(9) But what again, when the Theologians say, that the unmoved goes forth to all, and is moved? Must we not understand this in a sense befitting God? For we must reverently suppose that He is moved, not as beseems carriage, or change, or alteration, or turning, or local movement, or the straight, or the circular, or that from both (curvative), or the intellectual, or the spiritual, or the physical, but that Almighty God brings into being and sustains everything, and provides in every way for everything; and is present, to all, by the irresistible embrace of all, and by His providential progressions and operations to all existing things. But we must concede to our discourse, to celebrate in a sense becoming God, even movements of God, the immovable. And the straight must be considered (to be) the unswerving and the undeviating progression of the operation, and the production from Himself of the whole; and the curvative--the steady progression and the productive condition; and the circular the same, and the holding together the middle and extremities, which encompass and are encompassed,--and the turning to Him of the things which proceeded from Him.

(21) The claim of Motion to be established as a genus will depend upon three conditions: first, that it cannot rightly be referred to any other genus; second, that nothing higher than itself can be predicated of it in respect of its essence; third, that by assuming differences it will produce species. These conditions satisfied, we may consider the nature of the genus to which we shall refer it.

Clearly it cannot be identified with either the Substance or the Quality of the things which possess it. It cannot, further, be consigned to Action, for Passivity also comprises a variety of motions; nor again to Passivity itself, because many motions are actions: on the contrary, actions and passions are to be referred to Motion.

Furthermore, it cannot lay claim to the category of Relation on the mere ground that it has an attributive and not a self-centred existence: on this ground, Quality too would find itself in that same category; for Quality is an attribute and contained in an external: and the same is true of Quantity.

If we are agreed that Quality and Quantity, though attributive, are real entities, and on the basis of this reality distinguishable as Quality and Quantity respectively: then, on the same principle, since Motion, though an attribute has a reality prior to its attribution, it is incumbent upon us to discover the intrinsic nature of this reality. We must never be content to regard as a relative something which exists prior to its attribution, but only that which is engendered by Relation and has no existence apart from the relation to which it owes its name: the double, strictly so called, takes birth and actuality in juxtaposition with a yard's length, and by this very process of being juxtaposed with a correlative acquires the name and exhibits the fact of being double.

What, then, is that entity, called Motion, which, though attributive, has an independent reality, which makes its attribution possible- the entity corresponding to Quality, Quantity and Substance?

But first, perhaps, we should make sure that there is nothing prior to Motion and predicated of it as its genus.

Change may be suggested as a prior. But, in the first place, either it is identical with Motion, or else, if change be claimed as a genus, it will stand distinct from the genera so far considered: secondly, Motion will evidently take rank as a species and have some other species opposed to it- becoming, say- which will be regarded as a change but not as a motion.

What, then, is the ground for denying that becoming is a motion? The fact, perhaps, that what comes to be does not yet exist, whereas Motion has no dealings with the non-existent. But, on that ground, becoming will not be a change either. If however it be alleged that becoming is merely a type of alteration or growth since it takes place when things alter and grow, the antecedents of becoming are being confused with becoming itself. Yet becoming, entailing as it does these antecedents, must necessarily be a distinct species; for the event and process of becoming cannot be identified with merely passive alteration, like turning hot or white: it is possible for the antecedents to take place without becoming as such being accomplished, except in so far as the actual alteration has "come to be"; where, however, an animal or a vegetal life is concerned, becoming takes place only upon its acquisition of a Form.

The contrary might be maintained: that change is more plausibly ranked as a species than is Motion, because change signifies merely the substitution of one thing for another, whereas Motion involves also the removal of a thing from the place to which it belongs, as is shown by locomotion. Even rejecting this distinction, we must accept as types of Motion knowledge and musical performance- in short, changes of condition: thus, alteration will come to be regarded as a species of Motion- namely, motion displacing.

(11) And let no one fancy that we honour the Name of Love beyond the Oracles, for it is, in my opinion, irrational and stupid not to cling to the force of the meaning, but to the mere words; and this is not the characteristic of those who have wished to comprehend things Divine, but of those who receive empty sounds and keep the same just at the ears from passing through from outside, and are not willing to know what such a word signifies, and in what way one ought to distinctly represent it, through other words of the same force and more explanatory, but who specially affect sounds and signs without meaning, and syllables, and words unknown, which do not pass through to the mental part of their soul, but buzz without, around their lips and ears, as though it were not permitted to signify the number four, by twice two, or straight lines by direct lines, or motherland by fatherland, or any other, which signify the self-same thing, by many parts of speech. We ought to know, according to the correct account, that we use sounds, and syllables, and phrases, and descriptions, and words, on account of the sensible perceptions; since when our soul is moved by the intellectual energies to the things contemplated, the sensible perceptions by aid of sensible objects are superfluous; just as also the intellectual powers, when the soul, having become godlike, throws itself, through a union beyond knowledge, against the rays of the unapproachable light, by sightless efforts. But, when the mind strives to be moved upwards, through objects of sense, to contemplative conceptions, the clearer interpretations are altogether preferable to the sensible perceptions, and the more definite descriptions are things more distinct than things seen; since when objects near are not made clear to the sensible perceptions, neither will these perceptions be well able to present the things perceived to the mind. But that we may not seem, in speaking thus, to be pushing aside the Divine Oracles, let those who libel the Name of Love (Ἔρωτος) hear them. "Be in love with It," they say, "and It will keep thee--Rejoice over It, and It will exalt thee--Honour It, in order that It may encompass thee,"--and whatever else is sung respecting Love, in the Word of God.

(6) If space is, therefore, to be thought, [it should] not, [then, be thought as] God, but space. If God is also to be thought, [He should] not [be conceived] as space, but as energy that can contain [all space]. Further, all that is moved is moved not in the moved but in the stable. And that which moves [another] is of course stationary, for 'tis impossible that it should move with it. A: How is it, then, that things down here, Thrice-greatest one, are moved with those that are [already] moved? For thou hast said the errant spheres were moved by the inerrant one. H: This is not, O Asclepius, a moving with, but one against; they are not moved with one another, but one against the other. It is this contrariety which turneth the resistance of their motion into rest. For that resistance is the rest of motion.

(9) A: What meanest thou by this, Thrice-greatest one? Is it not bodies, then, that move the stock and stone and all the other things inanimate? H: By no means, O Asclepius. The something-in-the-body, the that-which-moves the thing inanimate, this surely's not a body, for that it moves the two of them - both body of the lifter and the lifted? So that a thing that's lifeless will not move a lifeless thing. That which doth move [another thing] is animate, in that it is the mover. Thou seest, then, how heavy laden is the soul, for it alone doth lift two bodies. That things, moreover, moved are moved in something as well as moved by something is clear.

(8) Of this I'll give thee here on earth an instance, which the eye can see. Regard the animals down here - a man, for instance, swimming! The water moves, yet the resistance of his hands and feet give him stability, so that he is not borne along with it, nor sunk thereby. A: Thou hast, Thrice-greatest one, adduced a most clear instance. H: All motion, then, is caused in station and by station. The motion, therefore, of the cosmos (and of every other hylic to the cosmos, but by things interior [outward] to the exterior - such [things] as soul, or spirit, or some such other thing incorporeal. 'Tis not the body that doth move the living thing in it; nay, not even the whole [body of the universe a lesser] body e'en though there be no life in it.

(34) For ourselves, while whatever in us belongs to the body of the All should be yielded to its action, we ought to make sure that we submit only within limits, realizing that the entire man is not thus bound to it: intelligent servitors yield a part of themselves to their masters but in part retain their personality, and are thus less absolutely at beck and call, as not being slaves, not utterly chattels.

The changing configurations within the All could not fail to be produced as they are, since the moving bodies are not of equal speed.

Now the movement is guided by a Reason-Principle; the relations of the living whole are altered in consequence; here in our own realm all that happens reacts in sympathy to the events of that higher sphere: it becomes, therefore, advisable to ask whether we are to think of this realm as following upon the higher by agreement, or to attribute to the configurations the powers underlying the events, and whether such powers would be vested in the configurations simply or in the relations of the particular items.

It will be said that one position of one given thing has by no means an identical effect- whether of indication or of causation- in its relation to another and still less to any group of others, since each several being seems to have a natural tendency of its own.

The truth is that the configuration of any given group means merely the relationship of the several parts, and, changing the members, the relationship remains the same.

But, this being so, the power will belong, not to the positions but to the beings holding those positions?

To both taken together. For as things change their relations, and as any one thing changes place, there is a change of power.

But what power? That of causation or of indication?

To this double thing- the particular configuration of particular beings- there accrues often the twofold power, that of causation and that of indication, but sometimes only that of indication. Thus we are obliged to attribute powers both to the configuration and to the beings entering into them. In mime dancers each of the hands has its own power, and so with all the limbs; the relative positions have much power; and, for a third power, there is that of the accessories and concomitants; underlying the action of the performers' limbs, there are such items as the clutched fingers and the muscles and veins following suit.

(2) And he: "If I were made of leaded glass, Thine outward image I should not attract Sooner to me than I imprint the inner. Just now thy thoughts came in among my own, With similar attitude and similar face, So that of both one counsel sole I made. If peradventure the right bank so slope That we to the next Bolgia can descend, We shall escape from the imagined chase." Not yet he finished rendering such opinion, When I beheld them come with outstretched wings, Not far remote, with will to seize upon us. My Leader on a sudden seized me up, Even as a mother who by noise is wakened, And close beside her sees the enkindled flames, Who takes her son, and flies, and does not stop, Having more care of him than of herself, So that she clothes her only with a shift; And downward from the top of the hard bank Supine he gave him to the pendent rock, That one side of the other Bolgia walls. Ne'er ran so swiftly water through a sluice To turn the wheel of any land-built mill, When nearest to the paddles it approaches,

(5) Sometimes an animal, when covered, struggles So that his impulse needs must be apparent, By reason of the wrappage following it; And in like manner the primeval soul Made clear to me athwart its covering How jubilant it was to give me pleasure. Then breathed: "Without thy uttering it to me, Thine inclination better I discern Than thou whatever thing is surest to thee; For I behold it in the truthful mirror, That of Himself all things parhelion makes, And none makes Him parhelion of itself. Thou fain wouldst hear how long ago God placed me Within the lofty garden, where this Lady Unto so long a stairway thee disposed. And how long to mine eyes it was a pleasure, And of the great disdain the proper cause, And the language that I used and that I made. Now, son of mine, the tasting of the tree Not in itself was cause of so great exile, But solely the o'erstepping of the bounds. There, whence thy Lady moved Virgilius, Four thousand and three hundred and two circuits Made by the sun, this Council I desired;

(37) Did not the Power also, that appeared to Hermas in the Vision, in the form of the Church, give for transcription the book which she wished to be made known to the elect? And this, he says, he transcribed to the letter, without finding how to complete the syllables. And this signified that the Scripture is clear to all, when taken according to the bare reading; and that this is the faith which occupies the place of the rudiments. Wherefore also the figurative expression is employed, "reading according to the letter;" while we understand that the gnostic unfolding of the Scriptures, when faith has already reached an advanced state, is likened to reading according to the syllables.

(603) a principle within us which is equally removed from reason, and that they have no true or healthy aim. Exactly. The imitative art is an inferior who marries an inferior, and has inferior offspring. Very true. And is this confined to the sight only, or does it extend to the hearing also, relating in fact to what we term poetry? Probably the same would be true of poetry. Do not rely, I said, on a probability derived from the analogy of painting; but let us examine further and see whether the faculty with which poetical imitation is concerned is good or bad. By all means. We may state the question thus:—Imitation imitates the actions of men, whether voluntary or involuntary, on which, as they imagine, a good or bad result has ensued, and they rejoice or sorrow accordingly. Is there anything more? No, there is nothing else. But in all this variety of circumstances is the man at unity with himself—or rather, as in the instance of sight there was confusion and opposition in his opinions about the same things, so here also is there not strife and inconsistency in his life? Though I need hardly raise the question again, for I remember that all this has been already admitted; and the soul has been acknowledged by us to be full of these and ten thousand similar oppositions occurring at the same moment? And we were right, he said. Yes, I said, thus far we were right; but there was an

(5) 'Twas not to know the number in which are The motors here above, or if 'necesse' With a contingent e'er 'necesse' make, 'Non si est dare primum motum esse,' Or if in semicircle can be made Triangle so that it have no right angle. Whence, if thou notest this and what I said, A regal prudence is that peerless seeing In which the shaft of my intention strikes. And if on 'rose' thou turnest thy clear eyes, Thou'lt see that it has reference alone To kings who're many, and the good are rare. With this distinction take thou what I said, And thus it can consist with thy belief Of the first father and of our Delight. And lead shall this be always to thy feet, To make thee, like a weary man, move slowly Both to the Yes and No thou seest not; For very low among the fools is he Who affirms without distinction, or denies, As well in one as in the other case; Because it happens that full often bends Current opinion in the false direction, And then the feelings bind the intellect.

(23) The Motion which acts upon Sensible objects enters from without, and so shakes, drives, rouses and thrusts its participants that they may neither rest nor preserve their identity- and all to the end that they may be caught into that restlessness, that flustering excitability which is but an image of Life.

We must avoid identifying Motion with the objects moved: by walking we do not mean the feet but the activity springing from a potentiality in the feet. Since the potentiality is invisible, we see of necessity only the active feet- that is to say, not feet simply, as would be the case if they were at rest, but something besides feet, something invisible but indirectly seen as an accompaniment by the fact that we observe the feet to be in ever-changing positions and no longer at rest. We infer alteration, on the other hand, from the qualitative change in the thing altered.

Where, then, does Motion reside, when there is one thing that moves and another that passes from an inherent potentiality to actuality? In the mover? How then will the moved, the patient, participate in the motion? In the moved? Then why does not Motion remain in it, once having come? It would seem that Motion must neither be separated from the active principle nor allowed to reside in it; it must proceed from agent to patient without so inhering in the latter as to be severed from the former, passing from one to the other like a breath of wind.

Now, when the potentiality of Motion consists in an ability to walk, it may be imagined as thrusting a man forward and causing him to be continually adopting a different position; when it lies in the capacity to heat, it heats; when the potentiality takes hold of Matter and builds up the organism, we have growth; and when another potentiality demolishes the structure, the result is decay, that which has the potentiality of demolition experiencing the decay. Where the birth-giving principle is active, we find birth; where it is impotent and the power to destroy prevails, destruction takes place- not the destruction of what already exists, but that which intervenes upon the road to existence.

Health comes about in the same way- when the power which produces health is active and predominant; sickness is the result of the opposite power working in the opposite direction.

Thus, Motion is conditioned, not only by the objects in which it occurs, but also by its origins and its course, and it is a distinctive mark of Motion to be always qualified and to take its quality from the moved.

(19) We have to ask ourselves whether there are not certain Acts which without the addition of a time-element will be thought of as imperfect and therefore classed with motions. Take for instance living and life. The life of a definite person implies a certain adequate period, just as his happiness is no merely instantaneous thing. Life and happiness are, in other words, of the nature ascribed to Motion: both therefore must be treated as motions, and Motion must be regarded as a unity, a single genus; besides the quantity and quality belonging to Substance we must take count of the motion manifested in it.

We may further find desirable to distinguish bodily from psychic motions or spontaneous motions from those induced by external forces, or the original from the derivative, the original motions being activities, whether externally related or independent, while the derivative will be Passions.

But surely the motions having external tendency are actually identical with those of external derivation: the cutting issuing from the cutter and that effected in the object are one, though to cut is not the same as to be cut.

Perhaps however the cutting issuing from the cutter and that which takes place in the cut object are in fact not one, but "to cut" implies that from a particular Act and motion there results a different motion in the object cut. Or perhaps the difference lies not in the fact of being cut, but in the distinct emotion supervening, pain for example: passivity has this connotation also.

But when there is no pain, what occurs? Nothing, surely, but the Act of the agent upon the patient object: this is all that is meant in such cases by Action. Action, thus, becomes twofold: there is that which occurs in the external, and that which does not. The duality of Action and Passion, suggested by the notion that Action takes place in an external, is abandoned.

Even writing, though taking place upon an external object, does not call for passivity, since no effect is produced, upon the tablet beyond the Act of the writer, nothing like pain; we may be told that the tablet has been inscribed, but this does not suffice for passivity.

Again, in the case of walking there is the earth trodden upon, but no one thinks of it as having experienced Passion . Treading on a living body, we think of suffering, because we reflect not upon the walking but upon the ensuing pain: otherwise we should think of suffering in the case of the tablet as well.

It is so in every case of Action: we cannot but think of it as knit into a unity with its opposite, Passion. Not that this later "Passion" is the opposite of Action in the way in which being burned is the opposite of burning: by Passion in this sense we mean the effect supervening upon the combined facts of the burning and the being burned, whether this effect be pain or some such process as withering.

Suppose this Passion to be treated as of itself producing pain: have we not still the duality of agent and patient, two results from the one Act? The Act may no longer include the will to cause pain; but it produces something distinct from itself, a pain-causing medium which enters into the object about to experience pain: this medium, while retaining its individuality, produces something yet different, the feeling of pain.

What does this suggest? Surely that the very medium- the act of hearing, for instance- is, even before it produces pain or without producing pain at all, a Passion of that into which it enters.

But hearing, with sensation in general, is in fact not a Passion. Yet to feel pain is to experience a Passion- a Passion however which is not opposed to Action.

(8) But, we need not record in memory all we see; mere incidental concomitants need not occupy the imagination; when things vividly present to intuition, or knowledge, happen to occur in concrete form, it is not necessary- unless for purposes of a strictly practical administration- to pass over that direct acquaintance, and fasten upon the partial sense-presentation, which is already known in the larger knowledge, that of the Universe.

I will take this point by point:

First: it is not essential that everything seen should be laid up in the mind; for when the object is of no importance, or of no personal concern, the sensitive faculty, stimulated by the differences in the objects present to vision, acts without accompaniment of the will, and is alone in entertaining the impression. The soul does not take into its deeper recesses such differences as do not meet any of its needs, or serve any of its purposes. Above all, when the soul's act is directed towards another order, it must utterly reject the memory of such things, things over and done with now, and not even taken into knowledge when they were present.

On the second point: circumstances, purely accidental, need not be present to the imaging faculty, and if they do so appear they need not be retained or even observed, and in fact the impression of any such circumstance does not entail awareness. Thus in local movement, if there is no particular importance to us in the fact that we pass through first this and then that portion of air, or that we proceed from some particular point, we do not take notice, or even know it as we walk. Similarly, if it were of no importance to us to accomplish any given journey, mere movement in the air being the main concern, we would not trouble to ask at what particular point of place we were, or what distance we had traversed; if we have to observe only the act of movement and not its duration, nothing to do which obliges us to think of time, the minutes are not recorded in our minds.

And finally, it is of common knowledge that, when the understanding is possessed of the entire act undertaken and has no reason to foresee any departure from the normal, it will no longer observe the detail; in a process unfailingly repeated without variation, attention to the unvarying detail is idleness.

So it is with the stars. They pass from point to point, but they move on their own affairs and not for the sake of traversing the space they actually cover; the vision of the things that appear on the way, the journey by, nothing of this is their concern: their passing this or that is of accident not of essence, and their intention is to greater objects: moreover each of them journeys, unchangeably, the same unchanging way; and again, there is no question to them of the time they spend in any given section of the journey, even supposing time division to be possible in the case. All this granted, nothing makes it necessary that they should have any memory of places or times traversed. Besides this life of the ensouled stars is one identical thing so that their very spatial movement is pivoted upon identity and resolves itself into a movement not spatial but vital, the movement of a single living being whose act is directed to itself, a being which to anything outside is at rest, but is in movement by dint of the inner life it possesses, the eternal life. Or we may take the comparison of the movement of the heavenly bodies to a choral dance; if we think of it as a dance which comes to rest at some given period, the entire dance, accomplished from beginning to end, will be perfect while at each partial stage it was imperfect: but if the dance is a thing of eternity, it is in eternal perfection. And if it is in eternal perfection, it has no points of time and place at which it will achieve perfection; it will, therefore, have no concern about attaining to any such points: it will, therefore, make no measurements of time or place; it will have, therefore, no memory of time and place.

If the stars live a blessed life in their vision of the life inherent in their souls, and if, by force of their souls' tendency to become one, and by the light they cast from themselves upon the entire heavens, they are like the strings of a lyre which, being struck in tune, sing a melody in some natural scale... if this is the way the heavens, as one, are moved, and the component parts in their relation to the whole- the sidereal system moving as one, and each part in its own way, to the same purpose, though each, too, hold its own place- then our doctrine is all the more surely established; the life of the heavenly bodies is the more clearly an unbroken unity.

(2) And wit well that all those that set them to be ghostly workers, and specially in the work of this book, that although they read “lift up” or “go in,” although all that the work of this book be called a stirring, nevertheless yet them behoveth to have a full busy beholding, that this stirring stretch neither up bodily, nor in bodily, nor yet that it be any such stirring as is from one place to another. And although that it be sometime called a rest, nevertheless yet they shall not think that it is any such rest as is any abiding in a place without removing therefrom. For the perfection of this work is so pure and so ghostly in itself, that an it be well and truly conceived, it shall be seen far removed from any stirring and from any place.

(7) Hence, too, the errant spheres, being moved contrarily to the inerrant one, are moved by one another by mutual contrariety, [and also] by the spable one through contrariety itself. And this can otherwise not be. The Bears up there , which neither set nor rise, think'st thou they rest or move? A: They move, Thrice-greatest one. H: And what their motion, my Asclepius? A: Motion that turns for ever round the same. H: But revolution - motion around same - is fixed by rest. For "round-the-same" doth stop "beyond-same". "Beyond-same" then, being stopped, if it be steadied in "round-same" - the contrary stands firm, being rendered ever stable by its contrariety.

(4) The heavens your movements do initiate, I say not all; but granting that I say it, Light has been given you for good and evil, And free volition; which, if some fatigue In the first battles with the heavens it suffers, Afterwards conquers all, if well 'tis nurtured. To greater force and to a better nature, Though free, ye subject are, and that creates The mind in you the heavens have not in charge. Hence, if the present world doth go astray, In you the cause is, be it sought in you; And I therein will now be thy true spy. Forth from the hand of Him, who fondles it Before it is, like to a little girl Weeping and laughing in her childish sport, Issues the simple soul, that nothing knows, Save that, proceeding from a joyous Maker, Gladly it turns to that which gives it pleasure. Of trivial good at first it tastes the savour; Is cheated by it, and runs after it, If guide or rein turn not aside its love. Hence it behoved laws for a rein to place, Behoved a king to have, who at the least Of the true city should discern the tower.

(22) Passivity, thus, implies the existence within of a motion functioning somehow or other in the direction of alteration. Action too implies motion within, whether the motion be aimless or whether it be driven by the impulse comported by the term "Action" to find its goal in an external object. There is Motion in both Action and Passion, but the differentia distinguishing Action from Passion keeps Action impassive, while Passion is recognised by the fact that a new state replaces the old, though nothing is added to the essential character of the patient; whenever Being is produced, the patient remains distinct.

Thus, what is Action in one relation may be Passion in another. One same motion will be Action from the point of view of A, Passion from that of B; for the two are so disposed that they might well be consigned to the category of Relation- at any rate in the cases where the Action entails a corresponding Passion: neither correlative is found in isolation; each involves both Action and Passion, though A acts as mover and B is moved: each then involves two categories.

Again, A gives motion to B, B receives it, so that we have a giving and a receiving- in a word, a relation.

But a recipient must possess what it has received. A thing is admitted to possess its natural colour: why not its motion also? Besides, independent motions such as walking and thought do, in fact, involve the possession of the powers respectively to walk and to think.

We are reminded to enquire whether thought in the form of providence constitutes Action; to be subject to providence is apparently Passion, for such thought is directed to an external, the object of the providential arrangement. But it may well be that neither is the exercise of providence an action, even though the thought is concerned with an external, nor subjection to it a Passion. Thought itself need not be an action, for it does not go outward towards its object but remains self-gathered. It is not always an activity; all Acts need not be definable as activities, for they need not produce an effect; activity belongs to Act only accidentally.

Does it follow that if a man as he walks produces footprints, he cannot be considered to have performed an action? Certainly as a result of his existing something distinct from himself has come into being. Yet perhaps we should regard both action and Act as merely accidental, because he did not aim at this result: it would be as we speak of Action even in things inanimate- "fire heats," "the drug worked."

So much for Action and Passion.

(6) And yet some one might say the seal is not whole and the same in the images throughout. But of this the seal is not the cause, for it imparts itself all and the same to each; but the difference of the recipients makes the figures dissimilar, since the archetype is one and complete and the same. For instance, if the wax were soft and impressionable, and smooth and unstamped, and neither unimpressionable and hard, nor running and dissolving, it will have the figure clear and sharp and fixed. But if it should lack any of the aforesaid aptitudes, this will be the cause of the non-participative and un-figured and indistinct, and whatever else arises from inaptitude for reception. Further, there is a distinction from the goodly work of God towards us, in that the superessential Word was invested with being amongst us--from us--wholly and truly, and did and suffered whatever things are choice and pre-eminent in His human work of God. For in these, the Father and the Spirit in no respect communicated, except perhaps, one might say, as regards the benign and philanthropic purpose, and as regards all the pre-eminent and unutterable work of God which the unchangeable, qua God and Word of God, did when He had been born amongst us. Thus we, too, strive to unite and distinguish in the Word the things Divine, as the things Divine themselves, are united and distinguished.