Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I

9And if fire were to generate two instances of heat apart from subjects, then, because it would act upon both with its whole being, the two would be equal. Indeed, even now it generates wholly similar and equal instances of heat in subjects that are altogether alike. Nature can, to be sure, produce different things through different media or from different materials; but when the diversity of media and materials is removed, it produces either one thing or things most closely alike. Nor can it fail to act when matter is present. God alone, however, produces without medium or subject both the first matter of bodies and a great multitude of essences of minds and souls, which differ widely from one another and are distinguished from one another by many degrees of perfection.

10Because God is the first agent, he rightly holds such mastery over his whole work that he himself can produce both the forms and the order of forms, together with their distinction into degrees. No agent would produce fewer or less varied effects than God—indeed, God would produce only one effect—if he acted solely after the manner of bare nature, since the divine nature is the simplest of all. He is therefore not impelled to act by natural instinct.

11Third argument. If intelligence is efficacious in us and more efficacious in angels, intelligence in God must be most efficacious of all. In God his nature and his intelligence are the same. Moreover, the mode of natural operation and that of intellectual operation are everywhere wont to be the same, since both nature and intelligence act through a form and produce something like themselves in form.