hings
connected, and that in this we must investigate Fate. Hence, Fate is
nature, or that incorporeal power which is the one life of the world,
presiding over bodies, moving all things according to time, and
connecting the motions of things that, by places and times, are distant
from each other. It is likewise the cause of the mutual sympathy of
mortal natures, and of their conjunction with such as are eternal. For
the nature which is in us, binds and connects all the parts of our body,
of which also it is a certain Fate. And as in our body some parts have a
principal subsistence, and others are less principal, and the latter are
consequent to the former, so in the universe, the generations of the less
principal parts are consequent to the motions of the more principal, viz.
the sublunary generations to the periods of the celestial bodies; and the
circle of the former is the image of the latter.

Hence it is not difficult to see that Providence is deity itself, the
fountain of all good. For whence can good be imparted, to all things, but
from divinity? So that no other cause of good but deity is, as Plato
says, to be assigned. And, in the next place, as this cause is superior
to all intelligible and sensible natures, it is consequently superior to
Fate. Whatever too is subject to Fate, is also under the dominion of
Providence; having its connection indeed from Fate, but deriving the good
which it possesses from Providence. But again, not all things that are
under the dominion of Providence are indigent of Fate; for intelligibles
are exempt from its sway. Fate therefore is profoundly conversant with
corporeal natures; since connection introduces time and corporeal motion.
Hence Plato, looking to this, says in the Timaeus, that the world is
mingled from intellect and necessity, the former ruling over the latter.
For by necessity here he means the motive cause of bodies, which in other
places he calls Fate. And this with great propriety; since every body is
compelled to do whatever it does, and to suffer whatever it suffers; to
heat or to be heated, to impart or to receive cold. But the elective
power is unknown to a corporeal nature; so that the necessary and the
nonelective may be said to be the peculiarities of bodies.

As there are two genera of things, therefore, the intelligible and the
sensible, so likewise there are two kingdoms of these; that of
Providence, upwards, which reigns over intelligibles and sensibles,