The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
BOOK NINE 93 thing other than what the seminal reasons would bring about, but not something that He Himself had not originally made possible to be done by Him in them. For He is all-powerful not by arbitrary power but by the strength of wisdom, and in the course of time He does with each thing what He originally has made possible in it. There is, then, the mode of being by which this plant grows one way and that another way; by which one time of life is fertile, another is not; by which a human being can speak, a beast cannot. The formative principles'® of these and similar modes of being are not only in God but have also been inserted by Him into creatures and joined to them.7" But that a tree which has been cut down, dried out, polished, without any root or earth or water, should suddenly flower and bring forth fruit,7® that a woman sterile in her youth should bear a child in her old age,'? that an ass should speak,®° and so on with other examples—God gave to the substances which He created the possibility that these actions could happen in them (for not even He would do in them what He Himself predetermined was impossible to be done in them, since He Himself is not more powerful than Himself); nevertheless, according to another mode of being He gave to these creatures the determination that these occurrences would not happen by virtue of natural forces but by virtue of the fact that they had been created so that their nature would be under the influence of a more powerful will.
CHAPTER 18
The mystery of the creation of Eve and the origin of the Church.
The ministry of the angels.
33. God, therefore, has in Himself the hidden causes of certain things which He has not placed in creatures, and He makes them operative not in the work of His ordinary providence by which He brings things into being, but in that work by which He administers according to His will the things that He has created as He has willed. In this sphere of God's action is the grace