Peter Lombard

The terminology of the Last Days and of corporeal resurrection had been provided by Peter Lombard s Sentences in the fourteenth century which were based on Augustine s City of God and Enchiridion, as well as on the writings of St. Gregory, Julian of Toledo, Hugh of St. Victor and others. 

Erastus s use of the term fabricate (fabricari) in his analysis of substantial forms reveals a fundamental element of his attack. Like the medieval commentators on Peter Lombard s Sentences, who stated categorically that demons could not create the serpents that Pharaoh s magicians seemed to make from their staffs, Erastus has placed the issue of artisanal power into the context of divine creation. As he puts it, nature is a divine power, to whom alone it is proper to frame substances. But when a substantial form conjoins with matter to produce something new, this is precisely the generation of a substance.170 Hence the alchemist, in trying to transmute metals by imparting a new substantial form, is usurping the role of the Creator,... 

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