The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of PhilosophyBoethius
Religion
The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy
Boethius
Happiness; Philosophy and religion; Theology -- Early works to 1800; Theology -- History -- Early Church, ca. 30-600
Then taking as it were a new beginning, she discoursed in this manner:
"The generation of all things, and all the proceedings of mutable
natures, and whatsoever is moved in any sort, take their causes, order,
and forms from the stability of the Divine mind. This, placed in the
castle of its own simplicity, hath determined manifold ways for doing
things; which ways being considered in the purity of God's
understanding, are named Providence, but being referred to those things
which He moveth and disposeth, they are by the ancients called Fate. The
diversity of which will easily appear if we weigh the force of both. For
Providence is the very Divine reason itself, seated in the highest
Prince, which disposeth all things. But Fate is a disposition inherent
in changeable things, by which Providence connecteth all things in their
due order. For Providence embraceth all things together, though diverse,
though infinite; but Fate putteth every particular thing into motion
being distributed by places, forms, and time; so that this unfolding of
temporal order being united into the foresight of God's mind is
Providence, and the same uniting, being digested and unfolded in time,
is called Fate. Which although they be diverse yet the one dependeth on
the other. For fatal order proceedeth from the simplicity of Providence.
For as a workman conceiving the form of anything in his mind taketh his
work in hand, and executeth by order of time that which he had simply
and in a moment foreseen, so God by His Providence disposeth whatsoever
is to be done with simplicity and stability, and by Fate effecteth by
manifold ways and in the order of time those very things which He
disposeth. Wherefore, whether Fate be exercised by the subordination of
certain Divine spirits to Providence, or this fatal web be woven by a
soul or by the service of all nature, or by the heavenly motions of the
stars, by angelical virtue, or by diabolical industry, or by some or all
of these, that certainly is manifest that Providence is an immoveable
and simple form of those things which are to be done, and Fate a
moveable connexion and temporal order of those things which the Divine
simplicity hath disposed to be done. So that all that is under Fate is
also subject to Providence, to which also Fate itself obeyeth. But some
things which are placed under Providence are above the course of Fate.
And they are those things which nigh to the first Divinity, being stable
and fixed, exceed the order of fatal mobility. For as of orbs which turn
about the same centre, the inmost draweth nigh to the simplicity of the
midst, and is as it were the hinge of the rest, which are placed without
it, about which they are turned, and the outmost, wheeled with a greater
compass, by how much it departeth from the middle indivisibility of the
centre, is so much the more extended into larger spaces, but that which
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