CHAPTER IV.. If, However, the Mundane As Well As the Supermundane Gods Are

If, however, the mundane as well as the supermundane Gods are incorporeal, it may be asked how the visible celestial orbs can be Gods? To this we reply, that the celestial Gods are not comprehended by bodies, but that they contain bodies in their divine lives and energies; that they are not converted to body, but that the body which is suspended from their essence is converted to a divine cause; and that body is no impediment to their intellectual and incorporeal perfection, and is not the cause of any molestation to them by its intervention. Hence it does not require an abundant care and attention, but spontaneously and after a certain manner self-motively follows the divinities with which it is connected, not being in want of any manuduction, but by its elevation to the one of the Gods, is also itself uniformly raised by itself.

Indeed, a celestial body is allied in the most eminent degree to the incorporeal essence of the Gods. For as the latter is characterized by unity, so the former is simple. As that is impartible, this is indivisible. And as that is immutable, this after a similar manner is unchanged in quality. If also it is admitted that the energies of the Gods are uniform, this body likewise has one circulation. Besides this, it imitates the sameness of the Gods, by its perpetual and invariable motion according to, and towards the same things, conformably to one reason and order. It likewise imitates the divine life of the Gods by the life which is connascent with the ethereal bodies. Hence, neither is a celestial body so constituted as if composed of contrary and different natures, as is the case with our bodies; nor does the soul of the celestial Gods so coalesce with the body suspended from it, as to form one animal from the two; but the animals of these divinities are perfectly similar and united to the Gods from whom they depend; and are throughout whole, uniform, and free from all composition. For more excellent natures always subsisting with invariable sameness in themselves, but inferior being suspended from the dominion of superior beings, yet so as never to draw down this dominion to themselves, wholes likewise being collected into one order and one perfection, and after a certain manner all things in the celestial Gods being incorporeal and throughout divine, because the divine form universally predominates in them,--this being the case, one total essence in the nature of these divinities every where prevails. And thus the visible celestial orbs are all of them Gods, and are after a certain manner incorporeal.

If, therefore, these divinities as being incorporeal, intellectual, and united, ride as it were in the celestial spheres, they have their origin in the intelligible world, and there intellectually perceiving the divine forms of themselves, they govern the whole of heaven according to one infinite energy. And if being present to the heavens in a separate manner, they lead its perpetual circulations by their will alone, they are themselves unmingled with a sensible nature, and are consubsistent with the intelligible Gods. Indeed, the celestial orbs, those visible statues as it were of the Gods, are generated from, and subsist about, the intelligible Gods, and being thus generated are established in them, and have the image elevated to them which from them also receives its perfection. The divine intellectual forms also which are present to the visible bodies of the Gods, have a subsistence prior to them in a separate manner; but the unmingled and supercelestial intelligible paradigms of them, abide in themselves, containing all things simultaneously in one, according to the eternal transcendency of their nature.

Hence there is one common indivisible bond of them according to intellectual energies. There is also the same bond between them according to the common participations of forms, since there is nothing to intercept them, nor any intervening medium. Indeed, an immaterial and incorporeal essence, being neither separated by places nor subjects, nor defined by any divisible circumscriptions of parts, immediately coalesces in sameness; and the elevation of wholes to the one, and the universal dominion of the one, collects the communion of the mundane Gods with the divinities that presubsist in the intelligible world.

Farther still, the intellectual conversion of secondary to first natures, and the gift of the same essence and power from the primary to the secondary Gods connects their congress into an indissoluble one. In things of different essences indeed, such as soul and body, and in things of different species, such as material forms, and those natures which in any other way are separated from each other, the connascent union is adventitious, being derived from supernal causes, and lost in certain definite periods of time. But the higher we ascend, to the sameness of first causes, both according to form and according to essence, and the more we raise ourselves from parts to wholes, by so much the more shall we discover and survey that union which is eternal, precedaneous and more principal, and which contains about and in itself difference and multitude.

Since, however, the order of all the Gods consists in union, and the first and second genera of them, and the multitude which germinates about them coexist in unity; since also every thing in them is characterized by the one; hence the beginning, middle, and end of their essence consubsists according to the one. It is not proper, therefore, to enquire whence unity extends to all things in them; for their very being, whatever it may be, consists in the one. And secondary genera indeed remain with invariable sameness in the one of the first genera. But the latter impart from themselves union to the former; while all of them possess in each other the communion of an indissoluble connexion.

From this cause, therefore, the perfectly incorporeal Gods, are united to the sensible Gods who are connected with bodies. For the visible Gods themselves are external to bodies, and on this account are in the intelligible world. And the intelligible Gods on account of their infinite union comprehend in themselves the apparent divinities; while in the mean time both these are established according to a common union and one energy. In a similar manner, this likewise is the illustrious prerogative of a deific cause and orderly distribution, that the same union of all things pervades from on high as far as to the end of the divine order. And thus much concerning the contact of the sensible with the intelligible Gods.