{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/102/1020364.htm","path":"chr/ecf/102/1020364.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/102/1020364.htm","text":"Chapter 25.\u2014That God Alone is the Creator of Every Kind of Creature, Whatever Its Nature or Form.\nFor whereas there is one form which is given from without to every bodily substance,\u2014such as the form which is constructed by potters and smiths, and that class of artists who paint and fashion forms like the body of animals,\u2014but another and internal form which is not itself constructed, but, as the efficient cause, produces not only the natural bodily forms, but even the life itself of the living creatures, and which proceeds from the secret and hidden choice of an intelligent and living nature,\u2014let that first-mentioned form be attributed to every artificer, but this latter to one only, God, the Creator and Originator who made the world itself and the angels, without the help of world or angels. For the same divine and, so to speak, creative energy, which cannot be made, but makes, and which gave to the earth and sky their roundness,\u2014this same divine, effective, and creative energy gave their roundness to the eye and to the apple; and the other natural objects which we anywhere see, received also their form, not from without, but from the secret and profound might of the Creator, who said, \u201cDo not I fill heaven and earth?\u201d 568 and whose wisdom it is that \u201creacheth from one end to another mightily; and sweetly doth she order all things.\u201d 569 Wherefore I know not what kind of aid the angels, themselves created first, afforded to the Creator in making other things. I cannot ascribe to them what perhaps they cannot do, neither ought I to deny them such faculty as they have. But, by their leave, I attribute the creating and originating work which gave being to all natures to God, to whom they themselves thankfully ascribe their existence. We do not call gardeners the creators of their fruits, for we read, \u201cNeither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase.\u201d 570 Nay, not even the earth itself do we call a creator, though she seems to be the prolific mother of all things which she aids in germinating and bursting forth from the seed, and which she keeps rooted in her own breast; for we likewise read, \u201cGod giveth it a body, as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed his own body.\u201d 571 We ought not even to call a woman the creatress of her own offspring; for He rather is its creator who said to His servant, \u201cBefore I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee.\u201d 572 And although the various mental emotions of a pregnant woman do produce in p. 243 the fruit of her womb similar qualities,\u2014as Jacob with his peeled wands caused piebald sheep to be produced,\u2014yet the mother as little creates her offspring as she created herself. Whatever bodily or seminal causes, then, may be used for the production of things, either by the cooperation of angels, men, or the lower animals, or by sexual generation; and whatever power the desires and mental emotions of the mother have to produce in the tender and plastic f\u0153tus corresponding lineaments and colors; yet the natures themselves, which are thus variously affected, are the production of none but the most high God. It is His occult power which pervades all things, and is present in all without being contaminated, which gives being to all that is, and modifies and limits its existence; so that without Him it would not be thus, or thus, nor would have any being at all. 573 If, then, in regard to that outward form which the workman\u2019s hand imposes on his work, we do not say that Rome and Alexandria were built by masons and architects, but by the kings by whose will, plan, and resources they were built, so that the one has Romulus, the other Alexander, for its founder; with how much greater reason ought we to say that God alone is the Author of all natures, since He neither uses for His work any material which was not made by Him, nor any workmen who were not also made by Him, and since, if He were, so to speak, to withdraw from created things His creative power, they would straightway relapse into the nothingness in which they were before they were created? \u201cBefore,\u201d I mean, in respect of eternity, not of time. For what other creator could there be of time, than He who created those things whose movements make time? 574","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II: City of God: Cha...","type":"page"}