SACRED THEMES

but above nature, indeed against nature, by using the ministry of angels. Scripture is industrious in demonstrating this, so that we may learn that it is beyond the grasp of reason when He strikes down the human race not through enemies, through famine, or through beasts, but by a hidden hand. A deacon may indeed say as he likes that other kinds of causes are organic according to nature: here, however, nature has nothing to add from its own store, but He accomplishes everything who wishes to demonstrate His insuperable power with His miraculous hand, to crush the rigor of the world in such immense obstinacy of sinning. I say He can do this either through the ministry of nature or without it. But in this place, He shows His strength when He strips of this life those whom He has proscribed by His secret counsel, whether by His own hidden thunderbolt or by one emitted through angels.

Let us accommodate some examples from Scripture here so that the truth may shine more brightly. It is held in Exodus 9 that God killed all the cattle in Egypt by a pestilence in one night, except for the cattle of the children of Israel. Here, what shall we find regarding the corruption of the air? Within so few hours such a great slaughter of cattle is brought about in all of Egypt, and the cattle of the Israelites are not even touched. It is not enough to have said once, as they are accustomed to say, that the air was pestilential, that the angel of the Lord stirred up natural causes; if they are so skilled in nature, let them show by what order of nature such a miraculous slaughter could have been done so quickly. Meanwhile, it is by no means hidden from me that they say natural causes are arranged and ruled by God, and that no one is touched by them unless God has directed His fate toward that person. But thus they answer nothing to the question, for they recoil from their own dogma if they answer thus, and they weaken their own ἀπόδειξιν demonstration/proof. We ask again, if this plague invaded the cattle of the Egyptians by a natural path, and if that corruption of the air was the path, why did only the cattle die, when humans also breathed the same air? How could such a great slaughter be brought about in one night? Why did the cattle of the Israelites remain healthy, attracting the same putrid air with their breath? If they can answer nothing other than that those bodies were infected with rot which God had foreseen and destined for death, they speak correctly indeed, and they do not dissent from us in these words at all. But to what purpose is such a great clamor and attestation of divine truth that the air is the cause, when they can answer nothing to the question from it, unless they repeat to the point of nausea the principle which they ought to have proven, but cannot? They flee into their asylum, in which we were before them, and we confess that God strikes whom He wills: but what do we have to do with the air now? What need is there to blame it, and to drive men into flight, and to bring forth such grave errors in piety? What need is there that they always object: the air, the air? Let them say the hand of the Lord did it, the angel of the Lord did it, and when God does this, He is not bound to secondary causes, nor to the air itself, and let them acknowledge that He can punish against the order of nature by Himself or by the ministry of angels. This very thing also fights against the order of nature, which they imagine that by contagion...