Greek, "a word we now also make use of in Latin." As we make even more common use of it in
Book VIII 373 in non-bodily fashion. lnwardly, that is to say, God speaks to it in a wonderful and inexpressible way: neither through writing imposed on bodily materials, nor through words sounding in bodily ears, nor through the likenesses of bodies such as are formed in the imagination, as happens in dreams or in a kind of ecstatic state.50 Visions of this kind, after all, though occurring more inwardly than the things that are brought to the spirit's attention through the senses of the body, are still like them, so that when they happen they cannot be distinguished from them at all (or at least very rarely and with difficulty). So because they are more external than what the rational and intellectual mind gazes upon in the unchangeable Truth itself, which is the light by which it passes judgment on all these other things, l consider that they are to be classed among things which happen externally.
So then the spiritual and intellectual creation, when perfect and blessed as in the holy angels, insofar as in itself it is just and is wise and blessed, is only assisted inwardly, as I was saying, by the eternity, the verity, the charity of the creator; outwardly though, if it can be said to be assisted at all, it is perhaps only in the fact that they see each other and enjoy their mutual company in God, and that with all creatures spread out on all sides to their gaze too, they give thanks and praise to the creator. As regards the activity, though, of the angelic creation, through which care is taken by the providence of God for all the different kinds of things, above all for humankind, this gives them external assistance, both through those visions which resemble bodily things, and through bodies them selves, which are under the power and authority of the angels.
A summing up of what has been said about God in relation to time and space, and about the twofold operation of his providence
26, 48. All this being so, God the almighty, holding all things under his sway, always the same in his unchangeable eternity, truth and will, while unmoved himself either through time or space, moves the spiritual creation through time, the bodily creation also through time and space. By such movement he adminis ters outwardly the natures which he set in place inwardly, doing this both through the wills subject to him, which he moves through time, and through the bodies which are subject both to him and to these wills, and which he moves through time and space, the time and local space whose idea or formula is life in God himself" without either time or place.
50. His phrase is in aliquo excessu spiritus; and he goes on to explain that this is called ekstasis in Greek, "a word we now also make use of in Latin." As we make even more common use of it in English, without having a parallel home-grown word like his excessus, it seemed best to put it all in this footnote, and not in the text. 5 1 . See Jn 1 :3-4, which Augustine always read as: "All things were made through him, and without him was made nothing. What was made in him was life."