The true God is he who has placed, not a few oxen, but all the
herds on their pastures throughout the world; who furnishes food to
the flocks wherever they wander; who has ordained the alternation
of summer and winter pasturage, and has taught us not merely to
play upon a reed, and to reduce to some order a rustic and artless
song, but who has invented so many arts and varieties of voice, so
many notes to make music, some with our own breath, some with
instruments. You cannot call our inventions our own any more than
you call our growth our own, or the various bodily functions which
correspond to each stage of our lives; at one time comes the loss
of childhood's teeth, at another, when our age is advancing and
growing into robuster manhood, puberty and the last wisdom-tooth
marks the end of our youth. "We have implanted in us the seeds of
all ages, of all arts, and God our master brings forth our
intellects from obscurity.

VII. "Nature," says my opponent, "gives me all this." Do you not
perceive when you say this that you merely speak of God under
another name? for what is nature but God and divine reason, which
pervades the universe and all its parts? You may address the author
of our world by as many different titles as you please; you may
rightly call him Jupiter, Best and Greatest, and the Thunderer, or
the Stayer, so called, not because, as the historians tell us, he
stayed the flight of the Roman army in answer to the prayer of
Romulus, but because all things continue in their stay through his
goodness. If you were to call this same personage Fate, you would
not lie; for since fate is nothing more than a connected chain of
causes, he is the first cause of all upon which all the rest
depend. You will also be right in applying to him any names that
you please which express supernatural strength and power: he may