על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר א ג׳On the Special Laws, Book I 3
א׳
1[13] Some have supposed that the sun and moon and the other stars were gods with absolute powers and ascribed to them the causation of all events. But Moses held that the universe was created and is in a sense the greatest of commonwealths, having magistrates and subjects; for magistrates, all the heavenly bodies, fixed or wandering; for subjects, such beings as exist below the moon, in the air or on the earth.
ב׳
2[14] The said magistrates, however, in his view have not unconditional powers, but are lieutenants of the one Father of All, and it is by copying the example of His government exercised according to law and justice over all created beings that they acquit themselves aright; but those who do not descry the Charioteer mounted above attribute the causation of all the events in the universe to the team that draw the chariot as though they were sole agents.
ג׳
3[15] From this ignorance our most holy lawgiver would convert them to knowledge with these words: “Do not when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars and all the ordered host of heaven go astray and worship them.” Well indeed and aptly does he call the acceptance of the heavenly bodies as gods a going astray or wandering.
ד׳
4[16] For those who see the sun with its advances and retreats producing the yearly seasons in which the animals and plants and fruits are brought at fixed periods of time from their birth to maturity, and the moon as handmaid and successor to the sun taking over at night the care and supervision of all that he had charge of by day, and the other stars in accordance with their sympathetic affinity to things on earth acting and working in a thousand ways for the preservation of the All, have wandered infinitely far in supposing that they alone are gods.
ה׳
5[17] But if they had been at pains to walk in that road where there is no straying, they would at once have perceived that just as sense is the servitor of mind, so too all the beings perceived by sense are the ministers of Him who is perceived by the mind. It is enough for them if they gain the second place.
ו׳
6[18] For it is quite ridiculous to deny that if the mind in us, so exceedingly small and invisible, is yet the ruler of the organs of sense, the mind of the universe, so transcendently great and perfect, must be the King of kings who are seen by Him though He is not seen by them.
ז׳
7[19] So all the gods which sense descries in Heaven must not be supposed to possess absolute power but to have received the rank of subordinate rulers, naturally liable to correction, though in virtue of their excellence never destined to undergo it.
ח׳
8[20] Therefore carrying our thoughts beyond all the realm of visible existence let us proceed to give honour to the Immaterial, the Invisible, the Apprehended by the understanding alone, who is not only God of gods, whether perceived by sense or by mind, but also the Maker of all. And if anyone renders the worship due to the Eternal, the Creator, to a created being and one later in time, he must stand recorded as infatuated and guilty of impiety in the highest degree.