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(97) Thou must not think that perhaps in Heaven there is some Manner of Body which only is thus generated, which above all other Things is called God.

(40) A true assertion respecting God, is an assertion of God.

You should not dare to speak of God to the multitude.

(29) Therefore, my beloved Mind, look what thou dost; and judge not so hastily and unadvisedly, and do not turn Beast because of the Multitude of Opinions, to whom belongs only the Chaff of the noble Seed. The Spirit of God shows himself in one that seeks him, yet according to the Manner and Kind of his Essences; and yet the Seed of God is sown along in the Essences; and if the Seeker seeks in a divine Desire, then he finds the Pearl according to his Essences, and so the great Wonders of God are manifested thereby.

(1) Hence you in vain doubt, “ that it is not proper to look to human opinions .” For what leisure can he have whose intellect is directed to the Gods to look downward to the praises of men? Nor do you rightly doubt in what follows, viz. “ that the soul devises great things from casual circumstances .” For what principle of fictions can there be in truly existing beings? Is it not the phantastic power in us which is the maker of images? But the phantasy is never excited when the intellectual life energizes perfectly. And is not truth essentially coexistent with the Gods? Is it not, likewise, concordantly established in intelligibles? It is in vain, therefore, that things of this kind are disseminated by you and others. But neither do those things for which certain futile and arrogant men calumniate the worshipers of the Gods, the like to which have been asserted by you, at all pertain to true theology and theurgy. And if certain things of this kind germinate in the sciences of divine concerns, as in other arts evil arts blossom forth; these are doubtless more contrary to such sciences than to any thing else. For evil is more hostile to good than to that which is not good.

(2) But if any one should say that we introduce in so doing a confusion, in disparagement of the distinction which befits God, we do not think that such a statement as this is itself sufficient to convince that it is true. For, if there is any one who has placed himself entirely in opposition to the Oracles, he will be also entirely apart from our. philosophy; and, if he has no care for the divine Wisdom of the Oracles, how shall we care for his guidance to the theological science? But, if he regards the truth of the Oracles, we also, using this canon and illumination, will advance unwaveringly to the answer, as best we can, by affirming that theology transmits some things as common, but others as distinctive; and neither is it meet to divide the common, nor to confuse the distinctive; but that following It according to our ability, we ought to rise to the Divine splendours; for, by taking thence the Divine revelations, as a most excellent canon of truth, we strive to guard the things lying there, in their native simplicity and integrity and identity--being ourselves guarded in our guard of the Oracles, and from these receiving strength to guard those who guard them.

(77) But thou must not think, as if God was tied to it, and cannot, or may not expel him from thence, if he should move or stir otherwise than God had constituted, settled or stated him at first.

(4) Will not, therefore, he who surveys this conspicuous statue of the Gods, thus united to itself, be ashamed to have a different opinion of the Gods, who are the causes of it, so as to introduce among them sections, and separations, and corporeal-formed circumscriptions? I, indeed, should think, that every one would be thus disposed. For if there is no ratio, no habitude of symmetry, no communion of essence, nor a connexion either in capacity or in energy, between that which is adorned and the adorning cause; if this be the case, there will neither be found in the world a certain extension according to interval, nor local comprehension, nor partible interception, nor any other such like connascent equalization in the presence of the Gods [with mundane natures]. For in things which are of a kindred nature, according to essence and power, or which are, in a certain respect, of the same species, or homogeneous, a certain comprehension, or conservation, may be discovered. But in such things as are entirely exempt from all mundane wholes, what opposing circumstance, or transition through all things, or partible circumscription, or local comprehension, or any thing else of this kind can justly be perceived? I think, therefore, that the several participants of the divinities are of such a nature, that some partake of them etherially, others aerially, and others aquatically; which also, the art of divine works perceiving, employs adaptations and invocations, conformable to such a division. And thus much concerning the distribution of the more excellent genera into the world.

(56) Neither must thou think, that the Deity is such a kind of Being as is only in the upper Heaven, and that the Soul, when it departs from the Body, goes up aloft into the upper Heaven many hundred thousand Miles off.

(30) But we must not so conceive, as if God was not at all in the Corpus or Body of the Stars, and in this World: For when we say, ALL, or from Eternity to Eternity; or all in All, then we understand the entire GOD. Take Man

(3) This, therefore, it is not fit to suspect of the Gods [ viz. that they can be defiled by vapours]; but it is much more requisite to think that things of this kind are foreign to us and to our nature. For things which are divided, and also material and kindred natures, are able to have a certain communion with each other in acting and suffering; but things which are essentially different, and such as are entirely transcendent, and which employ other natures and powers, these cannot act on or receive any thing from each other. The defilement, therefore, produced by material natures, falls on things which are detained by a material body; and from these it is necessary those should be purified who are capable of being defiled by matter. But how can those beings be defiled by material essences who neither have a divisible nature nor possess the power of receiving in themselves the passions of matter? How, likewise, can divinity, who has nothing in common with us, in consequence of antecedently existing superior to human imbecility, be polluted by my passions, or by those of any other man?

(2) This, therefore, is nearly the cause of our aberration to a multitude of conceptions. For men being in reality unable to apprehend the reasons of sacred institutions, but conceiving that they are able, are wholly hurried away by their own human passions, and form a conjecture of divine concerns from things pertaining to themselves. In so doing, however, they err in a twofold respect; because they fall from divine natures; and because, being frustrated of these, they draw them down to human passions. But it is requisite not to apprehend after the same manner, things which are performed both to Gods and men, such as genuflexions, adorations, gifts, and first fruits, but to establish the one apart from the other, conformably to the difference between things more and things less honourable; and to reverence the former, indeed, as divine, but to despise the latter as human, and as performed to men. It is proper, likewise, to consider, that the latter produce passions, both in the performer and those to whom they are performed; for they are human and corporeal-formed; but to honour the energy of the former in a very high degree, as being performed through immutable admiration, and a venerable condition of mind, because they are referred to the Gods.

(80) Now when we speak or write of the Three Persons in the Deity, you must not conceive, that therefore there are Three Gods, each reigning and ruling by himself, like temporal Kings on the Earth. [Or the Trinity has no such Being in God.]

(7) And what must we say concerning this? For the Word of God Itself extols the fact that He is dissimilar, and of the same rank with none; as "different" even from everything, and, what is more paradoxical, says there is nothing that is similar to Him. Yet the expression is not contrary to the similarity towards Him, for the same things are both similar to God, and dissimilar--the former as regards the received imitation of the inimitable, the latter as regards the dependence of the things caused upon the cause, and their being inferior in degrees, endless and incalculable.

(5) Shall we say, then, that it is because they afford a certain utility to those that behold them? But what advantage can be derived from falsehood? If, therefore, this is not the case, may it not be natural to divinity to extend a phantasm from itself? But how can that which is firmly established in itself, and which is the cause of essence and truth, produce in a foreign seat a certain deceitful imitation of itself? By no means, therefore, does divinity either transform himself into phantasms, nor extend these from himself to other things, but emits, by illumination, true representations of himself, in the true manners of souls. Conformably to this, also, the attendants of the Gods are emulous of the self-visible truth of the Gods. But that which you now say, “ that it is common to Gods and dæmons, and the rest of the more excellent genera, to produce fictitious images, and to speak boastingly of themselves ,” confounds all the genera of superior beings in each other, and leaves no difference whatever between them. For thus all things will be common to them, and nothing singularly excellent will be given to transcendent natures. It will, therefore, be more just to ask, in opposition to you, in what will the genus of the Gods be superior to that of dæmons? These genera, however, have nothing in common, nor is the communion between them phantastic, nor is it fit from such natures as are last, and from the errors which take place in them, to estimate first essences, and the true impressions of forms which are in them. For by thus thinking concerning these essences, we shall think justly, and in a way pleasing to the Gods.

(22) Yet you must not think, that God, who is in Heaven and above the Heaven, does there stand and hover, like a Power and Quality which has in it neither Reason, nor Knowledge in it,

(44) You must not think, that in the Divine Pomp there come forth Beasts, Worms, and other Creatures in Flesh, as in this World they do; No; but I mean only the wonderful Proportion, Power, Virtue, and Comeliness of Feature in them. And

(17) Now if we will lift up our Minds, and seek after the Heaven wherein God dwells, we cannot say that God dwells only above the Stars, and has inclosed himself with the Firmament which is made out of the Waters, in which none can enter except it be opened (like a Window) for him; with which Thoughts Men are altogether befooled [and bewildered.] Neither can we say (as some suppose) that God the Father and the Son are only with Angels in the uppermost inclosed Heaven, and rule only here in this World by the Holy Ghost, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. All these Thoughts are void of the very Knowledge of God. For then God should be divided and circumscriptive, like the Sun that moves aloft above us, and sends its Light and Virtue to us, whereby the whole Deep becomes light and active all over.

(1) We will exchange, therefore, this division for the doubt which may be adduced by you against the present opinion. “ For ,” it may be said by you, “ how, conformably to what we assert, can the sun and moon, and the visible natures in the heavens, be Gods, if the Gods are alone incorporeal? ” To this we reply, that the celestial divinities are not comprehended by bodies, but contain bodies in their divine lives and energies; that they are not themselves converted to body, but they have a body which is converted to its divine cause; and that body does not impede their intellectual and incorporeal perfection, nor occasion them any molestation by its intervention. Hence it does not require an abundant attention, but follows the divinities spontaneously, and after a certain manner, self-motively, not being in want of manual direction; but, through an anagogic tendency, being itself uniformly coelevated by itself, to the one of the Gods.

(74) Thou must not think, as Johannes Calvus or Calvinus thought, which was, that the Body of Christ is not an almighty Being, and that it comprehends or reaches no further then a little circumscribed Place wherein it is.

(4) Neither of these, therefore, at all pertains to the Gods; neither our being filled with material bodies; (for there is nothing, in short, of this kind with them, nor are they defiled by our stains, since they are entirely pure and incorruptible), nor if there are certain material vapours of bodies which are emitted about the earth; for these vapours are most remote from the essence and power of the Gods. Hence the whole hypothesis of contrariety is subverted if no part of it pertains to the Gods. For how, in short, can that which is not possess in itself a certain contest [with any thing]? You in vain, therefore, suspect things of this kind to be absurd, and you adduce doubts unworthy of the Gods, since they cannot be reasonably applied even to good men. For no man who possesses intellect, and is free from passion, would ever permit himself to be allured by the exhalation of vapours, and much less would any one of the beings more excellent than man suffer himself to be thus allured. These things, however, will be discussed shortly after. But now, since this contrariety is, through many solutions, subverted, we shall here finish what we have to say about the first doubt.