Yet, though the fact that the angels are the work of God is not omitted here, it is indeed not explicitly mentioned;^[1] but elsewhere Holy Scripture asserts it in the clearest manner. For in the Hymn of the Three Children in the Furnace it was said, O all ye works of the Lord bless ye the Lord;^[2] and among these works mentioned afterwards in detail, the angels are named. And in the psalm it is said, Praise ye the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights. Praise ye him, all his angels; praise ye him, all his hosts. Praise ye him, sun and moon; praise him, all ye stars of light. Praise him, ye heaven of heavens; and ye waters that be above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord; for he commanded, and they were created.^[3]

However, what God actually is, not only have the prophets not seen, but not even angels or archangels. If you ask them, you will not hear them reply anything about his substance, but only singing, Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth among people of good will.^[1] If you desire to learn something even from the cherubim or seraphim, you will hear the mystical melody of his holiness and that heaven and earth are full of his glory.^[2] If you inquire of the higher powers, you will discover nothing else than that their one work is to praise God, for, Praise him, all his powers, the psalmist said.

Sing his praises heights of heaven,

Let the mighty hosts of heaven sing in

Let no tongue of humanity be silent, HYMNS

Now, how that celestial and most blessed company^[1] is constituted, how the various ranks differ one from the other, so that, while all the citizens share the general name of angel (as we read in the epistle to the Hebrews: Now to which of the angels has he ever said: ‘Sit at my right hand’?,^[2] which shows that all are together called angels), still, there are archangels among them; and whether it is these same archangels who are called hosts, and the passage, Praise him, all you his angels: praise him, all you his hosts is to mean Praise him, all you his angels: praise him, all you his archangels; and what distinction there is among the four names under which the apostle seems to embrace the whole celestial company: Whether thrones, or dominations, or principalities or powers—to these questions let those reply who can, if, that is, they can prove their answers true. I acknowledge my own ignorance of these things. I am not even certain on this point, whether the sun and the moon and the other stars belong to this same company, though some believe these to be merely luminous bodies, without either sensation or intelligence.

Wherefore, though light and darkness are to be taken in their literal signification in these passages of Genesis in which it is said, God said, Let there be light, and there was light, and God divided the light from the darkness, yet, for our part, we understand these two societies of angels,—the one enjoying God, the other swelling with pride; the one to whom it is said, Praise ye him, all his angels, the other whose prince says, All these things will I give Thee if Thou wilt fall down and worship me;^[1] the one blazing with the holy love of God, the other reeking with the unclean lust of self-advancement. And since, as it is written, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble,^[2]we may say, the one dwelling in the heaven of heavens, the other cast thence, and raging through the lower regions of the air; the one tranquil in the brightness of piety, the other tempest-tossed with beclouding desires; the one, at God’s pleasure, tenderly succoring, justly avenging,—the other, set on by its own pride, boiling with the lust of subduing and hurting; the one the minister of God’s goodness to the utmost of their good pleasure, the other held in by God’s power from doing the harm it would; the former laughing at the latter when it does good unwillingly by its persecutions, the latter envying the former when it gathers in its pilgrims.

The Persians therefore may call the whole circle of heaven Jupiter; but we maintain that the heaven is neither Jupiter nor God, as we indeed know that certain beings of a class inferior to God have ascended above the heavens and all visible nature: and in this sense we understand the words, Praise God, you heaven of heavens, and you waters that are above the heavens; let them praise the name of the Lord.^[1]

This is not the time to prove that the Creator did not become the servant of the Word and make the world and to show that the Word became the servant of the creator and prepared the world. For according to the prophet David, God spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.^[1] For the uncreated God commanded the firstborn of all creation,^[2] and they were created. This includes not only the cosmos and the things in it, but also all that remains, whether thrones, or dominations, or principalities or powers; for all things have been created through him and for him, and he is before all things.^[3]

And now that we have thus distinguished the various modes of generation, it will be time to observe how the benevolent provision of the Holy Spirit, in delivering to us the divine mysteries, imparts that instruction that transcends reason by such methods as we can receive. For the inspired teaching adopts, in order to set forth the unspeakable power of God, all the forms of generation that human intelligence recognizes, yet without including the bodily senses attaching to the words. For when it speaks of the creative power, it gives to such an energy the name of generation, because its expression must stoop to our level of understanding. It does not, however, convey thereby all that we include in creative generation, as time, place, the furnishing of matter, the fitness of instruments, the design in the things that come into being. It leaves these and asserts of God in lofty and magnificent language the creation of all existent things, when it says, He spoke the word, and they were made, He commanded, and they were created. Again when it interprets to us the unspeakable and transcendent existence of the Only-Begotten from the Father, as the poverty of human intellect is incapable of receiving doctrines that surpass all power of speech and thought, there too it borrows our language and terms him Son, a name that our usage assigns to those who are born of matter and nature.

The causes of the beginnings of all things are seeds. And the apostle of the Gentiles has said that the human body is a seed.^[1] And so in succession after sowing there is the substance that is needed for the resurrection. But even if there were no substance and no cause, who could think it difficult for God to create people anew whence he will and as he wills. Who commanded the world to come into being out of no matter and no substance? Look at the heaven, behold the earth. Whence are the fires of the stars? Whence the orb and rays of the sun? Whence the globe of the moon? Whence the mountain heights, the hard rocks, the woody groves? Whence are the air diffused around, and the waters, whether enclosed or poured abroad? But if God made all these things out of nothing (for he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created), why should we wonder that which has been should be brought to life again, since we see produced that which had not been?

God has no need of human assistance. God commanded the heavens to come into existence, and it was done. He decided to create the earth, and it was created.^[1] Who carried the stones on his shoulders? Who paid the cost? Who helped him with the work? These things were done in a moment. Do you want to know how quickly? He spoke, and they were made. If the material universe sprang into being at a word, why should not the dead also rise again at a word?

For he spoke, and they were made. For God to have commanded is to have created; the command is creation. He spoke, and they were made, according to that which is written in Genesis: God said, and God created; that is, God the Father gave the command; God the Son created. Someone may say, He is the greater who gives the command, and he is the less to whom it is given. That is what the Arians,^[1] the Eunomians^[2] and the Macedonians^[3] maintain. I answer you, O heretics, in accordance with your own reasoning. You say, the Father is greater because he gives the command, and the Son is less because he is commanded by the Father. If this is in accord with human understanding, answer me: Is it greater to command or to create? I say, Let a house be made, and another builds the house. There is nothing great in uttering the words; it is difficult to build the house. He is greater, therefore, who creates than he who gives the command. But that is impious irreverence, for the Son is not greater than the Father. It is just as blasphemous to believe this of the Son against the Father as it is to believe it of the Father against the Son. For he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created. One nature both commands and creates; God gives the order, God fulfills it. A painter bids a painter paint, and the painter paints what he has bid be painted.

Did it [Gen 1:1] say, In the beginning, because it was made first? Or was it impossible for heaven and earth to have been made first among the creatures, if the angels and all the intellectual powers were made first? We must believe that the angels are the creation of God and were made by him. For the prophet included the angels in Psalm 148, when he said, He commanded, and they were made; he gave the order, and they were created. But if the angels were made first, we can ask whether they were made in time or before all time or at the start of time. If [they were made] in time, there already was time before the angels were made, and since time itself is also a creature, it turns out that we have to admit that something was made before the angels. But if we say that they were made at the start of time, so that time began with them, we have to say that it is false that time began with heaven and earth, as some claim.^[1]

After all, what is beyond hoping for from God, to whom nothing is difficult? He does great things just as he does small ones; he raises the dead, just as he creates the living. If a painter can make a mouse with the same art as he makes an elephant—different subjects, one and the same art—how much more God, who spoke and they were made, commanded and they were created? What can be difficult for him to make who makes with a word? He created the angels above the heavens with ease, with equal ease the luminaries in the heavens, with equal ease the fishes in the sea, with equal ease the trees and animals on the earth, great things with the same ease as small. It was supremely easy for him to make everything out of nothing—is it astonishing that he gave some old people a son?^[1]

All things that God did not beget of himself but made through his Word, he made not out of things that already existed but out of what did not exist at all, that is, out of nothing. Thus the apostle says, Who calls those things that are not as though they were.^[1] But it is written more clearly in the book of the Maccabees. I beseech you, my child, lift your eyes to the heaven and the earth and all that are therein. See and know that God did not make those things out of anything that already existed.^[2] There is also what is written in the Psalms. He spoke, and they were made. Clearly he did not beget these things of himself but made them by his Word and command. What he did not beget he made of nothing; for there was nothing else out of which he might have made them. Of him the apostle says most openly, Since of him and through him and in him are all things.^[3]

And, even if the waters above the heavens are sometimes invited to praise the common Master of the universe, yet we do not for this reason consider them to be an intellectual nature. The heavens are not endowed with life because they show forth the glory of God,^[1] nor is the firmament a perceptive being because it declares the work of his hands. And, if someone says that the heavens are speculative powers, and the firmament, active powers productive of the good, we accept the expression as neatly said, but we will not concede that it is altogether true. For, in that case, dew, hoarfrost, cold and heat, since they were ordered by Daniel^[2] to praise in hymns the Creator of the universe, will be intelligent and invisible natures. The meaning in these words, however, accepted by speculative minds, is a fulfillment of the praise of the Creator. Not only the water that is above the heavens, as if holding the first place in honor because of the preeminence added to it from its excellence, fulfills the praise of God, but, Praise him, the psalmist says, from the earth, you dragons and all you deeps. So that even the deep, which those who speak allegories relegated to the inferior portion, was not itself judged deserving of rejection by the psalmist, since it was admitted to the general chorus of creation; but even it harmoniously sings a hymn of praise to the Creator through the language assigned to it.

There follows the seventh commandment: You shall not steal,^[1] and the seventh plague: hail on the crops. What you steal from the commandment, you lose from your account in heaven. No one makes an unjust gain without suffering a just loss. For example, someone steals and acquires a suit, but by the judgment of heaven he forfeits trust. Where there is gain, there is loss; visible gain, invisible loss; gain from his own blindness, loss from the Lord’s cloud. You see, dearly beloved, there is nothing that escapes providence. Or do you really think that what people suffer, they suffer while God is asleep? We see these things happening all the time and all around; clouds gather, rain comes down in buckets, hail is hurled down, the earth shaken by thunder, scared out of its wits by lightning. Everywhere these things are thought to happen as though they had nothing to do with divine providence. Against such ideas that psalm is on its guard: Praise the Lord from the earth—his praises had already been told from the heavens—dragons and all deeps, fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy winds, which all carry out his word. So those who for their own evil desire steal outwardly are hailed on inwardly by the judgment of God.

For you [God] evil does not exist, and not only for you but for the whole of your creation as well, because there is nothing outside it that could invade it and break down the order that you have imposed on it. Yet in the separate parts of your creation there are some things that we think of as evil because they are at variance with other things. But there are other things again with which they are in accord, and then they are good. In themselves, too, they are good. And all these things that are at variance with one another are in accord with the lower part of creation that we call the earth. The sky, which is cloudy and windy, suits the earth to which it belongs. So it would be wrong for me to wish that these earthly things did not exist, for even if I saw nothing but them, I might wish for something better, but still I ought to praise you for them alone. For all things give praise to the Lord on earth, monsters of the sea and all its depths; fire and hail, snow and mist, and the storm-wind that executes his decree; all you mountains and hills, all you fruit trees and cedars; all you wild beasts and cattle, creeping things and birds that fly in air; all you kings and peoples of the world, all you that are princes and judges on earth; young men and maids, old men and boys together; let them all give praise to the Lord’s name. The heavens, too, ring with your praises, O God, for you are the God of us all. Give praise to the Lord in heaven; praise him, all that dwells on high. Praise him, all you angels of his, praise him, all his armies. Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, every star that shines. Praise him, you highest heavens, you waters beyond the heavens. Let all these praise the Lord.^[1] And since this is so, I no longer wished for a better world, because I was thinking of the whole of creation, and in the light of this clearer discernment I had come to see that though the higher things are better than the lower, the sum of all creation is better than the higher things alone.

I am, therefore, leaving out those things that are done corporeally in a quite ordinary period of time, such as the rising and the setting of the stars, the births and the deaths of animals, the innumerable diversities of seeds and buds, the mists and the clouds, the snows and the rain, the lightnings and the thunders, the thunderbolts and the hails, the winds and the fires, the cold and the heat, and all such things. Nor am I taking into account the things that rarely happen in the same order, such as the eclipses of the heavenly bodies, the appearances of unusual stars, monsters, earthquakes, and similar things. I am considering none of these things, for their first and highest cause is nothing else than the will of God. Hence, when certain things of this kind are also mentioned in the psalm, such as fire, hail, snow, mists, it immediately adds that fulfill his words, lest anyone might believe that they were done by chance or by corporeal causes only, or even by spiritual causes that exist outside the will of God.