Nine Books on the Nature of Things

The resuscitation and reduction of natural things is no small matter in nature, but a profound and great secret, something divine and angelic rather than human and natural. Yet I wish to be understood here with the greatest discrimination, and only in accordance with my meaning, with what nature daily and clearly shows and experience proves. Otherwise I would be exposed to the lies and slanders of my enemies, the false physicians, who habitually misinterpret everything of mine, as though I wished to usurp divine power and attribute to nature what it could never accomplish. The greatest care is therefore required, since death is twofold: violent and spontaneous. One permits resuscitation; the other does not. Do not believe the sophists who say that whatever has once died or been mortified can never be resuscitated, and make nothing of resuscitation and restoration. Their error is considerable. It is indeed true that only God can resuscitate whatever perishes by its natural death or nature mortifies according to its predestination; it must occur by his divine command. What nature consumes a human cannot restore. What a human destroys, however, a human can restore and break again once repaired. Humanity has no further power by its own condition. Whoever attempted more would arrogate God’s power and yet labour in vain and be confounded, unless God were with that person, or that person possessed faith great enough to move mountains. For such a person this too would be possible, and still greater things, because Scripture says, and Christ himself said: If you have faith like a mustard seed and say to this mountain, Go and settle there, it will do so and settle there; everything will be possible for you and nothing impossible.