another place they change their direction as though following some important aim. This means they are in motion in accordance with the immaterial measured proportions of the tree or animal, which come from divine determining and are governed by those proportions.

Since there are the manifestations of divine determining to this extent in physical and visible things, certainly the forms with which things are clothed with the passing of time and the states acquired through the motions they perform will also be dependent on the ordering of divine determining. Present in a seed are two manifestations of divine determining; one is evident and points to the Clear Book, which is a title of will and the creational commands; the other is theoretical and points to the Clear Record, which is a title of divine knowledge and the divine command. Evident divine determining specifies the physical nature, states, and parts of the tree which the seed comprises. While theoretical divine determining specifies the stages, states, forms, motions, and glorifications which the tree will undergo and perform over the period of its life, and which are in the seed and will be created from it; these stages, states, forms, and acts, which constantly change and are called its life history, each have a regulated measure in accordance with divine determining, the same as the tree’s branches and leaves.

Since there is such a manifestation of divine determining in the commonest and simplest of things, it surely demonstrates that all things are written before they come into existence; this may be understood with little attention. Now, evidence for the fact that the story of everything’s life is written after its existence are all fruits, which in this world tell of the Clear Book and the Clear Record, and the faculty of memory in man, which points to the Preserved Tablet; these all hint and testify to this fact. Indeed, the appointed events of a tree’s life are written in its seeds, which are like the hearts of its fruits. And man’s life history together with some of the past events of the world are written in his memory in such a way that, as though copying out with the hand of power and pen of divine determining in a faculty as tiny as a mustard seed a small note from the page of his actions, the memory gives the note to man’s hand and puts it in the pocket of his mind, so that with it he will call his actions to mind at the time of reckoning. So too, due to it he may be confident that within the upheavals of transience and death there are numerous lasting mirrors in which the All-Powerful and Wise One depicts and makes permanent the identities of transient beings; and truly numerous tablets which shall endure for all eternity on which that All-Knowing Preserver inscribes the meanings of transitory beings.