ON THE PRINCIPLES OF THE MACROCOSM. 23

God is said to be present in this heaven in a greater way through his presence, where the works of his power shine more brightly, as if in a more worthy place and position in which divine power operates more aptly, as DamascenusJohn of Damascus, an 8th-century theologian who wrote on the nature of the heavens. testifies. For God is not said to be above all things and outside all things by local distance, but by the excellence of his nature, as is held in the Theological Resolutions, tract 1, part 1, question 4. And it is from this that this heaven is called intellectual, because God, whose seat it is, is called the Intellectual Spirit. Some others have attributed this super-celestial region to the angels and blessed souls, and for that reason established another dwelling place outside of this one, which they called the heaven of the Trinity, belonging solely to the Trinity—namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They say that this is God himself in essence, though differing in our reasoning. For according to AlbertusAlbert the Great, a medieval philosopher and teacher of Thomas Aquinas., this heaven is the excellence of divine power, which contains and circumscribes all created things. Hence, to be in this heaven is to be in the equality of the power of God, who creates, contains, and saves all things. All these things are clearly explained through the vision of EzekielReferring to the biblical vision of the chariot and the firmament in Ezekiel 1., where although these two regions—namely of the Intelligences and of the Trinity—seem to differ only in the purity and exaltation of their essence, the Prophet denotes that they are contained within one Empyrean heaven (so called from its perfect illumination), not otherwise than air and fire are contained in the ethereal heaven. For the single heaven surrounding the convexity of the firmament reflected the likeness of a man, whose upper part from the loins of the image upward shone with a fire of amber form original: "carabeæ formæ" - referring to the 'electrum' or glowing metal seen in Ezekiel's vision., that is, most thin and spiritual; but the lower part from the loins downward glowed with a fire somewhat denser and thicker. By this partition of the place, he seems to indicate two regions differing in dignity: namely, the pre-celestial heaven proper to spiritual creatures, and that super-celestial heaven.

CHAPTER III.

Decorative drop cap initial 'I' with architectural or floral scrollwork patterns.

A huge disagreement arises among recent Philosophers concerning the origin of the matter of the first creation. The larger chorus of them asserts that it was created; among whom ArtephiusA medieval author of alchemical texts. uses nearly these words:

The Creator of all in the beginning, without the utterance of speech, said: "Let such a creature be," and afterwards that nature or primary matter original: "materia prima" was created by God.
But another smaller chorus, in which ParacelsusThe famous Swiss physician and occultist who founded the school of iatrochemistry. participates with the rest of his school, calls this matter the great mystery original: "mysterium magnum", which had no likeness to any created thing, nor was it even created, but was only prepared by God, the highest craftsman. Both of these schools attempt to prove their reasons from the Holy Scripture delivered by Moses, interpreting the nature and sense of the word Beginning original: "Principii" in various ways. For Artephius, with the others of his opinion, explains the start of the narrative of Genesis handed down to us by Moses—namely, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, etc.—in this way: In the first place, or first of all, God created the heaven and the earth. Attempting to refute this exposition of the word Beginning, the followers of Paracelsus propose these three doubts to us: namely, whether by in the first place or firstly the interpreter intended to refer the name of the Beginning to some time, or to order and time together, or whether he intended to designate a first place by it. To which questions they respond by denying them absolutely and confidently. First, because time did not yet exist, since it only had its origin from the evening and the morning; hence they in no way admit that interpretation of the beginning. Second, because it would be absurd to place the world before its own mat-