[77] And therefore it is said in another place, “there is a cup in the hand of the Lord of unmixed wine, full of mixture” (Ps. 74 [75] 8). But surely the mixed is not unmixed, and yet there is a meaning in these words most true to nature, and in agreement with what I have said before. For the powers which God employs are unmixed in respect of Himself, but mixed to created beings. For it cannot be that mortal nature should have room for the unmixed.
[78] We cannot look even upon the sun’s flame untempered, or unmixed, for our sight will be quenched and blasted by the bright flashing of its rays, ere it reach and apprehend them, though the sun is but one of God’s works in the past, a portion of heaven, a condensed mass of ether. And can you think it possible that your understanding should be able to grasp in their unmixed purity those uncreated potencies, which stand around Him and flash forth light of surpassing splendour?
[79] When God extended the sun’s rays from heaven to the boundaries of earth, He mitigated and abated with cool air the fierceness of their heat. He tempered them in this way, that the radiance drawn off from the blazing flame, surrendering its power of burning but retaining that of giving light, might meet and hail its friend and kinsman, the light which is stored in the treasury of our eyes; for it is when these converge to meet and greet each other that the apprehension through vision is produced. Just in the same way if God’s knowledge and wisdom and prudence and justice and each of His other excellences were not tempered, no mortal could receive them, nay not even the whole heaven and universe.
[80] The Creator then, knowing His own surpassing excellence in all that is best and the natural weakness of His creatures, however loud they boast, wills not to dispense benefit or punishment according to His power, but according to the measure of capacity which He sees in those who are to participate in either of those dispensations.
[81] If indeed we could drink and enjoy this diluted draught, wherein is a moderate measure of His powers, we should reap sufficient gladness, and let not the human race seek a more perfect joy. For we have shewn that these powers at their full height unmixed and untempered subsist only in the Existent.