me also at Rome’ (Acts xxiii. 11); who, moreover, promised and said, ‘There shall not so much as one soul perish, neither shall a hair fall from your heads’ (Acts xxvii. 22, 34); yet, the mariners devising how they might find a way to escape, the same Paul says to the centurion and to the soldiers, ‘Unless these remain in the ship, ye can not be safe’ (Acts xxvii. 31). For God, who has appointed every thing his end, he also has ordained the beginning and the means by which we must attain unto the end. The heathens ascribe things to blind fortune and uncertain chance; but St. James would not have us say, ‘To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city, and there buy and sell;’ but he adds, ‘For that which ye should say, If the Lord will, and if we live, we will do this or that’ (James iv. 13, 15). And Augustine says, ‘All those things which seem to vain men to be done advisedly in the world, they do but accomplish his word because they are not done by his commandment.’ And, in his exposition of the 148th Psalm, ‘It seemed to be done by chance that Saul, seeking his father’s asses, should light on the prophet Samuel;’ but the Lord had before said to the prophet, ‘To-morrow I will send unto thee a man of the tribe of Benjamin,’ etc. (1 Sam. ix. 16).
CHAPTER VII.—OF THE CREATION OF ALL THINGS; OF ANGELS, THE DEVIL, AND MAN.
This good and almighty God created all things, both visible and invisible, by his eternal Word, and preserves the same also by his eternal Spirit: as David witnesses, saying, ‘By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth’ (Psa. xxxiii. 6); and, as the Scripture says, ‘All things that the Lord created were very good’ (Gen. i. 31), and made for the use and profit of man.
Now, we say, that all those things do proceed from one beginning: and therefore we detest the Manichees and the Marcionites, who did wickedly imagine two substances and natures, the one of good, the other of evil; and also two beginnings and two gods, one contrary to the other—a good and an evil.
Among all the creatures, the angel and men are most excellent. Touching angels, the Holy Scripture says, ‘Who maketh his angels spirits, his ministers a flaming fire’ (Psa. civ. 4); also, ‘Are they not
