SACRED THEMES

Scripture opens the abysses of divine power. It is strange how much this dissonates in them if they hear from philosophers that the air was infected, and conversely from the Word that the enemies of the Church itself were struck by the angel of God. For here the insuperable divine power is understood, and the immensity of the judgments of God, by which the reprobate Assyrians are horribly struck and laid low, and if God wills, eradicated entirely. It is very pious to understand this and to lift the mind to it; it is a slow and idle thing for inflaming piety, in such great examples of miracles, if we look only to the order of nature, as if whatever power God wished to show for punishing, He worked only through causes placed in nature.

Nor is it taught obscurely by these examples that if God executes His judgment through angels, the number is designated to them, and the names of those to be struck are given, just as it is said about Death sitting on the pale horse in Apocalypse 6, that he must strike the third part of the earth. Therefore, those whom He has on the list, He strikes. What need is there for us to dream much about the air? Shall we deny that He can invade either men or cattle while the air remains most wholesome, and if He has it in His commands, afflict them with a most terrible ulcer? And will the third part not fall, or can the angel not strike, unless nature provides her means? Or do two parts of the earth remain unharmed for that reason, because they have nature propitious to them and healthy air? If the air is always the cause, as it ought to be beyond all controversy in their opinion, that the pestilence arises from infected air, why does the Holy Spirit everywhere in His Scripture forget the closer and more manifest cause, and always speak of the angel of the Lord? Perhaps He did not frequent the schools of our philosophers and doctors. Wherefore it is safest that we use the teaching of the Holy Spirit with our mouths rather than Hippocrates, or Galen, or the others of this class who could express nothing in their teachings except what pertains to nature: we are lifted above nature, with the Holy Spirit as our guide in His Word, to the omnipotence of God, who presides over natures and impedes natures even if it seems good to Him, so far are we from thinking that God can kill no one with the pestilence unless the laws of nature intervene. Where it is also not very skillfully evaded that Scripture calls the pestilence Deuær the Word of God (or a divine stroke), the name having arisen without doubt from this, as the Hebrews also explain, because God strikes with that ulcer by an irrevocable sentence. Why then do we macerate ourselves for a long time in the contemplation of the air and the stars, or what do we fear, lest a putrid stench from an infected body also breathe upon us? Here, here our minds ought to rest, knowing that those whom He destined for death are struck by God; whatever air may flutter around us, the sentence has been laid down immovably in heaven against those who are to die. Wherefore these ulcers are also called the swift arrows of the Lord (Psalm 91), where they are also said to fly in the darkness, because we cannot look into the counsels of the Lord regarding them. We hear indeed that they clamor about the air as an organic and natural cause, but how they adopt what they say to the Scriptures can be clear to no one.