In the next place, it is necessary to observe of the mundane Gods that they do not obtain the rank which they hold in the universe from any habitude or arrangement towards bodies; for they are all of them essentially liberated from body, unrestrained in their energies, and have no proximity or alliance to a corporeal nature. For bodies are ministrant to them, and are subservient to the generation of mutable essences. Hence they are not in bodies, but rule over them externally; so that they are not changed together with them. Farther still, they impart from themselves to bodies, every good which they are capable of receiving, but do not in return receive any thing from bodies; and consequently they do not receive certain peculiarities from them. For if indeed they had a subsistence like the habits of bodies, or like material forms, or were corporeal after any other manner, it might perhaps be possible for them to be transmuted together with the differences of bodies. But if they antecedently subsist separate from bodies, and are essentially unmingled with them, what reasonable distinction can they derive from a corporeal nature? To which may be added, that such an hypothesis makes bodies to be better than the divine genera, if they afford a seat to more excellent causes, and essentially insert in them characteristic peculiarities. He therefore, who co-arranges the allotments and distributions of the governors with the governed, will evidently ascribe authority and dominion to better natures. For because the presiding powers possess such peculiarities, on this account they chuse such an allotment, and give it essentially a specific distinction; but the allotment itself is not assimilated to the nature of the recipient.