'So the unfolding of this temporal order unified into the foreview of
the Divine mind is providence, while the same unity broken up and
unfolded in time is fate. And although these are different, yet is there
a dependence between them; for the order of destiny issues from the
essential simplicity of providence. For as the artificer, forming in his
mind beforehand the idea of the thing to be made, carries out his
design, and develops from moment to moment what he had before seen in a
single instant as a whole, so God in His providence ordains all things
as parts of a single unchanging whole, but carries out these very
ordinances by fate in a time of manifold unity. So whether fate is
accomplished by Divine spirits as the ministers of providence, or by a
soul, or by the service of all nature--whether by the celestial motion
of the stars, by the efficacy of angels, or by the many-sided cunning of
demons--whether by all or by some of these the destined series is woven,
this, at least, is manifest: that providence is the fixed and simple
form of destined events, fate their shifting series in order of time, as
by the disposal of the Divine simplicity they are to take place. Whereby
it is that all things which are under fate are subjected also to
providence, on which fate itself is dependent; whereas certain things
which are set under providence are above the chain of fate--viz., those
things which by their nearness to the primal Divinity are steadfastly
fixed, and lie outside the order of fate's movements. For as the
innermost of several circles revolving round the same centre approaches
the simplicity of the midmost point, and is, as it were, a pivot round
which the exterior circles turn, while the outermost, whirled in ampler
orbit, takes in a wider and wider sweep of space in proportion to its
departure from the indivisible unity of the centre--while, further,
whatever joins and allies itself to the centre is narrowed to a like
simplicity, and no longer expands vaguely into space--even so whatsoever
departs widely from primal mind is involved more deeply in the meshes of
fate, and things are free from fate in proportion as they seek to come
nearer to that central pivot; while if aught cleaves close to supreme
mind in its absolute fixity, this, too, being free from movement, rises
above fate's necessity. Therefore, as is reasoning to pure intelligence,
as that which is generated to that which is, time to eternity, a circle
to its centre, so is the shifting series of fate to the steadfastness
and simplicity of providence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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