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There is in us great diversity of faculties and
habits, which produce also a great variety of
actions, and those actions an incomparable multitude
of works. Thus differ the faculties of hearing,
seeing, tasting, touching, moving, feeding,
understanding, willing; and the habits of speaking,
walking, playing, singing, sewing, leaping swimming:
as also the actions and works which issue from these
faculties and habits are greatly different.
But it is not the same in God; for in him there is
one only most simple infinite perfection, and in that
perfection one only most sole and most pure act: yea
to speak more holily and sagely, God is one unique
and most uniquely sovereign perfection, and this
perfection is one sole most purely simple and most
simply pure acts which being no other thing than the
proper divine essence, is consequently ever permanent
and eternal.
Nevertheless poor creatures that we are, we talk
of God's actions as though daily done in great number
and variety, though we know the contrary. But our
weakness, Theotimus, forces us to this; for our
speech can but follow our understanding, and our
understanding the customary order of things with us.
Now, as in natural things there is hardly any
diversity of works without diversity of actions, when
we behold so many different works, such great variety
of productions and the innumerable multitude of the
effects of the divine might, it seems to us at first
that this diversity is caused by as many acts as we
see different effects, and we speak of them in the
same way, in order to speak more at our ease,
according to our ordinary practice and our customary
way of understanding things. And indeed we do not in
this violate truth, for though in God there is no
multitude of actions, but one sole act which is the
divinity itself, yet this act is so perfect that it
comprehends by excellence the force and virtue of all
the acts which would seem requisite to the production
of all the different effects we see.
God spoke but one word, and in virtue of that in a
moment were made the sun, moon and that innumerable
multitude of stars, with their differences in
brightness, motion and influence. He spoke and they
were made.(1) A single word of God's filled the air
with birds, and the sea with fishes, made spring from
the earth all the plants and all the beasts we see.
For although the sacred historian, accommodating
himself to our fashion of understanding, recounts
that God often repeated that omnipotent word: Let
there be: according to the days of the world's
creation, nevertheless, properly speaking, this word
was singularly one; so that David terms it a
breathing or spirit of the divine mouth;(2) that is,
one single act of his infinite will, which so
powerfully spreads its virtue over the variety of
created things, that it makes us conceive this act as
if it were multiplied and diversified into as many
differences as there are in these effects, though in
reality it is most simply and singularly one. Thus S.
Chrysostom remarks that what Moses said in many words
describing the creation of the world, the glorious S.
John expressed in a single word, saying that by the
word, that is by that eternal word who is the Son of
God, all things were made.(3)
This word then, Theotimus, whilst most simple and
most single, produces all the distinction of things;
being invariable produces all fit changes, and, in
fine, being permanent in his eternity gives
succession, vicissitude, order, rank and season to
all things.
Let us imagine, I pray you, on the one hand, a
painter making a picture of Our Saviour's birth (and
I write this in the days dedicated to this holy
mystery). Doubtless he will give a thousand and a
thousand touches with his brush, and will take, not
only days, but weeks and months, to perfect this
picture, according to the variety of persons and
other things he wants to represent in it. But on the
other hand, let us look at a printer of pictures, who
having spread his sheet upon the plate which has the
same mystery of the Nativity cut in it, gives but
a single stroke of the press: in this one stroke,
Theotimus, he will do all his work, and instantly he
will draw off a picture representing in a fine
engraving all that has been imagined, as sacred
history records it.
Now though with one movement he performed the
work, yet it contains a great number of personages,
and other different things, each one well
distinguished in its order, rank, place, distance and
proportion: so that one not acquainted with the
secret would be astonished to see proceed from one
act so great a variety of effects.
In the same way, Theotimus, nature as a painter
multiplies and diversifies her acts according as the
works she has in hand are various, and it takes her a
great time to finish great effects, but God, like the
printer, has given being to all the diversity of
creatures which have been, are, or shall be, by one
only stroke of his omnipotent will. He draws from his
idea as from a well cut plate, this admirable
difference of persons and of things, which succeed
one another in seasons, in ages, and in times, each
one in its order, as they were to be.
For this sovereign unity of the divine act is
opposed to confusion and disorder, and not to
distinction and variety; these on the contrary it
purposely uses, to make beauty from them, by reducing
all differences and diversities to proportion,
proportion to order, and order to the unity of the
world, which comprises all things created, visible
and invisible. All these together are called the
universe, perhaps because all their diversity is
reduced to unity as though one said "unidiverse,"
that is, one and diverse, one with diversity and
diverse with unity.
To sum up, the sovereign divine unity diversifies
all, and his permanent eternity gives change to all
things, because the perfection of this unity being
above all difference and variety, it has wherewith to
furnish all the diversities of created perfections
with their beings, and contains a virtue to produce
them; in sign of which the Scripture having told us
that God in the beginning said: Let there be lights
made in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day
and the night, and let them be for signs, and for
seasons and for days and years,(4) - we see even to
this day a perpetual revolution and succession of
times and seasons which shall continue till the end
of the world. So we learn that as he spoke and they
were made, so the single eternal will of his divine
Majesty extends its force from age to age, yea to
ages of ages, to all that has been, is, or shall be
eternally; and nothing at all has existence save by
this sole most singular, most simple, and most
eternal divine act, to which be honour and glory.
Amen. |