is a disposition such that it ought to do good to all, even if the one to whom the benefit is given is unworthy and does not deserve to obtain good; but, as it seems to me, they have not used this definition rightly, thinking that good is not done to one on whom something harsh or painful is inflicted. Justice, on the other hand, they thought to be a disposition that renders to each according to his deserts. But here again they do not interpret the sense of their own definition rightly. For they think that the just does evil to the evil and good to the good, that is, that according to their sense the just man does not seem to wish well to the evil but is borne against them with a kind of hatred. And they gather any places they find in the Scriptures of the Old Testament where the narrative relates, for example, the punishments of the flood and of those who are related to have perished in it, or how Sodom and Gomorrah are laid waste by a rain of fire and sulphur, or how all fall in the desert for their sins, so that none of those who had set out from Egypt is found to enter the land of promise except Joshua and Caleb. From the New Testament, on the other hand, they gather words of mercy and kindness by which the disciples are instructed by the Saviour, and by which it seems to be declared that no one is good except the one God the Father; and on this basis they have dared to call the Father of the Saviour Jesus Christ good, but say that the God of the world is another, whom they were pleased to call just but not also good.

From them I think we must first demand whether, according to their definition, they can show the creator to be just in punishing according to their deserts either those who perished at the time of the flood, or the Sodomites, or those who had set out from Egypt, when we sometimes see far more wicked and criminal outrages committed than those for which the people we mentioned were destroyed, and yet we do not see each sinner paying the penalty he deserves. Will they say that he who was once just has become good? Or will they rather think that he is just now, but bears human offences patiently, whereas then he was not even just, when he destroyed innocent little children and infants at the breast together with the monstrous and impious giants? But they think so because they do not know how to hear anything beyond the letter; otherwise let them show how it is just according to the letter that the sins of parents be repaid into the bosom of their children to the third and fourth generation, and on their children's children after them. By us, however, such things are not understood according to the letter, but, as Ezekiel taught when he called it a parable, we seek what the parable itself signifies inwardly. They must also show how he is just and renders to each according to his merits who punishes the earthly and the devil, when they have committed nothing worthy of punishment. For they could not do anything good, if, according to these people, they were of an evil and lost nature. And as to their calling him a judge, he seems a judge not so much of deeds as of natures; since if an evil nature cannot do good, neither can a good one do evil. Then again, he whom they call good, if he is good to all, is undoubtedly good also to those who are to perish; and why does he not save them? If he does not will to, he will no longer be good; if he wills and cannot, he will not be almighty. Let them rather hear in the Gospels of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ preparing fire for the devil and his angels. And how, by their way of thinking, will this work, so penal and so grim, seem to belong to the good God? The Saviour himself too, the Son of the good God, testifies in the Gospels and says that “if the signs and wonders had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.” And when he had come very near to those very cities and had entered their territory, why, I ask, does he avoid entering those cities and granting them an abundance of signs and wonders, if it was certain that through these deeds they would repent in sackcloth and ashes? Since he does not do this, he undoubtedly leaves them to destruction, though the very word of the Gospel indicates that they were not of an evil and lost nature, since it shows that they could have repented. And also in a certain parable of the Gospel, the king, coming in to see those reclining at table who had been invited, saw a certain man not clothed in wedding garments, and said to him: “Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?” Then he said to the servants: “Bind his hands and feet and cast him out into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Let them tell us who this king is who came in to see those reclining and, finding among them one in dirty garments, orders him to be bound by his servants and thrust into the outer darkness. Is he the one they call just? And how had he ordered both good and bad to be invited, and not commanded his servants to inquire into their merits? By this is certainly shown the disposition not of someone just, as these people say, who repays according to merit, but of a kindness that makes no distinction among all. But if this must be understood of the good God, that is, of Christ or the Father of Christ, what else do they object against the just judgment of God? Indeed, what charge do they bring against the God of the law that is comparable to this, that he should order one who had been invited by the servants he had sent to call good and bad to be bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness for his rather dirty garments?

These things which we have taken from the authority of the Scriptures ought to suffice for refuting what the heretics are accustomed to allege. It will not seem unfitting, however, if we deal with them briefly also from reason and its consequences. We ask them, then, whether they know what account is held among human beings of virtue and wickedness, and whether it seems consistent that we speak of virtues in God, or, as they think, in these two gods. Let them answer this too: whether goodness seems to them to be a virtue, which I think they will undoubtedly admit. What will they say of justice? Never, surely, as it seems to me, will they be so foolish as to deny that justice is a virtue. If, then, goodness is a virtue and justice is a virtue, justice is undoubtedly goodness. But if they say that justice is not good, it remains that it is either evil or indifferent. To answer those who say that justice is evil I think absurd; for I shall seem to be answering senseless words or people out of their minds. For how will that seem evil which can render good to the good, as even they themselves admit? But if they say it is indifferent, it follows that, since justice is indifferent, temperance and prudence and all the other virtues are also held to be indifferent. And what shall we answer to Paul, who says: “If there is any virtue, if any praise, think on these things which you have learned and received and heard and seen in me”? Let them learn, then, by searching the divine Scriptures, what the individual virtues are, and not deceive by saying that the God who renders to each according to his merit renders evil to the evil out of hatred of the wicked, and not because those who have sinned need to be healed by harsher medicines, and that for this reason he applies to them things which, with a view to their amendment, seem for the present to bring a sense of pain. They do not read what is written of the hope of those who perished in the flood, about which hope Peter himself says in his first Epistle: “For Christ died indeed in the flesh, but was made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to those spirits who were held in prison, who had once been unbelieving, when they awaited the patience of God in the days of Noah, while the ark was being built, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water; and baptism, in a similar form, now saves you also.” As for Sodom and Gomorrah, let them tell us whether they believe that the prophetic words belong to the creator God, namely to him who is related to have rained a shower of fire and sulphur upon them. What does the prophet Ezekiel say of them? “Sodom,” he says, “will be restored to its former state.” And in afflicting those who are worthy of punishment, does he not afflict them for their good? He also says to Chaldea: “You have coals of fire; sit upon them; they will be a help to you.” And about those who fell in the desert, let them hear what is related in the seventy-seventh Psalm, which is entitled “of Asaph”; for it says: “When he slew them, then they sought him.” It does not say that when some were killed, others sought him, but that the death of those who were killed was such that, when put to death, they sought God. From all this it is established that the God of the law and of the Gospels is one and the same, just and good, and that he does good with justice and punishes with goodness; because neither good without just nor just without good can show the dignity of the divine nature. We shall add this too, as their cunning compels us: if the just is something other than the good, since evil is the contrary of good and unjust the contrary of just, then undoubtedly the unjust will be something other than the evil; and just as among you the just man is not good, so neither will the unjust man be evil; and again, just as the good man is not just, so the evil man will not be unjust. But to whom does it not seem absurd that to the good God there should be a contrary, the evil one, while to the just God, whom they call inferior to the good, there should be no contrary? For there is not, as there is Satan who is called evil, another who is called unjust. What then? Let us cut away what we are defending. For they will not be able to say that the evil one is not also unjust, and the unjust evil. And if in these contraries injustice inheres inseparably in evil, or evil in injustice, undoubtedly the good also will be inseparable from the just, and the just from the good; so that, as we speak of one and the same wickedness of malice and injustice, so we may hold one and the same virtue of goodness and justice.

But again they call us back to the Scriptures, bringing forward that most famous question of theirs. For they say: It is written that “a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor a bad tree good fruit; for the tree is known by its fruit.” What then do they say? What kind of tree the law is, is declared by its fruits, that is, by the words of its precepts. For if the law is found to be good, then undoubtedly he who gave it is believed to be a good God; but if it is just rather than good, the lawgiver God will also be thought just. The apostle Paul, using no circumlocution, says: “The law therefore is good, and the commandment holy and just and good.” From this it is plain that Paul had not learned the letters of these people who separate the just from the good, but had been instructed by that God and enlightened by the Spirit of that God who is at once holy and good and just; and speaking by his Spirit he said that the commandment of the law was holy and just and good. And to show more evidently that goodness is present in the commandment over and above justice and holiness, repeating the word, he put forward goodness alone in place of these three, saying: “Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means.” For knowing that goodness is the genus of the virtues, and justice or holiness species of that genus, having named genus and species together above, in repeating the word he turned it back to the genus alone. And in what follows: “Sin,” he says, “worked death in me through what is good.” In this he concludes by the genus what he had set out above by the species. In this way too must be understood the saying: “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good, and the evil man out of the evil brings forth evil.” For here too he took the genus in good and evil, showing undoubtedly that in the good man there is justice and temperance and prudence and piety and everything that can be called or understood as good. Likewise also he spoke of the evil man, who would undoubtedly be unjust and impure and impious and all the things that disfigure the evil man in his parts. For just as without these wickednesses no one thinks anyone an evil man, nor can he be evil, so it is certain that without those virtues no one will be thought good. There remains to them also what they think was given them as a shield of their own, that the Lord said in the Gospel, “No one is good but one, God the Father,” saying that this is the proper name of the Father of Christ, who is nevertheless other than God the creator of all, to whom, the creator, he gave no title of goodness. Let us see, then, whether in the Old Testament the God of the prophets and the creator of the world and lawgiver is not called good. And what of what is said in the Psalms: “How good is the God of Israel to the upright in heart!” and: “Let Israel now say that he is good, that his mercy is for ever”? And in the Lamentations of Jeremiah it is written: “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.” As, then, God is frequently called good in the Old Testament, so too the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is called just in the Gospels. Indeed, in the Gospel according to John our Lord himself, praying to the Father, says: “Just Father, and the world has not known you.” Lest perhaps they say that because of his taking flesh he called the creator of the world Father and named him just, they are excluded by the words that immediately follow; for he says, “And the world has not known you.” For according to them the world is ignorant only of the good God, since it most truly recognizes its own maker, as the Lord himself says that the world loves what is its own. Plainly, then, he whom they think the good God is said in the Gospels to be just. At leisure it will be possible to gather more testimonies where in the New Testament the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is called just, and where in the Old Testament the creator of heaven and earth is called good, so that the heretics, convicted by more testimonies, may perhaps at some time be ashamed.

Now that these things have been gone through, it is time for us to return to the incarnation of our Lord and Saviour, how or why he became man. With our very slight powers we have considered the divine nature more from the contemplation of his works than from our own understanding, and have looked at his visible creatures and contemplated the invisible ones by faith, since human frailty can neither see all things with the eyes nor grasp them by reason, because we human beings are the weakest and frailest of all rational living beings, those which are held to be in heaven or above the heavens being more excellent. It remains that we seek the middle between all these creatures and God, that is, the mediator, whom the apostle Paul declares to be the firstborn of all creation. We see also what is related in the holy Scriptures about his majesty, and observe that he is called “the image of the invisible God and the firstborn of all creation,” and that “in him were created all things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and in him; and he is before all, and all things hold together in him”; he is the head of all, having as his head God the Father alone; for it is written, “The head of Christ is God.” We perceive also that it is written, “No one knows the Father except the Son, nor does anyone know the Son except the Father” (for who can know what Wisdom is except him who begot her? Or who knows clearly what the truth is except the Father of truth? Who indeed could investigate the whole nature of his Word, and of God himself, which is from God, except God alone, with whom the Word was?). We ought therefore to hold for certain that this Word, or Reason as it may be called, this Wisdom, this Truth, no one knows except the Father alone; of whom it is written, “I think that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written,” namely about the glory and majesty of the Son of God. For it is impossible to commit to writing the things that pertain to the glory of the Saviour. Having considered such great things about the nature of the Son of God, we are struck dumb with the highest wonder that this nature, pre-eminent over all, emptying itself of its state of majesty, became man and lived among human beings, as the grace poured on his lips testifies, and as the heavenly Father bears witness to him, and as is confirmed by the signs and wonders and various mighty works done by him. Before this presence of his which he showed in the body, he sent the prophets as forerunners and messengers of his coming; and after his ascension into heaven he made the holy apostles, men unskilled and unlearned, taken from among tax collectors or fishermen but filled with the power of his divinity, go round the world, so that from every race and all peoples they might gather a people of the pious who believe in him.

But of all the miracles and wonders concerning him, this one altogether surpasses the admiration of the human mind, and the frailty of mortal intelligence cannot find how to conceive or understand it: that this so great power of the divine majesty, the very Word of the Father and the very Wisdom of God, in which all things visible and invisible were created, is to be believed to have been within the limits of that man who appeared in Judea; and, more, that the Wisdom of God entered a woman's womb, and was born a little child, and uttered cries like crying children; then that he is related to have been troubled in the face of death, as he himself declares, saying, “My soul is sorrowful even to death”; and finally that he was brought to the death which is held most shameful among human beings, although he rose again on the third day. Since, then, we see in him some things so human that they seem in no way to differ from the common frailty of mortals, and some things so divine that they befit none other than that first and ineffable nature of the Godhead, the narrowness of human understanding is at a loss, and, struck with amazement at such great wonder, does not know where to turn, what to hold, whither to direct itself. If it thinks of God, it sees a mortal; if it thinks of a man, it sees him returning from the dead with the spoils, having conquered the empire of death. Therefore this must be contemplated with all fear and reverence, so that the truth of each nature may be shown in one and the same person, in such a way that nothing unworthy or unfitting is thought of in that divine and ineffable substance, nor, on the other hand, are the things that were done thought to be illusions of false appearances. To bring these things to human ears and explain them in words far exceeds the powers of our merit, or of our ability and speech. I think indeed that it surpasses even the measure of the holy apostles; indeed, perhaps the explanation of this mystery is beyond the whole creation of the heavenly powers. Of this we shall speak, not from any rashness but because the order of the place requires it, in very few words, setting forth rather what our faith holds than what the assertion of human reason is accustomed to claim, and bringing forward our conjectures rather than any clear affirmations.

The only-begotten of God, then, through whom, as the course of the discussion has taught above, all things visible and invisible were made, according to the statement of Scripture both made all things and loves what he made. For since he himself is the invisible image of the invisible God, he gave a share of himself invisibly to all rational creatures, so that each received a share of him in proportion to the love with which it had clung to him. But since, by the faculty of free choice, variety and diversity of minds had taken hold of each one, so that one was held by a more ardent, another by a fainter and weaker love toward its author, that soul of which Jesus said, “No one takes my soul from me,” clinging to him from the beginning of creation and ever after inseparably and indissolubly, as to the Wisdom and Word of God and the truth and the true light, and receiving him wholly, and itself passing into his light and splendour, was made with him in a principal way one spirit, as the Apostle also promises to those who ought to imitate it, that “he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit.” With this substance of the soul, then, mediating between God and the flesh (for it was not possible for the nature of God to be mingled with a body without a mediator), there is born, as we said, the God-man, that substance being the middle; for it was certainly not contrary to its nature to take on a body. Nor again was it contrary to the nature of that soul, as a rational substance, to receive God, into whom, as we said above, as into the Word and Wisdom and Truth, it had already wholly passed. Hence, deservedly, because it was either wholly in the Son of God or received the Son of God wholly into itself, it too, together with the flesh it had taken, is called the Son of God and the power of God, Christ and the Wisdom of God; and again the Son of God, through whom all things were created, is named Jesus Christ and the Son of Man. For the Son of God too is said to have died, namely with respect to that nature which could certainly receive death; and he is called the Son of Man who is proclaimed as about to come in the glory of God the Father with the holy angels. For this reason, throughout all Scripture, the divine nature is called by human names, and the human nature is adorned with the marks of divine designation. For of this more than of any other can be said what is written: “They two shall be in one flesh, and they are no longer two but one flesh.” For the Word of God is to be thought to be in one flesh with the soul more than a husband with his wife. And to whom is it more fitting to be one spirit with God than to this soul, which so joined itself to God by love that it may deservedly be said to be one spirit with him?

That the perfection of love and the sincerity of a deserving affection made for it this inseparable unity with God, so that the taking up of his soul was not by chance or with respect of persons, but was conferred on it by the merit of its virtues, hear the Prophet saying to it: “You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.” By the merit of love, then, it is anointed with the oil of gladness; that is, the soul of Christ together with the Word of God becomes Christ. For to be anointed with the oil of gladness is understood as nothing other than to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And in saying “above your fellows,” he indicates that the grace of the Spirit was not given to it as to the prophets, but that the substantial fullness of the very Word of God was in it, as the Apostle too said: “In whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” For this reason, indeed, he not only said, “You have loved righteousness,” but added, “and hated iniquity.” For to hate iniquity is what Scripture says of him, that “he committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth”; and what it says, “tempted in all things in like manner, without sin.” And the Lord himself also says, “Which of you convicts me of sin?” And again he says of himself, “Behold, the prince of this world comes, and finds nothing in me.” All these things indicate that no sense of sin existed in him. And to indicate more clearly that no sense of iniquity ever entered him, the prophet says: “Before the child knew how to call father or mother, he turned away from iniquity.”

But if this seems difficult to anyone, because we have shown above that there is a rational soul in Christ, while throughout all our discussions we have often shown that the nature of souls is capable of good and evil, the difficulty of this matter will be explained in this way. That the nature of that soul was the same as that of all souls cannot be doubted; otherwise it could not even be called a soul, if it was not truly a soul. But since the power of choosing good and evil is present to all, this soul which is Christ's so chose to love righteousness that, by the immensity of its love, it clung to it unchangeably and inseparably, so that firmness of purpose, immensity of affection and the inextinguishable warmth of love cut off every sense of turning or change, and what was placed in choice has now been turned into nature by the affection of long use. So it must be believed both that there was in Christ a human and rational soul, and that it had no sense or possibility of sin.

For a fuller explanation of the matter, however, it does not seem absurd if we also use some comparison, although in a matter so arduous and so difficult there is not even an abundance of suitable examples. Yet, to speak without prejudging anything: the metal iron is capable of cold and of heat. If, then, some mass of iron is always placed in fire, receiving fire through all its pores and all its veins and becoming wholly fire, if neither the fire ever ceases from it nor it is separated from the fire, shall we say that this, which by nature is indeed a mass of iron, placed in fire and burning unceasingly, can ever receive cold? Rather, what is truer, we say that it has become wholly fire, as we often see with our eyes happen in furnaces, since nothing else is seen in it but fire; and if anyone tries to touch and handle it, he will feel the force not of iron but of fire. In this way, then, that soul too which, like iron in fire, has been placed always in the Word, always in Wisdom, always in God, is God in all that it does, feels and understands; and therefore it cannot be called changeable or mutable, since, set unceasingly on fire by its union with the Word of God, it possessed unchangeableness. To all the saints, indeed, some warmth of the Word of God must be thought to have come; but in this soul the divine fire itself must be believed to have rested substantially, and from it some warmth has come to the others. Finally, in saying, “God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows,” he shows that this soul is anointed with the oil of gladness, that is, with the Word of God and Wisdom, in one way, and its fellows, that is, the holy prophets and apostles, in another. For they are said to have run in the fragrance of his ointments; but this soul was the vessel of that ointment itself, from whose fragrance those who shared in it became worthy prophets and apostles. As, then, the substance of an ointment is one thing and its fragrance another, so Christ is one thing and his fellows another. And as the vessel itself which contains the substance of the ointment can in no way receive any foul smell, while those who share in its fragrance may, if they move a little farther from its fragrance, receive a foul smell that comes upon them, so it was impossible for Christ, as the very vessel in which the substance of the ointment was, to receive the contrary smell; but his fellows will share in and be capable of the fragrance in proportion as they are near the vessel.

I think, indeed, that the prophet Jeremiah too, understanding what the nature of the Wisdom of God in him was, which was also the same that he had taken for the salvation of the world, said: “The breath of our face, Christ the Lord, of whom we said that in his shadow we shall live among the nations.” For just as the shadow of our body is inseparable from the body and takes on and performs the movements and gestures of the body without deviation, I think that he, wishing to show the work and movement of Christ's soul, which clung to him inseparably and did all things according to his movement and will, called this the shadow of Christ the Lord, in which shadow we were to live among the nations. For in the mystery of this assumption the nations live, who, imitating it, come to salvation through faith. And David too, saying, “Remember, Lord, my reproach, with which they reproached me in exchange for your Christ,” seems to me to show similar things. And what else does Paul mean when he says, “Your life is hidden with Christ in God”? In another place indeed he says, “Do you seek a proof of Christ who speaks in me?” And now he says that Christ is hidden in God. Unless some such understanding of this is indicated as we said above is signified by the prophet through the shadow of Christ, perhaps this sense too exceeds the human mind. We see very many other passages in the divine Scriptures concerning the meaning of shadow, such as that in the Gospel according to Luke, when Gabriel says to Mary: “The Spirit of the Lord will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” And the Apostle says of the law that those who have fleshly circumcision serve a likeness and shadow of heavenly things. And elsewhere it is said: “Is not our life a shadow upon the earth?” If, then, both the law which is upon the earth is a shadow, and our whole life which is upon the earth is a shadow, and we live in the shadow of Christ among the nations, we must see whether the truth of all these shadows will be known in that revelation when, no longer through a mirror and in an enigma but face to face, all the saints will merit to behold the glory of God and the causes and truth of things. Having already received the pledge of this truth through the Holy Spirit, the Apostle said: “Even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer.” These things, for the present, have been able to occur to us as we discuss matters so difficult, namely the incarnation and the deity of Christ. If anyone can find something better and confirm what he says by clearer statements from the holy Scriptures, let that be accepted rather than this.

After those first discussions which we set out at the beginning about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, as the matter required, it seemed that we ought to go back and show that the same God is the creator of the world and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that is, that the God of the law and the prophets and the Gospels is one and the same; and then also concerning Christ, that he who had been shown above to be the Word and Wisdom of God had to be shown in what follows to have become man, and how. It remains, then, that we also go back briefly, as far as we can, to the Holy Spirit. It is time now for us to discuss a little, as far as we can, about the Holy Spirit, whom our Lord and Saviour named the Paraclete in the Gospel according to John. For just as it is the same God himself and the same Christ himself, so it is the same Holy Spirit who was in the prophets and in the apostles, that is, both in those who believed in God before the coming of Christ and in those who have taken refuge in God through Christ. That heretics have dared to say there are two Gods and two Christs we have heard; but that there are two Holy Spirits we have never known to be preached by anyone. For how will they be able to affirm this from the Scriptures, or what difference will they be able to give between Holy Spirit and Holy Spirit, if indeed any definition or description of the Holy Spirit can be found? For even if we grant to Marcion or Valentinus that they can introduce differences in the Godhead, and describe one nature of the good and another of the just, what will he devise and find in order to introduce a difference in the Holy Spirit? I think, then, that they can find nothing to indicate any difference whatever.

We, however, think that every rational creature receives participation in him, as in the Wisdom of God and the Word of God, without any difference. Yet I see that the special coming of the Holy Spirit to human beings is declared after Christ's ascension into heaven rather than before his coming. For before, the gift of the Holy Spirit was granted only to the prophets and to a few, if anyone among the people happened to merit it; but after the coming of the Saviour it is written that what was said in the prophet Joel was fulfilled: “It shall be in the last days, and I will pour out of my Spirit on all flesh, and they shall prophesy”; which is like that saying, “All nations shall serve him.” Through the grace of the Holy Spirit, then, among very many other things this most magnificent thing is shown: that in what was written in the prophets or in the law of Moses, few then, namely the prophets themselves, and scarcely here and there one out of the whole people, could rise above the bodily understanding and understand something greater, that is, something spiritual, in the law or the prophets; but now there are countless multitudes of believers who, although not all can explain in order and clearly the sequence of the spiritual understanding, yet all are persuaded that neither circumcision is to be understood bodily, nor the rest of the Sabbath, nor the shedding of the blood of cattle, nor that it was about these things that God gave his answers to Moses; and this understanding is undoubtedly suggested to all by the power of the Holy Spirit.

But just as there are many ways of understanding Christ, who, although he is wisdom, does not act or have the force of wisdom in all, but only in those who devote themselves to wisdom in him; and who, though he is called physician, does not act as a physician toward all, but only toward those who, perceiving the weakness of their sickness, take refuge in his mercy so as to obtain health; so I think it is also with the Holy Spirit, in whom is every kind of gift. For to some is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to others the word of knowledge, to others faith; and so in each of those who can receive him the Spirit himself becomes, or is understood as, that which is needed by the one who has merited to share in him. Not noticing these divisions and differences, those who hear him named the Paraclete in the Gospel, and not considering from what work or act he is named Paraclete, have compared him to I know not what base spirits, and by this have tried to disturb the churches of Christ, so that they produced no small dissensions among the brethren. But the Gospel shows him to be of such power and majesty that it says the apostles could not yet grasp what the Saviour wished to teach them until the Holy Spirit should come, who, pouring himself into their souls, could enlighten them about the account and faith of the Trinity. These people, however, through the ignorance of their understanding, since not only are they themselves unable to set out consistently what is right, but cannot even lend a hearing to what is said by us, thinking less than is fitting about his divinity, have given themselves over to errors and deceptions, depraved by a wandering spirit rather than instructed by the teachings of the Holy Spirit, as the Apostle said: “following the doctrine of spirits of demons, forbidding to marry,” to the destruction and ruin of many, and unseasonably to abstain from foods, so that by a show of stricter observance they might lead astray the souls of the innocent.

We must know, then, that the Paraclete is the Holy Spirit, teaching greater things than can be uttered by the voice, and, so to speak, things that are unspeakable, “which it is not lawful for a man to utter,” that is, which cannot be indicated in human speech. We take it that “is not lawful” was said by the Apostle for “cannot,” as also where he says: “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are expedient; all things are lawful for me, but not all things build up.” For the things in our power, because we can have them, he says are lawful for us. The Holy Spirit is called the Paraclete from consolation; for paraclesis in Latin is called consolatio. For if anyone has merited to share in the Holy Spirit, when he has come to know the unspeakable mysteries, he undoubtedly receives consolation and gladness of heart. For when he has come to know, by the Spirit's showing, the reasons of all things that happen, why or how they happen, his soul can in no way be disturbed or receive any sense of sorrow; nor is he afraid in anything, when, clinging to the Word of God and his Wisdom, he calls Jesus Lord in the Holy Spirit. But since we have mentioned the Paraclete and have set out as far as we could how he ought to be thought of, and since our Saviour too is called Paraclete in the Epistle of John, when it says, “If any of us sins, we have a Paraclete with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins,” let us consider whether this name Paraclete perhaps means one thing of the Saviour and another of the Holy Spirit. For of the Saviour, Paraclete seems to be said for intercessor; for Paraclete in Greek means both, intercessor and consoler. Because of the words that follow, then, “And he is the propitiation for our sins,” the name Paraclete seems in the Saviour's case to be understood rather as intercessor; for he is said to intercede with the Father for our sins. In the case of the Holy Spirit, Paraclete ought to be understood as consoler, because he grants consolation to the souls to which he openly reveals the sense of spiritual knowledge.

After this, the order now requires us to inquire also about the soul in general, beginning from the lower and ascending to the higher. That there are souls in each living thing, even in those that live in the waters, I think no one doubts. For the common opinion of all holds this, and the confirmation of the authority of holy Scripture is added, when it is said, “God made great sea monsters and every soul of creeping living things which the waters brought forth according to their kind.” It is confirmed also from the common understanding of reason by those who define the soul in fixed words. For the soul is defined thus: that it is a substance φανταστική and ὁρμητική, which in Latin, though it cannot be rendered so properly, may be called capable of perception and of movement. This can certainly be said of all living things, including those that live in the waters; and in birds too this same definition of soul is shown fittingly to apply. Scripture has also added the authority of another statement, when it says: “You shall not eat blood, because the soul of all flesh is its blood; and you shall not eat the soul with the flesh”; in which it most evidently indicates that the blood of all living things is their soul. Now if anyone asks how it said that the soul of all flesh is its blood, with regard to bees, wasps and ants, and, among those in the waters, oysters and snails and whatever others lack blood and yet are most plainly shown to be living things, we must reply that the force which the vigour of red blood has in other living things is held in these by the fluid that is in them, though it be of another colour; for it makes no difference what the colour is, provided the substance is life-giving. That beasts of burden and cattle are living beings there is no doubt even in common opinion. Yet the statement of divine Scripture is clear when God says: “Let the earth bring forth the living soul according to its kind, four-footed beasts and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kind.” And as regards man, although no one doubts it nor could anyone inquire, yet divine Scripture indicates that “God breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” It remains to inquire about the angelic order, whether they too have souls or are souls, and about the other divine and heavenly powers, and also about the opposing powers. We have found no authority anywhere in divine Scripture that either the angels, or any divine spirits who are ministers of God, are said either to have souls or to be souls; yet that they are living beings is held by very many. Of God, however, we find it written thus: “And I will set my soul against that soul which has eaten blood, and I will root it out from its people”; and again elsewhere: “Your new moons and sabbaths and the great day I do not accept. Your fasts and holidays and festal days my soul hates.” And in the twenty-first Psalm it is said thus of Christ (for it is certain that this Psalm is ascribed to his person, as the Gospel testifies): “But you, Lord, do not put your help far off; look to my defence; deliver my soul, O God, from the sword, and my only one from the hand of the dog.” There are also many other testimonies about the soul of Christ when he was in the flesh.

But as for the soul of Christ, the account of the incarnation, coming to our aid, removes every question. For as he truly had flesh, so he truly had a soul. But how what is called the soul of God in the Scriptures ought to be understood is difficult both to conceive and to express; for we confess once for all that nature to be simple and without admixture of any addition. Yet, however it is to be understood, the soul of God meanwhile seems to be named; about Christ, however, there is no doubt. And therefore it does not seem absurd to me to say or think some such thing of the holy angels and the other heavenly powers too, since that definition of soul seems to apply to them also. For who could reasonably deny that they are capable of perception and of movement? And if this seems a correct definition, that a substance rationally capable of perception and movement is called soul, this same definition seems to belong to the angels too. For what else is in them than rational perception and movement? And things which share one account of definition undoubtedly have the same substance. Paul indeed indicates that there is a certain soulish man, who, he says, cannot receive the things that are of the Spirit of God; rather, the teaching of the Holy Spirit seems foolish to him, and he cannot understand what is spiritually discerned. And in another place he says that a soulish body is sown and a spiritual body rises, showing that in the resurrection of the righteous there will be nothing soulish in those who have merited the life of the blessed. And therefore we inquire whether perhaps there is some substance which, in so far as it is soul, is imperfect. But whether it is imperfect because it fell from perfection, or was made such by God, we shall inquire when each matter begins to be discussed in order. For if the soulish man does not receive the things that are of the Spirit of God, and because he is soulish cannot receive the understanding of a better, that is, divine, nature, it is perhaps for this reason that Paul, wishing to teach us more evidently what it is by which we can understand the things of the Spirit, that is, spiritual things, joins and associates the mind rather than the soul with the Holy Spirit. For this I think he shows when he says: “I will pray with the spirit, I will pray with the mind also; I will sing psalms with the spirit, I will sing psalms with the mind also.” He does not say “I will pray with the soul,” but with the spirit and the mind; and he does not say “I will sing psalms with the soul,” but “I will sing psalms with the spirit and the mind.”

But perhaps it is asked: if it is the mind that prays and sings psalms with the spirit, and it is the same that receives perfection and salvation, how does Peter say, “Receiving the end of our faith, the salvation of our souls”? If the soul neither prays nor sings psalms with the spirit, how will it hope for salvation? Or when it has come to blessedness, will it no longer be called soul? But let us see whether perhaps it can be answered in this way: that just as the Saviour came to save what was lost, and when it is saved, what was previously called lost is no longer lost, so perhaps this too which is being saved is called soul, but when it has been saved it will be named by the word for its more perfect part. And it will seem to some that this too can be added: just as what is lost undoubtedly existed before it was lost, when it was something other than lost, as it will certainly also be when it is no longer lost, so too the soul which is said to have perished will appear to have been something at one time, when it had not yet perished and for this reason came to be called soul; and, freed again from perdition, it can once more be that which it was before it perished and was called soul. And also from the very meaning of the name soul which the Greek indicates, it has seemed to some who inquire more curiously that no small understanding can be suggested. For the divine word has said that God is fire, when it says, “Our God is a consuming fire.” And of the substance of the angels it says thus: “Who makes his angels spirits and his ministers a burning fire”; and elsewhere, “The angel of the Lord appeared in a flame of fire in the bush.” Moreover, we have received a commandment to be “fervent in spirit,” by which the Word of God is undoubtedly shown to be fiery and hot. And the prophet Jeremiah hears from him who gave him answers: “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth as fire.” As, then, God is fire, and the angels a flame of fire, and all the saints are fervent in spirit, so on the contrary those who have fallen away from the love of God must undoubtedly be said to have grown cold in their love for him and to have become cold. For the Lord also says that because iniquity is multiplied, the love of many will grow cold. And whatever things in the holy Scriptures are compared to the adverse power you always find cold; and the devil is spoken of, and what is found colder than he? In the sea too the dragon is said to reign. For the prophet indicates that the serpent and dragon, which is certainly referred to one of the evil spirits, is also in the sea. And elsewhere the prophet says: “I will bring my holy sword upon the dragon, the fleeing serpent, upon the dragon, the crooked serpent, and it will slay him.” And again he says: “Even if they depart from my eyes and go down into the depth of the sea, there I will command the dragon and it will bite them.” And in Job too he is said to be king of all that are in the waters. The prophet announces that evils will be kindled from the north upon all who dwell on the earth. And the north wind is described in the holy Scriptures as cold, as it is written in Wisdom: “The cold north wind.” This too must undoubtedly be understood of the devil. If, then, things that are holy are called fire and light and fervent, while those that are contrary are called cold, and the love of many is said to grow cold, we must inquire whether perhaps the name soul, which in Greek is ψυχή, was so named from growing cold from a more divine and better state, and was transferred from the fact that it seems to have grown cold from that natural and divine warmth, and is therefore placed in the state and bears the name in which it now is. Finally, see whether you can easily find the soul spoken of properly in praise in the holy Scriptures; but in blame it frequently occurs, as there: “An evil soul destroys him who possesses it”; and “The soul that sins, it shall die.” For after it has been said, “All souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so the soul of the son is mine,” it certainly seemed to follow that he should say, “The soul that does righteousness, it shall be saved,” and “The soul that sins, it shall die.” But now we see that what is blameworthy he joined to the soul, while what was worthy of praise he passed over in silence. We must see, then, whether perhaps, as we said is declared by the name itself, it was called ψυχή, that is, soul, from having grown cold from the fervour of the righteous and from participation in the divine fire, and yet it has not lost the capacity to restore itself to that state of fervour in which it was at the beginning. Hence the Prophet too seems to show something of the kind when he says: “Return, my soul, to your rest.” From all this that seems to be shown: that the mind, falling from its state and dignity, became or was named soul; and if it is restored and corrected, it returns to being mind.

If this is so, it seems to me that this very decline and descent of the mind is not to be thought equal in all, but that it is turned into soul more or less, and that some minds preserve something even of their former vigour, others either nothing or some small amount. Hence some are found from their earliest age to be of more ardent sharpness, others slower, and some are born very dull and wholly unteachable. However, what we have said, that mind is turned into soul, or anything else that seems to point this way, let the reader examine and handle more carefully for himself; but let these things not be thought to have been put forward by us as dogmas, but discussed in the manner of treatment and inquiry. Let the reader also add this to the treatment: with regard to the soul of the Saviour it is observed from what is written in the Gospel that some things are ascribed to him under the name of soul, and others assigned under the name of spirit. For when he wishes to indicate some suffering or disturbance of his, he indicates it under the name of soul, as when he says, “Now my soul is troubled,” and “My soul is sorrowful even to death,” and “No one takes my soul from me, but I lay it down of myself.” But into the hands of the Father he commends not his soul but his spirit; and when he says that the flesh is weak, he does not say that the soul is willing, but the spirit. Hence the soul seems to be a kind of middle between the weak flesh and the willing spirit.

But perhaps someone may confront us with one of those points of which we ourselves gave warning in our propositions, and say: How then is the soul of God spoken of? We shall answer thus: just as with all things that are said of God in bodily terms, such as fingers, hands, arms, eyes, feet or mouth, we say that these are not human members but that certain powers of his are indicated by these names of bodily members, so too it must be thought that something else is indicated by this term, the soul of God. And if it is right for us to dare to say something more in such a matter, perhaps the soul of God can be understood as his only-begotten Son. For just as the soul, implanted throughout the whole body, moves all things and stirs all that it works, so too the only-begotten Son of God, who is his Word and Wisdom, reaches and extends to every power of God, being implanted in it. And perhaps as an indication of this mystery God is either called or described in the Scriptures as a body. We must consider, indeed, whether the only-begotten of God may perhaps be understood as the soul of God for this reason too, that he himself came into this place of affliction, and went down into the valley of weeping and into the place of our humiliation; as he says in the Psalm: “For you have humbled us in the place of affliction.” Finally, I know that some, expounding what the Saviour said in the Gospel, “My soul is sorrowful even to death,” have interpreted it of the apostles, whom he called his soul as being better than the rest of the body. For since the multitude of believers is called his body, they said that the apostles, as better than the rest of the body, ought to be understood as his soul. These things about the rational soul we have put forward, as far as we could, to be discussed by readers rather than as established and defined. Concerning the souls of cattle and other dumb animals, let what we said above in general suffice.

But now let us return to the order of the proposed discussion, and look at the beginning of creation, whatever beginning of God's creating the mind has been able to behold. In that beginning, then, we must think that God made as great a number of rational or intellectual creatures (or whatever those are to be called which we called minds above) as he foresaw would be sufficient. For it is certain that he made them according to some number fixed beforehand with himself; for we must not think, as some wish, that creatures have no limit, because where there is no limit there can be no comprehension nor any circumscription. And if this were so, the things that were made could certainly not be held together or dispensed by God. For by nature whatever is infinite will also be incomprehensible. Moreover, as Scripture says, “God founded all things in number and measure”; and therefore number will rightly be applied to rational creatures or minds, that they may be as many as can be dispensed, ruled and held together by the providence of God; and measure will consequently be applied to bodily matter, which we must believe was created by God as great as he knew would be sufficient for the adornment of the world. These, then, are what we must think were created by God in the beginning, that is, before all things. This we think is indicated also in that beginning which Moses introduced rather obscurely, when he says: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” For it is certain that this is said not of the firmament nor of the dry land, but of that heaven and earth from which this heaven and earth that we see afterwards borrowed their names.

But since these rational natures, which we said above were made in the beginning, were made when they did not exist before, by this very fact, that they were not and began to be, they necessarily subsisted as changeable and mutable; since whatever power was in their substance was not in it by nature but was produced by the kindness of the Creator. What they are, therefore, is not their own nor everlasting, but given by God. For it did not always exist; and everything that has been given can also be taken away and depart. And the cause of departure will lie in this, if the movement of minds is not directed rightly and commendably. For the Creator granted to the minds he made voluntary and free movements, so that the good might become their own, being preserved by their own will; but sloth and weariness of labour in preserving the good, and aversion and neglect of better things, gave the beginning of departure from the good. And to depart from the good is nothing other than to come to be in evil. For it is certain that evil is the lack of good. Hence it happened that in whatever measure one fell away from the good, to that measure he came into wickedness. In this each mind, according to its own movements, neglecting the good more or less, was drawn into the contrary of good, which is undoubtedly evil. From this the Creator of all seems to have received certain seeds and causes of variety and diversity, so that according to the diversity of minds, that is, of rational creatures (a diversity which they must be thought to have conceived from the cause we mentioned above), he created a varied and diverse world. And what we mean by varied and diverse is this which we now wish to indicate.

By world we now mean everything that is above the heavens or in the heavens, or upon the earth, or in what are called the lower regions, or whatever places there are anywhere at all, and those who are said to dwell in them. All this, then, is called the world. In this world some are said to be super-heavenly, that is, placed in more blessed dwellings and clothed with more heavenly and splendid bodies; and among these themselves many differences are shown, as for example the Apostle also says that “one is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, another the glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.” Some are called earthly, and among them, that is, among human beings, there is no small difference; for some of them are barbarians, others Greeks, and of the barbarians some are savage and fierce, others milder. And some use most approved laws, others baser or harsher ones, and others again live by inhuman and savage customs rather than laws. And some from the very beginning of their birth are humbled and subjected and brought up as slaves, placed under masters or princes or tyrants, while others are brought up more freely and reasonably; some with healthy bodies, some sick from earliest age; some deprived of sight, others of hearing and speech; some born so, others robbed of such senses soon after birth, or suffering something of the kind when already grown. And what is the use of my unfolding and enumerating all the disasters of human miseries, from which some are free and in which others are entangled, since each one can consider and weigh each of them for himself? There are also certain invisible powers, to whom the things upon the earth have been entrusted to be dispensed; and no small difference must be believed to exist among them too, as is found among human beings. The apostle Paul indeed indicates that there are certain beings below the earth, and in them likewise the cause of variety must undoubtedly be sought. As for dumb animals and birds and those that live in the waters, it seems superfluous to inquire, since it is certain that these are to be taken not as principal but as consequent.

All things that were made are said to have been made through Christ and in Christ, as the apostle Paul most clearly indicates when he says, “For in him and through him all things were created, whether in heaven or on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or principalities or dominions; all things were created through him and in him”; and John in the Gospel likewise shows the same, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; this was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made”; and it is written in the Psalm, “In wisdom you have made all things.” Since, then, Christ, as he is the Word and Wisdom, is also righteousness, it will undoubtedly follow that what was made in the Word and Wisdom is also said to have been made in the righteousness which is Christ; so that in the things that were made nothing unjust, nothing accidental appears, but all things are shown to be such as the rule of equity and justice requires. How, then, this so great variety of things and so great diversity can be understood as most just and most equitable, I am certain cannot be explained by human ability or speech, unless, prostrate and suppliant, we pray to the Word and Wisdom and Righteousness himself, who is the only-begotten Son of God, that by his grace he may pour himself into our minds and deign to illuminate what is obscure, open what is closed and disclose what is secret; if only we are found to ask or seek or knock so worthily that, asking, we may merit to receive, seeking, to find, and knocking, to have it opened to us. Relying, then, not on our own ability but on the help of the Wisdom which made all things, and of his righteousness which we believe to be present in all creatures, we shall try meanwhile, even if we cannot assert, yet trusting in his mercy, to inquire and search out how this so great variety and diversity of the world appears consistent with all justice and reason. I mean, of course, a general reason; for to seek a special reason for each individual is the mark of an ignorant man, and to wish to give one is the mark of a madman.

When we say that this world, set in the variety we have described above, was made by God, whom we call good and just and most equitable, very many are accustomed to object, especially those who, coming from the school of Marcion and Valentinus and Basilides, have heard that there are different natures of souls: how does it accord with the justice of the God who made the world that he should give to some a dwelling in the heavens, and not only provide them a better dwelling but also grant them some higher and more distinguished rank; grant principality to some, powers to others, give dominions to others, provide others with the most ample seats of the heavenly tribunals; that some should shine more brightly and glitter with starry brilliance; that some should have the glory of the sun, others the glory of the moon, others the glory of the stars, and star differ from star in glory? And, to put it all together briefly, if God the creator lacks neither the will for supreme and good work nor the power to accomplish it, what cause could there be that, creating rational natures, that is, beings of whose existence he himself was the cause, he should make some higher and produce others in the second or third and many lower and worse ranks? Then they also object about those on earth, that a happier lot of birth has fallen to some: for example, that one is begotten of Abraham and born of the promise; another, too, of Isaac and Rebecca, who while still in the womb supplants his brother and is said to be loved by God before he is born. Or, in general, that one is born among the Hebrews, among whom he finds instruction in the divine law; another among the Greeks, themselves wise and men of no small learning; and another among the Ethiopians, whose custom is to eat human flesh; or among the Scythians, among whom parricide is committed as if by law; or among the Taurians, where strangers are sacrificed. They say to us, then: If this so great diversity of things, and the condition of birth so varied and so diverse, in which the faculty of free choice certainly has no place (for no one chooses for himself where or among whom or in what condition he is born), if, they say, this is not caused by a diversity of the nature of souls, that is, that a soul of evil nature is destined for an evil nation and good ones for good nations, what else remains but that these things must be thought to happen by chance and accident? And if this is accepted, it will no longer be believed that the world was made by God or is ruled by his providence, and consequently neither will the judgment of God on each one's deeds seem to be awaited. What the truth of things in this matter is, clearly, it belongs to him alone to know who searches all things, even the depths of God.

We, however, as human beings (lest by keeping silent we nourish the insolence of the heretics), shall answer what they have alleged in this way, with what can occur to us according to our powers. That God the creator of all is good and just and almighty we have often shown by such assertions from the divine Scriptures as we could. When in the beginning he created what he wished to create, that is, rational natures, he had no other cause for creating than himself, that is, his goodness. Since, then, he himself was the cause of the things that were to be created, and in him there was neither any variety nor change nor inability, he created all whom he created equal and alike, since there was in him no cause of variety and diversity. But since these rational creatures themselves, as we have often shown and shall show again in its place, were endowed with the faculty of choice, the freedom of his will either called each one to progress by the imitation of God or drew him to decline through negligence. And this, as we have already said before, was the cause of the diversity among rational creatures, deriving its origin not from the will or judgment of the Creator but from the choice of their own freedom. And God, to whom it then seemed just to dispense his creation according to merit, drew the diversities of minds into the harmony of one world, so that with these different vessels, that is, souls or minds, he might adorn, as it were, one house, in which there should be not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and earthenware, some for honour and some for dishonour. And these, as I think, are the causes of its diversity which this world received, while divine providence dispenses each one according to the variety of his movements, or of his mind and purpose. By this reasoning the Creator will not seem unjust, since he distributes each one according to merit on the basis of preceding causes; nor will the happiness or unhappiness of each one's birth, or whatever condition befalls him, be thought accidental; nor will there be believed to be different creators or different natures of souls.

Nor indeed does holy Scripture seem to me to have been wholly silent about the reason of this secret; as when the apostle Paul, discussing Jacob and Esau, says: “For when they had not yet been born, nor had done anything good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not from works but from him who calls, it was said that the elder shall serve the younger; as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” And after this he answers himself and says, “What then shall we say? Is there injustice with God?” And to give us occasion to inquire into these things and search out how they do not happen without reason, he answers himself and says, “By no means.” For the same question, it seems to me, which is proposed about Jacob and Esau can be raised also about all heavenly and earthly creatures and those below the earth. And similarly it seems to me that, just as he says there, “For when they had not yet been born, nor had done anything good or evil,” so it can also be said of all the others: “For when they had not yet been created, nor had done anything good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand,” some were made heavenly (as some think), others earthly, and others below the earth, “not from works” (as they think) “but from him who calls.” What then shall we say, if these things are so? Is there then injustice with God? By no means. Therefore, just as in the case of Esau and Jacob, when the Scriptures are searched more carefully, it is found that there is no “injustice with God” in its being said, “before they were born or had done anything” (in this life, that is), that “the elder shall serve the younger”; and just as it is found not to be injustice that Jacob “supplanted his brother in the womb,” if we perceive that he was worthily “loved by God” because of the merits, that is, of a preceding life, so that he deserved to be preferred even to his brother: so too with the heavenly creatures, if we notice that this diversity is not the beginning of creation, but that from preceding causes a different office of service is prepared for each by the Creator according to the worth of merit, namely because each one, in so far as it was created by God a mind or rational spirit, has prepared for itself more or less merit according to the movements of its mind and the inclinations of its soul, and has become either lovable to God or even hateful; while nevertheless some of those who are of better merits are appointed, for the adornment of the state of the world, to suffer with the rest and to render service to those below them, so that by this they themselves too may become sharers in the patience of the Creator; according to what the Apostle himself says: “For the creation was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope.” Observing, then, this statement which the Apostle made in setting out the birth of Esau and Jacob, “Is there injustice with God? By no means,” I think it right that this same statement be kept in all creatures; since, as we said above, the justice of the Creator ought to appear in all. And this, as it seems to me, will be shown more clearly only if each one, whether heavenly or earthly or of those below the earth, is said to have the causes of its diversity in itself, preceding its bodily birth. For all things were created by the Word of God and his Wisdom, and set in order through his justice. And by the grace of his mercy he provides for all, and all by whatever remedies they can be healed he exhorts and invites to salvation.

Just as, then, there is no doubt that at the day of judgment the good will be separated from the bad and the just from the unjust, and each one according to merit will be assigned by the judgment of God to those places of which they are worthy, as we shall show, God willing, in what follows, so I think something of the kind has also happened before. For God must be believed always to do and arrange all things by judgment. That too which the Apostle teaches, saying that “in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and earthenware, and some for honour, some for dishonour,” and what he adds, saying that “if anyone cleanses himself, he will be a vessel for honour, sanctified and useful to the Lord, for every good work,” undoubtedly shows that whoever has cleansed himself while placed in this life will be prepared for every good work in the future; but whoever has not cleansed himself will be, according to the amount of his impurity, a vessel for dishonour, that is, unworthy. So, then, it is possible to understand that there were rational vessels before also, either cleansed or less cleansed, that is, which had either cleansed themselves or not; and from this each vessel, according to the measure of its purity or impurity, received a place or region or condition of birth or of fulfilling something in this world. All of this God, providing and discerning down to the least by the power of his wisdom, arranges by the governance of his judgment with the most equitable retribution, so that each one should be helped or cared for according to merit. In this every principle of equity is shown, while the inequality of things preserves the equity of retribution for merits. The reasons of these merits for each individual, according to truth and clearly, he alone knows, together with his only-begotten Word and Wisdom and the Holy Spirit.

On the resurrection and the judgment, on the fire of hell and punishments. But since our discussion has reminded us of the judgment to come and of the retribution and punishments of sinners, according to what the holy Scriptures threaten and the church's preaching contains, namely that at the time of judgment eternal fire and outer darkness and a prison and a furnace and other things like these are prepared for sinners, let us see what we ought to think about these too. But so that we may come to these in proper order, it seems to me that we must first speak about the resurrection, so that we may know what it is that will come either to punishment or to rest or to blessedness. On this we have discussed more fully in other books which we wrote on the resurrection, and have shown what we thought about it. But now too, because of the sequence of the treatise, it does not seem absurd to repeat a few things from there, especially because some are offended at the church's faith, as though we believed foolishly and altogether senselessly about the resurrection; especially the heretics, to whom I think we should reply in this way. If they too confess that there is a resurrection of the dead, let them answer us: what is it that died? Was it not the body? It is of the body, then, that the resurrection will take place. Then let them say whether they think we shall use bodies or not. I think that, since the apostle Paul says that a soulish body is sown and a spiritual body will rise, they cannot deny that a body rises, or that we use bodies in the resurrection. What then? If it is certain that we shall use bodies, and the bodies that fell are preached as rising (for nothing is properly said to rise except what fell before), no one doubts that they rise for this reason, that we may be clothed with them again after the resurrection. The one thing, then, hangs on the other. For if bodies rise, undoubtedly they rise to clothe us; and if it is necessary for us to be in bodies, as it certainly is necessary, we must be in no other bodies than our own. And if it is true that they rise, and rise spiritual, there is no doubt that they are said to rise from the dead with corruption cast off and mortality laid aside; otherwise it will seem vain and superfluous for anyone to rise from the dead only to die again. This can be understood more evidently at last if one considers carefully what is the quality of the soulish body which, sown in the earth, restores the quality of a spiritual body. For out of the soulish body the very power and grace of the resurrection brings forth a spiritual body, when it changes it from dishonour to glory.

Since, then, the heretics seem to themselves most learned and most wise, we shall ask them whether every body has some schema, that is, is shaped by some form. And if they say there is a body which is not shaped by some form, they will appear the most ignorant and foolish of all; for no one will deny this unless he is wholly a stranger to all learning. But if, as is consistent, they say that every body is shaped by some definite form, we shall demand of them whether they can show and describe to us the form of a spiritual body; which they will certainly be in no way able to do. We shall also inquire of them about the differences among those who rise. How will they show that this saying is true, that “one is the flesh of birds, another of fish; and there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one and that of the earthly another; one is the glory of the sun, another of the moon, another of the stars; star differs from star in glory; so also is the resurrection of the dead”? According to this sequence, then, let them show us the differences of glory among those who rise, corresponding to the heavenly bodies; and if they attempt in any way to devise some account according to the differences of the heavenly bodies, we shall ask them to assign differences of the resurrection also according to the comparison with earthly bodies. We, however, understand it thus: that the Apostle, wishing to describe how great the difference would be among those who will rise in glory, that is, the saints, took the comparison of the heavenly bodies, saying, “One is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, another the glory of the stars.” And again, wishing to teach the differences among those who come to the resurrection not purified in this life, that is, sinners, he takes an example from earthly things, saying, “One is the body of birds, another of fish.” For fittingly are heavenly things compared to the saints, earthly to sinners. Let these things be said against those who deny the resurrection of the dead, that is, the resurrection of bodies.

Now we turn our discussion to some of our own people who, whether from smallness of understanding or poverty of explanation, introduce a very low and abject idea of the resurrection of the body. We ask them how they understand that the soulish body is to be changed by the grace of the resurrection and will be spiritual; how they think that what is sown in weakness will rise in power; how what is sown in dishonour rises in glory; and how what is sown in corruption is changed into incorruption. If they believe the Apostle that the body, rising in glory and in power and in incorruption, has now become spiritual, it seems absurd and contrary to the Apostle's meaning to say that it is again entangled in the passions of flesh and blood, since the Apostle clearly says: “Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God, nor will corruption possess incorruption.” And how do they take what the Apostle says, “But we shall all be changed”? This change is certainly to be expected according to the order which we have described above, in which we must undoubtedly hope for something worthy of divine grace. We believe that this will come about in the order in which the Apostle describes a bare grain of wheat or of some other kind sown in the earth, to which “God gives a body as he willed,” when the grain of wheat itself has first died. So our bodies too must be thought to fall into the earth like a grain; and the principle implanted in them, which contains the bodily substance, although the bodies have died and been corrupted and scattered, yet by the word of God that very principle, which is always preserved in the substance of the body, raises them from the earth and restores and repairs them, just as the power that is in the grain of wheat, after its corruption and death, repairs and restores the grain into the body of a stalk and ear. And so, for those who will merit to obtain the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven, that principle of repairing the body which we mentioned above, by God's command, repairs out of the earthly and soulish body a spiritual body which can dwell in the heavens; while to those who are of lower merit, or more abject, or even the lowest and most thrust down, glory and dignity of body is given according to the dignity of each one's life and soul; in such a way, however, that even for those who are to be destined for eternal fire or punishments, through the very change of the resurrection, the body which rises is so incorruptible that it cannot be corrupted and dissolved even by punishments.

If, then, such is the quality of the body that will rise from the dead, let us now see what the threat of eternal fire means. For we find in the prophet Isaiah that the fire by which each is punished is indicated to be his own; for he says: “Walk in the light of your fire and in the flame which you have kindled.” By these words it seems to be indicated that each sinner kindles for himself the flame of his own fire, and is not plunged into some fire which had already been kindled by another or existed before him. The material and food of this fire are our sins, which the apostle Paul calls wood and hay and stubble. And I think that, just as in the body an abundance of food and a contrary quality and quantity of nourishment generate fevers, and fevers of different kinds or durations according to the measure in which the accumulated intemperance has supplied the material and fuel of the fevers (and this quality of material, gathered from different intemperance, becomes the cause of a sharper or a more prolonged disease), so the soul, when it has gathered within itself a multitude of evil works and an abundance of sins, at the proper time all that gathering of evils boils up to punishment and is set aflame to penalties; when the mind itself, or conscience, receiving by divine power all things into memory, of which it had impressed certain signs and forms on itself when it sinned, will see set out before its eyes a kind of history of its crimes, of each of the things it had done foully and shamefully or even committed impiously; then the conscience itself is driven and pricked by its own goads, and becomes its own accuser and witness. This I think the apostle Paul also felt when he says: “Their thoughts among themselves accusing or even excusing them, on the day when God will judge the secrets of men, according to my Gospel, through Jesus Christ.” From this it is understood that around the very substance of the soul certain torments are generated from the harmful affections of the sins themselves.

And lest the understanding of this matter seem too difficult to you, it can be considered from those faults of the passions which commonly befall souls: that is, when the soul is burned by the flames of love, or wasted by the fires of jealousy or envy, or when it is driven by anger, or consumed by the immensity of madness or sorrow; how some, finding the excesses of these evils intolerable, have held it more tolerable to undergo death than to endure such torments. You will ask, indeed, whether for those who have been entangled in these evils of vice which we mentioned above, and could procure no amendment for themselves while still placed in this life, and so departed from this world, it suffices for punishment that they are tormented by those very harmful affections remaining in them, of anger, of fury, of madness or of grief, whose deadly poison has been softened by no medicine of amendment in this life; or whether, these affections being changed, they will be vexed by the goads of a general punishment. I think, indeed, that another kind of punishment can also be understood: just as we feel that when the members of the body are loosened and torn from their joints they produce the torment of immense pain, so when the soul is found outside the order and structure, or that harmony in which it was created by God for acting well and feeling usefully, and does not accord with itself in the structure of rational movements, it must be thought to bear the punishment and torment of its own dissension, and to feel the penalty of its own inconstancy and disorder. And when this dissolution and tearing apart of the soul has been tested by the application of fire, it is undoubtedly made firm into a more solid structure and restoration of itself.

There are also many other things hidden from us, known to him alone who is the physician of our souls. For if, for the health of the body, because of the faults we have gathered through food and drink, we sometimes need the treatment of a harsher and more biting medicine, and sometimes, if the quality of the fault demands it, we need the rigour of iron and the harshness of cutting; and if the measure of the disease has gone beyond even these, at last fire burns out the fault that has taken hold; how much more must it be understood that this physician of ours, God, wishing to wash away the faults of our souls which they had gathered from the diversity of sins and crimes, uses penal remedies of this kind, and even applies the punishment of fire to those who have lost the health of the soul? Images of this are also given in the holy Scriptures. Indeed in Deuteronomy the divine word threatens sinners that they will be punished with fevers and chills and jaundice, and are to be tormented with failing of the eyes and alienation of mind and paralysis and blindness and weakness of the kidneys. If anyone, then, at leisure gathers from all Scripture all the mentions of diseases that are recorded in threats to sinners under the names of bodily illnesses, he will find that either the faults or the punishments of souls are indicated by them figuratively. And that we may understand that God acts toward those who have lapsed and fallen into sins in the same way as physicians apply aids to the sick in order to restore health by their treatment, this too is an indication: that through the prophet Jeremiah the cup of God's fury is commanded to be given to all nations to drink, that they may drink and be mad and vomit; in which he threatens, saying that if anyone will not drink, he will not be cleansed. From this it is certainly understood that the fury of God's vengeance serves for the purification of souls. And that even the punishment which is said to be inflicted through fire is understood to be applied as a help, Isaiah teaches, who says of Israel: “The Lord will wash away the filth of the sons or daughters of Zion, and purge the blood from their midst by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning.” And of the Chaldeans he says: “You have coals of fire; sit upon them; they will be a help to you.” And in other places he says: “The Lord will sanctify in burning fire.” And in the prophet Malachi he says: “The Lord, sitting, will smelt his people like gold and silver; he will smelt and purify and pour out the purified sons of Judah.”

And that too which is said in the Gospel about the stewards who are not good, who are said to be cut in two and their portion placed with the unbelievers, as though that part which is not their own were to be sent elsewhere, undoubtedly indicates some kind of punishment of those in whom, as it seems to me, the spirit is indicated as to be separated from the soul. If this spirit is to be understood as of divine nature, that is, the Holy Spirit, we shall take this as said of the gift of the Holy Spirit: that when, whether through baptism or through the grace of the Spirit, the word of wisdom or the word of knowledge or any other gift has been given to someone, and it has not been rightly administered (that is, has either been buried “in the earth” or tied up “in a napkin”), the gift of the Spirit will surely be taken away from the soul, and the remaining “part,” that is, the substance of the soul, “will be placed with the unbelievers,” divided and separated from that Spirit with whom, “by joining itself to the Lord,” it ought to have been “one spirit.” But if this is to be understood not of the Spirit of God but of the nature of the soul itself, its better part will be said to be that which was made “in the image and likeness” of God, and the other “part” that which was afterwards, through the fall of free choice, taken on against the nature of its first condition of purity; and this part, as being friendly and dear to bodily matter, is condemned with the lot of the unbelievers. This division can also be understood in a third sense: since an angel is said to be present to each of the faithful, even the least in the Church, who is also declared by the Saviour always to behold the face of God the Father, and this angel was certainly one with him over whom he was set, if that person becomes unworthy through disobedience, the angel of God may be said to be taken away from him, and then his portion, that is, the portion of human nature torn away from God's portion, is reckoned with the unbelievers, since he did not faithfully keep the admonitions of the angel appointed to him by God.

And the outer darkness, as I think, is to be understood not so much as some dark air without any light, but of those who, plunged in the darkness of deep ignorance, have been placed outside all light of reason and understanding. We must also see whether perhaps this expression signifies this too: that just as the saints will receive from the resurrection, bright and glorious, the bodies in which they lived holily and purely in the dwellings of this life, so too all the impious, who in this life loved the darkness of errors and the night of ignorance, will be clothed after the resurrection with dark and black bodies, so that the very darkness of ignorance which in this world had besieged their inner minds may in the future appear through the outer clothing of the body. The prison too is to be understood likewise. But let these things suffice for the present place, which have been said meanwhile, in as few words as possible, so that the order of discussion might be kept.

Let us now see briefly what is to be thought also about the promises. It is certain that no living being can be wholly idle and motionless, but it longs in every way to be moved and to act and always to will something; and that this nature is present in all living beings I think is plain. Much more, then, must a rational living being, that is, the nature of man, always be moving or doing something. And if he is forgetful of himself and does not know what befits him, his whole effort is moved about bodily uses, and in all his movements he is occupied with his pleasures and the lusts of the body; but if he is such as to be eager to care or provide for something for the common good, he exercises himself either in counselling the state, or obeying magistrates, or whatever else certainly seems to be of common benefit. But if someone is such as to understand something better than these things that seem bodily, and to give his effort to wisdom and knowledge, he will undoubtedly turn all his industry to studies of this kind, so that, having investigated the truth, he may come to know the causes and reason of things. Just as, then, in this life one judges bodily pleasure the highest good, another counselling for the common good, another giving effort to studies and understanding, so let us inquire whether in that life which is true, which is said to be hidden with Christ in God, that is, in that eternal life, there will be some such order or state of living for us.

Some, then, refusing in a way the labour of understanding, and following a certain surface of the letter of the law, and indulging rather their own delight and desire, disciples of the letter alone, think that the promises to come are to be expected in bodily pleasure and luxury; and therefore they especially desire to have again after the resurrection such flesh as never lacks the ability to eat and drink and do all that belongs to flesh and blood, not following the apostle Paul's statement about the resurrection of a spiritual body. To these things they consequently add marriage contracts and the begetting of children even after the resurrection, imagining for themselves an earthly city of Jerusalem to be rebuilt, with precious stones laid in its foundations, its walls raised of jasper stone and its battlements of crystal; and that it will have an enclosing wall of choice and varied stones, that is, jasper and sapphire and chalcedony and emerald and sardius and onyx and chrysolite and chrysoprase and jacinth and amethyst. Moreover, they think that foreigners will be given them as servants of their pleasures, whom they will have as ploughmen or builders of walls, by whom their ruined and fallen city may be rebuilt; and they think that they will receive the wealth of the nations to eat and will rule over their riches, so that even the camels of Midian and Kedar will come and bring them gold and incense and precious stones. And they try to confirm these things by prophetic authority, from what is written about the promises to Jerusalem, where it is also said that those who serve the Lord will eat and drink, but sinners will hunger and thirst, and that the righteous will rejoice, but sorrow will possess the impious. From the New Testament too they bring forward the Saviour's saying in which he promises his disciples the gladness of wine, saying, “For I will not drink of this henceforth until I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.” They add also that the Saviour calls blessed those who now hunger and thirst, promising them that they will be filled; and they bring forward many other examples from the Scriptures, whose force they do not perceive must be understood figuratively. Then, according to the form that exists in this life, and according to the arrangements of this world's dignities or orders or eminences of powers, they think they will be kings and princes, as these earthly ones are, because, namely, of what is said in the Gospel: “You shall have authority over five cities.” And, to put it briefly, they wish all that is expected from the promises to be in every way like the conduct of this life, that is, that what is should be again. So think those who believe in Christ indeed, but, understanding the divine Scriptures in a kind of Jewish sense, have presumed nothing from them worthy of the divine promises.

But those who receive the contemplation of the Scriptures according to the sense of the apostles hope that the saints will indeed eat, but the bread of life, which nourishes the soul with the food of truth and wisdom, and enlightens the mind, and gives it to drink from the cups of divine wisdom, as divine Scripture says: “Wisdom has prepared her table, slain her victims, mixed her wine in the bowl, and cries with a loud voice: Turn aside to me; eat the bread which I have prepared for you, and drink the wine which I have mixed for you.” Nourished by these foods of wisdom, the mind is restored to wholeness and perfection, as man was made in the beginning, to the image and likeness of God; so that even if someone has departed from this life less instructed, but has brought commendable works, he can be instructed in that Jerusalem, the city of the saints, that is, taught and formed and made a living stone, a precious and chosen stone, because he has endured bravely and steadfastly the contests of life and the struggles of piety; and there he will know more truly and clearly what has already been said beforehand here, that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And the princes and rulers are to be understood as those who rule those below them, and instruct and teach them and train them for divine things.

But if these things seem to stir too little desire in the minds of those who hope for them, let us go back a little and inquire, since the desire for the thing itself is natural and implanted in the soul, so that we may at last describe, by the sequence of contemplation, as it were the very forms of the bread of life and the quality of its wine and the property of the principalities. Just as, then, in the arts which are carried out by hand, the reason of what is made, or how, or for what uses, resides in the mind, while the effecting of the work is unfolded by the service of the hands, so in the works of God which were made by him we must hold that the reason and understanding of the things we see made by him remain hidden. And just as, when our eye sees things made by a craftsman, if it beholds something especially skilfully made, the mind at once burns to inquire how, or in what way, or for what uses it was made, much more, and beyond all comparison, does the mind burn with ineffable desire to know the reason of the things we perceive to be made by God. This desire, this love, we believe was undoubtedly implanted in us by God; and just as the eye naturally seeks light and sight, and our body by nature desires food and drink, so our mind bears a proper and natural desire to know the truth of God and to learn the causes of things. And we have received this desire from God not so that it should never be, nor could ever be, fulfilled; otherwise the love of truth would seem to have been implanted in our mind by God the Creator in vain, if it is never made master of its desire. Hence, even in this life, those who with the greatest labour have given themselves to pious and religious studies, although they grasp only small things out of the many and immense treasures of divine knowledge, yet by the very fact that they occupy their souls and minds with these things and press forward in this desire, they receive great benefit, from the very fact that they turn their souls to the zeal and love of seeking the truth, and make them better prepared for the capacity of future instruction (just as when someone wishes to paint a picture, if a sketch by a fine stylus first marks out the lines of the future form and prepares marks capable of receiving the features to be laid on, undoubtedly the preliminary form laid down by the sketch is found better prepared for receiving those true colours), provided only that this sketch and outline is written on the tablets of our heart by the stylus of our Lord Jesus Christ. And perhaps for this reason it is said that “to everyone who has it will be given and added.” From this it is established that to those who have in this life a kind of outline of truth and knowledge, the beauty of the perfect image will also be added in the future.

Such, I think, was the desire indicated by him who said, “I am hard pressed between the two, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for it is far better”; knowing that when he had returned to Christ he would know more clearly the reasons of all things that are done on earth: about man, or the soul of man, or the mind, or whatever those things are of which man consists: what the ruling spirit is, what the spirit that works, what too is the vital spirit, and what is the grace of the Holy Spirit that is given to the faithful. Then too he will understand what Israel is perceived to be, or what the diversity of the nations, what the twelve tribes of Israel mean, and what the individual peoples in each tribe. Then he will understand also the reason concerning the priests and Levites and the different priestly orders, and whose figure was in Moses, and also what the truth is with God of the jubilees and the weeks of years; he will see also the reasons of the feast days and holidays, and he will behold the causes of all the sacrifices and purifications; he will notice too what is the reason of the cleansing of leprosy, and what are the different leprosies, and what is the purification of those who suffer a flux of seed; and he will know also what and how great and of what kind are the good powers, and also the contrary ones, and what is the affection of the former toward human beings, and the contentious rivalry of the latter. He will behold also what is the reason of souls, and what the diversity of living things, whether of those that live in the waters, or of birds, or of beasts; and why each genus is divided into so many species; what is the Creator's foresight, or what sense of his wisdom is hidden in each of these. He will learn for what reason certain powers are associated with some roots or herbs, and on the contrary are driven off by other herbs or roots; what is the account of the apostate angels, and what is the cause that with those who do not despise them with full faith they can ingratiate themselves in some things, or become the cause of error and deception. He will also learn the judgment of divine providence about each of the things that happen to human beings: that they do not happen by chance or accident, but by a reason so carefully weighed and so lofty that not even the number of the hairs, not only of the saints but perhaps of all human beings, escapes it; a providence whose reason extends even to the two sparrows sold for a penny, whether the sparrows are understood spiritually or according to the letter. For here it is still being sought meanwhile, but there it will then be plainly seen.

From all this it must be thought that no little time passes meanwhile until the reason of only those things that are upon the earth is shown, after their departure from life, to the worthy and well-deserving, so that through the knowledge of all these things and the grace of full knowledge they may enjoy unspeakable gladness. Then, if this air which is between heaven and earth is not empty of living beings, and of rational living beings, as the Apostle also said, “in which you once walked according to the age of this world, according to the prince of the power of this air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience”; and again he says, “We shall be caught up in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord,” we must think, then, that the saints remain there until they come to know the reason of the dispensation of the things done in the air in both ways. By “both ways” I mean this: for example, when we were on earth, we saw animals or trees and observed their differences, and also very great diversity among human beings; but seeing these things we did not understand their reason, but this alone was suggested to us by the very diversity we saw, that we should inquire and search out by what reason all these things were created different or are dispensed variously; and if we have conceived on earth a zeal or love for knowledge of this kind, the knowledge and understanding of it will be given us after our departure, if only things go as we wish. When, then, we have fully comprehended its reason, then we shall comprehend in both ways what we saw on earth. Something of the same kind must also be said about the seat in the air. For I think that all the saints departing from this life will remain in some place situated on the earth, which divine Scripture calls paradise, as in a kind of place of instruction and, so to speak, a lecture hall or school of souls, in which they may be taught about all the things they had seen on earth, and may also receive certain indications of what follows and is to come; just as, placed in this life too, they had conceived certain indications of things to come, though through a mirror and in enigmas, yet in some part, which are revealed more clearly and brightly to the saints in their own places and times. If anyone indeed is pure in heart and purer in mind and more practised in perception, advancing more swiftly he will quickly ascend to the place of the air and come to the kingdoms of the heavens through the mansions, so to speak, of the individual places, which the Greeks called spheres, that is, globes, but divine Scripture calls heavens. In each of these he will first see what is done there, and secondly will also know the reason why it is done; and so he will pass through each in order, following him who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, who says, “I will that where I am, these too may be with me.” He indicates these diversities of places also when he says, “In my Father's house there are many mansions.” He himself, however, is everywhere and passes through all things. Nor are we any longer to understand him in that smallness in which he became for our sake, that is, not in that circumscription which he had in our body when he was placed on earth among human beings, so as to be thought enclosed as it were in some one place.

When, then, for example, the saints have come to the heavenly places, then they will see through the reason of the stars one by one, and will comprehend whether they are living beings or whatever else they are. And they will understand other reasons of the works of God, which he himself will reveal to them. For already, as to sons, he will show them the causes of things and the power of his creation, teaching them why that star is placed in that place of the sky, and why it is separated from another by so great an intervening space; for example, what would have followed if it had been nearer, and what would happen if it were farther off; or, if that star had been greater than this one, how the universe would not remain the same but all things would be changed into some other form. And so, when they have gone through everything contained in the reckoning of the stars and in those courses that are in heaven, they will come also to the things that are not seen, or to those whose names alone we have now heard, and to the invisible things, which the apostle Paul taught exist, but what they are or what difference they have we cannot even guess by any understanding. And so the rational nature, growing through each stage, not as it grew in this life in flesh or body and soul, but increased in mind and perception, is led on as a mind already perfect to perfect knowledge, no longer hindered at all by these fleshly senses, but increased by intellectual growth, always looking purely and, so to speak, face to face at the causes of things, it attains perfection: first that by which it ascends to it, and secondly that by which it remains in it, having as the food on which it feeds the contemplations and understandings of things and the reasons of causes. For just as in this bodily life of ours we first grow bodily into what we are, the sufficiency of food in our early years supplying growth, but after our height has been completed to its measure we use food no longer in order to grow but in order to live and be preserved in life by nourishment, so I think the mind too, even when it has come to perfection, still feeds on and uses its own fitting food, in such measure that nothing ought to be lacking and nothing in excess. In all things, moreover, this food is to be understood as the contemplation and understanding of God, having measures proper and fitting to this nature which was made and created; and these measures it befits each of those who are beginning “to see God,” that is, to understand through “purity of heart,” to observe.

The two former books On First Principles I translated not only at your urging but under your pressure, during the days of Lent. But since in those days you, my devout brother Macarius, both lived near me and had more leisure, I too worked harder; these two later books I have unfolded more slowly, because you come to us more rarely, as a taskmaster, from the farthest edge of the city. Now if you remember what I warned of in my former little preface, that certain people would be indignant if they did not hear us speak some evil of Origen, you have, I think, at once found it so. But if the demons who stir up men's tongues to speak evil were so inflamed by that work, in which he had not yet fully laid bare their secrets, what do you think will happen in this one, in which he has revealed all their blind and hidden ways, by which they creep into human hearts and deceive weak and frail souls? You will see at once everything thrown into disorder, factions stirred up, outcries spread through the whole city, and the man summoned to condemnation who tried to drive away the devil's darkness of ignorance by the light of the Gospel lamp. But let him think little of these things who desires to be trained in divine learning while keeping the rule of the catholic faith. This, however, I must remind you of: as in the former books, so in these I have observed the rule not to translate what seemed contrary to his other opinions and to our faith, but to pass it over as inserted and corrupted by others. If he seems to have said anything new about rational beings, since the substance of the faith does not lie in this, for the sake of knowledge and exercise, when perhaps we had to answer certain heresies in this order, I have not passed it over either in these books or in the former ones, except where in these later books he wished to repeat what had already been said in the earlier ones; there I thought it useful, for brevity's sake, to cut some of it away. If anyone reads these things from a desire to make progress and not to disparage, he will do better to have them explained to him by more skilled men. For it is absurd that the invented songs of the poets and the laughable stories of comedies should be explained by grammarians, and that anyone should think he can learn without a master and interpreter the things that are said about God, or the heavenly powers, or the whole universe, in which some perverse error either of pagan philosophers or of heretics is refuted; and so it happens that people prefer to condemn difficult and obscure things rashly and ignorantly rather than to learn them by diligence and study.

Such, we believe, are the things to be thought about the divine promises, when we direct our understanding to the contemplation of that eternal age which no end will close, and contemplate its unspeakable joy and blessedness. But since the church's preaching also contains faith in the future just judgment of God, and this belief in judgment calls and persuades people to live well and happily and to flee sin in every way, and since it is without doubt implied by this that it is placed in our power to give ourselves to a praiseworthy or to a blameworthy life, I think it necessary to discuss a few things about the freedom of our choice as well, since this question too is discussed by very many, and not in a mean way. That we may more easily know what freedom of choice is, let us inquire what the very nature of choice and will means.

Of all things that move, some carry the causes of their motion within themselves, while others receive them from outside. Those things are moved only from outside that are without life, such as stones or wood and whatever things of this kind consist only of the state of their matter or of their bodies. That question must certainly be set aside here which also calls it motion when bodies are dissolved by decay, for it does not bear on our present purpose. Others have the cause of motion in themselves, such as animals or trees and all things that exist by natural life or by a soul; among these some have thought that veins of metal should also be counted; and fire too must be thought to have its own motion, and perhaps springs of water also. Of the things that have the cause of their motion within themselves, some are said to be moved out of themselves, others by themselves; and they divide them thus: those are moved out of themselves which live but are not animals; those are moved by themselves which are animals, when a phantasia, that is, a kind of will or incitement, is present in them, which stirs them to be moved or incited toward something. Indeed, in certain animals there is such a phantasia, that is, a will or sense, which by a kind of natural instinct provokes and stirs them to ordered and regular motions: as we see spiders do, which are stirred most regularly to the work of weaving by a phantasia, that is, by a certain will and desire for weaving, a natural motion without doubt prompting the effort for such a work; and yet the animal itself is found to have no other sense than the natural desire for weaving; just as the bee too has the desire for shaping honeycombs and, as they say, for gathering the honey of the air.

A rational animal, although it has these natural motions in itself, yet has beyond the other animals the power of reason as well, by which it can judge and discern among the natural motions, rejecting and casting away some and approving and accepting others, so that by the judgment of this reason the motions of a human being may be directed and governed toward a praiseworthy life. It follows that, since the nature of this reason which is in a human being has in itself the power of discerning good and evil, and, when it has discerned, the faculty also of choosing what it has approved, it is rightly judged praiseworthy in choosing what is good and blameworthy in following what is shameful or evil. We must certainly not overlook that in some dumb animals a more ordered motion is found than in the other animals, as in hunting dogs or war horses, so that to some they seem to be moved by a kind of rational sense. But this must be believed to come about not so much from reason as from a kind of incentive and natural motion granted more abundantly for such uses. But, as we had begun to say, since this is how a rational animal is, things may indeed befall us human beings from outside, or meet us whether through sight or hearing or the other senses, which stir and provoke us to good or contrary motions; and because they befall us from outside, it is not placed in our power that they should not befall or meet us. But to judge and approve how we ought to use the things that befall us is the business and work of nothing else than the reason that is in us, that is, of our judgment; and by the judgment of this reason we use the incitements that befall us from outside for whatever purpose reason itself has approved, governing our natural motions at its nod either toward good things or toward the contrary.

If someone says that the things which befall us from outside and provoke our motions are such that it is not possible to resist them, whether they stir us to good or to evil, let him who thinks this turn his mind for a little to himself and examine his own motions more carefully, and see whether he does not find that, when the enticement of some desire strikes, nothing is done before the mind's assent is given and the mind's will yields to the evil suggestion; so that, as before a judge sitting within the tribunal of our heart, the case seems to be pleaded from both sides with plausible reasons, and, the causes having first been set out, sentence for action is passed by the judgment of reason. To give an example: if a woman should appear to a man who has resolved to live continently and chastely and to keep himself from all contact with women, provoking him and enticing him to do something contrary to his resolve, the woman is not the perfect and absolute cause or necessity of his transgressing, since he can, remembering his resolve, rein in the incitements of lust and check the delights of the provoking enticement with the sterner rebukes of virtue, so that, with every sense of lust put to flight, the firmness and constancy of his resolve may persevere. Indeed, if such incitements come to more learned men, strengthened by divine instruction, at once remembering who they are, recalling to memory what they have long meditated and been taught, and fortifying themselves with the support of holier teaching, they reject and refute every enticement of incitement and drive away contrary desires by the opposition of the reason implanted in them.

Since, then, these things are proved to be so by natural evidence, as it were, how is it not superfluous to turn back the causes of our deeds onto the things that befall us from outside, and to remove the blame from ourselves, in whom the whole cause lies; that is, to say that we are like pieces of wood or stones, which have no motion within themselves but receive the causes of their motion from outside? This is neither truly nor fittingly said, but is invented only so that freedom of choice may be denied; unless perhaps we think that freedom of choice can exist only if nothing befalls us from outside that provokes us to good or to evil. If someone refers the causes of sins to a natural bad temperament of the body, this is shown to be contrary to the reason of all instruction. For just as we see in very many who before had lived without restraint or self-control and had been captives of luxury and lust, if they were perhaps called to better things by the word of teaching and instruction, that so great a change came about that from being luxurious and base they were made sober and most chaste, from fierce and savage most gentle and mild; so again we see in others, quiet and honourable people, that when they have perhaps joined themselves to restless and base people, “good morals are corrupted by evil conversation,” and they become such as those who lack nothing for baseness; and this sometimes happens to men already of mature age, so that they lived more continently in youth than when a more advanced age granted them the means of a freer life. The consequence of reason therefore shows that the things which befall us from outside are not in our power; but to use well or ill the things that befall us, by that reason within us which discerns and judges how they ought to be used, is in our power.

That we may confirm by the authority of the Scriptures as well what reason has shown in due order, namely that it is our own work to live rightly or less rightly, and that we are not compelled either by the things that befall us from outside or, as some think, by the pressure of fate, the prophet Micah will bear witness in these words: “If it has been told you, O man, what is good, or what the Lord requires of you, but to do justice and love mercy and be ready to walk with the Lord your God.” And Moses says thus: “I have set before your face the way of life and the way of death; choose what is good, and walk in it.” And Isaiah says: “If you are willing and hear me, you shall eat the good things of the land; but if you are not willing and do not hear me, the sword shall consume you; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken this.” And in the Psalms it is written: “If my people had heard me, if Israel had walked in my ways, I would surely have humbled their enemies to nothing”; by which he shows that it was in the people's power to hear and to walk in the ways of God. And the Saviour, when he says, “But I say to you, do not resist evil,” and, “Whoever is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment,” and, “Whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” and when he gives all the other commandments, what else does he show but that it is in our power to be able to keep what is commanded, and that for this reason we are rightly made “liable to judgment” if we transgress what we certainly could have kept? Hence he himself says, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them is like a wise man who built his house on the rock,” and so on; and, “But he who hears these and does not do them is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand,” and the rest. And what he says to those on his right, “Come to me, all you blessed of my Father,” and so on, “for I was hungry and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink,” clearly shows that it lay in themselves either to be praiseworthy, as these were, doing what was commanded and receiving what was promised, or to be blameworthy, as those were who deserved to hear or receive the contrary, to whom it is said, “Depart, you cursed, into the eternal fire.” Let us see how the apostle Paul too speaks to us as to those who have power of choice and who hold in themselves the causes either of salvation or of perdition: “Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and patience and long-suffering, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But according to your hardness and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to each according to his works: to those who by patience in good work seek glory and honour and incorruption, eternal life; but to those who are contentious and do not believe the truth but believe iniquity, wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and of the Greek; but glory and honour and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and to the Greek.” You will find many other, indeed countless, passages in the holy Scriptures that clearly show that we have the power of free choice. Otherwise it would be contradictory that commandments should be given to us by keeping which we are saved, or by transgressing which we are condemned, if the ability to keep them is not in us.

But since there are found in the divine Scriptures themselves certain words so placed that something contrary seems able to be understood from them, let us bring them forward and, discussing them according to the rule of piety, give their solutions, so that from these few which we expound the solution of the others that are said in a similar way, by which the power of choice seems to be excluded, may become clear. Very many, then, are moved by what is said by God about Pharaoh, when he says more than once, “I will harden Pharaoh's heart.” For if he is hardened by God, and through being hardened he sins, he is not himself the cause of his sin. And if this is so, Pharaoh will not seem to have freedom of choice, and it will consequently be asserted, on the strength of this example, that the others who perish do not receive the cause of their perdition from the freedom of their own choice either. And what is written in Ezekiel, when he says, “I will take away their stony hearts and put in them hearts of flesh, that they may walk in my precepts and keep my ordinances,” might move someone, on the ground that it seems to be given by God either to walk in his commandments or to keep his ordinances, if he himself takes away the stony heart that hinders the keeping of the commandments and puts in and implants a better and more feeling heart, which is now called a heart of flesh. Let us consider also what the Lord and Saviour answered in the Gospel to those who asked him why he spoke to the crowds in parables: “That seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not hear and not understand, lest perhaps they turn and it be forgiven them.” And what was said by the apostle Paul, that “it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy”; and in another place, “Both to will and to accomplish are from God”; and again in another place: “So then he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens. You will say to me then, Why does he still find fault? For who resists his will? O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does the thing formed say to him who formed it, Why have you made me thus? Or has not the potter power over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honour and another for dishonour?” These and similar passages seem able to deter not a few from believing that each one has freedom of his own choice, and to make it seem rather that whether someone is saved or perishes depends on the will of God.

Let us begin, then, with what was said to Pharaoh, who is said to have been hardened by God so that he would not let the people go; and together with it the apostle's word will also be treated, where he says, “So then he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens.” For on these above all the heretics rely, saying that it is not in our power to be saved, but that there are natures of souls such that they in every case either perish or are saved, and that in no way can a soul of evil nature become good, or one of good nature become evil. Hence they say that Pharaoh too, being of a lost nature, was for that reason hardened by God, who hardens those of earthly nature but has mercy on those of spiritual nature. Let us see, then, what it is that they assert, and let us ask them first to answer us whether they hold that Pharaoh was of the earthly nature, which they call lost. They will answer without doubt: of the earthly. If then he was of earthly nature, he could not at all believe God or obey him, since his nature resisted. But if this was in him by nature, what further need was there for his heart to be hardened by God, and not once but often, unless it was in fact possible for him to be persuaded? Nor would he be said to be hardened by another, unless he was not hard of himself. And if he was not hard of himself, it follows that he was not of earthly nature either, but such a one as could yield when struck with amazement by signs and mighty works. For God needed him, so that in him he might show his power for the salvation of many, while he resists greatly and struggles against the will of God; and through this his heart is said to be hardened. Let these things be said first against them, so that their assertion, by which they think Pharaoh was lost by nature, may be overthrown; and concerning what was said by the apostle Paul we shall deal with them in the same way. For whom does God harden, according to your opinion? Those, of course, whom you call of lost nature. What else, I ask, would they have done if they had not been hardened? But if by being hardened they come to perdition, then they no longer perish by nature but by what befalls them. Then tell us, on whom does God have mercy? On those, of course, who are to be saved. And in what do these need a second mercy, who are to be saved once for all by nature and come to blessedness naturally? Unless it is shown even from this that, because it was possible for them to perish, they therefore obtain mercy, so that through it they may not perish but come to salvation and possess the kingdom of the godly. And let this be said against those who, by their fabulous inventions, introduce good or evil natures, that is, earthly or spiritual, from which they say it comes about that each one is either saved or perishes.

Now we must answer those as well who want the God of the law to be only just and not also good: how do they think the heart of Pharaoh is hardened by God, by what doing or by what foreseeing on his part? For the foresight and purpose of God must be kept in view, who according to us is just and good, and according to them only just. And let them show us how God, whom they too confess to be just, justly causes a man's heart to be hardened, so that from that very hardening he sins and perishes. And how will God's justice be defended in this, if he himself is the cause of perdition for those whom, because they proved hard and unbelieving, he himself will afterwards condemn with a judge's authority? Why does he also blame him, saying, “But since you will not let my people go, behold, I will strike all the firstborn in Egypt, even your firstborn,” and whatever else is written as said by God through Moses to Pharaoh? For everyone who believes that the things recorded in the Scriptures are true, and wants to show that the God of the law and the prophets is just, must give an account of all these things, showing how nothing whatever is taken away from God's justice by them; for though they deny that he is good, they nevertheless confess him to be just, and judge, and creator of the world. Another kind of answer is needed against those who assert that the evil one, that is, the devil, is the creator of this world.

But we, since we confess that the God who spoke through Moses is not only just but also good, let us examine more carefully how it befits the just and good God that he is said “to harden” Pharaoh's “heart.” And let us see whether, following the apostle Paul, we can perhaps solve the difficulty of the matter by some examples and comparisons, if we show how by one and the same work God “has mercy on one and hardens another,” not doing or willing this, that he who is hardened should “be hardened”; but while he uses his kindness and patience, the heart of those who turn his kindness and patience into contempt and insolence is hardened, as the punishment of their crimes is put off, while those who take his kindness and patience as an occasion for their repentance and amendment obtain mercy. To show more clearly what we are saying, we use the example which the apostle Paul uses in the Epistle to the Hebrews, saying: “For the land that drinks the rain that often comes upon it, and brings forth herbs useful to those by whom it is tilled, will receive blessings from God; but that which brings forth thorns and thistles is rejected and near to a curse, and its end is to be burned.” From these words of Paul which we have taken up, it is clearly shown that by one and the same work of God, by which he gives “rain” to the land, one land, carefully tilled, bears good fruit, while another, neglected and untilled, “brings forth thorns and thistles.” And if someone, speaking as it were in the person of the rains, should say, “I, the rain, made the good fruits, and I made the thorns and thistles,” although it seems harsh to say, it is nevertheless said truly; for unless there had been rain, neither fruits nor thorns and thistles would spring up, but when the rain comes the land produces both from itself. Yet although the land has produced both kinds of growth by the gift of the rain, the difference in what springs up will not rightly be ascribed to the rains; the blame for the bad crop will justly fall back on those who, though they could have broken up the land with frequent ploughing, turned the sluggish clods with heavy hoes, cut off and rooted out all the useless roots of noxious weeds, and prepared the fallow ground, cleansed and cultivated with all the labours and care that tillage requires, for the rains to come, neglected to do this, and will reap the fruits best suited to their idleness, “thorns and thistles.” So it comes about that the goodness and fairness of the rains come equally upon all the land, but by one and the same working of the rain the land that is cultivated brings forth useful fruits with blessing for its diligent and useful cultivators, while that which has grown hard through the idleness of its cultivators sprouts “thorns and thistles.” Let us take it thus, then: the signs and mighty works done by God were like rains ministered by God from above, while the purpose and will of human beings must be understood as the land, untilled or tilled, all of one nature, as land is all one with land, but not of one and the same cultivation. Hence each person's purpose, if it is untilled and wild and barbarous, is hardened by the mighty works and wonders of God and becomes harsher and thornier; or else it grows gentler and gives itself up with its whole mind to obedience, if it has been cleansed of vices and cultivated.

For a clearer proof of the matter it will not be superfluous to use another comparison as well: for example, if someone were to say that it is the sun that binds and loosens, although loosening and binding are contraries. Yet what he says will not be false, since by one and the same power of its heat the sun melts wax but dries and hardens mud: not that its power works one way in the mud and another in the wax, but because the quality of mud is one thing and that of wax another, although by nature they are one, since both are from the earth. So one and the same working of God, carried out through Moses in signs and mighty works, exposed the hardness of Pharaoh, which he had conceived by the intent of his malice, and showed forth the obedience of the other Egyptians who were mingled with the Israelites, who are also reported to have gone out of Egypt together with the Hebrews. As for what is written, that Pharaoh's heart was gradually tamed, so that at one time he said, “Do not go far; you shall go a three days' journey, but leave your wives and your children and your cattle,” and whatever else is written by which he seems gradually to give way to the signs and mighty works, what else is shown by these than that the power of the signs and wonders did work something in him, yet did not accomplish as much as it should have? For if his hardening were such as very many think, he would surely not be found to give way even in a few things. I think it will not seem absurd to explain the turn or figure of speech used in what is written about hardening from common usage as well. For kindlier masters often say to servants who become more insolent and wicked through their masters' great patience and gentleness: “I made you what you are; I ruined you; my patience made you very bad; I am the cause of this so hard and evil mind of yours, because I do not punish you at once for each fault as your offences deserve.” For we must first notice the turn or figure of speech, and only then understand the force of what is said, and not bring false charges against a word whose inner sense we have not examined carefully. Indeed the apostle Paul, plainly treating of such people, says to the one who remained in sins: “Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and patience and long-suffering, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But according to your hardness and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God.” What the apostle says, then, to one who is in sins, let us turn and take these very words as said to Pharaoh, and see whether you do not find them fittingly said of him too, who “according to his hardness and impenitent heart stored up” and laid by “wrath for himself on the day of wrath,” since his hardness could never have been so exposed and brought to light had not signs and wonders so many and so magnificent followed.

But if the proofs we have given seem less than complete, and the argument from the apostle's comparison still seems to have too little support, let us add the assent of prophetic authority as well, and see what the prophets also declare about those who at first lived rightly and deserved to receive very many proofs of God's kindness, but afterwards, being human, sinned. Making himself one with them, the prophet says: “Why, O Lord, have you made us stray from your way? And why have you hardened our heart, so that we do not fear your name? Return for the sake of your servants, for the sake of the tribes of your inheritance, that we too may receive a little of the inheritance of your holy mountain.” And Jeremiah likewise says: “You deceived us, O Lord, and we were deceived; you held fast and you prevailed.” What he says, then, “Why, O Lord, have you hardened our heart, so that we do not fear your name?”, spoken by those who were praying for mercy, must be taken as a figure of speech used of conduct, as if someone were to say: “Why have you spared us so long, and not called us to account when we sinned, but left us alone, so that this evil grew and the licence to sin spread because punishment had ceased?” So a horse, if it does not feel the iron heel of a constant rider and its mouth is not worn by the jagged bit, grows hard. So boyhood, if it is not bent by constant blows, will produce a youth both insolent and headlong toward vice. God therefore abandons and neglects those whom he has judged unworthy of correction. “For whom the Lord loves he corrects and chastises, and he scourges every son whom he receives.” From this we must think that those are received into the rank and affection of sons who have deserved to be scourged and corrected by God, so that through patience in trials and tribulations they too may be able to say: “Who shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus? Shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword?” For through all these each person's purpose is made manifest and brought to light, and the firmness of his perseverance is shown, not so much to God, who “knows all things before they happen,” as to the rational and heavenly powers, who have been allotted the care of human salvation as helpers and ministers of God. But those who do not yet offer themselves to God with such constancy and such love, and who, in coming to the service of God, are not ready to prepare their souls for trial, are said to be “abandoned” by God, that is, not to be instructed, because they are not ready to be instructed; their ordering or cure is without doubt put off to a later time. They certainly do not know what they will obtain from God unless they first come to desire to obtain the benefit; and this will come about only if a person first knows himself and perceives what he lacks, and understands from whom he ought or is able to seek what he lacks. For one who has not first understood his weakness or his sickness does not know how to seek a physician; or at least, when he has recovered his health, he will not be grateful to the physician, because he did not first recognize the danger of his illness. So too, if someone has not first learned the faults of his soul and the evil of his sins and made them known by the confession of his own mouth, he cannot be cleansed and absolved, lest he should not know that what he possesses was granted to him by grace, and should think the divine generosity his own good; and this without doubt breeds arrogance and pride of soul again, and becomes once more the cause of his ruin. So we must think of the devil also, who believed that the primacy he had when he was spotless was his own and not given by God; and in him was fulfilled the saying, “Everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled.” Hence it seems to me that the divine mysteries were for this reason “hidden from the prudent and wise,” so that, as Scripture says, “no flesh should glory in the sight of God,” and were “revealed to little ones,” that is, to those who, after they have become infants and little ones, that is, have brought themselves back to the humility and simplicity of little ones, then make progress; and when they come to perfection they certainly remember that they have obtained blessedness not so much by their own powers as by the grace and mercy of God.

The one, then, who deserves to be abandoned is abandoned by God's judgment, and God is patient with certain sinners, though not without a definite reason. And this very fact that he is patient he does for their benefit, since the soul whose care and providence he bears is immortal; and what is immortal and eternal, even if it is not quickly healed, is not so much shut out from salvation as put off to more fitting times. And perhaps it is better for those who are infected by the poisons of a deeper malice to obtain salvation more slowly. For as physicians sometimes, though they could close the scars of wounds more quickly, hold back and postpone the immediate healing with a view to a better and firmer health, knowing that it is better to wait while wounds are swollen and to let the flowing channels of the malignant humour run for a while than to hurry to a healing of the surface and shut up in the hidden veins the fuel of a poisonous humour, which, shut out from its usual channels, will without doubt creep into the inner members and penetrate the very vital organs, bringing on the body no longer a disease but death; so in this way God too, who knows the secrets of the heart and foreknows the future, in his great patience allows certain things to happen which, befalling people from outside, draw out into the light the passions and vices hidden within, so that through these those may be cleansed and healed who through great negligence and carelessness have received into themselves the roots and seeds of sins, so that, being cast out and drawn to the surface, they may in a manner be vomited forth and dispersed; so that even if someone seems to be caught up in more grievous evils, suffering convulsions in all his members, he may yet at some time cease and stop and have his fill of evils, and so, after many troubles, be restored to his proper state. For God governs souls not only for this brief time of our life, which is enclosed within about sixty years or a little more, but for a perpetual and eternal time, since he is himself eternal and immortal and holds providence over immortal souls as well. For he made the rational nature, which he also created “after his image and likeness,” incorruptible; and therefore the soul, which is immortal, is not shut out from divine care and remedies by the shortness of this life of ours.

But let us take from the Gospels too comparisons for what we have said. There a certain rock is mentioned that has little and scanty soil; if seed falls on it, it is said to spring up quickly, but when it has sprung up, because it does not send its “root” deep, “when the sun rises” what has sprung up is said “to be scorched and to wither.” This rock without doubt stands for the human soul hardened by its own negligence and turned to stone by malice. For no one is given “a heart of stone” by God; but each one's heart is said to become stony through malice and disobedience. As then, if someone should blame a farmer for not casting his seed more quickly on rocky ground, because he sees that another rocky ground received seed and sprouted quickly, the farmer will surely answer and say, “I sow this ground more slowly for this reason, that it may keep the seed it receives; for it is better for such ground to be sown later, lest the crop, sprouting too quickly and coming up from the surface of a thin soil, be unable to withstand the heat of the sun” (will not the one who first found fault agree with the reasoning and skill of the farmer, and approve as reasonably done what seemed to him inconsistent?): so God too, the most skilled farmer of his whole creation, holds back and postpones to another time, without doubt, the things that seem to us to have deserved to obtain health more quickly, so that their surface may not be healed rather than what lies within. But if someone objects to this, “Why then do some seeds fall even on rocky ground, that is, on a hard and stony soul?”, we must say that not even this can happen without the providence of the divine ordering; for unless it were learned through this what condemnation rash hearing and shameless inquiry incur, it would certainly not be recognized what benefit there is in being taught in due order. And from this it comes about that the soul recognizes its fault and reproaches itself, and accordingly reserves and gives itself over to cultivation, that is, sees that its own vices must first be cut away, and that only then must it come to instruction in knowledge. Since, then, as souls are innumerable, so also their characters and purposes, and the motions, desires and incitements of each are diverse, whose variety the human mind can in no way survey, the art, power and knowledge of such an ordering must therefore be left to God alone, who alone can know the remedies of each and measure the time of their cures. He, then, who alone, as we said, knows the ways of each mortal, knows by what way he should lead Pharaoh too, “so that through him his name might be named in all the earth,” after first chastising him with many plagues and bringing him even to drowning in the sea. In this drowning we must certainly not think that God's providence toward Pharaoh came to an end; for Pharaoh must not be thought to have perished in his substance as soon as he was drowned. “For in the hand of God are both we and our words, and all prudence and skill in works,” as Scripture says. These things we have discussed as well as we could, examining the chapter of Scripture in which it is said that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and the saying, “He has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens.”

Now let us see also about the words of Ezekiel, where he says: “I will take away the heart of stone from them and put in them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my ordinances and keep my precepts.” For if God, when he wills, “takes away the heart of stone” and “gives a heart of flesh,” so that “his precepts” are observed and his commandments “kept,” it will seem that neither is it in our power to put away malice (for the “taking away of the heart of stone” seems to be nothing other than the cutting away, from whomever God wills, of the malice by which one is hardened), nor is the giving of a “heart of flesh,” so that one walks in God's “precepts” and keeps his commandments, which is nothing other than becoming obedient and not resisting the truth, and doing the works of virtue. If then God promises that he will do this, and before he himself “takes away the heart of stone” we cannot put it away from ourselves, it follows that it is not in our power to cast off malice, but in God's. And again, if it is not by our action that a “heart of flesh” comes to be in us, if it is the work of God alone, it will not be our work to live according to virtue, but in everything it will seem to be the work of God's grace. This is what those say who want to prove from the authority of Scripture that nothing is placed in our power. We shall answer them that these words must not be understood so, but in this way: suppose someone is unskilled and untaught, and, perceiving the disgrace of his ignorance, moved either by someone's exhortation or by emulation of some wise men, he hands himself over to someone by whom he trusts he can be carefully trained and competently taught. Then if this man, who had earlier grown hard in ignorance, gives himself, as we said, with full intent of mind to a master and promises to obey him in everything, the master, seeing the intent of his purpose, will fittingly promise to take away all his ignorance and to implant skill; not that he promises to do this for a disciple who refuses or resists, but for one who offers himself and binds himself over to all obedience. So too the divine word promises to those who come to it that it will take away the “heart of stone,” not from those who do not listen to it, but from those who receive the precepts of its teaching; as in the Gospels we find the sick coming to the Saviour, asking to receive health, and so at last being healed. For example, that “the blind are healed and see”: in that they entreated the Saviour and believed that they could be healed by him, it is the work of those who were healed; in that their sight is restored to them, it is the work of the Saviour. So also here the divine word promises that it will give instruction by “taking away the heart of stone,” that is, by wiping away malice, so that through this they may walk in the divine precepts and keep the commandments of the law.

After this we propose to consider also what the Saviour had said in the Gospel: “For this reason I speak in parables to those who are outside,” “that seeing they may see and not see, and hearing they may hear and not understand, lest perhaps they turn and it be forgiven them.” On this, one who argues from the opposite side will say: If those who hear more clearly will in every case be corrected and “turned,” and so “turned” as to be worthy to receive the remission of sins, and it is not in their own power to hear a clear word, but certainly in the power of the one who teaches to teach more openly and clearly; and if the one who teaches says that he does not preach the word clearly to them for this reason, “lest perhaps they hear and understand and turn” and be saved, then it will certainly not be in themselves to be saved. And if this is so, we shall have no free choice either for salvation or for perdition. And if the words “lest perhaps they turn and it be forgiven them” had not been added, an easier answer might be given: we could say that the Saviour did not wish those whom he foreknew would not be good to understand the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, and “for that reason spoke to them in parables”; but now, since “lest perhaps they turn and it be forgiven them” is added, the explanation becomes more difficult. And first we should notice what defence this passage provides against the heretics too, who are accustomed to hunt out words from the Old Testament that seem to them, as they understand them, to point to something harsh and inhuman in God the Creator, where a disposition of avenging or punishing is indicated, or whatever else they are accustomed to call it, on the ground of which they deny that there is goodness in the Creator: how is it that they do not judge the Gospels with the same mind and the same sense, and do not notice whether such things are found in the Gospels too as they judge or blame in the Old Testament? For in this chapter it is clearly shown, as they themselves say, that the Saviour does not speak clearly for this reason, that people may “not turn” and, having turned, receive the remission of sins. Certainly if this is understood according to the letter alone, it will contain nothing less than the things they accuse in the Old Testament. But if even to them the things so placed in the New Testament seem to need explanation, it follows of necessity that the things they accuse in the Old Testament should also be cleared by a similar explanation, so that it may be proved through this that what is written in both Testaments belongs to one and the same God. But let us turn, as far as we can, to the question set before us.

We said earlier, in discussing Pharaoh, that sometimes to be healed too quickly does not turn to a person's good, especially if the disease, shut in, rages more violently in the inner organs. Hence God, who knows hidden things and “knows all things before they come to be,” in his great kindness defers the healing of such people and prolongs the treatment, and, so to speak, heals them by not healing, lest a hasty health should make them incurable. It is possible, then, that in the case of those to whom, as being outside, the word of our Lord and Saviour was spoken, because he who “searches hearts and reins” saw that they were not yet fit to receive the teaching of plainer speech, he covered the faith of a deeper mystery with veiled speech, lest perhaps, being quickly turned and healed, that is, having quickly received the remission of their sins, they should easily fall back into the same disease of sins, which they had found to be healed without any difficulty. If this should happen, no one doubts that the penalty is doubled and the increase of evils heaped up, since not only are the sins that seemed to have been remitted repeated, but the court of virtue is also polluted, if deceitful and defiled minds, full of hidden malice within, trample on it. And what remedy will there ever be for such people, who after the impure and filthy foods of malice, having tasted the sweetness of virtue and taken its delight into their throats, have turned back again to the poisonous and deadly foods of wickedness? And who doubts that it is better for such people to be put off and left for the time being, so that if perhaps they at some time have their fill of malice and come to abhor the filth in which they now delight, then at last the word of God may be fittingly made known to them, so that “what is holy” may not be given “to dogs,” nor “pearls” thrown “before swine,” to “trample them under their feet,” and then “turn and tear” and attack those who had preached the word of God to them? These, then, are the ones who are said to be “outside,” without doubt by comparison with those who are said to be “inside” and to hear the word of God more clearly. Yet these who are outside also hear the word, though it is covered with parables and shadowed by proverbs. But there are others besides those outside, who are called Tyrians, who do not hear at all, although the Saviour foreknew of them that “they would long ago have repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes,” “if the mighty works done among others had been done among them”; and yet they do not hear even what those outside hear. I believe this is because their rank in malice was far lower and worse than that of those who are said to be outside, that is, not far from those inside, who deserved to hear the word, though in parables; and because perhaps their healing was being deferred to that time when it will be “more tolerable” for them “in the day of judgment” than for those among whom the mighty works that are written were done; so that then at last, relieved of the weight of their evils, they may walk more easily and tolerably along the way of salvation. But I want those who read these things to be warned of this: that in such very difficult and obscure passages we take the utmost pains, not so much to make out the solutions of the questions with full clarity (for each will do that “as the Spirit gives him to speak”), as to hold fast the rule of piety by a most careful assertion, in that we try to show that the providence of God governs all things justly and rules immortal souls by the most equitable dispensations according to the merits and causes of each. For the dispensation of human beings is not enclosed within the life of this age, but the earlier state of merits always furnishes the cause of the future state, and so, by the immortal and eternal law of equity and governance of divine providence, the immortal soul is brought to the summit of perfection. If, however, someone objects to us, because we said that the word of preaching was deliberately put off from certain worse and more wicked people, why it was preached to those in comparison with whom the Tyrians, who were certainly despised, are preferred, so that their evil was increased and their condemnation made heavier, since they heard the word who were not going to believe, it seems we must answer thus. God, who knows all minds, foreseeing the complaints against his providence, especially of those who say, “How could we believe, when we neither saw what others saw nor heard what was preached to others? So far is the fault outside us, since those to whom the word was announced and signs shown did not delay at all but, amazed by the very power of the wonders, believed”; wishing to refute the pretexts for such complaints, and to show that it is not any neglect on the part of divine providence but the choice of the human mind that is the cause of its own perdition, conferred the grace of his benefits even on the unworthy and unbelieving, so that truly “every mouth may be stopped,” and the human mind may know that all that it lacks is from itself and nothing from God; and at the same time, since the one who despised the divine benefits offered to him is condemned more heavily than the one who did not deserve to obtain or hear them at all, it may understand and recognize that it belongs to the divine mercy and to God's most equitable dispensation that he sometimes refrains from granting to some that they should see anything or hear the mysteries of divine power, lest, having seen the mighty signs and learned and heard the mysteries of his wisdom, if they should despise and neglect them, they be punished with a heavier penalty for their impiety.

Let us see now also about the saying, “It is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.” For those on the other side say: If “it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs,” but the one on whom God has mercy is saved, then it is not in us to be saved. For either our nature is such that we can be saved or not be saved, or else it rests solely in the will of him who, if he wills, has mercy and saves. To them we first put this question: Is willing good things good or evil? And is running, hastening so as to reach the end of the good, praiseworthy or blameworthy? If they say it is blameworthy, they will plainly be mad; for all the saints both will good things and run toward good things, and are certainly not blameworthy. How then, if the one who is not saved is of an evil nature, does he will good things and run toward good things and yet not find good things? For they say that “a bad tree does not bear good fruit”; and willing good things is a good fruit. How then is the fruit of a bad tree good? But if they say that willing good things and running toward good things is something indifferent, that is, neither good nor evil, we shall say to them: If willing good things and running toward good things is indifferent, then what is contrary to these will also be indifferent, that is, willing evil things and running toward evil things. But it is certain that willing evil things and running toward evil things is not indifferent but plainly evil; it is established, therefore, that willing good things and running toward good things is not indifferent but good.

Having driven them back with this answer, let us now hasten to the explanation of the question itself, in which he says, “It is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.” In the book of Psalms, in the songs of ascents, which are reported to be Solomon's, it is written thus: “Unless the Lord builds the house, they have laboured in vain who build it; unless the Lord guards the city, the one who guards it has kept watch in vain.” By these words he certainly does not indicate that we should cease from building, or from keeping watch to guard the city that is within us; but what he shows is this: that whatever is built without God, and whatever is guarded without God, is built in vain and kept to no purpose. For in all things that are well built and well kept safe, the Lord is credited as the author of the building or of the guarding. For example, if we were to see some magnificent work and the mass of a splendid building raised with fine construction, should we not rightly and deservedly say that it was built not by human strength but by divine help and power? Yet it will not be implied by this that the labour and diligence of human effort ceased and did nothing at all. Or again, if we see some city surrounded by a heavy siege of enemies, with threatening engines brought up against the walls, and pressed with rampart, weapons, fire and all the instruments of war by which destruction is prepared, and the enemy could be driven back and put to flight, we rightly and deservedly say that the deliverance of the freed city was granted by God; yet we do not mean by this that the watches of the sentries, the readiness of the young men and the vigils of the guards were lacking. So the apostle too must be understood to have spoken: since the human will alone is not sufficient for achieving salvation, nor is any mortal's running fit for attaining heavenly things and for winning “the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus,” unless this good will of ours itself, and our ready purpose, and whatever diligence there can be in us, is helped or strengthened by divine aid. And therefore the apostle said very consistently that “it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy”; as if we were to say of farming what is written: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.” As, then, when a crop has brought good and abundant fruit to full ripeness, no one will piously and reasonably say that the farmer made those fruits, but will confess that they were given by God; so our perfection too is not brought about while we are idle and inactive, and yet its completion will be credited not to us but to God, to whom most of the work in it belongs. So also when a ship has come through the dangers of the sea, although the matter is carried on with much labour of the sailors and with all the work of the sailor's art expended, with the zeal and diligence of the helmsman applied, with the help of favouring winds and with the signs of the stars carefully observed, if at last, battered by waves and wearied by billows, it comes safe to harbour, no one of sound mind will credit the safety of the ship to anything but the mercy of God. Not even the sailors themselves or the helmsman dare to say, “I saved the ship”; they refer everything to the mercy of God; not that they feel they contributed no skill or labour to saving the ship, but because they know that the labour was theirs, while the safety was granted to the ship by God. So too in the course of our life, labour must be spent by us and zeal and diligence applied, but the fruit of our labour, salvation, must be hoped for from God. Otherwise, if he requires nothing of our work, the commandments will certainly seem superfluous; in vain too does Paul himself blame some for having fallen away from the truth and praise others for standing in the faith, and to no purpose does he hand on precepts and ordinances to the churches; and in vain do we ourselves “will or run” toward good things. But it is certain that these things are not done in vain, and it is certain that the apostles do not give precepts in vain, and that the Lord does not give laws without cause. It remains, then, for us to declare that the heretics slander these good words in vain.

After this came the question raised by the saying, “Both to will and to accomplish are from God.” And they say: If to will is from God and to accomplish is from God, then whether we will or act well or ill, it is from God; and if this is so, we are not of free choice. To this we must answer that the apostle's word does not say that to will evil is from God, or that to will good is from God, nor that to accomplish good or evil is from God, but says in general that “to will and to accomplish are from God.” For as we have from God this very thing, that we are human beings, that we breathe, that we move, so also we have from God that we will; just as if we were to say that our moving is from God, or that each of our members serves its function and moves is from God. From this, certainly, we are not to understand that because the hand moves, for example to strike unjustly or to steal, this is from God; rather, the very fact that it moves is from God, but it is ours to turn these motions, the power of which we have from God, either to good or to evil. So also what the apostle says means this: that we receive from God the power of willing, but we use the will either in good or in evil desires. We must think in the same way about what we accomplish.

But about what the apostle said: “So then he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens. You will say to me then: Why does he still complain? For who resists his will? But indeed, O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does the thing formed say to him who formed it, Why have you made me thus? Or has not the potter power over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honour and another for dishonour?”, someone will perhaps say: If, as “the potter from the same lump makes some vessels for honour and others for dishonour,” so God makes some for salvation and others for perdition, it is not in us either to be saved or to perish; and in this way we do not seem to be of our own choice. We must answer those who understand it so: Can it be that the apostle says things that contradict himself? And if this cannot be thought of the apostle, how will he seem, on their view, to blame justly those who committed sexual immorality in Corinth, or those who sinned “and did not repent of the impurity, sexual immorality and uncleanness they had committed”? How too does he praise those who acted well, like “the house of Onesiphorus,” saying: “The Lord grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chain; but when he came to Rome he sought me diligently and found me. The Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day”? It does not befit apostolic gravity, then, to blame one who deserves blame, that is, one who has sinned, and to praise one who deserves praise for a good work, and then again, as if it were in no one's power to do anything good or evil, to say that it is the Creator's work that each one acts well or ill, since he makes one vessel for honour and another for dishonour. And how too can he add that “we must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, that each of us may receive in the body according to what he has done, whether good or evil”? For what reward for good is there for one who could not do evil, having been formed for this very thing by the Creator? Or what punishment will justly be inflicted on one who could not do good because of the very way his Maker created him? Then again, how is this assertion not contradicted by what he says elsewhere: “In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and earthenware, some for honour and some for dishonour. If then anyone cleanses himself from these, he will be a vessel for honour, sanctified and useful to the Lord, prepared for every good work”? So the one who has cleansed himself becomes a vessel for honour, while the one who has scorned to cleanse away his filth becomes a vessel for dishonour. From these sentences, I think, the cause of our deeds can in no way be referred to the Creator. For God the Creator does make vessels for honour, and he makes other vessels for dishonour; but the vessel that has cleansed itself from all uncleanness he makes a vessel for honour, while the one that has stained itself with the filth of vices he makes a vessel for dishonour. So it is concluded from this that the cause of each one's deeds comes first, and according to his merits each one is made by God a vessel either of honour or of dishonour. Each vessel, then, has furnished its maker from within itself with the causes and occasions for being formed by the Creator either for honour or for dishonour.

And if this assertion seems just, as it certainly is just and in agreement with all piety, that each vessel is prepared by God for honour or for dishonour from preceding causes, it does not seem absurd that, examining older causes in the same order and by the same line of reasoning, we should think the same in the account of souls also, and that this is why Jacob was loved even before he was born into this world, and Esau was hated while he was still held in his mother's womb. Nor will what is said, that from “the same lump” a vessel both of honour and of dishonour is made, be able to hem us in. For we say that the nature of all rational souls is one, as is signified by “the one lump of clay lying before the potter.” Since, then, the nature of all rational creatures is one, out of it God, according to the preceding causes of merits, as the potter out of one lump, has formed or created “some for honour and others for dishonour.” As for the apostle's words, which are those of one rebuking, “O man, who are you to answer back to God?”, I think he shows by them that such a rebuke is not addressed to anyone who is faithful and lives rightly and justly and has confidence before God, that is, to someone such as Moses was, of whom Scripture says, “Moses spoke, and God answered him with a voice”; and as God answered Moses, so every holy person answers God. But the one who is unbelieving, and has lost the confidence to answer before God because of the unworthiness of his life and conduct, and who asks about these things not in order to learn and make progress but in order to dispute and resist, and, to put it more plainly, who is the kind of person who could say what the apostle indicates when he says, “Why then does he still complain? For who resists his will?”, to such a one the rebuke the apostle speaks is rightly directed: “O man, who are you to answer back to God?” This rebuke, then, is addressed not to the faithful and holy but to the unbelieving and ungodly.

To those who introduce different natures of souls and drag this apostolic word into support of their doctrine, we must answer thus: If they too agree that the apostle says that from “one lump” are made both those who are for honour and those who are for dishonour, whom they call of the nature to be saved and of the lost nature, then there will no longer be different natures of souls, but one for all. And if they accept that one and the same potter without doubt signifies one Creator, there will not be different creators of those who are saved and of those who perish. Now let them choose whether they wish it to be understood of a good God who creates the evil and the lost, or of a God who is not good who creates the good and those prepared for honour; for the necessity of answering forces one of the two from them. But according to our assertion, by which we say that God makes vessels for honour or for dishonour from preceding causes, the vindication of God's justice is in no way hemmed in. For it is possible that this vessel, which from earlier causes was made for honour in this world, if it acts carelessly, may according to the merits of its conduct become a vessel for dishonour in another age; just as, again, if someone has been formed by the Creator in this life as a vessel for dishonour from preceding causes, and has amended himself and cleansed himself of all vices and filth, he can in that new age become “a vessel for honour, sanctified and useful to the Lord, prepared for every good work.” Indeed, those who were formed by God in this age to be Israelites, and lived a life unworthy of the nobility of their race and fell away from all the dignity of their family, these, in a sense, will be changed in the age to come, because of their unbelief, from vessels of honour into vessels of dishonour; and again many who in this life were counted among the Egyptian or Edomite vessels, having taken up the faith and conduct of the Israelites, when they have done the works of the Israelites and “entered the church of the Lord,” will be vessels of honour “in the revelation of the sons of God.” Hence it agrees better with the rule of piety to believe that every rational being, according to its purpose or conduct, is sometimes turned from evil to good and sometimes falls from good to evil; that some remain in good, while others advance even to better things and always climb to higher ones, until they reach the highest step of all; while others remain in evil, or, if malice has begun to spread further in them, advance to worse and are plunged into the uttermost depth of malice. Hence we must also think it possible that some who began at first with small sins should be spread out into such great malice, and come to such an advance in evils, as to be made equal in wickedness to the opposing powers; and again, if through many grievous and most severe punishments they are able at some time to come to their senses and gradually try to seek healing for their wounds, that, as malice ceases, they can be restored to good. From this we think that, since, as we have often said, the soul is immortal and eternal, it is possible that in many and endless spaces, through immeasurable and different ages, it may either descend from the highest good to the lowest evils, or be restored from the uttermost evils to the highest goods.

But since the apostle's words, in what he says about vessels of honour or dishonour, that “if anyone cleanses himself, he will be a vessel for honour, sanctified and useful to the Lord, prepared for every good work,” seem to place nothing in God but everything in us, while in the words, “The potter has power to make from the same lump one vessel for honour and another for dishonour,” he seems to refer everything to God, these must not be taken as contrary to each other, but both senses must be brought together and one understanding made out of the two: namely, that we should neither think that the things in our choice can be accomplished without the help of God, nor think that the things in God's hand are brought to completion without our acts and efforts and purpose. That is, we do not have it in our own choice to will or to accomplish anything in such a way that we need not know that this very ability to will or to accomplish has been given us by God, according to the distinction we made above; nor again, when God fashions “vessels, some for honour and some for dishonour,” must it be thought that he has our wills or purposes or merits as a kind of material, the cause of honour or dishonour, from which he fashions each of us either “for honour” or “for dishonour,” while the movement of the soul and the purpose of the mind suggest of themselves to him, from whom the heart and the thought of the mind are not hidden, whether its vessel ought to be fashioned “for honour” or “for dishonour.” But let these things suffice that we have discussed, as best we could, concerning the questions of free choice.

We must now see, according to the Scriptures, how the opposing powers, or the devil himself, struggle against the human race, provoking and inciting it to sin. First, in Genesis the serpent is described as having led Eve astray; concerning which, in the Ascension of Moses, a little book that the apostle Jude mentions in his epistle, the archangel Michael, disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, says that the serpent, inspired by the devil, was the cause of the transgression of Adam and Eve. Some also ask who the angel is who speaks from heaven to Abraham, saying: "Now I know that you fear God, and you have not spared your beloved son, whom you loved, for my sake." For he is plainly described as an angel, who says that he knew then that Abraham feared God and had not spared his beloved son, as Scripture says; but he did not declare that it was for God's sake, but for his own, that is, for the one who said this. We must also inquire about the one of whom it is said in Exodus that he wished to kill Moses because he was going into Egypt; and afterwards, who is the one called the destroying angel; and also who is the one written of in Leviticus as Apopompaeus, that is, 'the one who sends away', of whom Scripture says: "One lot for the Lord, and one lot for Apopompaeus," that is, the sender-away. In the first book of Kingdoms, too, an evil spirit is said to choke Saul. And in the third book the prophet Micaiah says: "I saw the Lord of Israel sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven stood around him, on his right and on his left. And the Lord said: Who will deceive Ahab king of Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead? And one said this, and another said that. A spirit came out and stood before the Lord and said: I will deceive him. And the Lord said to him: By what means? And he said: I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said: You shall deceive him, and indeed you shall prevail. Go out, then, and do so quickly. And now the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all your prophets; the Lord has spoken evil against you." By this it is clearly shown that a certain spirit chose by its own will and purpose to deceive and to work falsehood, which the Lord made use of for the death of Ahab, who deserved to suffer this. In the first book of Chronicles also: "The devil Satan stirred up Israel, and incited David to number the people." In the Psalms an evil angel is said to afflict certain people. In Ecclesiastes, too, Solomon says: "If the spirit of one who has power rises up against you, do not leave your place, for healing will check many sins." In Zechariah we read of the devil standing at the right hand of Jesus and resisting him. Isaiah says that the sword of the Lord rises up against the dragon, the crooked serpent. And what shall I say of Ezekiel, who in his second vision prophesies most plainly to the prince of Tyre about the opposing power, and who says that the dragon dwells in the rivers of Egypt? And the whole book written about Job, what else does it contain than an account of the devil, who asks that power be given him over all that Job has, and over his sons, and even over his body? Yet he is overcome through Job's patience. In that book the Lord taught many things in his answers about the power of this dragon that opposes us. These things, meanwhile, as far as they could come to mind at present, have been said from the Old Testament about how the opposing powers are either named in the Scriptures or said to oppose the human race, and are to be punished afterwards. Let us look also at the New Testament, where Satan comes to the Saviour, tempting him; and the evil spirits and unclean demons that had besieged certain people were driven by the Saviour from the bodies of the sufferers, who are said to have been set free by him. Judas too, when the devil had already put it into his heart to betray Christ, afterwards received Satan wholly into himself; for it is written that after the morsel Satan entered into him. And the apostle Paul teaches us that we should not give place to the devil, but, he says, "put on the armour of God, that you may be able to resist the wiles of the devil," indicating that the saints' struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. He also says that the Saviour was crucified by the rulers of this world, who are coming to nothing, whose wisdom he also says he does not speak. Through all these things, then, divine Scripture teaches us that there are certain invisible enemies fighting against us, and that we must arm ourselves against them. Hence the simpler of those who believe in the Lord Christ think that all the sins people commit come about from these opposing powers pressing on the minds of sinners, because in that invisible contest the powers are found to be superior; so that if, for example, there were no devil, no human being would sin at all.

But we, looking at the reasoning more clearly, do not think this is so, considering the things that come plainly from bodily necessity. Are we to think that the devil is the cause of our being hungry or thirsty? I think no one would dare to affirm it. If then he is not the cause of our hunger and thirst, what else [is he the cause of] when a person's age has reached the time of manhood and the incentives of natural heat have prompted him? It follows without doubt that, as the devil is not the cause of hunger and thirst, so neither is he the cause of that motion which nature prompts at a mature age, that is, the desire for intercourse. It is certain that this cause is by no means always stirred up by the devil, as if we had to think that, if there were no devil, bodies would have no desire for such union. Then let us consider whether, if, as we showed above, food is sought by people not from the devil but by a kind of natural instinct, it could happen, if there were no devil, that human experience would use such discipline in taking food as never to exceed the measure at all, that is, never to take it otherwise than the matter required or in greater quantity than reason allowed, and that it would never happen to people to err in keeping to the measure and limit of food. I for my part do not think that people could have kept this, even if no instigation of the devil had provoked them, so that no one would exceed the measure and discipline in taking food, before they had learned it by long use and experience. What then? In food and drink it was possible for us to sin even without the devil's incitements, if we happened to be found less self-controlled or less careful; and are we to think that in desiring intercourse, or in tempering the natural desires, we should not suffer something similar? I think the same line of reasoning can be applied to the other natural motions as well, of desire, or anger, or sadness, or in all things whatever that exceed the limit of natural measure through the vice of intemperance. The reasoning is plain, then: as in good things the human purpose by itself alone is incomplete for the accomplishment of the good, for it is brought to perfection by divine help, so also in the contrary we receive certain beginnings, and as it were certain seeds of sins, from the things we naturally use. But when we have indulged beyond what is enough and have not resisted the first motions of intemperance, then the hostile power, seizing the opening given by this first fault, incites and presses us in every way, striving to spread sins more widely; we human beings provide the occasions and beginnings of sins, while the hostile powers propagate them more widely and further, and, if possible, without any end. So, finally, the fall into avarice comes about: at first people desire a little money; then, as the vice grows, greed increases. After this, when blindness of mind has also followed from the passion, with the hostile powers prompting and pressing, money is no longer desired but seized, and acquired by violence or even by the shedding of human blood. For a surer proof that these monstrous excesses of vice come from demons, it can easily be seen that those who are driven by immoderate loves, or by uncontrolled anger, or by excessive sadness, suffer no less than those who are vexed bodily by demons. For it is reported in some histories that some people fell into madness from love, others from anger, not a few from sadness or from excessive joy; which I think happens because these opposing powers, that is, demons, having been given a place in their minds, which intemperance had first opened, took full possession of their senses, especially when no glory of virtue had roused them to resist.

That there are some sins which do not come from the opposing powers but take their beginning from the natural motions of the body, the apostle Paul declares most plainly where he says: "The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; these resist each other, so that you do not do the things you wish." If, then, the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, we have at times a struggle against flesh and blood, that is, when we are merely human and walk according to the flesh, and when we cannot be tempted with greater temptations than human ones, as is said of us: "Let no temptation take hold of you but what is human. But God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you are able." For as those who preside over the games do not let those who come to the contest engage each other at random or by chance, but with careful examination of their bodies or ages match them with the fairest pairing, this one with that, for example boys with boys and men with men, who are close to one another in age or strength; so we must understand of divine providence too, that it disposes with the most just moderation all who descend into these contests of human life, according to the strength of each, which he alone knows who alone sees the hearts of men: so that one fights against such flesh and another against such, one for so long a time and another for so long, and one is incited by the flesh to this or that, another to something else; and so that one resists this or that hostile power, another two or three at once, or now one and now another, at a certain time this one and at another time that one, or after certain deeds against some and after others against others. Consider whether something of this kind is not indicated by what the apostle says, "God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you are able," that is, because each is tempted in proportion to the amount or capacity of his strength. Yet because we have said that by the just judgment of God each one is tempted in proportion to the amount of his strength, it must not therefore be thought that the one who is tempted must conquer in every way; just as the one who strives in the games, although he has been matched with his opponent with fair equality and moderation, cannot always conquer. But unless the strength of the contestants is equal, the victor's palm will not be just, nor will the loser be justly blamed. Therefore God allows us to be tempted, but not beyond what we are able; for we are tempted according to our strength. Nor is it written that he will make with the temptation a way out of enduring, but a way out, that we may be able to endure; that is, he himself grants that we may be able to endure. But whether we fulfil vigorously or idly this ability he has given us is up to us. For there is no doubt that in every temptation the strength to bear it is present to us, if only we use the strength granted us properly. For to have the strength to conquer is not the same as to conquer, as the apostle himself indicated with very careful wording, saying that "God will give a way out, that you may be able to endure," not "that you will endure." For many do not endure but are overcome in temptation. What is given by God is not that we endure, otherwise there would seem to be no contest at all, but that we may be able to endure. And the strength that is given us so that we may be able to conquer we use, according to the faculty of free choice, either diligently, and we conquer, or idly, and we are overcome. For if this were given us entirely, that we should prevail in every way and never be overcome, what reason for contending would remain for one who cannot be overcome? Or what merit is there in the palm, where the faculty of resisting and of conquering is taken away? But if the possibility of conquering is offered equally to all of us, and it is placed in our power how we are to use this possibility, that is, diligently or idly, then the fault of the vanquished and the palm of the victor will be just. From the things we have discussed as well as we could, I think it has clearly appeared that there are some offences that we commit without malign powers pressing us, and others to which we are provoked by their instigation to a certain excess and lack of measure. Hence it follows that we must now inquire how these opposing powers work these incitements in us.

The thoughts that proceed from our heart, or the memory of any deeds whatever, or the contemplation of any things and causes, we find sometimes proceed from ourselves, sometimes are stirred up by opposing powers, and at times are also sent in by God or by holy angels. But this may perhaps seem fabulous unless it is proved by the testimonies of divine Scripture. That thought arises from ourselves, David testifies in the Psalms, saying: "For the thought of man shall confess to you, and the remnants of thought shall keep festival to you." That it is also usually done by opposing powers, Solomon testifies in Ecclesiastes thus: "If the spirit of one who has power rises up against you, do not leave your place; for healing will check many sins." And the apostle Paul will give testimony of the same, saying: "Destroying thoughts and every height that exalts itself against the knowledge of Christ." That it happens from God, David likewise testifies in the Psalms, saying: "Blessed is the man whose help is from you, O Lord; ascents are in his heart." And the apostle says that God put it in the heart of Titus. That some things are suggested to human hearts through angels, whether good or evil, is shown both by the angel who accompanied Tobias and by the word of the prophet who says, "And the angel who spoke in me answered." The book of the Shepherd also declares the same, saying that two angels accompany each human being, and that if good thoughts arise in our heart they are suggested by the good angel, but if contrary ones, they are the instigation of the evil angel. Barnabas declares the same in his epistle, when he says there are two ways, one of light and the other of darkness, over which, he says, certain angels preside: over the way of light, the angels of God; over the way of darkness, the angels of Satan. Yet we must think that nothing else happens to us from the things suggested to our heart, good or evil, except only a movement and incitement provoking us either to good or to evil. It is possible for us, when a malign power has begun to incite us to evil, to cast the depraved suggestions away from us and to resist the worst persuasions and to do nothing at all that is blameworthy. And again it is possible that, when a divine power has called us to better things, we do not follow, the power of free choice being preserved to us in both cases. We said above that certain memories of good or evil things are also suggested to us, whether by divine providence or by the opposing powers; as is shown in the book of Esther, when Artaxerxes had not remembered the services of that most just man Mordecai, and, wearied by sleepless nights, was brought by God to remember to ask for the records of past events committed to writing; and, reminded in them of Mordecai's services, he ordered his enemy Haman to be hanged, and conferred on Mordecai himself magnificent honours, and on the whole nation of the saints salvation when danger was already imminent. But by the contrary power of the devil we must think it was suggested to the memory of the chief priests and scribes when they came to Pilate and said, "Lord, we remember how that deceiver said while he was still alive, After three days I will rise." And what Judas thought about the betrayal of the Lord and Saviour did not come from the malice of his own mind alone; for Scripture testifies that the devil had already put it into his heart to betray him. Therefore Solomon rightly commanded, saying, "Keep your heart with all diligence"; and the apostle Paul says, "We ought to give the more earnest heed to what we have heard, lest perhaps we drift away"; and when he says, "Do not give place to the devil," he shows by this that by a certain deed, or by a certain sloth of mind, place is given to the devil, so that once he has entered our heart he either takes possession of us or at least pollutes the soul, if he cannot wholly possess it, when he hurls his fiery darts at us; by these we are sometimes wounded, the wound going deep, and sometimes only set on fire. Rarely indeed, and in a few people, are these fiery darts of his quenched so that they find no place to wound, that is, when someone is covered with the strongest and most powerful shield of faith. But what is said in the Epistle to the Ephesians, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places," must be understood thus: "our" means mine, Paul's, and yours, the Ephesians', and of all whose struggle is not with flesh and blood. For these have a contest against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world; not as it was for the Corinthians, whose contest was still against flesh and blood, and whom no temptation had seized but what was human.

Yet we must not think that each individual contends against all these. For I think it impossible for any human being, however holy he may be, to be able to wage a contest against all these at once. And if this should somehow happen, which certainly cannot be, it is impossible that human nature could bear it at all without its utter overthrow. But just as, for example, if some fifty soldiers say that a battle with fifty others is imminent for them, it is not to be understood that one of them is to fight against fifty, but each of them rightly says, "We have a battle against fifty," all of them, however, against all; so too we must hear what the apostle says, that all the athletes and soldiers of Christ have a struggle and a contest against all these things that have been listed: all of them, but each singly, either in a contest to come with single opponents, or at least as shall have been approved by God, the just president of the contest himself. For I think there is a certain measure to human nature, even if it is Paul, of whom it is said, "This man is a chosen vessel to me," or Peter, against whom the gates of hell do not prevail, or Moses, the friend of God; none of whom could at all endure the whole troop of opposing powers at once without some ruin to himself, unless perhaps the power of him alone were at work in him who said, "Take courage, I have overcome the world." Because of him Paul too said confidently, "I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me"; and again, "I laboured more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me." Because of this power, then, which is certainly not human, working and speaking in him, Paul said: "But I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor power, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." For I do not think that human nature alone by itself can wage a contest against angels, and heights and depths, and any other creature; but when it has felt the Lord present and dwelling in it, it will say in confidence of divine help: "The Lord is my light and my Saviour; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers draw near against me to eat my flesh, my enemies who afflict me, they themselves are weakened and have fallen. If an army should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; if war should rise against me, in this will I hope." Hence I think that a human being can perhaps never overcome an opposing power by himself unless he has made use of divine help. Hence the angel too is said to have “wrestled” with Jacob. We understand this to mean that it is not the same for the angel to have wrestled with Jacob as against Jacob; rather, the one who was present to him for the sake of his salvation, and who, when he knew his progress, also gave him the name Israel, wrestles with him, that is, is with him in the contest and helps him in the fight; while without doubt there was another against whom he fought and against whom his contest was waged. Indeed Paul did not say that our wrestling is with principalities or with powers, but against principalities and powers. Hence, even if Jacob wrestled, he without doubt wrestled against one of those powers which Paul declares oppose the human race, and especially the saints, and stir up contests. That is why Scripture says of him that he wrestled with an angel and prevailed with God; so that the struggle of the contest was sustained by the help of an angel, while the palm of perfection brings the victor to God.

Nor must we suppose that such contests are carried on by bodily strength and the exercises of the wrestling school; rather, the fight is of spirit against spirit, just as Paul indicates that our contest is against principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world. The very form of these contests must be understood thus: when losses, when dangers, when insults, when accusations are stirred up against us, the hostile powers do not aim at this, that we should merely suffer these things, but that through them we should be provoked either to great anger, or to excessive sadness, or to utter despair; or, what is worse, that, worn out and overcome by weariness, we should be driven to complain against God, as if he did not govern human life fairly and justly; so that through this we may be weakened in faith, or fall away from hope, or be compelled to abandon the truth of the doctrines and be persuaded to think something impious about God. For some such things are written about Job, when the devil asked God to be given power over his goods. Through this we are also taught that we are not assailed by chance attacks when such losses of property strike us, and that it is not by chance that one of our family is led away captive, or that the collapse of houses in which our dear ones are crushed happens. In all these each of the faithful ought to say, "You would have no power against me, unless it had been given you from above." For see that the house of Job would not have fallen upon his sons unless the devil had first received power against them; nor would the horsemen have rushed in three companies to carry off his camels or oxen and other animals, had they not been driven by that spirit to which they had bound themselves as servants by the obedience of their own purpose; nor would that which seemed to be fire, or what was thought to be lightning, have fallen on Job's sheep, before the devil said to God: "Have you not fenced around all that is his, outside and within? But now put forth your hand and touch all that he has, and see if he does not bless you to your face."

From all these it is shown that all the things that happen in this world which are reckoned indifferent, whether they are sad or of whatever kind, are not done by God, and yet not without God; for God not only does not prevent the malign and opposing powers that wish to work such things, but even permits them to do them, though only at certain times and to certain persons; as is said of Job himself, that for a certain time he was appointed to fall under others, and his house to be plundered by the wicked. Therefore divine Scripture teaches us to receive all things that happen to us as brought on us by God, knowing that nothing happens without God. And that this is so, that is, that nothing happens without God, how can we doubt, when the Lord and Saviour declares and says: "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father who is in heaven"? But necessity has drawn us to wander a little further in discussing the struggle of the opposing powers which they wage against human beings, and the sadder things that befall the human race, that is, the trials of this life, as Job says, "Is not the whole life of man on earth a trial?", so that it might be set out more clearly how these things happen and how piously we ought to think about them. Now let us see how people also slip into the sin of false knowledge, or with what aim the opposing powers are accustomed to stir up battles against us concerning these things as well.

The holy apostle, wishing to teach us something great and hidden about knowledge and wisdom, says in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: "We speak wisdom among the perfect; yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who are coming to nothing; but we speak the wisdom of God hidden in a mystery, which God foreordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this world knew; for if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of majesty." Wishing to show in this the differences between wisdoms, he describes a certain wisdom of this world, and a certain wisdom of the rulers of this world, and another, the wisdom of God. And when he says "the wisdom of the rulers of this world," I do not think he means some wisdom common to all the rulers of this world; rather he seems to me to indicate a wisdom proper to each ruler. And again, when he says, "But we speak the wisdom of God hidden in a mystery, which God foreordained before the ages for our glory," we must ask whether he means that this wisdom of God, which was hidden in other times and generations and was not made known to the sons of men as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets, is the same as the wisdom of God that existed before the Saviour's coming, by which Solomon was made wise; and the Saviour's own word declares that what the Saviour teaches is more than Solomon, when he says, "And behold, something greater than Solomon is here." In this it is shown that those who were taught by the Saviour were taught something more than Solomon knew. For if someone says that the Saviour indeed knew more, but did not hand on more to others than Solomon did, how will it fit, and how will it be thought consistently said, what he says afterwards: "The queen of the South will rise in the judgment and condemn the people of this generation, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here"? There is, then, a wisdom of this world, and there is a wisdom belonging perhaps to each of the rulers of this world. But of the wisdom of the one God itself we perceive this to be indicated: that it worked less in the ancient and older times, but has been revealed more fully and more clearly through Christ. But we shall inquire about the wisdom of God in its proper place.

But now, since the treatise in hand concerns the opposing powers and how they also stir up those contests by which false knowledge is implanted in human minds, and souls are led astray while they think they have found wisdom, I think it necessary to state and distinguish what the wisdom of this world is and what the wisdom of the rulers of this world is, so that through this we may also notice who are the fathers of this wisdom, or rather of these wisdoms. I think, then, as we said above, that the wisdom of this world is something other than those wisdoms which belong to the rulers of this world; by this wisdom, it seems, the things that belong to this world are understood and grasped. Yet it has nothing in itself by which it can perceive anything about the Godhead, or about the reason of the world, or about any higher matters, or about the ordering of a good and blessed life; but it is such, for example, as is all the art of poetry, or grammar, or rhetoric, or geometry, or music, with which perhaps medicine too should be counted. In all these we must consider the wisdom of this world to be present. By the wisdom of the rulers of this world we understand such things as the secret and hidden philosophy, as they call it, of the Egyptians, and the astrology of the Chaldeans, and the claims of the Indians to knowledge of the highest, and also the manifold and varied opinions of the Greeks about the Godhead. We find in the holy Scriptures, then, that there are rulers over each nation, as we read in Daniel that there is a certain prince of the kingdom of the Persians and another prince of the kingdom of the Greeks, who, it is clearly shown from the course of the reading itself, are not human beings but certain powers. In the prophet Ezekiel, too, the prince of Tyre is most plainly indicated to be a certain spiritual power. These, then, and others like them, each having its own wisdoms and building up its own doctrines and varied opinions, when they saw our Lord and Saviour promising and proclaiming that he had come into this world in order to destroy all the doctrines of knowledge falsely so called, at once, not knowing who was hidden within him, laid snares for him: "For the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ." Knowing these snares of theirs, and understanding what they plotted against the Son of God when they crucified the Lord of glory, the apostle says: "We speak wisdom among the perfect, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing, which none of the rulers of this world knew; for if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory."

We must certainly examine whether these wisdoms of the rulers of this world, with which they try to imbue human beings, are put into people by the opposing powers with the aim of ensnaring and harming them, or are applied only through error, that is, not with a view to harming humans, but because these rulers of this world themselves think these things true and therefore wish to teach others too what they themselves suppose to be true; which I rather think. For as, for example, the Greek authors, or the leaders of each heresy, having first themselves accepted the error of false doctrine as truth and judged within themselves that this is the truth, then try to persuade others too of the things they have judged within themselves to be true; so we must think the rulers of this world also do, in which world certain spiritual powers have been allotted rule over certain nations and for that reason are called rulers of this world. Besides these rulers there are also certain special energies of this world, that is, certain spiritual powers working certain things which they chose to do by the freedom of their choice; among these are those rulers who produce the wisdom of this world: for example, there is a particular energy and power that inspires poetry, another geometry, and so each one prompts each of the arts and disciplines of this kind. Indeed very many of the Greeks have held that the art of poetry cannot exist without madness; hence it is also related in their histories that those whom they call bards were sometimes suddenly filled with the spirit of a kind of madness. And what is to be said of those whom they call diviners, from whom, through the working of the demons that preside over them, answers are given in skilfully measured verse? Those too whom they call magicians or sorcerers have sometimes, by calling up demons over boys still of tender age, made them recite poems in verse that amazed and astonished everyone. We must think these things happen in this way: as holy and spotless souls, when they have devoted themselves to God with all affection and all purity, and have kept themselves aloof from all contact with demons, and have purified themselves by much abstinence, and have been steeped in pious and religious disciplines, thereby take on a share in divinity and deserve the grace of prophecy and of the other divine gifts; so we must think that those who show themselves fit for the opposing powers, that is, by a way of life or by pursuits friendly and acceptable to them, receive their inspiration and become partakers of their wisdom and doctrine. Hence it comes about that they are filled with the workings of those to whose service they have first subjected themselves.

Concerning those who teach otherwise about Christ than the rule of the Scriptures allows, it is not idle to consider whether the opposing powers, striving with treacherous purpose against the faith of Christ, invented certain fabulous and at the same time impious doctrines; or whether they too, having heard the word of Christ, and being able neither to vomit it out of the secret places of their conscience nor to keep it purely and holily, brought in various errors against the rule of Christian truth through vessels suited to them and, so to speak, through their own prophets. And we must rather think that the apostate and runaway powers, which have withdrawn from God, out of the very wickedness of their mind and purpose, or out of envy of those for whom, once they have known the truth, an ascent is being prepared to that rank from which they themselves fell, put together these errors and deceptions of false doctrine in order to hinder such progress. It is therefore plainly shown by many indications that the human soul, while it is in this body, can receive different energies, that is, workings of different spirits, evil and good. Of the evil there are two kinds: either when they have wholly and entirely possessed the mind, so that they allow those they have besieged to understand or feel nothing at all, as with those commonly called energumens, whom we see out of their minds and mad, such as those who are reported in the Gospel to have been healed by the Saviour; or when, by hostile suggestion, they corrupt with various thoughts and sinister persuasions a soul that still feels and understands, as an example of which is Judas, provoked to the crime of betrayal by the devil's prompting, as Scripture declares, saying, "When the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot to betray him." But a person receives the energy, that is, the working, of a good spirit when he is moved and provoked to good things and inspired toward heavenly or divine things; as the holy angels and God himself worked in the prophets, provoking and exhorting them to better things by holy suggestions, yet in such a way that it remained in the person's own choice and judgment whether he would or would not follow the one calling him to heavenly and divine things. Hence by this clear mark it is recognized when the soul is moved by the presence of a better spirit: that is, if it suffers no disturbance or derangement of mind at all from the inspiration that comes upon it, and does not lose the free judgment of its choice; as an example are all the prophets and apostles, who ministered the divine oracles without any disturbance of mind. That human memory is provoked by the suggestions of a good spirit to the recollection of better things we have already shown by examples above, when we mentioned Mordecai and Artaxerxes.

I think we must next inquire for what causes the human soul is moved now by good powers and now by evil ones. Of this I suspect there are certain causes older even than this bodily birth, as John indicates, leaping and exulting in his mother's womb when the voice of Mary's greeting reached the ears of Elizabeth his mother; and as the prophet Jeremiah declares, who “before he was formed in his mother's womb” was known to God, and “before he came out of the womb” was sanctified by him, and while still a boy received the grace of prophecy. And again, on the contrary, it is plainly shown that some have been possessed by hostile spirits from their earliest age, that is, that some were born with a demon itself, and others, as the credibility of histories declares, practised divination from boyhood, having suffered from their earliest age the demon they call Python, that is, a ventriloquist. Concerning all these, those who assert that all things in this world are governed by God's providence, as our faith also holds, cannot, it seems to me, answer otherwise, so as to show divine providence free from all blame of injustice, than by saying that there were certain earlier causes for them, by which, before they were born in the body, the souls contracted some guilt in their thoughts or motions, for which they were judged by divine providence to deserve to suffer this. For the soul is always of free choice, both when it is in this body and when it is outside the body; and freedom of choice is always moved either toward good or toward evil; nor can a rational sense, that is, a mind or soul, ever be without some motion, either good or evil. It is probable that these motions furnish the causes of merits even before they do anything in this world; so that for these causes or merits they are, by divine providence, appointed to suffer something good or evil immediately from their first birth, indeed even before their birth, so to speak.

Let this be said about the things that seem to happen to people either immediately at their first birth or even before they come forth into this light. But concerning the things suggested by different spirits to souls, that is, to human thoughts, which provoke either to good or to the contrary, we must think that sometimes in this too there are certain causes prior to bodily birth. But sometimes the mind, watchful and casting away from itself what is evil, calls to itself the help of the good; or, on the contrary, negligent and slothful, when it is less on its guard, it gives place to those spirits which, lying in wait like robbers in hiding, try to rush into human minds when they have seen a place given them through sloth; as the apostle Peter says, “Your adversary the devil goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” Therefore our heart must be kept day and night with all watchfulness, and “no place must be given to the devil,” but everything must be done by which the ministers of God (that is, those “spirits who have been sent to minister” to those who are called to “the inheritance of salvation”) may find a place in us and delight to enter the guest-chamber of our soul, and, dwelling with us, that is, in our heart, may guide us by better counsels; if, that is, they find the dwelling of our heart adorned with the cultivation of virtue and holiness. But let these things suffice that we have discussed, as best we could, about the powers that oppose the human race.

Now I think we should not be silent about human temptations either, which arise at times from flesh and blood, or from the wisdom of flesh and blood, which is said to be hostile to God. And whether what some say is true, that there are two souls in each person, [we must consider,] now that we have set out the temptations that are said to be more than human, that is, those which we wage against principalities and powers and against the rulers of the darkness of this world and the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, or which are carried on for us against evil spirits and unclean demons. In this matter I think we must consequently inquire whether in us, that is, in human beings, who consist of soul and body and vital spirit, there is also something else which has its own incitement and motion provoking to evil. For some are accustomed to raise a question of this kind: whether there are, as it were, two souls in us, one more divine and heavenly and the other lower; or whether, from the very fact that we cleave to bodies (which bodies by their own nature are dead and wholly lifeless, since the material body is given life by us, that is, by souls, and the body is certainly contrary and hostile to the spirit), we are drawn and provoked to those evils which are pleasing to the body; or else, third, as some of the Greeks have thought, that our soul, though one in substance, is nevertheless made up of several parts, one part being called rational and the other irrational, and the part they call irrational being divided again into two affections, desire and anger. These, then, are the opinions about the soul which we have found held by some. Of these, the one we said seemed good to certain Greek philosophers, that the soul is threefold, I do not see to be much confirmed by the authority of divine Scripture; but for the other two that remain some passages can be found which might seem to fit them from the divine writings.

Of these let us first discuss what some are accustomed to maintain, that there is in us one soul that is good and heavenly and another that is lower and earthly; and that the better one is implanted from heaven, such as the one which in Jacob, while he was still in the womb, won the palm of victory in supplanting his brother Esau, and which in Jeremiah is sanctified from the womb, and in John is filled with the Holy Spirit from the womb. The lower one, they say, comes from bodily seed, and they assert that it is sown together with the body; hence they deny that it can live or subsist apart from the body, and for this reason they say it is often called flesh. For what is written, "The flesh lusts against the spirit," they take as said not of the flesh but of this soul, which is properly the soul of the flesh. From these words they also try to confirm what is written in Leviticus thus: "The soul of all flesh is its blood." For since the blood, spread through the whole flesh, gives life to the flesh, they say that this soul, which is called the soul of all flesh, is in the blood. And this very thing that is said, that the flesh fights against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and what is said, "The soul of all flesh is its blood," they say is called by another name the wisdom of the flesh, which is a kind of material spirit that is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can it be, because it has earthly wills and bodily desires. Of this, they think, the apostle also spoke when he says: "But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which is in my members." If anyone objects to them that this is said of the nature of the body, which according to the property of its own nature is indeed dead, but is said to have a sense or wisdom that is hostile to God or wars against the spirit, as if one were to say that it is in a manner the voice of the flesh itself, crying out not to be hungry, not to be thirsty, not to be cold, and not to want to suffer any discomfort at all whether from abundance or from want, they will try to refute and attack this by showing that there are very many other passions of the soul that draw their origin in no way from the flesh, and yet the spirit opposes them, such as ambition, avarice, rivalry, envy, pride and the like. Seeing that the human mind or spirit has a kind of battle with these, they therefore place the cause of all these evils in nothing other than this soul of which we spoke above, a bodily soul, as it were, and generated by transmission from the seed. They are accustomed also to add in support of their assertion the testimony of the apostle where he says: "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are sexual immorality, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, rivalries, anger, quarrels, dissensions, heresies, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like," saying that not all these things draw their origin from the use or pleasure of the flesh, so that all these motions should be thought to arise from that substance which has no soul, that is, the flesh. And the saying, "See your calling, brothers, that not many among you are wise according to the flesh," will seem to point to this: that there appears to be a certain fleshly and material wisdom of its own, and another wisdom according to the spirit; and the former cannot be called wisdom unless there is a soul of the flesh which is wise in what is called the wisdom of the flesh. To these they also add this: "If the flesh wars against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, so that we do not do what we wish," what are the things of which he says "so that we do not do what we wish"? It is certain, they say, that this is not said of the spirit, for the will of the spirit is not prevented; nor of the flesh, because if the flesh has no soul of its own, it will certainly have no will either. It remains, then, that it is said of the will of this soul, which can have a will of its own, which certainly opposes the will of the spirit. And if this is so, it is established that the will of this soul is something intermediate between the flesh and the spirit, serving and obeying without doubt one of the two, whichever it has chosen to obey. When it subjects itself to the pleasures of the flesh, it makes people carnal; but when it joins itself to the spirit, it makes people to be in the spirit, and for this reason to be called spiritual. This is what the apostle seems to indicate when he says, "But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit." We must ask, then, what at all this will is between the flesh and the spirit, besides the will that is said to belong to the flesh or to the spirit. For it is held for certain that all things said to be of the spirit are the will of the spirit, and whatever are called works of the flesh are the will of the flesh. What, then, besides these, is this will of the soul that is named separately, which the apostle does not want us to do when he says, "so that you do not do whatever you wish"? By this it seems to be indicated that it ought to cleave to neither of these two, that is, neither to the flesh nor to the spirit. But someone will say: as it is better for the soul to do its own will than to do the will of the flesh, so again it is better to do the will of the spirit than its own will. How, then, does the apostle say, "so that you do not do the things you wish"? Because in the fight that is waged between the flesh and the spirit, the victory of the spirit is by no means certain; for it is plain that the flesh prevails in very many people.

But since we have fallen into a deep discussion, in which we must examine every side that can be raised, let us see whether perhaps something of this kind can be treated in this place: that as it is better for the soul to follow the spirit when the spirit has conquered the flesh, so also, even if it seems worse for it to follow the flesh, which wars against the spirit and wishes to call the soul back to itself, it may nevertheless perhaps seem more useful for the soul to be held by the flesh than to remain in its own wills. For since, while it remains in its own wills, it is then said to be neither hot nor cold, but to continue in a kind of middle lukewarmness, it will find a slow and rather difficult conversion. But if it cleaves to the flesh, then from the very evils it suffers from the vices of the flesh, sated at last and filled, and as it were wearied by the heaviest burdens of luxury and lust, it can be turned more easily and quickly from material filth to the desire for heavenly things and to spiritual grace. And we must think the apostle said this: that the spirit fights against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit for this reason, that we may not do whatever we wish, meaning without doubt the things that are designated as outside the will of the spirit and outside the will of the flesh; as if we were to say in other words that it is better for a person to be either in virtue or in wickedness than in neither; but the soul, before it turns to the spirit and is made one with it, while it cleaves to the body and thinks of carnal things, seems to be neither in a good state nor plainly in a bad one, but to be like an animal, so to speak. It is better, if it can be, that it cleave to the spirit and become spiritual. But if this cannot be, it is more expedient for it to follow even the wickedness of the flesh than, placed in its own wills, to hold the state of an irrational animal. These things we have treated, wishing to discuss the opinions of each assertion, with a longer digression than we wished, so that we might not be thought unaware of the questions usually raised by those who ask whether there is another soul in us besides this heavenly and rational one, which is naturally opposed to it and is called the flesh, or the wisdom of the flesh, or the soul of the flesh.

Now let us see what is usually answered to these things by those who maintain that there is in us one motion and one life of one and the same soul, whose salvation or perdition is properly ascribed to it according to its own acts. And first let us see what kind of passions of the mind we suffer when we feel ourselves as it were torn into parts over each matter, when a kind of battle of thoughts takes place in our hearts, and certain probabilities are suggested to us by which we incline now to this and now to that, and by which we are now reproved and now approve ourselves. It is nothing remarkable if we say that bad characters are at variance with themselves, since this is found in all people whenever deliberation on an uncertain matter comes to be weighed, and it is considered or consulted what may be chosen more rightly or more usefully. It is no wonder, then, if two probabilities meeting each other and suggesting contrary things draw the mind in different directions. For example, if thought invites someone to faith and the fear of God, it cannot then be said that the flesh is fighting against the spirit; but while it is uncertain what is true and useful, the mind is drawn in different directions. So too, when the flesh is thought to provoke to lust, but better counsel resists such incitements, we must not think there is some other life resisting another, but the nature of the body, which, when the places of the seminal humour are filled, longs to empty them and let them flow away; just as it is not some contrary power, or the life of another soul, that must be thought to excite thirst in us and provoke us to drink, or to make us hungry and stir us to food. But as these things are sought or discharged by the natural motions of the body, so also the humour of natural seed, gathered over time in its places, longs to be expelled and cast out; and this is so far from coming about by the impulse of any other provocation that it is sometimes discharged even of its own accord. When it is said, then, that "the flesh fights against the spirit," these people understand it thus: that the use, or necessity, or pleasure of the flesh, provoking a person, draws him away and leads him off from divine and spiritual things. For, drawn away by the necessity of the body, we are not allowed to give our time to divine things that will profit us for ever. So again the soul, giving its time to divine and spiritual things and joined to the spirit, is said to fight against the flesh, when it does not allow it to grow slack with delights and to drift in pleasures, in which it naturally takes delight. In this way they also explain the saying, "The wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God": not that the flesh truly has a soul or a wisdom of its own, but as we are accustomed to say, by a loose use of words, that the earth is thirsty and wants to drink water, where we say "wants" not properly but loosely, or again that a house wants to be rebuilt, and many other things like these; so also "the wisdom of the flesh" must be taken, or the saying "the flesh lusts against the spirit." They usually add also the saying, "The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the ground." For what cries to God is not properly the blood that was shed; but blood is said loosely to cry out, while vengeance is demanded on the one who shed it. And what the apostle says, "But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind," they understand as if he had said that whoever wishes to give his time to the word of God is distracted, torn and hindered by bodily necessities and uses, which are in the body like a kind of law, so that, giving his time to wisdom, he cannot contemplate the divine mysteries more intently.

As for heresies, envies, contentions and the rest being listed among the works of the flesh, they take it thus: that the soul, when it has become coarser in perception from subjecting itself to the passions of the body, being weighed down by the mass of its vices and perceiving nothing subtle or spiritual, is said to have become flesh, and takes its name from that on which it spends more zeal or purpose. They also add this question: who will be found, or who will be called, the creator of this evil sense that is called the sense of the flesh? For they maintain that no other creator of soul and flesh is to be believed in but God. And if we say that the good God in his very creation created something hostile to himself, it will certainly seem absurd. If, then, it is written that "the wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God," and this is said to have come about by creation, God himself will seem to have made a nature hostile to himself, which cannot be subject to him or to his law; that is, if the thing of which these words are said is thought to be a living being. And if this is accepted, how will it seem to differ from those who say that different natures of souls were created, which by nature are either to perish or to be saved? This certainly pleases only the heretics, who, since they cannot maintain the justice of God by pious reasoning, compose fictions of impiety of this kind. We, for our part, have set forth as well as we could, in the manner of a discussion, what could be said on each doctrine in the person of each side; let the reader choose from them which account is rather to be embraced.

Next, since it is one of the church's definitions, held especially according to the faith of our history, that this world was made and began at a definite time, and that at the consummation of the age, known to all, it is to be dissolved because of its corruption, it does not seem absurd to repeat a few things about this too. As far as the faith of the Scriptures is concerned, the assertion on this point seems very easy. Indeed, the heretics, though they are divided on many other matters, nevertheless seem to agree on this, yielding to the authority of Scripture. About the creation of the world, then, what other Scripture can teach us better than what was written by Moses about its origin? Although it contains within it greater things than the narrative of the history seems to show, and contains a spiritual sense in very many places, and uses the letter as a kind of veil over mystical and deep matters, nonetheless the narrator's account indicates that all things that are seen were created from a definite time. About the consummation of the world, Jacob indicates it first, when he testifies to his sons, saying: "Gather to me, sons of Jacob, that I may tell you what will be in the last days," or, "after the last days." If, then, there are last days, or a time after the last days, the days that began must necessarily cease. David also says thus: "The heavens shall perish, but you will remain; and they will all grow old like a garment, and like a covering you will change them, and they will be changed; but you are the same, and your years will not fail." Our Lord and Saviour, when he says, "He who created them from the beginning made them male and female," himself testifies that the world was made; and again, when he says, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away," he indicates that it is corruptible and will come to an end. And the apostle, when he says, "For the creation was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be set free from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God," plainly declares the end of the world; and again when he says, "The form of this world is passing away." But in the very words that the creation was subjected to vanity he also shows its beginning; for if the creation was subjected to vanity because of some hope, it was certainly subjected for a cause; and what exists from a cause must necessarily have begun; for the creation could not, without any beginning, have been subjected to vanity, and hope to be set free from a bondage of corruption which it had not begun to serve. Whoever searches at leisure will find very many other sayings of this kind in the divine Scriptures, by which the world is said both to have a beginning and to hope for an end.

If, then, there is anyone who in this matter opposes either the authority of our Scripture or the faith, we would ask him whether he says that God can comprehend all things or cannot. To say that he cannot is plainly impious. But if, as he must, he says that God comprehends all things, it remains that, by the very fact that they can be comprehended, they are understood to have both a beginning and an end. For what is wholly without any beginning cannot be comprehended at all. For however far the understanding extends itself, so far the power of comprehending is withdrawn and put off without end, where no beginning is held.

But they are accustomed to object to us, saying: If the world began in time, what was God doing before the world began? For to call the nature of God idle and unmoving is both impious and absurd, as is to think that goodness at some time did no good and omnipotence at some time exercised no power. This they usually object to us when we say that this world began at a definite time, and when, following the faith of Scripture, we even count the years of its age. I do not think any of the heretics can easily answer these propositions in keeping with the principle of his own doctrine. But we shall answer consistently, keeping the rule of piety, by saying that God did not then first begin to work when he made this visible world; but as after the corruption of this world there will be another, so also before this one existed we believe there were others. Both points will be confirmed by the authority of divine Scripture. For that after this world there will be another, Isaiah teaches, saying: “There will be a new heaven and a new earth, which I will make to remain in my sight, says the Lord.” And that before this world there were others too, Ecclesiastes shows, saying: “What is it that has been made? The very thing that will be. And what is it that has been created? The very thing that is to be created; and there is nothing at all new under the sun. If anyone speaks and says, Behold, this is new, it has already been in the ages that were before us.” By these testimonies both points are proved at once, that there were ages before and that there will be ages afterwards. Yet we must not think that there are several worlds at the same time, but that after this one another will come in its turn; about these it is not necessary now to repeat each point, since we have already done so above.

I think one thing must certainly not be passed over idly: that the holy Scriptures have called the creation of the world by a new and peculiar name, speaking of the καταβολή of the world (which has been rather improperly translated into Latin as “the foundation of the world”; but καταβολή in Greek rather means “casting down,” that is, throwing downward, which, as we said, they have improperly rendered in Latin as “the foundation of the world”); as in the Gospel according to John, when the Saviour says, “And there will be tribulation in those days such as has not been since the foundation of the world” (here “foundation” is καταβολή, which must be understood as we have explained above). The apostle too used the same word in the Epistle to the Ephesians, when he says, “Who chose us before the foundation of the world” (here too he called the foundation of the world καταβολή, to be understood in the same sense as we interpreted above). It seems worth inquiring, then, what is indicated by this new name. And I think that, since the end and consummation of the saints will be in those things “which are not seen and are eternal,” we must judge from the contemplation of that very end, as we have often shown above, that rational creatures had a similar beginning. And if they had a beginning such as the end they hope for, they were without doubt from the beginning in those things “which are not seen and are eternal.” If this is so, there has been a descent from higher to lower, not only on the part of those souls that deserved it by the variety of their motions, but also on the part of those that were brought down from those higher and invisible places to these lower and visible ones for the service of the whole world, even though unwilling. “For the creation was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope,” so that sun or moon or stars or angels of God might render service to the world; and for those souls which, because of their excessive defects of mind, needed these coarser and more solid bodies, and because of those for whom this was necessary, this visible world was established. From this, then, by this meaning of the word, that is, by καταβολή, a bringing down of all in common from higher to lower seems to be indicated. The whole “creation,” indeed, holds the hope of liberty, that it “may be set free from the bondage of corruption,” when “the sons of God” who fell away or were scattered have been gathered into one, or when they have fulfilled the other duties in this world which God alone, the maker of all, knows. Such and so great a world must be thought to have been made as could hold all the souls that were appointed to be exercised in this world, and all the powers that are ready to be present with them, to order them and to help them. For that all rational creatures are of one nature is proved by many assertions; by this alone can the justice of God be defended in all his dealings with them, since each one has in itself the causes why it has been placed in this or that rank of life.

This ordering of God, then, which he afterwards arranged, having already from the origin of the world foreseen the reasons and causes, both of those who for some defect of mind deserved to come into bodies, and of those who were carried away by desire for visible things, and also of those who, willingly or unwillingly, were compelled by him who subjected them “in hope” to render certain services to those who had fallen into this state: some, not understanding or noticing that this variety in the ordering had been instituted by God from preceding causes of free choice, have thought that all things in this world are driven either by chance motions or by fatal necessity, and that nothing is in our choice. Hence they could not show the providence of God to be blameless.

As we said, all the souls that have lived in this world needed many ministers, or rulers, or helpers; so in the last times, when the end of the world was already near and close at hand, and the whole human race was sinking toward final perdition, not only those who were ruled but also those to whom the care of ruling had been entrusted having grown weak, it no longer needed such help, nor defenders like itself, but asked for the aid of its author and creator himself, who would restore the corrupted and profaned discipline both of obeying for the one and of ruling for the other. Hence the only-begotten Son of God, who was the Word and Wisdom of the Father, though he was in that glory with the Father which he had before the world was, emptied himself and, taking the form of a servant, became obedient unto death, so that he might teach obedience to those who could obtain salvation in no other way than through obedience. He also restored the corrupted laws of ruling and reigning, when he subjected all his enemies under his feet, so that by this, that he must reign until he puts his enemies under his feet and destroys the last enemy, death, he might teach the rulers themselves the right measures of ruling. Since, then, he had come to restore not only the discipline of ruling or reigning, but also, as we said, of obeying, fulfilling first in himself what he wished others to fulfil, he therefore not only became obedient to the Father unto the death of the cross, but also, at the consummation of the age, embracing in himself all whom he subjects to the Father and who come to salvation through him, he himself too, together with them and in them, is said to be subject to the Father; for all things hold together in him, and he is the head of all, and in him is the salvation and fullness of those who obtain salvation. This, then, is what the apostle says of him: "When all things have been subjected to him, then the Son himself also will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all."

But I do not know how the heretics, not understanding the apostle's meaning contained in these words, bring disgrace on the word 'subjection' in the Son. If the proper meaning of this term is sought, it can easily be found from its opposites. For if to be subject is not good, it remains that its opposite is good, that is, not to be subject. For the apostle's words, as they would have it, seem to show this when he says, "When all things have been subjected to him, then the Son himself also will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him," as if he who is not now subject to the Father will be subject then, when the Father has first subjected all things to him. But I wonder how this can be understood: that he who, while all things are not yet subject to him, is not himself subject, should be thought to be subjected then, when all things have been subjected to him, when he has become king of all and holds power over the universe, though he was not subject before. They do not understand that the subjection of Christ to the Father shows the blessedness of our perfection and declares the crowning of the work he undertook, since he offers to the Father not only the sum of ruling and reigning, which he has amended throughout the whole creation, but also the ordinances of obedience and subjection of the human race, corrected and restored. If, then, this subjection by which the Son is said to be subject to the Father is taken as good and saving, it is very consistent and coherent that the subjection of enemies, which is said to be made to the Son of God, should also be understood as saving and beneficial; so that, as when the Son is said to be subject to the Father the perfect restoration of the whole creation is declared, so when enemies are said to be subjected to the Son of God, the salvation of those subjected and the restoration of the lost are understood in it.

But this subjection will be accomplished in certain ways, by certain disciplines and at certain times; not by any necessity compelling to subjection, so that the whole world is made subject to God by force, but by word, by reason, by teaching, by the calling forth of better things, by the best instructions, and also by deserved and fitting threats, which justly hang over those who despise the care and health of their own salvation and benefit. Indeed, we human beings too, when we train servants or sons while they are still, because of their age, incapable of reason, restrain them by threats and fear; but when they have grasped an understanding of what is good, useful and honourable, then, the fear of blows having ceased, persuaded by word and reason, they consent to all that is good. But how each one ought to be dealt with, the freedom of choice being preserved to all rational creatures (that is, whom the word of God finds and instructs as already prepared and capable, whom it puts off for a time, from whom it is wholly hidden and arranges that their hearing be far from it; whom, again, when they despise the word of God shown and preached to them, it presses toward salvation by inflicting certain corrections and chastisements, and in a manner exacts and extorts their conversion; and to whom it even offers certain occasions of salvation, so that sometimes someone obtains a salvation beyond doubt even from a single answer uttered in faith); for what causes or on what occasions these things come about, or what divine wisdom, looking within, or seeing what motions of their purpose, orders all these things, is known only to God and to his Only-begotten, through whom all things were created and restored, and to the Holy Spirit, through whom all things are sanctified, who proceeds from the Father himself; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

About the end and consummation of all things we have already discussed above as well as we could, as far as the authority of divine Scripture allowed, and we think this sufficient for instruction; now we add a few reminders, since the order of the inquiry has brought us to this place. The highest good, then, toward which all rational nature hastens, which is also called the end of all things, is defined by very many philosophers too in this way: that the highest good is to become like God as far as possible. But I think this is not so much their own discovery as something they took from the divine books. For Moses indicates it before all others when he narrates the first creation of man, saying: “And God said: Let us make man after our image and likeness.” Then he adds: “And God made man; after the image of God he made him; male and female he made them, and he blessed them.” When he says, then, “after the image of God he made him,” and is silent about the likeness, he indicates nothing other than that man received the dignity of the “image” in his first creation, while the perfection of the “likeness” was reserved for him in the consummation; that is, that he should acquire it for himself by the efforts of his own diligence through the imitation of God, so that, the possibility of perfection having been given him at the beginning through the dignity of the “image,” he might at the end, through the fulfilment of works, bring the perfect “likeness” to completion in himself. But the apostle John defines more openly and clearly that this is so, declaring thus: “Little children, we do not yet know what we shall be; but when it is revealed to us” (speaking without doubt of the Saviour), “we shall be like him.” By this he most surely indicates both the end of all things, which he says is still unknown to him, and the likeness to God that is to be hoped for, which will be granted according to the perfection of merits. The Lord himself too, in the Gospel, shows that these same things are not only to come but are to come through his own intercession, when he deigns to ask this of the Father for his disciples, saying: “Father, I will that where I am these also may be with me”; and, “as I and you are one, so these also may be one in us.” In this the likeness itself seems already, if it may be said, to advance, and from being like to become “one,” because without doubt in the consummation or end God is “all things and in all.” Here some ask whether the nature of bodily being, even if it has been cleansed thoroughly and made wholly spiritual, does not seem to stand in the way either of the dignity of the likeness or of the property of oneness; for a nature that is in a body does not seem able to be called like the divine nature, which is certainly in the first place incorporeal, nor to be truly and rightly called one with it, especially since the truth of the faith teaches that the Son's being “one with the Father” must be referred to the property of their nature.

Since, then, God is promised at the end to be “all and in all,” it follows that we must not think that animals, or cattle, or wild beasts come to that end, lest God be indicated to be in animals or cattle or beasts as well; nor wood or stones, lest God be said to be in these too. So too we must not think that any malice reaches that end, lest, when God is said to be “in all,” he be said to be in some vessel of malice too. For even if we say that God is now too everywhere and “in all,” because nothing can be empty of God, yet we do not say that he is now “all” in those in whom he is. Hence we must consider more carefully what this is that signifies the perfection of blessedness and the end of things: that God is said not only to be “in all” but also to be “all.” Let us inquire, then, what these “all things” are which God is to be “in all.”

And I for my part think that the saying that God is “all in all” means that he is also “all” in each one. He will be “all” in each in this way: that whatever the rational mind, cleansed from all the dregs of vices and with every cloud of malice wholly wiped away, can feel or understand or think, will all be God, and it will no longer perceive anything other than God; it will think God, see God, hold God, and God will be the measure and limit of its every motion; and so God will be “all” to it. For there will no longer be any distinction of evil and good, because evil is nowhere (for God is “all” to it, and evil no longer lies beside it); nor will the one who is always in the good, and to whom God is “all,” desire any longer to eat of the tree of the knowledge of “good and evil.” If, then, the end, brought back to the beginning, and the outcome of things made to match their beginnings, restores that state which rational nature had when it had no need to eat of the tree of the knowledge of “good and evil,” so that, with every sense of malice removed and the mind wiped clean to sincerity and purity, he alone who is the one good God becomes “all” to it, and not in a few or in many, but so that “in all” he himself is “all,” when there is no longer “death” anywhere, nor the “sting” of death anywhere, nor any evil at all: then truly God will be “all in all.” But some think that this perfection and blessedness of rational natures remains in the state we described above, that is, that they have God as “all” and God is “all” to them, only if no fellowship with bodily nature draws them away; otherwise, they think, the glory of the highest blessedness would be hindered if an admixture of material substance were inserted. About this matter we have treated and set out more fully above what could occur to us.

Now, since we find in the apostle Paul mention of a “spiritual body,” let us inquire, only as far as we can, how we ought to think about this from there too. As far as our understanding can grasp, we think that the quality of the spiritual body is such as befits not only all holy and perfect souls to dwell in, but also all that creation which “will be set free from the bondage of corruption.” Of this body the apostle also said, “We have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,” that is, in the dwellings of the blessed. From this we can form a conjecture of how great the purity, the subtlety and the glory of the quality of that body is, if we compare it with those bodies which now, though they are heavenly and most splendid, are nevertheless “made with hands” and visible. But of that one it is said that it is a house “not made with hands” but “eternal in the heavens.” Since, then, “the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal,” that which is neither visible nor “made with hands” but is “eternal” far surpasses all these bodies that we see, whether on earth or in heaven, and which can be seen and are “made with hands” and are not “eternal.” From this comparison one may conjecture how great is the beauty, the splendour and the brightness of the “spiritual body,” and that it is true, what was said, that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.” We must not doubt that the nature of this body of ours can, by the will of God who made it such, be brought by the Creator to that quality of a most subtle, most pure and most splendid body, as the state of things shall call for and the merit of rational nature require. Indeed, when the world needed variety and diversity, matter offered itself in complete service to its maker, as to its Lord and creator, through the different appearances and kinds of things, so that he might draw from it the different forms of heavenly and earthly things. But when things have begun to hasten toward this, “that all may be one,” as “the Father is one with the Son,” we are given to understand as a consequence that, where all are “one,” there will no longer be diversity.

For this reason the last enemy also, who is called death, is said to be destroyed, so that there may no longer be anything sad where there is no death, nor anything adverse where there is no enemy. The destruction of the last enemy must be understood thus: not that its substance, which was made by God, perishes, but that its hostile purpose and will, which came not from God but from itself, perish. It will be destroyed, then, not so that it no longer exists, but so that it is no longer an enemy and death. For nothing is impossible to the Almighty, nor is anything incurable to its maker; for he made all things that they might exist, and the things that were made to exist cannot cease to exist. Therefore they will undergo change and variety, so that according to their merits they are placed in a better or worse state; but the things made by God in order to exist and to remain cannot undergo destruction of their substance. For the things that in common opinion are believed to perish are not at once agreed to perish by the reasoning of faith or truth. Indeed our flesh is thought by the unlearned and by unbelievers to perish so completely after death that nothing at all of its substance is believed to remain. But we who believe in its resurrection understand that only a change is brought about in it by death, while its substance certainly remains, and by the will of its Creator, at a definite time, it is restored again to life, and a change is made in it again; so that what was at first flesh from the earth, earthly, then dissolved by death and made once more ash and earth ("For you are earth," he says, "and to earth you shall go"), is raised again from the earth, and after this, as the merit of the soul that dwells in it requires, advances to the glory of a spiritual body.

To this state, then, we must think that all this bodily substance of ours will be brought, when all things are restored so as to be one, and when God is all in all. This, however, must be understood to happen not suddenly but gradually and by stages, over infinite and immeasurable ages, as amendment and correction proceed little by little in each individual: some running ahead and pressing toward the heights with swifter course, others following at the next interval, and others far behind; and so, through many and countless ranks of those who are advancing and being reconciled to God from being his enemies, the last enemy is reached, who is called death, so that he too may be destroyed and be an enemy no longer. When, then, all rational souls have been restored to such a state, then the nature of this body of ours also will be brought to the glory of a spiritual body. For as we see concerning rational natures that those who lived in unworthiness because of their sins are not different from those who were invited to blessedness because of their merits, but we see the very same ones who were sinners before, afterwards converted and reconciled to God, called back to blessedness, so too we must think about the nature of the body: that the body we now use in dishonour, in corruption and in weakness is not one body, and the one we shall use in incorruption, in power and in glory another; but this same body, casting off the weaknesses in which it now is, will be transformed into glory and made spiritual, so that what was a vessel of dishonour, this very thing, cleansed, becomes a vessel of honour and a dwelling of blessedness. In this state we must believe that it remains always and unchangeably by the will of the Creator, as the saying of the apostle assures us: "We have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." For the faith of the church does not accept, as certain Greek philosophers hold, that besides this body which is made of the four elements there is another, fifth body, in every way other than and different from this body of ours. For no one can bring forward from the holy Scriptures even a suspicion of such things, nor does the very sequence of things allow it to be accepted, especially since the holy apostle plainly defines that no new bodies are given to those who rise from the dead, but that they receive the very bodies they had while living, transformed from worse to better. For he says: "It is sown a natural body, it will rise a spiritual body; it is sown in corruption, it will rise in incorruption; it is sown in weakness, it will rise in power; it is sown in dishonour, it will rise in glory." As, then, there is a kind of progress for a human being, so that one who is at first a natural man and does not understand the things of the Spirit of God comes by instruction to become spiritual, and judges all things while he himself is judged by no one, so too we must think about the state of the body: that the same body which now, because of its service to the soul, is called natural, will by a certain progress, when the soul joined to God has become one spirit with him, advance, as a body serving the spirit, to a spiritual state and quality; especially since, as we have often shown, bodily nature was made by the Creator such that it easily follows into whatever quality he wills or the matter requires.

This whole line of reasoning, then, comes to this: that God created two general natures, a visible nature, that is, bodily, and an invisible nature, which is incorporeal. These two natures undergo different changes. The invisible one, which is rational, is changed in mind and purpose, because it has been endowed with freedom of choice; and through this it is found sometimes in good things and sometimes in their contraries. This bodily nature, on the other hand, undergoes a change of substance; hence, for whatever God the maker of all wishes to devise, fashion or refashion, he has the service of this matter in all things, so that he transforms and transfers bodily nature into whatever forms or kinds he wills, as the merits of things demand. The prophet plainly indicates this when he says, "God, who makes all things and transforms them."

Now we must certainly ask whether, when God is all in all, at the consummation of all things, the whole nature of body will consist of one kind, and every quality of body will be that one alone which will shine in that unspeakable glory which we must think will belong to the spiritual body. For if we understand rightly, this is what Moses writes at the beginning of his book, saying, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth." For this is the beginning of all creation; to this beginning it is fitting that the end and consummation of all things be brought back, that is, that that heaven and that earth be the dwelling and rest of the godly; so that first all the holy and the meek receive the inheritance of that earth, since the law and the prophets and the Gospel teach this too. In that earth, I think, are the true and living forms of that worship which Moses handed down through the shadow of the law; of which it is said that they "serve the copy and shadow of heavenly things," that is, those who served under the law. And to Moses himself it was said, "See that you make everything according to the pattern and likeness that was shown you on the mountain." Hence it seems to me that, as on this earth the law was a kind of tutor for those who were to be led by it to Christ, instructed and trained by it so that after the training of the law they might more easily receive the more perfect institutions of Christ, so also another earth, receiving all the holy, first steeps and forms them in the institutions of the true and eternal law, so that they may more easily be perfected also by those perfect institutions of heaven, to which nothing can be added; in which there will truly be what is called the eternal Gospel, and the Testament ever new, which will never grow old.

In this way, then, we must think it will come about in the consummation and restoration of all things that, advancing gradually and ascending in due measure and order, they come first to that earth and to the instruction that is in it, in which they are prepared for better institutions, to which nothing can be added. For after “stewards” and “guardians,” Christ the Lord, who is king of all, will himself take up the kingdom; that is, after the instruction of the holy powers, he himself will instruct those who can receive him in so far as he is wisdom, reigning in them until he subjects them also to the Father “who subjected all things to him”; that is, so that when they have become capable of God, God may be to them “all in all.” Then, consequently, bodily nature also will receive that highest state, to which nothing can be added. Having so far discussed the account of bodily nature and of the spiritual body, we leave it to the reader's judgment to choose from the two whichever he judges the better. And with this let us make an end of the third book.

But since, in discussing such great and weighty matters, it is not enough to entrust the whole matter to human senses and common understanding, and, so to speak, to make visible pronouncements about invisible things, we must also bring in the testimonies of the divine Scriptures to prove what we say. That these testimonies may have sure and undoubted credibility, whether for what we are to say or for what has already been said, it seems necessary first to show that the Scriptures themselves are divine, that is, inspired by the Spirit of God. As briefly as we can, then, we shall set out on this subject too, bringing forward from the divine Scriptures themselves the things that have rightly moved us; that is, first concerning Moses, the lawgiver of the Hebrew nation, and from the words of Jesus Christ, the author and head of the Christian religion and teaching. For though there have been very many lawgivers among the Greeks and barbarians, and countless teachers or philosophers professing to assert the truth, we remember no lawgiver who was able to instil such affection and zeal into the minds even of foreign nations that they would either willingly receive his laws or defend them with all their strength of mind. No one, then, has been able to make what seemed to him the truth so welcome and so deeply rooted, not only in many other foreign nations but even in one nation, that the knowledge or belief of it reached everyone. And indeed it cannot be doubted that lawgivers wished their laws to be kept by all people, if it could be, and that teachers wished the truth as they saw it to be known to all. But knowing that they could not do this at all, and that there was no such power in them as might call even foreign nations to the observance of their laws or doctrines, they did not dare even to attempt or begin this at all, lest the attempt itself, ineffective and impossible to complete, should mark them as imprudent in this too. But throughout the whole world, in all Greece and in all the foreign nations, there are countless and immense numbers who, leaving their ancestral laws and those whom they thought to be gods, have given themselves to the observance of the law of Moses and to the discipleship and worship of Christ; and this not without immense hatred stirred up against them by the worshippers of images, so that they are often subjected by them to tortures and sometimes even led to death; and yet they embrace and keep the word of Christ's teaching with all affection.

And one may see how in a short time this religion has grown, advancing through the punishments and deaths of its worshippers, and through the plundering of their goods and every kind of torture endured from these people; and this is the more wonderful because its teachers themselves are neither very skilled nor very numerous; yet “this word is preached throughout the whole world,” so that “Greeks and barbarians, wise and unwise” receive the religion of the Christian teaching. From this there is no doubt that it is “not by human” strength or “resources” that this comes about, that the word of Christ Jesus grows strong, with all power and belief, in the minds and hearts of all. For that these very things were foretold by him and confirmed by his divine oracles is plain when he says, “You will be brought before governors and judges for my sake, as a testimony to them and to the nations”; and again, “This Gospel will be preached among all the nations”; and again, “Many will say to me on that day: Lord, Lord, did we not eat and drink in your name, and cast out demons in your name? And I will say to them: Depart from me, workers of iniquity; I never knew you.” If these things had indeed been said by him and yet what was foretold had not come to pass, perhaps they might have seemed less true and to have no authority. But now, since the things foretold by him are coming to pass, and were foretold with such power and authority, it is most plainly declared that he who became man and delivered saving precepts to human beings is truly God.

What, then, must be said of the fact that the prophets had foretold of him that “rulers would not fail from Judah, nor leaders from his thighs, until he should come for whom it is reserved,” namely the kingdom, and “until the expectation of the nations should come”? For it is most plainly apparent from history itself, and from what is seen today, that from the times of Christ there have been no more kings among the Jews. And all those Jewish ambitions in which they took great pride and in which they exulted, whether in the beauty of the temple or in the ornaments of the altar, and all those priestly fillets and vestments of the high priests, were all destroyed together. For the prophecy was fulfilled which had said: “For many days the sons of Israel shall sit without king, without prince; there shall be no sacrifice, nor altar, nor priesthood, nor oracles.” We use these testimonies, then, against those who seem to assert, concerning what Jacob said in Genesis, that it was said of Judah, and who say that a ruler still remains from the race of Judah, namely the one who is the ruler of their nation, whom they call the patriarch, and that those of his seed will not fail who are to remain until the coming of that Christ whom they picture for themselves. But if what the prophet says is true, that “for many days the sons of Israel shall sit without king, without prince, and there shall be no sacrifice, nor altar, nor priesthood”; and if, as is certainly the case, since the temple was overthrown “no sacrifices” are offered, “no altar” is found, and “no priesthood” exists, then it is most certain that “rulers have failed from Judah,” as it is written, and “a leader from his thighs, until he came for whom it is reserved.” It is established, then, that “he has come for whom it is reserved,” in whom is also “the expectation of the nations.” And this is plainly seen to be fulfilled in the multitude of those who from different nations have believed in God through Christ.

In the song of Deuteronomy, too, it is indicated by prophecy that because of the sins of the former people there would be the election of a foolish nation, none other than this which was made through Christ. It says thus: “They provoked me with their idols, and I will provoke them to jealousy; with a foolish nation I will provoke them.” It is quite clearly to be recognized, then, how the Hebrews, who are said to have “provoked” God by those who are not gods and to have angered him “with their idols,” were themselves provoked to jealousy by “a foolish nation,” which God “chose” through the coming of Christ Jesus and his disciples. For so the apostle says: “Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you are wise according to the flesh, not many powerful, not many noble; but God chose what is foolish in the world, and the things that are not, to destroy the things that were before.” Let not “carnal Israel boast,” then, for so it is called by the apostle; let not, I say, “flesh boast in the presence of God.”

But what must be said of the things prophesied about Christ in the Psalms, especially in the one entitled “A song for the beloved,” where it is said that his “tongue” is “the pen of a swiftly writing scribe, fair in beauty above the sons of men,” because “grace is poured out on his lips”? The sign of “the grace poured out on his lips” is this: that although only a short time passed in his teaching (for he taught for a year and some months), the whole world was nevertheless filled with his teaching and with the faith of his religion. For “there arose in his days righteousness and abundance of peace,” lasting “until” the end, which end is called “the taking away of the moon”; “and he rules from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.” A “sign” was also given to the house of David: “For a virgin conceived in the womb and bore Emmanuel,” which is interpreted, “God with us”; and what the same prophet says was fulfilled: “God is with us. Know this, you nations, and be overcome.” For “we have been overcome” and conquered, we who are from the nations, and we are, as it were, spoils of his victory, we who have bowed our necks to his grace. The place of his birth too was foretold in the prophet Micah, who says: “And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the leaders of Judah; for from you shall come a leader who shall rule my people Israel.” The weeks of years also were fulfilled up to Christ the leader, which the prophet Daniel had foretold. Present too is the one who was foretold through Job as about “to destroy the great beast,” who also “gave power” to his own disciples “to tread on serpents and scorpions and on all the power of the enemy, without being harmed at all by it.” And if anyone considers the journeys of Christ's apostles to each place, where, sent by him, they preached the Gospel, he will find that what they dared to undertake is beyond human strength, and that their being able to accomplish what they dared is from God. If we consider how people hearing a new teaching brought in by them could receive them, or rather that often those who wished to destroy them were restrained by a divine power that was present with them, we shall find that nothing in this was done by human strength, but all was brought about by divine power and providence, “signs and mighty works without doubt bearing clear testimony to their word and teaching.”

These things having been briefly shown, namely concerning the divinity of Jesus Christ and the fulfilment of all that had been prophesied about him, I think it is proved at the same time that the Scriptures themselves which prophesied about him are divinely inspired, those which foretold either his coming, or the power of his teaching, or the taking up of all the nations. To this must be added that both the prophecy of the prophets and the law of Moses were shown and proved to be divine and divinely inspired chiefly from the time when Christ came into this world. For before the things foretold by them were fulfilled, although they were true and inspired by God, they could not be shown to be true, because they had not yet been proved to be fulfilled. But the coming of Christ declared that what they had said was true and divinely inspired, since before it had certainly been held uncertain whether the outcome of what had been foretold would be fulfilled. And if anyone considers the prophetic sayings with all the zeal and reverence they deserve, it is certain that in the very act of reading and examining them more carefully he will be struck in mind and sense by some more divine breath, and will recognize that the words he reads were not produced by human beings but are the words of God; and he will perceive for himself that these books were written not by human art nor by mortal eloquence but, so to speak, in a divine style. The splendour of Christ's coming, then, illuminating the law of Moses with the brightness of truth, drew away the veil that had been laid over its letter, and opened to all who believe in him all the good things that were covered and hidden within it.

It would be a laborious task to list one by one the things foretold by the prophets long ago and how or when they were fulfilled, so as to seem to strengthen those who doubt by means of them; since anyone who wishes to know these things more carefully can gather proofs more abundantly from the books of truth themselves. But if to those less learned in the divine disciplines the sense that is above man does not at once appear on the first face of the letter, it is no wonder; for divine things come down to human beings rather hiddenly, and are the more hidden the more one is unbelieving or unworthy. For though it is certain that all things that exist or are done in this world are ordered by God's providence, some appear plainly enough to be arranged under the government of providence, while others are unfolded so secretly and incomprehensibly that the reason of divine providence is wholly hidden in them; so that sometimes some people do not believe that certain things belong to providence, because the reason is hidden from them by which the works of divine providence are ordered with a kind of ineffable art; yet this reason is not equally hidden from all. For even among human beings it is perceived less by one and more by another; and better than by any human being on earth, whoever he may be, it is known by the inhabitant of heaven. The reason of bodies is clear in one way, that of trees in another, that of animals in another; but that of souls is hidden in yet another way; and how the different motions of rational minds are ordered by divine providence is hidden more from human beings, but not a little, I think, from the angels too. But just as divine providence is not refuted, least of all for those who are certain of it, because its works or dispensations cannot be grasped by human minds, so neither will the divine inspiration of holy Scripture, which extends through its whole body, be thought not to exist because the weakness of our understanding cannot trace out in each phrase the hidden and secret meanings; for the treasure of divine wisdom is hidden in the humbler and coarser vessels of words, as the apostle also indicates when he says, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels,” “so that the power of divine strength may shine out the more,” since no colouring of human eloquence is mixed into the truth of the doctrines. For if our books had enticed people to believe by the art of rhetoric or by philosophical cleverness, “our faith” would without doubt be thought “to consist in the art of words and in human wisdom, and not in the power of God.” But now it is known to all that “the word of this preaching” has been received by very many throughout almost the whole world in such a way that they understood that what they believed rested “not on persuasive words of wisdom but on the demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” Therefore, since we have been led to faith and belief by heavenly, indeed by more than heavenly, power, so that we worship God alone, the creator of all, let us also strive with all our might, “leaving behind the elementary teaching of Christ,” which is the first beginning of knowledge, to “be carried on to perfection,” so that the “wisdom” that is handed on to “the perfect” may be handed on to us also. For so he promises, to whom the preaching of this wisdom was entrusted, when he says: “But we speak wisdom among the perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who are coming to nothing.” By this he shows that this wisdom of ours has nothing in common with the wisdom of this world as regards elegance of speech. This wisdom, then, will be inscribed in our hearts more clearly and perfectly if it is laid open to us “according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept hidden for eternal ages but has now been made manifest through the prophetic Scriptures” and “through the coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” “to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

Having briefly set out these things, then, concerning the inspiration of the divine Scriptures by the Holy Spirit, it seems necessary also to explain how some, not reading or understanding them rightly, have given themselves over to very many errors, because the way by which one must proceed to the understanding of the divine writings is unknown to very many. Indeed the Jews, through the hardness of their hearts and because they wished to seem wise to themselves, did not believe in our Lord and Saviour, supposing that what was prophesied about him must be understood according to the letter: that is, that he ought to have “preached release to the captives” in a sensible and visible way, and that he ought first to have built the city which they truly think to be “the city of God,” and at the same time to have “cut off the chariots of Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem,” and also to have “eaten butter and honey, so that before he knew how to bring forth evil he might choose the good.” They also thought it was prophesied that “the wolf,” the four-footed animal, would at the coming of Christ “feed with lambs, and the leopard lie down with kids, that the calf and the bull would feed together with lions and be led to pasture by a little child, that the ox and the bear would lie down together in the pastures and their young be reared together, and that lions too would stand at the mangers with oxen and eat straw.” Seeing that none of all these things prophesied of him had been done according to the history, in which they believed above all that the signs of Christ's coming were to be looked for, they would not receive the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ; on the contrary, as if he had taken the name of Christ for himself against right and law, that is, against the faith of prophecy, they nailed him to the cross. Then the heretics, reading what is written in the law, “A fire has been kindled from my anger”; and, “I am God, jealous, repaying the sins of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation”; and, “I repent that I anointed Saul king”; and, “I am God, who make peace and create evils”; and again, “There is no evil in a city which the Lord has not done”; and, “Evils came down from the Lord upon the gates of Jerusalem”; and that “an evil spirit from God choked Saul”; and many other things like these which are written, did not dare to say that these were not the Scriptures of God, but supposed them to belong to that creator God whom the Jews worshipped, who, they thought, must be believed to be only just and not also good; and that the Saviour came to announce to us a more perfect God, whom they deny to be the creator of the world, disagreeing among themselves with various opinions on this very point; since, having once withdrawn from faith in God the creator, who is the God of all, they gave themselves over to various fictions and fables, inventing certain things and saying that some things are visible and made by one, and others invisible and founded by another, as the fancy and vanity of their own souls suggested to them. And some too of the simpler ones among those who are seen to be held within the faith of the church think indeed that there is none greater than God the creator, holding in this a right and sound opinion; but they think such things of him as ought not to be thought even of the most unjust and cruel of men.

But the cause of the false understanding of all those of whom we have spoken above was none other than this: that holy Scripture is understood by them not according to the spiritual sense but according to the sound of the letter. Therefore we shall try, according to the modest measure of our understanding, to show those who believe that the holy Scriptures are not composed of any human words but were written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and were handed down and entrusted to us too by the will of God the Father through his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ, what seems to us the right way of understanding them, keeping that rule and discipline which the apostles received from Jesus Christ and handed down by succession to their posterity as well, who teach the heavenly church. And indeed that certain mystical dispensations are indicated through the holy Scriptures, all, I think, even the simpler believers, confess. But what these are, or of what kind, anyone of right mind who is not troubled by the vice of boasting will more reverently admit that he does not know. For if someone, for example, puts to us the case of Lot's daughters, who seem to have joined with their father against what is lawful, or of the two wives of Abraham, or of the two sisters who were married to Jacob, and of the two handmaids who increased the number of his sons, what else can be answered than that these are certain mysteries and forms of spiritual things, but that it is not known to us of what kind they are? And when we read of the construction of the tabernacle, we hold it for certain that these things that are written are figures of certain hidden things; but to fit them to their proper measures and to open and discuss them one by one is, I think, very difficult, not to say impossible. Yet, as I said, that this description is full of mysteries does not escape even the common understanding. And all that narrative which seems to be written about marriages, or the begetting of sons, or various battles, or any other histories whatever, what else is to be believed than that they are forms and figures of hidden and sacred things? But because people apply little zeal to exercising their minds, or think they know before they learn, it comes about that they never begin to know. But if neither zeal is lacking nor a teacher, and if these things are sought as divine and not as human, that is, religiously and piously, and with the hope that they will be opened in very many points by God's revelation, since to human senses they are very difficult and hidden, then perhaps the one who seeks in this way will find what it is lawful to find.

But perhaps it may be thought that this difficulty lies only in the prophetic sayings, since it is agreed by all that the prophetic style is always thick with figures and enigmas: what, then, when we come to the Gospels? Is there not there too a hidden, inner sense, as being the sense of the Lord, which is revealed only through the grace that he had received who said, “But we have the mind of Christ, that we may know the things given us by God, which we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in the teaching of the Spirit”? And now the things that were revealed to John: if anyone reads them, how will he not be amazed that there is so great a concealment of ineffable mysteries in them, in which even those who cannot understand what is hidden in them nevertheless plainly understand that something is hidden? And the Epistles of the apostles, which seem to some to be plainer, are they not filled with meanings so deep that through them, to those who can understand the sense of divine wisdom, the brightness of an immense light seems to pour as through a small opening? Since, then, these things are so, and many in this life go astray, I do not think it is without danger to declare lightly that anyone knows or understands the things which, in order to be opened, need “the key of knowledge,” the key which the Saviour said was with “the lawyers.” Here, though by way of digression, I think we should ask those who say that before the Saviour's coming there was no truth among those who were occupied with the law, how it can be said by our Lord Jesus Christ that “the keys of knowledge” were with those who had in their hands the books of the law and the prophets. For so the Lord said: “Woe to you, teachers of the law, for you have taken away the key of knowledge; you yourselves did not enter, and those who wished to enter you hindered.”

But, as we had begun to say, the way which seems to us the right one for understanding the Scriptures and searching out their sense is, we think, of this kind, since we are taught by Scripture itself how we ought to think about it. In Solomon, in Proverbs, we find some such precept about the handling of divine Scripture: “And you,” he says, “describe these things to yourself threefold, in counsel and knowledge, that you may answer words of truth to those who put questions to you.” Each one, then, ought to describe in his soul threefold the understanding of the divine writings: that is, that the simpler may be edified by what is, so to speak, the very body of the Scriptures (for so we call this common and historical understanding); that those who have already begun to make some progress, and can see something more, may be edified by the very soul of Scripture; and that those who are perfect, and like those of whom the apostle says, “We speak wisdom among the perfect, yet not the wisdom of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are being destroyed; but we speak the wisdom of God hidden in a mystery, which God foreordained before the ages for our glory,” may be edified by the “spiritual law,” which “has a shadow of the good things to come,” as by the spirit. For as a human being is said to consist of body, soul and spirit, so also does holy Scripture, which has been granted by divine generosity for the salvation of human beings. We see this indicated also in the little book of the Shepherd, which seems to be despised by some, where Hermas is ordered “to write two little books” and afterwards himself “to announce to the presbyters of the church” what he had learned from the Spirit. It is written in these words: “And you will write two little books, and give one to Clement and one to Grapte. And let Grapte admonish the widows and orphans, and let Clement send to all the cities that are outside; but you will announce to the presbyters of the church.” Grapte, then, who is ordered to admonish the “orphans” and “widows,” is the pure understanding of the letter itself, by which childish souls are admonished that have not yet deserved to have God as their father and are therefore called “orphans.” And they are also “widows,” who have withdrawn from that unjust man to whom they had been joined contrary to the law, but remain “widows” because they have not yet advanced to being joined to the heavenly “bridegroom.” “Clement” is ordered to send what has been said to those who are already withdrawing from the letter, into “the cities that are outside,” as if he said: to those souls which, edified by these things, have begun to be outside care for the body and outside fleshly desires. And he himself is ordered to announce what he had learned from the Holy Spirit, not by letters nor by a book but by living voice, to the presbyters of the churches of Christ, that is, to those who bear a mature sense of wisdom according to their capacity for spiritual teaching.

But we must certainly not be unaware that there are some places in the Scriptures in which what we have called the body, that is, the sequence of the historical understanding, is not always found, as we shall show in what follows; and there are places where only what we have called the soul, or the spirit, is to be understood. I think this is indicated in the Gospels too, when it is said that there were “six water jars” set there for the purification of the Jews, “holding two or three measures each.” By this, as I said, the Gospel word seems to indicate, concerning those whom the apostle calls Jews “in secret,” that they are purified by the word of Scripture, receiving sometimes “two measures,” that is, the understanding of the soul or of the spirit according to what we said above, and sometimes “three,” when the reading can also preserve for edification the bodily understanding, which is that of the history. And “six water jars” are fittingly mentioned with reference to those who are purified while placed in this world; for we read that this world and everything in it were completed in six days, which is a perfect number.

How great the usefulness of this first understanding, which we have called historical, is, the whole multitude of believers is witness, who believe both faithfully enough and simply; nor does what lies open to all need much argument. Of the understanding which we said above is, as it were, the soul of Scripture, the apostle Paul has given us very many examples, as for instance first in the Epistle to the Corinthians. “For it is written,” he says, “You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the grain.” Then, explaining how this precept ought to be understood, he adds: “Is it for oxen that God cares? Or does he not speak entirely for our sake? It was written for our sake, that he who ploughs should plough in hope, and he who threshes in hope of a share.” And very many other things of this kind, interpreted in this way from the law, give great instruction to those who hear them. A spiritual explanation, on the other hand, is of this kind: if someone can show of what “heavenly things” those who are Jews “according to the flesh” “serve the copy and shadow,” and of what “good things to come the law has a shadow,” and anything else of this kind found in the holy Scriptures; or when it is asked what that “wisdom hidden in a mystery” is, “which God foreordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew”; or what the apostle himself says when, using certain examples from Exodus or Numbers, he says that “these things happened to them in a figure, but were written for our sake, on whom the ends of the ages have come,” and gives us an occasion of understanding, so that we may notice of what things these events that befell them were figures, when he says, “For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.” And in another epistle he recalls concerning the tabernacle the saying that had been commanded to Moses: “You shall make everything,” he says, “according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.” And writing to the Galatians, and as it were reproaching certain people who seem to themselves to read the law and yet do not understand it, because they do not know that there are allegories in what is written, he says to them with a kind of rebuke: “Tell me, you who wish to be under the law, have you not heard the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free woman. But the one by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, and the one by the free woman according to the promise; and these things are allegorical. For these are two covenants,” and the rest. Here this too must be noticed, how carefully the apostle said, “You who wish to be under the law,” and did not say, “you who are under the law,” “have you not heard the law?” “Heard” means: do you understand or recognize. And in the Epistle to the Colossians, briefly embracing and compressing the sense of the whole law, he says: “Let no one, then, judge you in food or in drink, or in festival days, or new moon, or sabbath, which are a shadow of things to come.” And writing to the Hebrews too, and discussing those who are of the circumcision, he says: “Those who serve the copy and shadow of heavenly things.” But perhaps, after these passages, those who receive the writings of the apostle as divinely spoken will not doubt about the five books of Moses. But concerning the rest of the history, they may ask whether the things related there too are to be said to have “happened in a figure” to those of whom they are written. We have observed that this also is stated in the Epistle to the Romans, where the apostle cites an example from the third book of Kingdoms, saying, “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” Paul took this as said figuratively of those who are called Israelites “according to election,” to show that the coming of Christ has benefited not only the Gentiles now but also very many of the race of Israel who have been called to salvation.

Since this is so, we shall sketch, by way of example and pattern, as far as things can occur to us, how divine Scripture is to be understood by us on each of these points; first repeating and pointing out that the Holy Spirit, by the providence and will of God, through the power of his only-begotten “Word,” who “was in the beginning God with God,” enlightened the ministers of truth, the prophets and apostles, to know the mysteries of those things or causes which take place among human beings or concerning human beings. By “human beings” I now mean souls placed in bodies. And they, presenting these mysteries that had been made known and revealed to them through the Spirit as if they were narrating certain human deeds or handing down certain legal observances and precepts, described them figuratively; so that not just anyone who wished might have these things set before his feet to trample on, but only one who had given himself to such studies with all chastity, sobriety and watchfulness, so that through these he might perhaps search out the sense of the Spirit of God hidden in the depths and concealed under the ordinary narrative of the words, which looks toward something else; and so might become a companion in the knowledge of the Spirit and a sharer in the divine counsel; because the soul cannot come to the perfection of knowledge in any other way than by being inspired by the truth of divine wisdom. Accordingly, what is chiefly set forth by these men filled with the divine Spirit concerns God, that is, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; then, filled with the divine Spirit, as we said, they set forth the mysteries of the Son of God, how “the Word became flesh,” and for what reason he came down even to taking up “the form of a servant.” Then it necessarily followed that they should also teach the race of mortals by divine words about rational creatures, both heavenly and earthly, the more blessed and the lower; and also about the differences of souls and where these differences arose; then what this world is and why it was made; and also where so great and so dreadful a wickedness on earth comes from, and whether it is on earth only or in other places too: these things it was necessary for us to learn from the divine words.

Since, then, the intention of the Holy Spirit was to enlighten about these and similar matters the holy souls that had devoted themselves to the ministry of truth, there was in the second place this aim: that, for the sake of those who could not or would not give themselves to the labour and diligence by which they might deserve to be taught or to recognize such great things, he should, as we said above, wrap up and conceal hidden mysteries in ordinary words, under the cover of a certain history and narrative of visible things. So a narrative of the visible creation is brought in, and the making and forming of the first man, then the offspring that followed from him in succession; some of the deeds done by the righteous are related, and sometimes certain sins of theirs are also mentioned, as of human beings; then some things done shamelessly or wickedly by the ungodly are also written. In a wonderful way, too, a narrative of battles is set out, describing now the victors and now the vanquished, through which certain ineffable mysteries are declared to those who know how to examine such sayings. And in the writing of the law, by an admirable discipline of wisdom, the law of truth is inserted and prophesied; each of these things has been woven by a certain divine art of wisdom as a kind of garment and veil of spiritual senses; and this is what we called the body of holy Scripture, so that through this very garment of the letter, as we called it, woven with the art of wisdom, very many might be edified and make progress who otherwise could not.

But since, if the coherence of this garment, that is, of the history and the law, had been kept in everything and its order preserved, we, having a continuous course of understanding, would certainly not believe that there was anything else enclosed within the holy Scriptures beyond what was indicated at first sight, divine wisdom for this reason arranged for certain stumbling-blocks or interruptions of the historical sense to occur, by inserting in the middle certain impossible and incongruous things; so that the very interruption of the narrative, like barriers set before the reader, might resist him, denying him the road and passage of this common understanding, and, shutting us out and driving us back, might call us to the beginning of another way, so that, by the entrance of a narrow path, it might open to us the immense breadth of divine knowledge on a higher and more eminent road. We must also know this: since the chief aim of the Holy Spirit is to keep the coherence of the spiritual sense, whether in things that are to be done or in things already done, wherever he found that the things done according to the history could be fitted to the spiritual sense, he composed the fabric of both orders in one narrative, always hiding the secret sense more deeply; but where the history of events could not fit the spiritual coherence, he sometimes inserted certain things that either did not happen or could not happen at all, and sometimes things that could indeed happen but did not. Sometimes he does this in a few words, which according to the bodily understanding do not seem able to keep the truth, and sometimes by inserting many; this is found especially often in the legislation, where there are many things that are plainly useful in the bodily precepts themselves, but some in which no reason of usefulness whatever is seen, and sometimes even impossible things are decreed. All these things, as we said, the Holy Spirit arranged so that, since what lies on the surface can be neither true nor useful, we might be called back to the search for a truth sought more deeply and examined more carefully, and might search for a sense worthy of God in the Scriptures, which we believe to be inspired by God. The Holy Spirit arranged these things not only in what was written up to the coming of Christ, but, being one and the same Spirit and proceeding from the one God, he did the same likewise in the Gospels and the apostles. For even the narratives he inspired through them he did not weave without the art of his wisdom of the kind we explained above. Hence in them too he mixed in not a few things by which the historical order of the narrative, interrupted or broken off by its own impossibility, might turn back and recall the attention of the reader to the examination of the inner understanding.

But that what we say may be recognized from the things themselves, let us now knock at the very places of Scripture. To whom, I ask, that has understanding, will it seem consistently said that the first, second and third day, in which “evening” and “morning” are named, were without sun and moon and stars, and the first day even without a sky? Who will be found so simple as to think that, like some farmer, “God planted trees in paradise, in Eden toward the east,” and planted in it a “tree of life,” that is, a visible and palpable piece of wood, so that someone eating from that tree with bodily teeth would receive life, and again, eating from another tree, would gain the knowledge “of good and evil”? And when “God” is said “to walk in paradise after midday,” “and Adam to hide under a tree,” I do not think anyone doubts that these things are set forth by Scripture in a figurative way, so that certain mystical things may be indicated through them. And “Cain,” going out “from the face of God,” plainly moves the prudent reader to ask what “the face of God” is, and how anyone can “go out” from it. But not to stretch out the work in hand further than is right, it is very easy for anyone who wishes to gather from the holy Scriptures things that are written as having happened, which nevertheless cannot be believed to have happened fittingly and reasonably according to the history. This kind of writing is also found abundantly in the books of the Gospels, as when the devil is said to have set Jesus “on a high mountain,” in order to “show him from there all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.” How could this seem to have been done according to the letter, either that Jesus was led up by the devil “onto a high mountain,” or that the devil “showed” to his bodily eyes “all the kingdoms of the world,” the kingdom of the Persians, of the Scythians and of the Indians, as lying below and next to one mountain, or how their kings are glorified by men? And whoever reads attentively will find very many other things like these in the Gospels, from which he will notice that in these narratives that seem to be set forth according to the letter, things are inserted and woven in that the history does not admit, but that the spiritual understanding holds.

Similar things are found in the passages containing precepts as well. In the law of Moses it is commanded that “every male who has not been circumcised on the eighth day shall be cut off”; which is very inconsistent, since, if the law were handed down to be kept according to the history, it ought certainly to have been commanded that the parents be punished who did not circumcise their sons, or those who rear the infants. But as it is, Scripture says: “The uncircumcised male,” that is, “the one who has not been circumcised on the eighth day, shall be cut off from his people.” And if we must also inquire into impossible laws, we find that an animal called the tragelaphus, which cannot exist at all, is among the clean animals that Moses commands to be eaten; and the lawgiver forbids the griffin to be eaten, which no one remembers or has heard of ever falling into human hands. And of the much-celebrated observance of the Sabbath he says thus: “You shall sit each one in your houses; no one shall move from his place on the day of the Sabbath.” This is certainly impossible to observe according to the letter; for no human being can sit for a whole day without moving from the place where he sat. About each of these points, those who are of the circumcision, and whoever wish nothing more to be understood in the holy Scriptures than what is indicated by the letter, think that the questions of the tragelaphus, the griffin and the vulture should not even be raised; and they invent certain empty and frivolous fables, bringing forward from I know not what traditions about the Sabbath that each person's place is reckoned within two thousand cubits. Others, among whom is Dositheus the Samaritan, find fault with explanations of this kind, but themselves lay down something more ridiculous: that in whatever posture, place and position one is found on the Sabbath day, one should remain so until evening; that is, if sitting, one should sit the whole day, and if lying down, lie the whole day. And the command, “Do not lift a burden on the Sabbath day,” seems to me impossible. For from such things the teachers of the Jews have run off into “endless fables,” as the holy apostle says, saying that it is not reckoned a “burden” if someone wears shoes without nails, but that it is a “burden” if someone wears sandals with nails; and that if someone carries something on one shoulder they judge it a “burden,” but if on both shoulders they will deny that it is a “burden.”

Now if we look for similar things in the Gospels as well, how will it not seem absurd, if it is understood according to the letter, that it is said, “Greet no one on the way”? Yet the simpler believers think that our Saviour commanded this to the apostles. And how can it seem possible to observe, especially in those places where a very harsh winter is made rougher by “icy frosts,” that one should have “neither two tunics nor shoes”? And that one who is “struck on the right cheek” is commanded “to offer the left as well,” when everyone who strikes with the right hand strikes the left cheek? This too must be counted among the impossibilities, what is written in the Gospel, that “if the right eye causes you to stumble, it should be plucked out.” For even if we suppose that it is said of bodily eyes, how will it seem consistent that, since one sees with both eyes, the blame for the stumbling should be referred to one, and that to the right one? Or who will be held free of the greatest crime if he lays hands on himself? But perhaps the letters of the apostle Paul will seem to be free of such things. Yet what does he mean when he says, “Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not draw on a foreskin”? First, if one considers it carefully, it does not seem to be said with reference to the matters he had in hand; for his discourse was giving precepts about marriage and chastity, so that these words will certainly seem to be mentioned superfluously in such a context. Second, what harm would it do, if it were possible for someone to draw on the foreskin in order to avoid the unseemliness that comes from circumcision? Third, it is certainly impossible in every way for this to be done.

All these things have been said by us to show that the aim of the Holy Spirit, who deigned to give us the divine Scriptures, is not that we should be edified by the letter alone, or by it in all things, since we often find it impossible and not sufficient in itself, that is, since through it sometimes things not only irrational but even impossible are indicated; but that we should understand that certain things have been woven into this visible history which, when considered and understood inwardly, bring forth a law useful to human beings and worthy of God. But lest anyone suspect us of saying that we think no history in Scripture happened, because we suspect that some of it did not happen; or that no precepts of the law stand according to the letter, because we say that some cannot be kept according to the letter, where either reason or the possibility of the thing does not allow it; or that we do not think that what is written about the Saviour was fulfilled in a sensible way as well, or that his precepts are not to be kept according to the letter: we must answer that we hold it clearly settled that in very many things the truth of the history both can and must be kept. For who can deny that Abraham was buried in the double cave in Hebron, and Isaac and Jacob too, and each of their wives? Or who doubts that Shechem was given to Joseph as his portion? Or that Jerusalem is the chief city of Judea, in which the temple of God was built by Solomon? And countless other things. For the things that stand according to the history are far more numerous than those that contain a purely spiritual sense. Then again, who would not affirm that the commandment which enjoins, “Honour your father and mother, that it may be well with you,” suffices even without any spiritual interpretation and is necessary for those who keep it, especially since Paul, repeating it in the same words, has confirmed this very commandment? And what need is there to speak of what is said, “You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, nor steal, you shall not bear false witness,” and the rest of this kind? As for what is commanded in the Gospel, there can be no doubt at all that very many things are to be observed according to the letter, as when he says, “But I say to you, do not swear at all”; and when he says, “Whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart”; and what is commanded in the apostle Paul: “Admonish the unruly, comfort the faint-hearted, support the weak, be patient with all,” and very many other things.

Nevertheless, if one reads more attentively, I do not doubt that in very many cases he will be uncertain whether this or that history is to be thought true according to the letter or less true, and whether this or that precept is to be observed according to the letter or not. Therefore one must strive with much zeal and labour, so that every reader may understand with all reverence that he is dealing with divine, not human, words set down in the holy books. The understanding, then, which we see ought to be followed worthily and consistently in the holy Scriptures is, we think, of this kind.

The divine writings declare that a certain nation on earth was chosen by God, which they have called by many names: sometimes this whole nation is called Israel, sometimes Jacob; and especially when this nation was divided into two parts by Jeroboam son of Nebat, the ten tribes that came under him were called Israel, while the other two, with which was also the tribe of Levi and the tribe descended from the royal line of David, were named Judah. The whole region that this nation possessed, which it had received from God, was called Judea, in which the chief city was Jerusalem; and it is called the mother-city as being, as it were, the mother of many cities. The names of these cities you will find scattered frequently in the other divine books too, but gathered together in one place in the book of Joshua son of Nun. Since these things are so, the holy apostle, wishing somehow to raise our understanding from the earth and lift it up, says in a certain place, “Look at Israel according to the flesh”; by which he certainly indicates that there is another Israel, which is not “according to the flesh” but according to the spirit. And again in another place he says, “For not all who are of Israel are Israel.”

Taught by him, then, that there is one “Israel according to the flesh” and another according to the spirit, when the Saviour says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” we do not take this as those do who are earthly-minded, that is, the Ebionites, who by their very name are called poor (for “Ebion” means “poor” among the Hebrews); but we understand that there is a race of souls which is called Israel, as the interpretation of the name itself indicates, for “Israel” is interpreted “a mind seeing God” or “a man seeing God.” Again, the apostle reveals such things about Jerusalem: “The Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother.” And in another of his epistles he says, “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to a multitude of angels praising together, and to the church of the firstborn enrolled in heaven.” If, then, there are souls in this world that are called Israel, and in heaven a city that is named Jerusalem, it follows that the cities said to belong to the nation of Israel have the heavenly Jerusalem as their mother-city; and accordingly we understand this of all Judea, of which we think the prophets also spoke in certain mystical narratives, when they prophesied anything about Judea or about Jerusalem, or when the holy histories declare that this or that kind of invasion befell Judea or Jerusalem. Whatever, then, is narrated or prophesied about Jerusalem, if we listen to the words of Paul as of “Christ speaking in him,” we must understand as said, in keeping with his view, of that city which he calls the heavenly Jerusalem, and of all those places or cities which are said to be cities of the holy land, of which Jerusalem is the mother-city. For it is of these cities that we must think the Saviour too, wishing to call us to a higher understanding, promises to those who have managed well the money entrusted to them by him that they will have authority “over ten cities” or “over five cities.”

If, then, the prophecies made about Judea and Jerusalem, and about Israel and Judah and Jacob, signify certain divine mysteries when they are not understood by us carnally, it certainly follows that the prophecies uttered about Egypt and the Egyptians, or about Babylon and the Babylonians, and about Sidon and the Sidonians, are not to be understood as prophesied about the Egypt that lies on earth, or about Babylon, Tyre or Sidon. For what the prophet Ezekiel prophesied about Pharaoh king of Egypt cannot fit any man who seems to have reigned in Egypt, as the very context of the reading plainly shows. Likewise what is said about the prince of Tyre cannot be understood as said of some man as king of Tyre. And what is said in many places in Scripture, and especially in Isaiah, about Nebuchadnezzar, how can we possibly take it of a man? For it is not a man who is said “to have fallen from heaven,” or who was “Lucifer,” or “who rose in the morning.” Nor do I know whether anyone who has understanding could take what is said in Ezekiel about Egypt, that it is “to be laid waste for forty years,” so that no “human foot” will be found in it, and that it is to be so devastated by war that human blood will rise through the whole land up to the knees, as said of this earthly Egypt, which borders on Ethiopia. But we must consider whether it may not be understood more worthily in this way: as there is a heavenly Jerusalem and Judea, and without doubt a nation dwelling in it which is called Israel, so it is possible that there are also certain places near these which seem to be called Egypt, or Babylon, or Tyre, or Sidon, and that the princes of those places, and the souls, if any dwell in those places, are called Egyptians, Babylonians, Tyrians and Sidonians. From these, too, in accordance with the manner of life that they lead there, a kind of captivity seems to come about, by which they are said to have gone down from Judea into Babylonia or into Egypt, from better and higher places, or to have been scattered among various other nations.

For perhaps, as those who leave this world by this common death are distributed according to their acts and merits, as they have been judged to deserve, some into the place called “the underworld,” others “into the bosom of Abraham,” and through various places or dwellings; so also from those places, as if dying there, if one may say so, they come down from the upper regions into this underworld. For the underworld to which the souls of the dying are led from here is, I believe, called by Scripture “the lower underworld” because of this distinction, as it says in the Psalms: “And you have delivered my soul from the lower underworld.” Each of those, then, who come down to earth is appointed, according to his merits or to the place he had there, to be born in this world in different places, or nations, or ways of life, or infirmities, or to be begotten of religious or of less pious parents; so that it sometimes happens that an Israelite comes down among the Scythians and a poor Egyptian is brought to Judea. Yet our Saviour came to gather “the sheep that were lost of the house of Israel”; and when very many of the Israelites did not accept his teaching, those who were from the nations were called. Hence it will seem to follow that the prophecies uttered about the individual nations should rather be referred to souls and to their various heavenly dwellings. And the histories of the events said to have happened to the nation of Israel, or to Jerusalem, or to Judea, when this or that nation attacked them, must be examined and searched out, since in very many cases they did not take place bodily, to see how these things rather fit those nations of souls which dwelt in this heaven that is said “to pass away,” or which must be thought to dwell there even now.

But if anyone demands from us evident and quite clear proofs of these things from the holy Scriptures, we must answer that it was the counsel of the Holy Spirit rather to hide these things and to cover them more deeply in what seem to be histories of events, in which some are said to go down into Egypt, or to be taken captive into Babylonia, or in those very regions some are “greatly humbled” and brought under the service of masters, while others in those very places of captivity were held famous and magnificent, so that they held powers and principalities and ruled over peoples. All these things, as we said, are hidden and concealed and covered in the histories of holy Scripture, because “the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid, and in his joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” Consider carefully here whether it is not indicated that the very soil and surface, so to speak, of Scripture, that is, what is read according to the letter, is the “field,” full and flowering with plants of every kind, while that higher and deeper spiritual understanding is the very “treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden,” which the Holy Spirit through Isaiah calls “dark, invisible and hidden treasures”; and that, in order that they may be found, there is need of the help of God, who alone can “break” the “bronze gates” by which they are shut in and hidden, “and shatter the iron bolts and bars” by which entrance is barred to all the things written and covered in Genesis about the different kinds of souls, and about those seeds and generations which either belong to kinship with Israel or are separated farther from its offspring; and also what that descent “into Egypt of the seventy souls” is, so that the “seventy souls” become in Egypt “like the stars of heaven in multitude.” But since not all who were from them are “the light of this world” (“for not all who are of Israel are Israel”), some from these seventy souls also become “like the sand that is by the seashore, innumerable.”

This descent of the holy fathers into Egypt, that is, into this world, may be seen to have been granted by the providence of God for the enlightenment of the rest and the instruction of the human race, so that through them the other souls might be enlightened and helped. “For to them first were entrusted the oracles of God,” because that race alone is said “to see God”; for this is what the name Israel means when interpreted. And now it follows that we should apply and interpret accordingly the fact that Egypt is struck with ten plagues so that it may let the people of God go out, and what is done in the desert with the people, and that the tabernacle is constructed from the contributions of the whole people, and that the priestly vestment is woven, and whatever is said about the vessels of the ministry, because, as it is written, they truly contain in themselves “a shadow” and form “of heavenly things.” For Paul says plainly of them that they “serve the shadow and copy of heavenly things.” In this same law is also contained by what laws and ordinances they are to live in the holy land. Threats are also set before those who transgress the law; and for those who needed purification various kinds of purification are handed down, as for people who would often be defiled, so that through these they might at last come to that one purification after which it is no longer permitted to be defiled. The people itself is also brought to a census, though not all of them; for childish souls do not yet have the time to be numbered by the divine command, nor even those souls that cannot become the head of another but are themselves subject to others as to a head, whom Scripture has named “women”; they are certainly not brought into that number which is commanded by God, but only those are numbered who are called men, to show, that is, that the women cannot be numbered separately, but are included in those who are called men. Above all, however, those come to the holy number who are ready to go out to the wars of Israel, who can fight against those foes and enemies whom “the Father subjects to the Son sitting at his right hand,” so that “he may destroy every principality and power”: so that by these ranks of his soldiers, who, “serving as soldiers” for God, “do not entangle themselves in worldly affairs,” he may overthrow the kingdoms of the adversary; by whom “the shields of faith” are carried and the “weapons” of wisdom brandished, on whom “the helmet of the hope of salvation” flashes and “the breastplate of love” fortifies the breast filled with God. Such soldiers seem to me to be indicated, and to be prepared for wars of this kind, those who in the divine books are ordered by God's command to be numbered. But far more glorious and perfect than these are those indicated whose very “hairs of the head” are said to be numbered. Those who were punished for their sins, whose bodies “fell in the desert,” seem to bear the likeness of those who made no little progress, but for various reasons could not at all reach the goal of perfection, because they are said “to have murmured,” or “worshipped idols,” or “committed sexual immorality,” or to have thought something such as it would certainly not be lawful even to conceive in the mind. Nor do I think it empty of mystery that certain men who had many cattle and many animals go ahead and seize a place suitable for pasture and the feeding of cattle, which the right hand of Israel's warfare had defended first of all. Having asked Moses for this place, they are separated beyond the streams of the Jordan and set apart from possession of the holy land. This Jordan may be seen, according to the pattern of “heavenly things,” to water and flood thirsty souls and the senses that lie near it. Here not even this will seem idle: that Moses hears from God what is written in the law of Leviticus, while in Deuteronomy the people become hearers of Moses and learn from him what they could not hear from God. For this reason Deuteronomy is called, as it were, the second law; which to some will seem to signify this very thing, that as the first “law,” which “was given through Moses,” ceases, a second legislation seems to be shaped, which is handed on in a special way by Moses to Joshua his successor, who is certainly believed to bear the form of our Saviour, by whose second law, that is, the precepts of the Gospel, all things are brought to perfection.

But we must consider whether it may not rather seem to indicate this: that as in Deuteronomy a clearer and plainer legislation is declared than in what was written first, so also, beyond that coming of the Saviour which he fulfilled in humility when he “took the form of a servant,” that clearer and more glorious second coming “in the glory of his Father” is indicated, and in it the pattern of Deuteronomy will be fulfilled, when in the kingdom of heaven all the saints will live by the laws of that “eternal Gospel”; and as by his present coming he has fulfilled the “law” which “has a shadow of good things to come,” so by that glorious coming the shadow of this coming too will be fulfilled and brought to perfection. For so the prophet said of him: “The breath of our face, Christ the Lord, of whom we said that under his shadow we shall live among the nations”; that is, when he will more worthily transfer all the saints from the temporal Gospel to the “eternal Gospel,” as John indicated in the Apocalypse concerning the “eternal Gospel.”

But in all these things let it suffice us to fit our understanding to the rule of piety, and to think of the words of the Holy Spirit in this way: that the discourse does not shine as something composed in the eloquence of human frailty, but, as it is written, “All the glory of the king is within,” and the “treasure” of divine meanings is enclosed within the “frail vessel” of the humble letter. But if anyone, out of curiosity, seeks the explanation of each point, let him come and hear with us how the apostle Paul, searching “by the Holy Spirit,” who “searches even the depths of God,” “the depth of divine wisdom and knowledge,” and yet not able to reach the end and, so to speak, the inmost knowledge, cries out in despair of the matter and in amazement, and says: “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” And in what despair of perfect comprehension he cried this out, hear him saying: “How unsearchable are the judgments of God, and how untraceable his ways!” For he did not say that “the judgments of God” can be searched only with difficulty, but that they cannot be searched at all; nor did he say that his “ways” can be traced only with difficulty, but that they cannot be traced. For however far someone advances in searching, and progresses by more intent study, helped also by the grace of God and “enlightened” in understanding, he will not be able to reach the perfect end of the things that are sought. Nor has any created mind the possibility of comprehending them in any way; but as it finds a little of the things sought, it sees again others that must be sought; and if it reaches these too, it will see in turn many more from them that ought to be sought. Therefore the most wise Solomon too, looking into the nature of things through wisdom, says: “I said, I will become wise; and wisdom itself was made far from me, far more than it was; and who will find its profound depth?” And Isaiah, knowing that the beginnings of things cannot be found by mortal nature, nor even by those natures which, though more divine than the human, were nevertheless themselves made or created, knowing, then, that neither beginning nor end can be found by any of these, says: “Tell the former things, what they were, and we shall know that you are gods; or announce the last things, what they are, and then we shall see that you are gods.” For my Hebrew teacher too used to teach this: that because the beginning or end of all things cannot be comprehended by anyone except only the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, Isaiah said in the figure of his vision that there were only two seraphim, who “with two wings cover the face” of God, “with two the feet, and with two fly, crying to one another and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of your glory.” Since, then, the seraphim alone have both pairs of their wings at the face of God and at his feet, we must dare to declare that neither “the army of the holy angels” nor the holy “thrones, nor dominions, nor principalities, nor powers” can know fully the beginning of all things and the ends of the universe. But we must understand that these holy spirits and powers which he has listed are indeed nearest to those beginnings, and attain as much as the rest cannot reach; yet whatever these powers have learned by the revelation of the Son of God and the Holy Spirit, though they will be able to attain very much, and the higher much more than the lower, it is nevertheless impossible for them to comprehend everything, because it is written, “Very many of the works of God are in secret.” Hence it is to be desired that each one should always, according to his strength, “stretch himself out to the things that are ahead, forgetting the things that are behind,” both “toward better works” and toward a purer sense and understanding, “through Jesus Christ our Saviour,” “to whom be glory for ever.”

Let everyone, then, who cares for the truth “care little about names and words,” since different nations have different customs of speech; and let him pay more attention to what is meant than to the words by which it is meant, especially in matters so great and so difficult; as when it is asked, for example, whether there is any substance in which neither colour nor shape nor touch nor size is to be conceived, perceptible to the mind alone, which each one names as he pleases. For the Greeks called it asōmaton, that is, incorporeal, while the divine Scriptures have named it “invisible,” because the apostle declares that God is “invisible”: for he says that Christ is “the image of the invisible God.” And again he says that through Christ “all things were created, visible and invisible.” By this it is declared that among creatures too there are certain substances “invisible” by their own nature. But these, though they themselves are not bodily, nevertheless use bodies, even though they themselves are better than bodily substance. But that substance of the Trinity which is the beginning and cause of all things, “from which are all things, and through which are all things, and in which are all things,” must be believed to be neither a body nor in a body, but wholly incorporeal. Let it suffice to have said these things briefly, though by way of digression, yet prompted by the sequence of the subject itself, in order to show that there are some things whose meaning cannot properly be explained at all in any “words of human language,” but is expressed rather by a simpler understanding than by any precise use of words. To this rule the understanding of the divine writings must also be held, so that what is said in them may be judged not by the poverty of the language but by the divinity of the Holy Spirit who inspired their writing.

[Recapitulation concerning the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the other things said above.] It is now time, having gone through the things said above as best we could, to recapitulate each point, by way of reminder, of what we have said here and there, and first of all to repeat what concerns the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. God the Father, since he is both invisible and inseparable from the Son, did not beget the Son by emission from himself, as some think. For if the Son is an emission of the Father, and “emission” means such a generation as the offspring of animals or of human beings usually is, then necessarily both the one who emitted and the one who was emitted is a body. For we do not say, as the heretics think, that some part of the substance of God was turned into the Son, or that the Son was procreated by the Father out of things that do not exist, that is, outside his own substance, so that there was a time when he was not; but, setting aside every bodily notion, we say that the Word and Wisdom was begotten of the invisible and incorporeal God without any bodily passion, as the will proceeds from the mind. Nor will it seem absurd, since he is called “the Son of love,” if in this way he is thought of as the Son of will too. John also indicates that “God is light,” and Paul indicates that the Son is “the radiance of eternal light.” As, then, light could never exist without its radiance, so neither can the Son be understood without the Father, the Son who is called “the express image of his substance,” and the Word and the Wisdom. How, then, can it be said that there was a time when the Son was not? For this is nothing other than to say that there was a time when truth was not, when wisdom was not, when life was not; whereas in all these the substance of God the Father is perfectly reckoned. For these cannot be cut off from him or ever separated from his substance. Though in our understanding they are said to be many, yet in reality and substance they are one, and in them is “the fullness” “of divinity.” But even this, when we say that there never was a time when he was not, must be heard with indulgence; for these very words carry the meaning of a time-word, that is, “when” and “never”; but what is said of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit must be understood as above all time, above all ages, and above all eternity. For this Trinity alone surpasses every sense of understanding, not only of time but of eternity. All other things, which are outside the Trinity, are to be measured in ages and times. This Son of God, then, as he is the “Word” and “God,” who “was in the beginning with God,” no one will consistently suppose to be contained in any place; nor as he is wisdom, nor as he is truth, nor as he is life, or righteousness, or sanctification, or redemption. For none of these needs a place in order to act or to work anything; but each of them is to be understood with reference to those who share in his power and working.

But if someone says that, through those who share in the Word of God, or in his wisdom, or truth, or life, the Word and Wisdom himself seems to be in a place, we must answer him that there is no doubt that Christ, as he is Word and Wisdom and all the rest, was in Paul; and so Paul said, "Or do you seek proof of Christ who speaks in me?" and again, "I live, yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me." Since, then, he was in Paul, who will doubt that he was likewise in Peter, and in John, and in each of the saints, and not only in those who are on earth but also in those who are in heaven? For it is absurd to say that Christ was in Peter and in Paul, but not in Michael the archangel and in Gabriel. From this it is clearly seen that the divinity of the Son of God was not enclosed in any place; otherwise it would have been only in that place and not in another; but by the majesty of his incorporeal nature, since it is enclosed by no place, it is understood to be absent from none. Only this difference must be understood: that even though he is in different beings, as we said, in Peter or Paul or Michael or Gabriel, he is not in all of them in the same way. For he is more fully and clearly and, so to speak, more openly in the archangels than in other holy men. This is plain from the fact that when the saints come to the highest perfection, they are said to become like the angels, or equal to them, according to the saying of the Gospel. Hence it is established that Christ is in each one as much as the measure of his merits allows.

Having briefly repeated these things about the doctrine of the Trinity, we should next briefly recall that through the Son are said to have been created all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers: "all things were created through him and in him, and he is before all, and all things hold together in him, who is the head." In agreement with this, John too says in the Gospel that "all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made." And David, signifying the mystery of the whole Trinity in the creation of all things, says: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all their power by the spirit of his mouth." After this we shall fittingly recall the bodily coming and incarnation of the only-begotten Son of God. In this we must not think that the whole majesty of his divinity was shut up within the confines of a very small body, so that the whole Word of God, and his wisdom, and substantial truth and life, was either torn away from the Father or confined and circumscribed within the smallness of his body, and is not thought to have worked anywhere besides; but our confession of piety must keep carefully between the two, so that neither is it believed that anything of divinity was lacking in Christ, nor is it thought that any division at all was made from the Father's substance, which is everywhere. For John the Baptist too indicates something of this kind when, while Jesus was bodily absent, he said to the crowds: "Among you stands one whom you do not know, who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie." For this certainly could not be said of one who was absent, as far as bodily presence is concerned, that he stood in the midst of those among whom he was not bodily present. Hence it is shown that the Son of God was present both wholly in the body and wholly everywhere.

Let no one, however, suppose that by this we affirm that some part of the divinity of the Son of God was in Christ and the rest elsewhere or everywhere; this can be thought only by those who do not know the nature of an incorporeal and invisible substance. For it is impossible to speak of a part of what is incorporeal, or for any division of it to be made; but he is in all, and through all, and above all, in the way we said above, that is, in the way in which he is understood as wisdom, or Word, or life, or truth; and by this understanding every confinement to place is without doubt excluded. The Son of God, then, wishing for the salvation of the human race to appear to human beings and to live among them, took up not only a human body, as some think, but also a soul, like our souls in nature, but in purpose and power like himself, and such as could fulfil unchangeably all the wills and dispensations of the Word and Wisdom. That he had a soul the Saviour himself shows most plainly in the Gospels, saying: "No one takes my soul from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay down my soul, and I have power to take it up again." And again: "My soul is sorrowful even to death." And again: "Now my soul is troubled." For the Word of God is not to be understood as the soul that is sorrowful and troubled, since he says by the authority of his divinity, "I have power to lay down my soul." Yet we do not say that the Son of God was in that soul in the way he was in the soul of Paul or Peter and the other saints, in whom Christ is believed to speak as he did in Paul. Of all of these we must think what Scripture says, that no one is clean from filth, not even if his life is but one day long. But this soul which was in Jesus chose the good before it knew evil; and because it loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore God anointed it with the oil of gladness above its fellows. It is anointed with the oil of gladness, then, when it is joined to the Word of God in a spotless union; and through this, alone of all souls, it was incapable of sin, because it was well and fully capable of the Son of God; and therefore it is one with him, and is named by his titles and called Jesus Christ, through whom all things are said to have been made. Of this soul, since it had received into itself the whole wisdom and truth and life of God, I think the apostle also spoke when he says: "Your life is hidden with Christ in God; but when Christ, your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." For what other Christ is to be understood here, who is said to be hidden in God and afterwards to appear, but the one who is said to have been anointed with the oil of gladness, that is, filled substantially with God, in whom he is now said to be hidden? For this reason Christ is set before all believers as an example: because as he always, even before he knew evil at all, chose the good, and loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and therefore God anointed him with the oil of gladness, so too each one, after a fall or an error, should cleanse himself of his stains with this example set before him, and, having a guide for the journey, walk the steep road of virtue; so that in this way perhaps, as far as possible, through imitating him we may become partakers of the divine nature, as it is written that whoever says he believes in Christ ought himself to walk as he walked. This Word, then, and this Wisdom, by imitating whom we are called wise or rational, becomes all things to all, that he may win all; he becomes weak to the weak, that he may win the weak; and because he becomes weak, it is said of him, "Though he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by the power of God." Finally, to the Corinthians, who were weak, Paul says that he knows nothing "among them except Jesus Christ, and him crucified."

Some wish that what the apostle says should also be taken as said of that soul itself, when it first took a body from Mary: "Who, being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant"; so that without doubt he might restore it to the form of God by better examples and teachings, and call it back to that fullness from which he had emptied himself. As by participation in the Son of God one is adopted as a son, and by participation in wisdom one is made wise in God, so too by participation in the Holy Spirit one is made holy and spiritual. For it is one and the same thing to receive participation in the Holy Spirit as in the Father and the Son, since the nature of the Trinity is one and incorporeal. What we have said about the participation of the soul must be understood in the same way of angels and heavenly powers as of souls, since every rational creature needs participation in the Trinity. As for the account of this visible world, since a very great question is usually raised about it too, as to how it stands, we have spoken of it above as best we could, both for those within our faith who seek the reason for believing as well, and for those heretics who stir up contests against us and very often toss about the word 'matter', which not even they have yet been able to understand; about this I think it necessary to give a brief reminder now too.

First we must know that we have never yet found the very word 'matter' used in the canonical Scriptures for the substance that is said to underlie bodies. For when Isaiah says, "And he will devour hylē, that is, matter, like hay," speaking of those who are placed in punishment, he used 'matter' for sins. And if the word 'matter' is perhaps written somewhere else, it will nowhere, I think, be found to mean what we are now inquiring about, except only in the Wisdom that is called Solomon's, which book is certainly not held by all to be authoritative. There, however, we find it written thus: "For your all-powerful hand, which created the world out of formless matter, did not lack the means to send upon them a multitude of bears or fierce lions." Very many, indeed, think that matter itself is meant in what Moses wrote at the beginning of Genesis: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth; but the earth was invisible and unformed." For by 'invisible and unformed earth' Moses seemed to them to indicate nothing other than formless matter. But if this is truly matter, it follows that the first principles of bodies are not unchangeable. For those who have laid down as the principles of bodily things atoms, or things that cannot be divided into parts, or things that are divided into equal parts, or some one element, could not place among the principles the name of matter, that is, what properly signifies matter. For when they place matter beneath every body as a substance changeable, alterable and divisible throughout, they do not place it beneath, according to its own property, as something apart from qualities. With them we too agree, since we wholly deny that matter should be called unbegotten or unmade, in keeping with what we showed earlier as well as we could, when we showed that from water and earth, air or heat, different fruits are produced through different kinds of trees; or when we taught that fire, air, water and earth change into one another, one element being resolved into another by a kind of mutual kinship; and also when we proved that the substance of flesh comes from the food of human beings or animals, and that the moisture of natural seed is turned into solid flesh and bones. All these things are proof that bodily substance is changeable and passes from any quality into any other.

Yet we must know that substance never subsists without quality, but that it is by the understanding alone that what underlies bodies and is capable of quality is distinguished as matter. Some, then, wishing to inquire more deeply into these things, have dared to say that bodily nature is nothing other than qualities. For if hardness and softness, hot and cold, wet and dry are qualities, and when these or others of the kind are taken away nothing else is understood to underlie them, then all things will seem to be qualities. Hence those who assert this have tried to argue that, since all who say matter is unmade confess that the qualities were made by God, it is found by this that, even according to them, matter is not unmade, if indeed all things are qualities, which are declared by all without contradiction to have been made by God. But those who wish to show that qualities are added from outside to a certain underlying matter use examples of this kind: Paul, without doubt, is either silent or speaking, awake or asleep, or holds some posture of the body, for he is either sitting, standing or lying down. These are accidents of human beings, without which they are hardly ever found. Yet our mind does not clearly define him by any of these, but we so understand or consider him through them that we do not at all grasp the account of his being in the fact that he is awake, or asleep, or speaking, or silent, or in whatever other things must happen to human beings. If, then, one can consider Paul to be without all these things that can happen to him, so too one will be able to understand the underlying substance without qualities. When, then, our mind, removing every quality from its thought, gazes, so to speak, at the bare point of the underlying substance alone and fixes on it, without regard to the softness or hardness, the heat or cold, the wetness or dryness of the substance, then by a kind of imagined thought it will seem to gaze at matter stripped of all these qualities.

But perhaps someone will ask whether we can also find in the Scriptures some occasion for this understanding. Something of this kind seems to me to be signified in the Psalms, when the prophet says, “My eyes have seen your imperfect being.” In this the mind of the prophet, examining the beginnings of things with a keener gaze and separating matter from its qualities by thought and reason alone, seems to have perceived God's “imperfect,” which is understood to be completed when qualities are added. Enoch too says thus in his book: “I walked as far as the imperfect”; which I think can be understood in a similar way, namely that the prophet's mind “walked,” examining and discussing each of the visible things, until it came to that beginning in which it saw “imperfect” matter without qualities. For it is written in the same little book, Enoch himself saying: “I beheld all the materials”; which is understood as if he said, “I saw all the divisions of matter,” which were broken off from one into the individual kinds, that is, of human beings, of animals, of the sky, of the sun, and of all the things in this world. After this we have shown above, as well as we could, that all things that exist were made by God, and that there is nothing that was not made except the nature of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; and that God, who is good by nature, wishing to have those to whom he might do good and who would rejoice in receiving his benefits, made creatures worthy of him, that is, able to receive him worthily, whom he also says “he has begotten as sons.” And he made all things in number and measure; for with God nothing is either without limit or without measure. For by his power he comprehends all things, and he himself is comprehended by the understanding of no creature. For that nature is known to itself alone: for the Father alone knows the Son, and the Son alone knows the Father, and the Holy Spirit alone “searches even the depths of God.” Every creature, then, is marked off with him within a certain number and measure, that is, either the number of rational beings or the measure of bodily matter. Since intellectual nature had to use bodies, being found to be changeable and alterable by the very condition in which it was made (for what did not exist and began to exist is shown by this very fact to be of a changeable nature, and so has neither virtue nor wickedness as part of its substance, but as something accidental), since, then, as we said, rational nature was changeable and alterable, so that according to its merits it would use a different clothing of body, of this or that quality, it was necessary that, just as God foreknew the future differences of souls or of spiritual powers, so he should also make a bodily nature which, by the change of its qualities, could be changed at the Creator's will into whatever the case required. This must last as long as the things last that need its clothing; and there will always be rational natures that need bodily clothing: therefore there will always be a bodily nature too, whose clothing rational creatures must use; unless someone thinks he can show by some arguments that a rational nature can lead a life without any body. But how difficult that is, and how nearly impossible for our understanding, we have shown above in discussing each point.

I think it will certainly not seem contrary to this work of ours if we also briefly repeat, as well as we can, what concerns the immortality of rational natures. Everyone who participates in something is without doubt of one substance and one nature with anyone else who participates in the same thing. For example, all eyes participate in light, and therefore all eyes that participate in light are of one nature. But although every eye participates in light, yet because one sees more sharply and another more dimly, not every eye participates in light equally. And again, every sense of hearing receives voice or sound, and therefore every hearing is of one nature; but according to the quality of pure and sound hearing, each one hears more quickly or more slowly. Let us pass, then, from these sensible examples to the contemplation of intellectual things. Every mind that participates in intellectual light must without doubt be of one nature with every mind that participates in intellectual light in the same way. If, then, the heavenly powers receive a share in intellectual light, that is, in the divine nature, by participating in wisdom and sanctification, and the human soul receives a share in the same light and wisdom, these too will be of one nature with one another and of one substance; and the heavenly powers are incorrupt and immortal: without doubt the substance of the human soul too will be incorrupt and immortal. And not only so, but since the very nature of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, in whose intellectual light alone the whole creation has a share, is incorrupt and eternal, it is entirely consistent and necessary that every substance that has a share in that eternal nature should also itself endure for ever, incorruptible and eternal, so that the eternity of divine goodness may be understood in this too, since those who receive his benefits are also eternal. But as in the examples a diversity in the reception of light was preserved, when the gaze of the one looking was described as duller or sharper, so too in participation in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit a diversity must be preserved according to the attentiveness of the senses or the capacity of the mind. Otherwise, let us consider whether it does not even seem impious that a mind capable of God should undergo the destruction of its substance; as if this very ability to understand and perceive God could not suffice for its permanence; especially since, even if through negligence the mind falls away so that it does not receive God into itself purely and wholly, it always has in itself, as it were, certain seeds of restoring and renewing a better understanding, when “the inner man,” who is also called rational, is called back “to the image and likeness” of God who created him. Therefore the prophet also says: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.”

But if anyone dares to ascribe the corruption of its substance to one who was made after the image and likeness of God, he extends, I think, the charge of impiety even to the Son of God himself; for he too is called the image of God in the Scriptures. Or else let whoever would have it so accuse the authority of Scripture, which says that man was made after the image of God. In man the marks of the divine image are plainly recognized, not through the form of the body, which decays, but through prudence of mind, through justice, through moderation, through courage, through wisdom, through discipline, in short through the whole choir of virtues, which, while they are in God by substance, can be in a human being through effort and through the imitation of God, as the Lord also indicates in the Gospel, saying, "Be merciful, therefore, as your Father is merciful," and, "Be perfect, as your Father is perfect." From this it is plainly shown that in God all these virtues always exist and can never come or go, whereas human beings acquire them gradually and one by one. Hence they seem through these to have a kind of kinship with God; and although God knows all things, and nothing of intellectual things is hidden from him (for God the Father alone, and his only-begotten Son, and the Holy Spirit have knowledge not only of the things they created but also of themselves), yet the rational mind too, advancing from small things to greater and from visible things to invisible, can come to a more perfect understanding. For it is placed in a body, and from these sensible things, which are bodily, it advances to things beyond the senses, which are incorporeal and intellectual. But lest it should seem to anyone an improper expression to speak of senses for intellectual things, we shall use as an example the saying of Solomon: "You will find a divine sense." By this he shows that intellectual things are to be sought not by a bodily sense but by another, which he calls divine. It is with this sense that we must look at each of the rational things we spoke of above, and with this sense that what we say must be heard and what we write considered. For the divine nature knows even what we turn over silently within ourselves. About the things we have said, and about the rest that follow from them, we must think according to the pattern we have set out.