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<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <title>CHURCH FATHERS: Against Hermogenes (Tertullian)</title><script src="https://dtyry4ejybx0.cloudfront.net/js/cmp/cleanmediacmp.js?ver=0104" async="true"></script><script defer data-domain="newadvent.org" src="https://plausible.io/js/script.js"></script><link rel="canonical" href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0313.htm"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <meta name="description" content="Featuring the Church Fathers, Catholic Encyclopedia, Summa Theologica and more."> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://feeds.newadvent.org/bestoftheweb?format=xml"><link rel="icon" href="../images/icon1.ico" type="image/x-icon"><link rel="shortcut icon" href="../images/icon1.ico" type="image/x-icon"><meta name="robots" content="noodp"><link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="../utility/screen6.css" media="screen"></head> <body class="fathers" id="0313.htm">  <br/> <div id="capitalcity"><table summary="Logo" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width="100%"><tr valign="bottom"><td align="left"><a href="../"><img height=36 width=153 border="0" alt="New Advent" src="../images/logo.gif"></a></td><td align="right"> <form id="searchbox_000299817191393086628:ifmbhlr-8x0" action="../utility/search.htm">  <input type="hidden" name="safe" value="active"> <input type="hidden" name="cx" value="000299817191393086628:ifmbhlr-8x0"/> <input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:9"/>  <label for="searchQuery" id="searchQueryLabel">Search:</label> <input id="searchQuery" name="q" type="text" size="25" aria-labelledby="searchQueryLabel"/>  <label for="submitButton" id="submitButtonLabel" class="visually-hidden">Submit Search</label> <input id="submitButton" type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" aria-labelledby="submitButtonLabel"/> </form> <table summary="Spacer" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td height="2"></td></tr></table> <table summary="Tabs" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff"></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../"> Home </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../cathen/index.html"> Encyclopedia </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../summa/index.html"> Summa </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_white_on_color" href="../fathers/index.html"> Fathers </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../bible/gen001.htm"> Bible </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../library/index.html"> Library </a></td> </tr></table> </td> </tr></table><table summary="Alphabetical index" width="100%" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td class="bar_white_on_color"> <a href="../cathen/a.htm"> A </a><a href="../cathen/b.htm"> B </a><a href="../cathen/c.htm"> C </a><a href="../cathen/d.htm"> D </a><a href="../cathen/e.htm"> E </a><a href="../cathen/f.htm"> F </a><a href="../cathen/g.htm"> G </a><a href="../cathen/h.htm"> H </a><a href="../cathen/i.htm"> I </a><a href="../cathen/j.htm"> J </a><a href="../cathen/k.htm"> K </a><a href="../cathen/l.htm"> L </a><a href="../cathen/m.htm"> M </a><a href="../cathen/n.htm"> N </a><a href="../cathen/o.htm"> O </a><a href="../cathen/p.htm"> P </a><a href="../cathen/q.htm"> Q </a><a href="../cathen/r.htm"> R </a><a href="../cathen/s.htm"> S </a><a href="../cathen/t.htm"> T </a><a href="../cathen/u.htm"> U </a><a href="../cathen/v.htm"> V </a><a href="../cathen/w.htm"> W </a><a href="../cathen/x.htm"> X </a><a href="../cathen/y.htm"> Y </a><a href="../cathen/z.htm"> Z </a> </td></tr></table></div> <div id="mobilecity" style="text-align: center; "><a href="../"><img height=24 width=102 border="0" alt="New Advent" src="../images/logo.gif"></a></div>  <div id="mi5"><span class="breadcrumbs"><a href="../">Home</a> > <a href="../fathers/index.html">Fathers of the Church</a> > Against Hermogenes (Tertullian)</span></div> <div id="springfield2"> <div class='catholicadnet-728x90' id='fathers-728x90-top' style='display: flex; height: 100px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; '></div> <h1>Against Hermogenes</h1> <p><em><a href="https://gumroad.com/l/na2"><strong>Please help support the mission of New Advent</strong> and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more  all for only $19.99...</a></em></p> <h2>Chapter 1. The Opinions of Hermogenes, by the Prescriptive Rule of Antiquity Shown to Be Heretical. Not Derived from Christianity, But from Heathen Philosophy. Some of the Tenets Mentioned</h2> <p>We are accustomed, for the purpose of shortening argument, to lay down the rule against <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heretics</a> of the <em>lateness</em> of their date. For in <em>as</em> far as by our rule, priority is given to the <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">truth</a>, which also foretold that there would be <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heresies</a>, in <em>so</em> far must all later opinions be prejudged as <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heresies</a>, being such as were, by the more ancient rule of <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">truth</a>, predicted as (one day) to happen. Now, the doctrine of Hermogenes has this taint of novelty. He is, in short, a man <em>living</em> in the world at the present time; by his very nature a <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heretic</a>, and turbulent withal, who mistakes loquacity for eloquence, and supposes impudence to be firmness, and judges it to be the duty of a good <a href="../cathen/04268a.htm">conscience</a> to speak ill of individuals. Moreover, he despises God's law in his painting, maintaining repeated marriages, alleges the law of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> in defense of <a href="../cathen/09438a.htm">lust</a>, <em>and yet</em> despises it in respect of his art. He falsifies by a twofold process — with his cautery and his pen. He is a thorough adulterer, both doctrinally and carnally, since he is rank indeed with the contagion of your marriage-hacks, and has also failed in cleaving to the rule of <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> as much as the apostle's own Hermogenes. <span class="stiki" id="note036140"><a href="../bible/2ti001.htm#verse15">2 Timothy 1:15</a></span> However, never mind the man, when it is his doctrine which I question. He does not appear to acknowledge any other Christ as Lord, though he holds Him in a different way; but by this difference in his <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> he really makes Him another being — nay, he takes from Him everything which is <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, since he will not have it that He made all things of nothing. For, turning away from <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christians</a> to the <a href="../cathen/12025c.htm">philosophers</a>, from the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> to the Academy and the Porch, he learned there from the <a href="../cathen/14299a.htm">Stoics</a> how to place Matter (on the same level) with the Lord, just as if it too had <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existed</a> ever both unborn and unmade, having no beginning at all nor end, out of which, according to him, the Lord afterwards created all things.</p> <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <h2>Chapter 2. Hermogenes, After a Perverse Induction from Mere Heretical Assumptions, Concludes that God Created All Things Out of Pre-Existing Matter</h2> <p>Our very bad painter has colored this his primary shade absolutely without any light, with such arguments as these: He begins with laying down the premiss, that the Lord made all things either out of Himself, or out of nothing, or out of something; in order that, after he has shown that it was impossible for Him to have made them either out of Himself or out of nothing, he might thence affirm the residuary proposition that He made them out of something, and therefore that that something was Matter. He could not have made all things, he says, of Himself; because whatever things the Lord made of Himself would have been parts of Himself; but He is not dissoluble into parts, because, being the Lord, He is indivisible, and unchangeable, and always the same. Besides, if He had made anything out of Himself, it would have been something of Himself. Everything, however, both which was made and which He made must be accounted imperfect, because it was made of a part, and He made it of a part; or if, again, it was a whole which He made, who is a whole Himself, He must in that case have been at once both a whole, and yet not a whole; because it behooved Him to be a whole, that He might produce Himself, and yet not a whole, that He might be produced out of Himself. But this is a most difficult position. For if He were in <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a>, He could not be made, for He was in <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a> already; if, however, he were not in <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a> He could not make, because He was a nonentity. He <em>maintains</em>, moreover, that He who always exists, does not <em>come into</em> <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a>, but exists for ever and ever. He accordingly concludes that He made nothing out of Himself, since He never passed into such a condition as made it possible for Him to make anything out of Himself. In like manner, he contends that He could not have made all things out of nothing — thus: He defines the Lord as a being who is <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a>, nay, very good, who must will to make things as good and excellent as He is Himself; indeed it were impossible for Him either to will or to make anything which was not good, nay, very good itself. Therefore all things ought to have been made good and excellent by Him, after His own condition. Experience shows, however, that things which are even <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> were made by Him: not, of course, of His own will and pleasure; because, if it had been of His own will and pleasure, He would be sure to have made nothing unfitting or unworthy of Himself. That, therefore, which He made not of His own will must be understood to have been made from the fault of something, and that is from Matter, without a <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a>.</p> <h2>Chapter 3. An Argument of Hermogenes. The Answer: While God is a Title Eternally Applicable to the Divine Being, Lord and Father are Only Relative Appellations, Not Eternally Applicable. An Inconsistency in the Argument of Hermogenes Pointed Out</h2> <p>He adds also another point: that as God was always <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, there was never a time when God was not also Lord. But it was in no way possible for Him to be regarded as always Lord, in the same manner as He had been always <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, if there had not been always, in the previous <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternity</a>, a something of which He could be regarded as evermore the Lord. So he concludes that <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> always had Matter co-existent with Himself as the Lord thereof. Now, this tissue of his I shall at once hasten to pull abroad. I have been willing to set it out in form to this length, for the information of those who are unacquainted with the subject, that they may <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">know</a> that his other arguments likewise need only be understood to be refuted. We affirm, then, that the name of <em>God</em> always <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existed</a> with Himself and in Himself — but not <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternally</a> so the <em>Lord</em>. Because the condition of the one is not the same as that of the other. God is the designation of the substance itself, that is, of the Divinity; but Lord is (the name) not of substance, but of power. I <em>maintain</em> that the substance <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existed</a> always with its own name, which is <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>; <em>the title</em> Lord was afterwards added, as the indication indeed of something accruing. For from the moment when those things began to exist, over which the power of a Lord was to act, <em>God</em>, by the accession of that power, both became Lord and received the name thereof. Because God is in like manner a Father, and He is also a Judge; but He has not always been Father and Judge, merely on the ground of His having always been God. For He could not have been the Father previous to the <a href="../cathen/14142b.htm">Son</a>, nor a Judge previous to <a href="../cathen/14004b.htm">sin</a>. There was, however, a time when neither <a href="../cathen/14004b.htm">sin</a> <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existed</a> with Him, nor the Son; the former of which was to constitute the Lord a Judge, and the latter a Father. In this way He was not Lord previous to those things of which He was to be the Lord. But He was only to become Lord at some future time: just as He became the Father by the <a href="../cathen/14142b.htm">Son</a>, and a Judge by <a href="../cathen/14004b.htm">sin</a>, so also did He become Lord by means of those things which He had made, in order that they might serve Him. Do I seem to you to be weaving arguments, Hermogenes? How neatly does Scripture lend us its aid, when it applies the two titles to Him with a distinction, and reveals them each at its proper time! For (the title) <em>God</em>, indeed, which always belonged to Him, it names at the very first: <q>In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth;</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036159"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse1">Genesis 1:1</a></span> and as long as He continued making, one after the other, those things of which He was to be the Lord, it merely mentions God. <q>And <em>God</em> said,</q> <q>and <em>God</em> made,</q> <q>and <em>God</em> saw;</q> but nowhere do we yet find the <em>Lord</em>. But when He completed the whole creation, and especially man himself, who was destined to understand His sovereignty in a way of special propriety, He then is designated Lord. Then also <em>the <a href="../bible/index.html">Scripture</a></em> added the name <em>Lord</em>: <q>And the <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">Lord God</a>, <em>Deus Dominus</em>, took the man, whom He had formed;</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036162"><a href="../bible/gen002.htm#verse15">Genesis 2:15</a></span> <q>And the Lord God commanded Adam.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036163"><a href="../bible/gen002.htm#verse16">Genesis 2:16</a></span> Thenceforth He, who was previously God only, is the <em>Lord</em>, from the time of His having something of which He might be the Lord. For to Himself He was always <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, but to all things was He only then <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, when He became also Lord. Therefore, in <em>as</em> far as (Hermogenes) shall suppose that Matter was <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a>, on the ground that the Lord was <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a>, in <em>so</em> far will it be evident that nothing <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existed</a>, because it is plain that the Lord <em>as such</em> did not always exist. Now I mean also, on my own part, to add a remark for the sake of <a href="../cathen/07648a.htm">ignorant</a> <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">persons</a>, of whom Hermogenes is an extreme instance, and actually to retort against him his own arguments. For when he denies that Matter was born or made, I find that, even on these terms, the title <em>Lord</em> is unsuitable to <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> in respect of Matter, because it must have been free, when by not having a beginning it had not an author. The fact of its past <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a> it owed to no one, so that it could be a subject to no one. Therefore ever since God exercised His power over it, by creating (all things) out of Matter, although it had all along experienced God as its Lord, yet Matter does, after all, demonstrate that God did not exist in the relation of Lord to it, although all the while He was really so. </p> <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <h2>Chapter 4. Hermogenes Gives Divine Attributes to Matter, and So Makes Two Gods</h2> <p>At this point, then, I shall begin to treat of Matter, how that, (according to Hermogenes,) God compares it with Himself as equally unborn, equally unmade, equally <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a>, set forth as being without a beginning, without an end. For what other estimate of God is there than <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternity</a>? What other condition has <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternity</a> than to have ever <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existed</a>, and to exist yet for evermore by virtue of its privilege of having neither beginning nor end? Now, since this is the property of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, it will belong to God alone, whose property it is — of course on this ground, that if it can be ascribed to any other being, it will no longer be the property of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, but will belong, along with Him, to that being also to which it is ascribed. For <q>although there be that are called gods</q> in name, <q>whether in heaven or in earth, yet to us there is but one <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> the <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">Father</a>, of whom are all things;</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036173"><a href="../bible/1co008.htm#verse5">1 Corinthians 8:5</a></span> whence the greater reason why, in our view, that which is the property of God ought to be regarded as pertaining to God alone, and why (as I have already said) that should cease to be such a property, when it is shared by another being. Now, since He is <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, it must necessarily be a unique mark of this quality, that it be confined to One. Else, what will be unique and singular, if that is not which has nothing equal to it? What will be principal, if that is not which is above all things, before all things, and from which all things proceed? By possessing these He is God alone, and by His sole possession of them He is One. If another also shared in the possession, there would then be as many gods as there were possessors of these attributes of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. Hermogenes, therefore, introduces two gods: he introduces Matter as God's equal. <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, however, must be One, because that is God which is supreme; but nothing else can be supreme than that which is unique; and that cannot possibly be unique which has anything equal to it; and Matter will be equal with God when it is held to be <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a>.</p> <h2>Chapter 5. Hermogenes Coquets with His Own Argument, as If Rather Afraid of It. After Investing Matter with Divine Qualities, He Tries to Make It Somehow Inferior to God</h2> <p>But God is <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and Matter is Matter. As if a mere difference in their names prevented equality, when an identity of condition is claimed for them! Grant that their nature is different; assume, too, that their form is not identical — what matters it so long as their absolute state have but one mode? God is unborn; is not Matter also unborn? God ever exists; is not Matter, too, ever existent? Both are without beginning; both are without end; both are the authors of the <a href="../cathen/15183a.htm">universe</a>— both He who created it, and the Matter of which He made it. For it is impossible that Matter should not be regarded as the author of all things, when the <a href="../cathen/15183a.htm">universe</a> is composed of it. What answer will he give? Will he say that Matter is not then comparable with God as soon as it has something belonging to <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>; since, by not having total (divinity), it cannot correspond to the whole extent of the comparison? But what more has he reserved for <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, that he should not seem to have accorded to Matter the full amount of the Deity? He says in reply, that even though this is the prerogative of Matter, both the authority and the substance of God must remain intact, by virtue of which He is regarded as the sole and prime Author, as well as the Lord of all things. Truth, however, maintains the unity of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> in such a way as to insist that whatever belongs to God Himself belongs to Him alone. For so will it belong to Himself if it belong to Him alone; and therefore it will be impossible that another god should be admitted, when it is permitted to no other being to possess anything of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. Well, then, you say, we ourselves at that rate possess nothing of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. But indeed we do, and shall continue to do — only it is from Him that we receive it, and not from ourselves. For we shall be even gods, if we, shall deserve to be among those of whom He declared, <q>I have said, You are gods,</q> and, <q><a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> stands in the congregation of the gods.</q> But this comes of His own <a href="../cathen/06689a.htm">grace</a>, not from any property in us, because it is He alone who can make gods. The property of Matter, however, he makes to be that which it has in common with <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. Otherwise, if it received from God the property which belongs to <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> — I mean its attribute of <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternity</a>— one might then even suppose that it both possesses an attribute in common with <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and yet at the same time is not God. But what inconsistency is it for him to allow that there is a conjoint possession of an attribute with <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and also to wish that what he does not refuse to Matter should be, after all, the exclusive privilege of God!</p> <h2>Chapter 6. The Shifts to Which Hermogenes is Reduced, Who Deifies Matter, and Yet is Unwilling to Hold Him Equal with the Divine Creator</h2> <p>He declares that God's attribute is still safe to Him, of being the only <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and the First, and the Author of all things, and the Lord of all things, and being incomparable to any — qualities which he straightway ascribes to Matter also. He is <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, to be sure. God shall also attest the same; but He has also <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">sworn</a> sometimes by Himself, that there is no other God like Him. <span class="stiki" id="note036188"><a href="../bible/isa045.htm#verse23">Isaiah 45:23</a></span> Hermogenes, however, will make Him a liar. For Matter will be such a God as He — being unmade, unborn, without beginning, and without end. God will say, <q>I am the first!</q> Yet how is He the first, when Matter is co-eternal with Him? Between co-eternals and contemporaries there is no sequence of rank. Is then, Matter also the first? <q>I,</q> says the Lord, <q>have stretched out the heavens alone.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036191"><a href="../bible/isa044.htm#verse24">Isaiah 44:24</a></span> But indeed He was not alone, when that likewise stretched them out, of which He made the expanse. When he asserts the position that Matter was <em><a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a></em>, without any encroachment on the condition of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, let him see to it that we do not in ridicule turn the tables on him, that God similarly was <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a> without any encroachment on the condition of Matter — the condition of Both being still common to Them. The position, therefore, remains unimpugned both in the case of Matter, that it did itself exist, only along with <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>; and that God <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existed</a> alone, but with Matter. It also was first with <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, as <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, too, was first with it; it, however, is not comparable with <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, as <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, too, is not to be compared with it; with God also it was the Author (of all things), and with God their Sovereign. In this way <em>he proposes that God</em> has something, and yet not the whole, of Matter. For Him, accordingly, Hermogenes has reserved nothing which he had not equally conferred on Matter, so that it is not Matter which is compared with <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, but rather God who is compared with Matter. Now, inasmuch as those qualities which we claim as peculiar to God — to have always <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existed</a>, without a beginning, without an end, and to have been the First, and Alone, and the Author of all things — are also compatible to Matter, I want to <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">know</a> what property Matter possesses different and alien from <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and hereby special to itself, by reason of which it is incapable of being compared with God? That Being, in which occur all the properties of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, is sufficiently predetermined without any further comparison.</p> <h2>Chapter 7. Hermogenes Held to His Theory in Order that Its Absurdity May Be Exposed on His Own Principles</h2> <p>When he contends that matter is less than <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and inferior to Him, and therefore diverse from Him, and for the same reason not a fit subject of comparison with Him, who is a greater and superior Being, I meet him with this prescription, that what is <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a> and unborn is incapable of any diminution and inferiority, because it is simply this which makes even God to be as great as He is, inferior and subject to none — nay, greater and higher than all. For, just as all things which are born, or which come to an end, and are therefore not <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a>, do, by reason of their exposure at once to an end and a beginning, admit of qualities which are repugnant to God — I mean diminution and inferiority, because they are born and made — so likewise <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, for this very reason, is unsusceptible of these accidents, because He is absolutely unborn, and also unmade. And yet such also is the condition of Matter. Therefore, of the two Beings which are <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a>, as being unborn and unmade — God and Matter — by reason of the identical mode of their common condition (both of them equally possessing that which admits neither of diminution nor subjection — that is, the attribute of <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternity</a>), we affirm that neither of them is less or greater than the other, neither of them is inferior or superior to the other; but that they both stand on a par in greatness, on a par in sublimity, <em>and</em> on the same level of that complete and perfect felicity of which <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternity</a> is reckoned to consist. Now we must not resemble the <a href="../cathen/11388a.htm">heathen</a> in our opinions; for they, when constrained to acknowledge <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, insist on having other deities below Him. The Divinity, however, has no degrees, because it is unique; and if it shall be found in Matter — as being equally unborn and unmade and <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a>— it must be resident in both alike, because in no case can it be inferior to itself. In what way, then, will Hermogenes have the <a href="../cathen/06147a.htm">courage</a> to draw distinctions; and thus to subject matter to <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, an <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a> to the Eternal, an unborn to the Unborn, an author to the Author? Seeing that it dares to say, I also am the first; I too am before all things; and I am that from which all things proceed; equal we have been, together we have been — both alike without beginning, without end; both alike without an Author, without a God. What <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, then, is He who subjects me to a contemporaneous, co-eternal power? If it be He who is called <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, then I myself, too, have my own (divine) name. Either I am <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, or He is Matter, because we both are that which neither of us is. Do you suppose, therefore, that he has not made Matter equal with <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, although, forsooth, he pretends it to be inferior to Him?</p> <h2>Chapter 8. On His Own Principles, Hermogenes Makes Matter, on the Whole, Superior to God</h2> <p>Nay more, he even prefers Matter to <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and rather subjects God to it, when he will have it that <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> made all things out of Matter. For if He drew His resources from it for the creation of the world, Matter is already found to be the superior, inasmuch as it furnished Him with the means of effecting His works; and God is thereby clearly subjected to Matter, of which the substance was indispensable to Him. For there is no one but requires that which he makes use of; no one but is subject to the thing which he requires, for the very purpose of being able to make use of it. So, again, there is no one who, from using what belongs to another, is not inferior to him of whose property he makes use; and there is no one who imparts of his own for another's use, who is not in this respect superior to him to whose use he lends his property. On this principle, Matter itself, no <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a>, was not in want of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, but rather lent itself to <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, who was in want of it — rich and abundant and liberal as it was — to one who was, I suppose, too small, and too weak, and too unskilful, to form what He willed out of nothing. A grand service, verily, did it confer on God in giving Him means at the present time whereby He might be <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">known</a> to be <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and be called Almighty — only that He is no longer Almighty, since He is not powerful enough for this, to produce all things out of nothing. To be sure, Matter bestowed somewhat on itself also — even to get its own self acknowledged with God as God's co-equal, nay more, as His helper; only there is this drawback, that Hermogenes is the only man that has found out this fact, besides the <a href="../cathen/12025c.htm">philosophers</a>— those patriarchs of all <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heresy</a>. For the <a href="../cathen/12477a.htm">prophets</a> <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knew</a> nothing about it, nor the <a href="../cathen/01626c.htm">apostles</a> thus far, nor, I suppose, even Christ.</p> <h2>Chapter 9. Sundry Inevitable But Intolerable Conclusions from the Principles of Hermogenes</h2> <p>He cannot say that it was as its Lord that God employed Matter for His creative works, for He could not have been the Lord of a substance which was co-equal with Himself. Well, but perhaps it was a title derived from the <a href="../cathen/15624a.htm">will</a> of another, which he enjoyed — a precarious holding, and not a lordship, and <em>that</em> to such a degree, that although Matter was <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, He yet endured to make use of an <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> substance, owing, of course, to the restraint of His own limited power, which made Him impotent to create out of nothing, not in consequence of His power; for if, as <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, He had at all possessed power over Matter which He <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knew</a> to be <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, He would first have converted it into good — as its Lord and the good God — that so He might have a good thing to make use of, instead of a bad one. But being undoubtedly good, only not the Lord withal, He, by using such power as He possessed, showed the necessity He was under of yielding to the condition of Matter, which He would have amended if He had been its Lord. Now this is the answer which must be given to Hermogenes when he maintains that it was by virtue of His Lordship that God used Matter — even of His non-possession of any right to it, on the ground, of course, of His not having Himself made it. Evil then, on your terms, must proceed from <em>God</em> Himself, since He is — I will not say the Author of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, because He did not form it, but — the permitter thereof, as having dominion over it. If indeed Matter shall prove not even to belong to God at all, as being <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, it follows, that when He made use of what belonged to another, He used it either on a precarious title because He was in need of it, or else by violent possession because He was stronger than it. For by three methods is the property of others obtained — by right, by permission, by <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a>; in other words, by lordship, by a title derived from the <a href="../cathen/15624a.htm">will</a> of another, by force. Now, as lordship is out of the question, Hermogenes must choose which (of the other methods) is suitable to <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. Did He, then, make all things out of Matter, by permission, or by force? But, in <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">truth</a>, would not God have more wisely determined that nothing at all should be created, than that it should be created by the mere sufferance of another, or by <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a>, and that, too, with a substance which was <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>?</p> <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <h2>Chapter 10. To What Straits Hermogenes Absurdly Reduces the Divine Being. He Does Nothing Short of Making Him the Author of Evil</h2> <p>Even if Matter had been the perfection of good, would it not have been equally indecorous in Him to have thought of the property of another, however good, (to effect His purpose by the help of it)? It was, therefore, absurd enough for Him, in the interest of His own <a href="../cathen/06585a.htm">glory</a>, to have created the world in such a way as to betray His own obligation to a substance which belonged to another — and that even not good. Was He then, asks (Hermogenes), to make all things out of nothing, that so <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> things themselves might be attributed to His <a href="../cathen/15624a.htm">will</a>? Great, in all <a href="../cathen/04268a.htm">conscience</a>, must be the blindness of our <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heretics</a> which leaves them to argue in such a way that they either insist on the belief of another God supremely good, on the ground of their thinking the Creator to be the author of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, or else they set up Matter with the Creator, in order that they may derive <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> from Matter, not from the Creator. And yet there is absolutely no god at all that is free from such a doubtful plight, so as to be able to avoid the appearance even of being the author of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, whosoever he is that — I will not say, indeed, has made, but still — has permitted <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> to be made by some author or other, and from some source or other. Hermogenes, therefore, ought to be told at once, although we postpone to another place our distinction concerning the mode of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, that even he has effected no result by this device of his. For observe how God is found to be, if not the Author of, yet at any rate the conniver at, <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, inasmuch as He, with all His extreme goodness, endured <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> in Matter before He created the world, although, as being good, and the enemy of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, He ought to have corrected it. For He either was able to correct it, but was unwilling; or else was willing, but being a weak <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, was not able. If He was able and yet unwilling, He was Himself <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, as having favoured <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>; and thus He now opens Himself to the charge of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, because even if He did not create it yet still, since it would not be existing if He had been against its <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a>, He must Himself have then caused it to exist, when He refused to will its non-<a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a>. And what is more shameful than this? When He willed that to be which He was Himself unwilling to create, He acted in fact against His very self, inasmuch as He was both willing that that should exist which He was unwilling to make, and unwilling to make that which He was willing should exist. As if what He willed was <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a>, and at the same time what he refused to be the Maker of was <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>. What He judged to be <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> by not creating it, He also proclaimed to be good by permitting it to exist. By bearing with <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> as a good instead of rather extirpating it, He <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proved</a> Himself to be the promoter thereof; criminally, if through His own will — disgracefully, if through necessity. God must either be the servant of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> or the friend thereof, since He held converse with <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> in Matter — nay, more, effected His works out of the <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> thereof.</p> <h2>Chapter 11. Hermogenes Makes Great Efforts to Remove Evil from God to Matter. How He Fails to Do This Consistently with His Own Argument</h2> <p>But, after all, by what <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proofs</a> does Hermogenes persuade us that Matter is <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>? For it will be impossible for him not to call that <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> to which he imputes <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>. Now we lay down this principle, that what is <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a> cannot possibly admit of diminution and subjection, so as to be considered inferior to another co-eternal Being. So that we now affirm that <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> is not even compatible with it, since it is incapable of subjection, from the fact that it cannot in any wise be subject to any, because it is <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a>. But inasmuch as, on other grounds, it is evident what is <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a> as God is the highest good, whereby also He alone is <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a>— as being <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a>, and therefore good — as being <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, how can <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> be inherent in Matter, which (since it is <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a>) must needs be <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">believed</a> to be the highest good? Else if that which is <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a> prove to be also capable of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, this (<a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>) will be able to be also <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">believed</a> of God to His prejudice; so that it is without adequate reason that he has been so anxious to remove <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> from <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>; since <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> must be compatible with an <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a> Being, even by being made compatible with Matter, <em>as Hermogenes makes it</em>. But, as the argument now stands, since what is <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a> can be deemed <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, the <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> must prove to be invincible and insuperable, as being <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a>; and in that case it will be in vain that we labour <q>to put away <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> from the midst of us;</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036235"><a href="../bible/1co005.htm#verse13">1 Corinthians 5:13</a></span> in that case, moreover, God vainly gives us such a command and precept; nay more, in vain has God appointed any judgment at all, when He means, indeed, to inflict punishment with <a href="../cathen/08010c.htm">injustice</a>. But if, on the other hand, there is to be an end of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, when the chief thereof, the <a href="../cathen/04764a.htm">devil</a>, shall <q>go away into the fire which <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> has prepared for him and his <a href="../cathen/01476d.htm">angels</a></q> <span class="stiki" id="note036237"><a href="../bible/mat025.htm#verse41">Matthew 25:41</a></span> — having been first <q>cast into the bottomless pit;</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036238"><a href="../bible/rev020.htm#verse3">Revelation 20:3</a></span> when likewise <q>the manifestation of the children of God</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036239"><a href="../bible/rom008.htm#verse19">Romans 8:19</a></span> shall have <q>delivered the creature</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036240"><a href="../bible/rom008.htm#verse21">Romans 8:21</a></span> from <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, which had been <q>made subject to vanity;</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036241"><a href="../bible/rom008.htm#verse20">Romans 8:20</a></span> when the cattle restored in the innocence and integrity of their nature shall be at peace with the beasts of the field, when also little children shall play with serpents; <span class="stiki" id="note036244"><a href="../bible/isa011.htm#verse6">Isaiah 11:6</a></span> when the Father shall have put beneath the feet of His Son His enemies, as being the workers of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> — if in this way an <em>end</em> is compatible with <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, it must follow of necessity that a <em>beginning</em> is also compatible with it; and Matter will turn out to have a beginning, by virtue of its having also an end. For whatever things are set to the account of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, have a compatibility with the condition of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>.</p> <h2>Chapter 12. The Mode of Controversy Changed. The Premisses of Hermogenes Accepted, in Order to Show into What Confusion They Lead Him</h2> <p>Come now, let us suppose Matter to be <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, nay, very <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, by <em>nature</em> of course, just as we <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">believe</a> God to be good, even very good, in like manner by <em>nature</em>. Now nature must be regarded as sure and fixed, just as persistently fixed in <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> in the case of Matter, as immoveable and unchangeable in good in the case of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. Because, as is evident, if nature admits of change from <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> to good in Matter, it can be changed from good to <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> in <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. Here some man will say, Then will <q>children not be raised up to <a href="../cathen/01051a.htm">Abraham</a> from the stones?</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036248"><a href="../bible/mat003.htm#verse9">Matthew 3:9</a></span> Will <q>generations of vipers not bring forth the fruit of repentance?</q> And <q>children of <a href="../cathen/01489a.htm">wrath</a></q> fail to become sons of peace, if nature be unchangeable? Your reference to such examples as these, my friend, is a thoughtless one. For things which owe their <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a> to birth such as stones and vipers and <a href="../cathen/09580c.htm">human</a> beings — are not apposite to the case of Matter, which is unborn; since their nature, by possessing a beginning, may have also a termination. But bear in mind that Matter has once for all been determined to be <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a>, as being unmade, unborn, and therefore supposably of an unchangeable and incorruptible nature; and this from the very opinion of Hermogenes himself, which he alleges against us when he denies that God was able to make (anything) of Himself, on the ground that what is <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a> is incapable of change, because it would lose — so the opinion runs — what it once was, in becoming by the change that which it was not, if it were not <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a>. But as for the Lord, who is also <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a>, (he maintained) that He could not be anything else than what He always is. Well, then, I will adopt this definite opinion of his, and by means thereof refute him. I blame Matter with a like censure, because out of it, <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> though it be — nay, very <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>— <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a> things have been created, nay, <q>very good</q> ones: <q>And God saw that they were good, and God blessed them</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036254"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse21">Genesis 1:21-22</a></span> — because, of course, of their very great goodness; certainly not because they were <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, or very <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>. Change is therefore admissible in Matter; and this being the case, it has lost its condition of <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternity</a>; in short, its beauty is decayed in death. Eternity, however, cannot be lost, because it cannot be <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternity</a>, except by reason of its immunity from loss. For the same reason also it is incapable of change, inasmuch as, since it is <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternity</a>, it can by no means be changed.</p> <h2>Chapter 13. Another Ground of Hermogenes that Matter Has Some Good in It. Its Absurdity</h2> <p>Here the question will arise How creatures were made good out of it, which were formed without any change at all? How occurs the seed of what is <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a>, nay, very good, in that which is <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, nay, very <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>? Surely a good tree does not produce <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> fruit, <span class="stiki" id="note036259"><a href="../bible/mat007.htm#verse18">Matthew 7:18</a></span> since there is no God who is not good; nor does an <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> tree yield good fruit, since there is not Matter except what is very <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>. Or if we were to grant him that there is some germ of good <em>in it</em>, then there will be no longer a uniform nature (pervading it), that is to say, one which is <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> throughout; but instead thereof (we now encounter) a double nature, partly good and partly <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>; and again the question will arise, whether, in a subject which is <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a> and <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, there could possibly have been found a harmony for light and darkness, for sweet and bitter? So again, if qualities so utterly diverse as good and <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> have been able to unite together, and have imparted to Matter a double nature, productive of both kinds of fruit, then no longer will absolutely <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a> things be imputable to <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, just as <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> things are not ascribed to Him, but both qualities will appertain to Matter, since they are derived from the property of Matter. At this rate, we shall owe to God neither gratitude for <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a> things, nor grudge for <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> ones, because He has produced no work of His own proper character. From which circumstance will arise the clear <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proof</a> that He has been subservient to Matter.</p> <h2>Chapter 14. Tertullian Pushes His Opponent into a Dilemma</h2> <p>Now, if it be also argued, that although Matter may have afforded Him the opportunity, it was still His own will which led Him to the creation of good creatures, as having detected what was <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a> in matter — although this, too, be a discreditable supposition — yet, at any rate, when He produces <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> likewise out of the same (Matter), He is a servant to Matter, since, of course, it is not of His own accord that He produces this too, having nothing else that He can do than to effect creation out of an <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> <em>stock</em> — unwillingly, no <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a>, as being good; of necessity, too, as being unwilling; and as an act of servitude, because from necessity. Which, then, is the worthier thought, that He created <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> things of necessity, or of His own accord? Because it was indeed of necessity that He created them, if out of Matter; of His own accord, if out of nothing. For you are now labouring in vain when you try to avoid making God the Author of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> things; because, since He made all things of Matter, they will have to be ascribed to Himself, who made them, just because He made them. Plainly the interest of the question, whence He made all things, identifies itself with (the question), whether He made all things out of nothing; and it matters not whence He made all things, so that He made all things thence, whence most <a href="../cathen/06585a.htm">glory</a> accrued to Him. Now, more <a href="../cathen/06585a.htm">glory</a> accrued to Him from a creation of His own will than from one of necessity; in other words, from a creation out of nothing, than from one out of Matter. It is more worthy to <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">believe</a> that God is free, even as the Author of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, than that He is a slave. Power, whatever it be, is more suited to Him than infirmity. If we thus even admit that matter had nothing good in it, but that the Lord produced whatever good He did produce of His own power, then some other questions will with equal reason arise. First, since there was no good at all in Matter, <em>it is clear</em> that good was not made of Matter, on the express ground indeed that Matter did not possess it. Next, if <em>good was</em> not <em>made</em> of Matter, it must then have been made of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>; if not of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, then it must have been made of nothing.— For this is the alternative, on Hermogenes' own showing. </p> <h2>Chapter 15. The Truth, that God Made All Things from Nothing, Rescued from the Opponent's Flounderings</h2> <p>Now, if good was neither produced out of matter, since it was not in it, <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> as it was, nor out of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, since, according to the position of Hermogenes, nothing could have been produced out of god, it will be found that good was created out of nothing, inasmuch as it was formed of none — neither of Matter nor of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. And if good was formed out of nothing, why not <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> too? Nay, if anything was formed out of nothing, why not all things? Unless indeed it be that the divine might was insufficient for the production of <em>all</em> things, though it produced a something out of nothing. Or else if good proceeded from <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> matter, since it issued neither from nothing nor from <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, it will follow that it must have proceeded from the conversion of Matter contrary to that unchangeable attribute which has been claimed for <em>it</em>, <em>as</em> an <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a> being. Thus, in regard to the source whence good derived its <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a>, Hermogenes will now have to deny the possibility of such. But still it is necessary that (good) should proceed from some one of those sources from which he has denied the very possibility of its having been derived. Now if <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> be denied to be of nothing for the purpose of denying it to be the work of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, from whose will there would be too much appearance of its being derived, and be alleged to proceed from Matter, that it may be the property of that very thing of whose substance it is assumed to be made, even here also, as I have said, God will have to be regarded as the Author of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>; because, whereas it had been His duty to produce all <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a> things out of Matter, or rather <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a> things simply, by His identical attribute of power and will, He did yet <em>not only</em> not produce all <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a> things, but even (some) <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> things — of course, either willing that the <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> should exist if He was able to <a href="../cathen/03459a.htm">cause</a> their non-<a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a>, or not being strong enough to effect that all things should be good, if being desirous of that result, He failed in the accomplishment thereof; since there can be no difference whether it were by weakness or by will, that the Lord <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proved</a> to be the Author of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>. Else what was the reason that, after creating <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a> things, as if Himself good, He should have also produced <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> things, as if He failed in His goodness, since He did not confine Himself to the production of things which were simply consistent with Himself? What necessity was there, after the production of His proper work, for His troubling Himself about Matter also by producing <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> likewise, in order to secure His being alone acknowledged as good from His good, and at the same time to prevent Matter being regarded as <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> from (created) <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>? Good would have flourished much better if <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> had not blown upon it. For Hermogenes himself explodes the arguments of sundry <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">persons</a> who contend that <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> things were necessary to impart lustre to the <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a>, which must be understood from their contrasts. This, therefore, was not the ground for the production of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>; but if some other reason must be sought for the introduction thereof, why could it not have been introduced even from nothing, since the very same reason would exculpate the Lord from the reproach of being thought the author of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, which now excuses <em>the <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a> of</em> <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> things, when He produces them out of Matter? And if there is this excuse, then the question is completely shut up in a corner, where they are unwilling to find it, who, without examining into the reason itself of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, or distinguishing how they should either attribute it to God or separate it from <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, do in fact expose God to many most unworthy <a href="../cathen/03190c.htm">calumnies</a>. </p> <h2>Chapter 16. A Series of Dilemmas. They Show that Hermogenes Cannot Escape from the Orthodox Conclusion</h2> <p>On the very threshold, then, of this doctrine, which I shall probably have to treat of elsewhere, I distinctly lay it down as my position, that both good and <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> must be ascribed either to <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, who made them out of Matter; or to Matter itself, out of which He made them; or both one and the other to both of them together, because they are bound together — both He who created, and that out of which He created; or (lastly) one to One and the other to the Other, because after Matter and God there is not a third. Now if both should prove to belong <em>to God</em>, God evidently will be the author of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>; but <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, as being good, cannot be the author of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>. Again, if both are ascribed <em>to Matter</em>, Matter will evidently be the very mother of good, but inasmuch as Matter is wholly <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, it cannot be the mother of good. But if both one and the other should be thought to belong to Both together, then in this case also Matter will be comparable with <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>; and both will be equal, being on equal terms allied to <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> as well as to good. Matter, however, ought not to be compared with <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, in order that it may not make two gods. If, (lastly,) one be ascribed to One, and the other to the Other — that is to say, let the good be God's, and the <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> belong to Matter — then, on the one hand, <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> must not be ascribed to <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, nor, on the other hand, good to Matter. And <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, moreover, by making both <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a> things and <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> things out of Matter, creates <em>them</em> along with it. This being the case, I cannot tell how Hermogenes is to escape from my conclusion; for he supposes that God cannot be the author of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, in whatever way He created <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> out of Matter, whether it was of His own will, or of necessity, or from the reason (of the case). If, however, He is the author of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, who was the actual Creator, Matter being simply associated <em>with Him</em> by reason of its furnishing Him with substance, you now do away with the <a href="../cathen/03459a.htm">cause</a> of <em>your</em> introducing Matter. For it is not the less <em><a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">true</a></em>, that it is by means of Matter that God shows Himself the author of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, although Matter has been assumed <em>by you</em> expressly to prevent God's seeming to be the author of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>. Matter being therefore excluded, since the <a href="../cathen/03459a.htm">cause</a> of it is excluded, it remains that God without <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a>, must have made all things out of nothing. Whether <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> things were among them we shall see, when it shall be made clear what are <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> things, and whether those things are <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> which you at present deem to be so. For it is more worthy of God that He produced even these of His own will, by producing them out of nothing, than from the predetermination of another, (which must have been the case) if He had produced them out of Matter. It is liberty, not necessity, which suits the character of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. I would much rather that He should have even willed to create <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> of Himself, than that He should have lacked ability to hinder its creation.</p> <h2>Chapter 17. The Truth of God's Work in Creation. You Cannot Depart in the Least from It, Without Landing Yourself in an Absurdity</h2> <p>This rule is required by the <a href="../cathen/10715a.htm">nature</a> of the One-only <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, who is One-only in no other way than as the sole <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>; and in no other way sole, than as having nothing else (co-existent) with Him. So also He will be first, because all things are after Him; and all things are after Him, because all things are by Him; and all things are by Him, because they are of nothing: so that reason coincides with the <a href="../bible/index.html">Scripture</a>, which says: <q>Who has <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">known</a> the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counsellor? Or with whom took He counsel? Or who has shown to Him the way of wisdom and <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knowledge</a>? Who has first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed to him again?</q> Surely none! Because there was present with Him no power, no material, no nature which belonged to any other than Himself. But if it was with some (portion of Matter) that He effected His creation, He must have received from that (Matter) itself both the design and the treatment of its order as being <q>the way of wisdom and <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knowledge</a>.</q> For He had to operate conformably with the quality of the thing, and according to the <a href="../cathen/10715a.htm">nature</a> of Matter, not according to His own will in consequence of which He must have made even <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> things suitably to the nature not of Himself, but of Matter.</p> <h2>Chapter 18. An Eulogy on the Wisdom and Word of God, by Which God Made All Things of Nothing</h2> <p>If any material was necessary to <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> in the creation of the world, as Hermogenes supposed, God had a far nobler and more suitable one in His own wisdom — one which was not to be gauged by the writings of <a href="../cathen/12025c.htm">philosophers</a>, but to be learned from the words or <a href="../cathen/12477a.htm">prophets</a>. This alone, indeed, <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knew</a> the mind of the Lord. For <q>who <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knows</a> the things of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and the things in <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, but the <a href="../cathen/07409a.htm">Spirit</a>, which is in Him?</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036293"><a href="../bible/1co002.htm#verse11">1 Corinthians 2:11</a></span> Now His wisdom is that Spirit. This was His counsellor, the very way of His wisdom and <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knowledge</a>. <span class="stiki" id="note036294"><a href="../bible/isa040.htm#verse14">Isaiah 40:14</a></span> Of this He made all things, making them through It, and making them with It. <q>When He prepared the heavens,</q> so says (the <a href="../bible/index.html">Scripture</a> ), <q>I was present with Him; and when He strengthened above the winds the lofty clouds, and when He secured the fountains which are under the heaven, I was present, compacting these things along with Him. I was He in whom He took delight; moreover, I daily rejoiced in His presence: for He rejoiced when He had finished the world, and among the sons of men did He show forth His pleasure.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036299"><a href="../bible/pro008.htm#verse27">Proverbs 8:27-31</a></span> Now, who would not rather approve of this as the fountain and origin of all things — of this as, in very deed, the Matter of all Matter, not liable to any end, not diverse in condition, not restless in motion, not ungraceful in form, but natural, and proper, and duly proportioned, and beautiful, such <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">truly</a> as even God might well have required, who requires His own and not another's? Indeed, as soon as He perceived It to be necessary for His creation of the world, He immediately creates It, and generates It in Himself. <q>The Lord,</q> says the <a href="../bible/index.html">Scripture</a>, <q>possessed me, the beginning of His ways for the creation of His works. Before the worlds He founded me; before He made the earth, before the mountains were settled in their places; moreover, before the hills He generated me, and prior to the depths was I begotten.</q> Let Hermogenes then confess that the very Wisdom of God is declared to be born and created, for the special reason that we should not suppose that there is any other being than God alone who is unbegotten and uncreated. For if that, which from its being inherent in the Lord was of Him and in Him, was yet not without a beginning — I mean His wisdom, which was then born and created, when in the thought of God It began to assume motion for the arrangement of His creative works — how much more impossible is it that anything should have been without a beginning which was extrinsic to the Lord! But if this same Wisdom is the <a href="../cathen/09328a.htm">Word of God</a>, in the capacity of Wisdom, and (as being He) without whom nothing was made, just as also (nothing) was set in order without Wisdom, how can it be that anything, except the <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">Father</a>, should be older, and on this account indeed nobler, than the <a href="../cathen/14142b.htm">Son of God</a>, the only-begotten and first-begotten Word? Not to say that what is unbegotten is stronger than that which is born, and what is not made more powerful than that which is made. Because that which did not require a Maker to give it <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a>, will be much more elevated in rank than that which had an author to bring it into <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">being</a>. On this principle, then, if <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> is indeed unbegotten, while the <a href="../cathen/14142b.htm">Son of God</a> is begotten (<q>for,</q> says <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, <q>my heart has emitted my most excellent Word</q> ), I am not quite sure that <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> may not be introduced by good, the stronger by the weak, in the same way as the unbegotten is by the begotten. Therefore on this ground Hermogenes puts Matter even before <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, by putting it before the Son. Because the Son is the Word, and <q>the Word is <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>,</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036313"><a href="../bible/joh001.htm#verse1">John 1:1</a></span> and <q>I and my Father are one.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036314"><a href="../bible/joh010.htm#verse30">John 10:30</a></span> But after all, perhaps, the Son will patiently enough submit to having that preferred before Him which (by Hermogenes), is made equal to the Father!</p> <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <h2>Chapter 19. An Appeal to the History of Creation. True Meaning of the Term Beginning, Which the Heretic Curiously Wrests to an Absurd Sense</h2> <p>But I shall appeal to the original document of <a href="../cathen/10596a.htm">Moses</a>, by help of which they on the other side vainly endeavour to prop up their conjectures, with the view, of course, of appearing to have the support of that authority which is indispensable in such an inquiry. They have found their opportunity, as is usual with <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heretics</a>, in wresting the plain meaning of certain words. For instance the very <em>beginning</em>, when God made the heaven and the earth, they will construe as if it meant something substantial and embodied, to be regarded as Matter. We, however, insist on the proper signification of every word, <em>and say</em> that <em>principium</em> means beginning — being a term which is suitable to represent things which begin to exist. For nothing which has come into being is without a beginning, nor can this its commencement be at any other moment than when it begins to have <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a>. Thus <em>principium</em> or beginning, is simply a term of inception, not the name of a substance. Now, inasmuch as the heaven and the earth are the principal works of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and since, by His making them first, He constituted them in a special manner the beginning of His creation, before all things else, with good reason does the <a href="../bible/index.html">Scripture</a> preface (its record of creation) with the words, <q>In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth;</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036319"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse1">Genesis 1:1</a></span> just as it would have said, <q>At last God made the heaven and the earth,</q> if God had created these after all the rest. Now, if the beginning is a substance, the end must also be material. No <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a>, a substantial thing may be the beginning of some other thing which may be formed out of it; thus the clay is the beginning of the vessel, and the seed is the beginning of the plant. But when we employ the word beginning in this sense of <em>origin</em>, and not in that of <em>order</em>, we do not omit to mention also the name of that particular thing which we regard as the origin of the other. On the other hand, if we were to make such a statement as this, for example, <q>In the beginning the potter made a basin or a water-jug,</q> the word beginning will not here indicate a material substance (for I have not mentioned the clay, which is the beginning <em>in this sense</em>, but only the <em>order</em> of the work, meaning that the potter made the basin and the jug first, before anything else — intending afterwards to make the rest. It is, then, to the order of the works that the word beginning has reference, not to the origin of their substances. I might also explain this word <em>beginning</em> in another way, which would not, however, be inapposite. The Greek term for beginning, which is <span class="greek">ἀρχή</span>, admits the sense not only of priority of order, but of power as well; whence princes and magistrates are called <span class="greek">ἀρχοντες</span> . Therefore in this sense too, <em>beginning</em> may be taken for princely authority and power. It was, indeed, in His transcendent authority and power, that <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> made the heaven and the earth.</p> <h2>Chapter 20. Meaning of the Phrase — In the Beginning. Tertullian Connects It with the Wisdom of God, and Elicits from It the Truth that the Creation Was Not Out of Pre-Existent Matter</h2> <p>But in <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proof</a> that the Greek word means nothing else than beginning, and that <em>beginning</em> admits of no other sense than the <em>initial</em> one, we have that (Being) even acknowledging such a beginning, who says: <q>The Lord possessed me, the beginning of His ways for the creation of His works.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036325"><a href="../bible/pro008.htm#verse22">Proverbs 8:22</a></span> For since all things were made by the Wisdom of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, it follows that, when God made both the heaven and the earth <em>in principio</em>— that is to say, in the beginning — He made them in His Wisdom. If, indeed, beginning had a <em>material</em> signification, the <a href="../bible/index.html">Scripture</a> would not have informed us that <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> made so and so <em>in principio</em>, at the beginning, but rather <em>ex principio</em>, of the beginning; for He would not have created <em>in</em>, but <em>of</em>, matter. When Wisdom, however, was referred to, it was quite right to say, in the beginning. For it was in Wisdom that He made all things at first, because by meditating and arranging His plans therein, He had in fact already done (the work of creation); and if He had even intended to create out of matter, He would yet have effected His creation when He previously meditated on it and arranged it in His Wisdom, since It was in fact the beginning of His ways: this meditation and arrangement being the primal operation of Wisdom, opening as it does the way to the works by the act of meditation and thought. This authority of Scripture I claim for myself even from this circumstance, that while it shows me the God who created, and the works He created, it does not in like manner reveal to me the source from which He created. For since in every operation there are three principal things, He who makes, and that which is made, and that of which it is made, there must be three names mentioned in a correct narrative of the operation — the person of the maker the sort of thing which is made, <em>and</em> the material of which it is formed. If the material is not mentioned, while the work and the maker of the work are both mentioned, it is manifest that He made the work out of nothing. For if He had had anything to operate upon, it would have been mentioned as well as (the other two particulars). In conclusion, I will apply the <a href="../cathen/06655b.htm">Gospel</a> as a supplementary testimony to the <a href="../cathen/14526a.htm">Old Testament</a>. Now in this there is all the greater reason why there should be shown the material (if there were any) out of which <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> made all things, inasmuch as it is therein plainly revealed by whom He made all things. <q>In the beginning was the Word</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036331"><a href="../bible/joh001.htm#verse1">John 1:1</a></span> — that is, the same beginning, of course, in which <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> made the heaven and the earth <span class="stiki" id="note036332"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse1">Genesis 1:1</a></span> — <q>and the Word was with <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and the Word was God. All things were made by Him, and without Him nothing was made.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036333"><a href="../bible/joh001.htm#verse1">John 1:1-3</a></span> Now, since we have here clearly told us who the Maker was, that is, <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and what He made, even all things, and through whom He made them, even His Word, would not the order of the narrative have required that the source out of which all things were made by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> through the Word should likewise be declared, if they had been in fact made out of anything? What, therefore, did not exist, the <a href="../bible/index.html">Scripture</a> was unable to mention; and by not mentioning it, it has given us a clear <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proof</a> that there was no such thing: for if there had been, the <a href="../bible/index.html">Scripture</a> would have mentioned it.</p> <h2>Chapter 21. A Retort of Heresy Answered. That Scripture Should in So Many Words Tell Us that the World Was Made of Nothing is Superfluous</h2> <p>But, you will say to me, if you determine that all things were made of nothing, on the ground that it is not told us that anything was made out of pre-existent Matter, take care that it be not contended on the opposite side, that on the same ground all things were made out of Matter, because it is not likewise expressly said that anything was made out of nothing. Some arguments may, of course, be thus retorted easily enough; but it does not follow that they are on that account fairly admissible, where there is a diversity in the <a href="../cathen/03459a.htm">cause</a>. For I maintain that, even if the <a href="../bible/index.html">Scripture</a> has not expressly declared that all things were made out of nothing — just as it abstains (from saying that they were formed) out of Matter — there was no such pressing need for expressly indicating the creation of all things out of nothing, as there was of their creation out of Matter, if that had been their origin. Because, in the case of what is made out of nothing, the very fact of its not being indicated that it was made of any particular thing shows that it was made of nothing; and there is no danger of its being supposed that it was made of anything, when there is no indication at all of what it was made of. In the case, however, of that which is made out of something, unless the very fact be plainly declared, that it was made out of something, there will be danger, until it is shown of what it was made, first of its appearing to be made of nothing, because it is not said of what it was made; and then, should it be of such a nature as to have the appearance of having certainly been made of something, there will be a similar risk of its seeming to have been made of a far different material from the proper one, so long as there is an absence of statement of what it was made of. Then, if God had been unable to make all things of nothing, the <a href="../bible/index.html">Scripture</a> could not possibly have added that He had made all things of nothing: (there could have been no room for such a statement,) but it must by all means have informed us that He had made all things out of Matter, since Matter must have been the source; because the one case was quite to be understood, if it were not actually stated, whereas the other case would be left in <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a> unless it were stated.</p> <h2>Chapter 22. This Conclusion Confirmed by the Usage of Holy Scripture in Its History of the Creation. Hermogenes in Danger of the Woe Pronounced Against Adding to Scripture</h2> <p>And to such a degree has the <a href="../cathen/07409a.htm">Holy Ghost</a> made this the rule of His Scripture, that whenever anything is made out of anything, He mentions both the thing that is made and the thing of which it is made. <q>Let the earth,</q> says He, <q>bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, after its kind. And it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after its kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after its kind.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036338"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse11">Genesis 1:11-12</a></span> And again: <q>And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that have life, and fowl that may fly above the earth through the firmament of heaven. And it was so. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036339"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse20">Genesis 1:20-21</a></span> Again afterwards: <q>And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beasts of the earth after their kind.</q> If therefore <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, when producing other things out of things which had been already made, indicates them by the <a href="../cathen/12477a.htm">prophet</a>, and tells us what He has produced from such and such a source (although we might ourselves suppose them to be derived from some source or other, short of nothing; since there had already been created certain things, from which they might easily seem to have been made); if the <a href="../cathen/07409a.htm">Holy Ghost</a> took upon Himself so great a concern for our instruction, that we might <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">know</a> from what everything was produced, would He not in like manner have kept us well informed about both the heaven and the earth, by indicating to us what it was that He made them of, if their original consisted of any material substance, so that the more He seemed to have made them of nothing, the less in fact was there as yet made, from which He could appear to have made them? Therefore, just as He shows us the original out of which He drew such things as were derived from a given source, so also with regard to those things of which He does not point out whence He produced them, He confirms (by that silence our assertion) that they were produced out of nothing. <q>In the beginning,</q> then, <q><a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> made the heaven and the earth.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036344"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse1">Genesis 1:1</a></span> I revere the fullness of His Scripture, in which He manifests to me both the Creator and the creation. In the gospel, moreover, I discover a Minister and Witness of the Creator, even His Word. <span class="stiki" id="note036346"><a href="../bible/joh001.htm#verse3">John 1:3</a></span> But whether all things were made out of any underlying Matter, I have as yet failed anywhere to find. Where such a statement is written, Hermogenes' shop must tell us. If it is nowhere written, then let it <a href="../cathen/06021a.htm">fear</a> the <em>woe</em> which impends on all who add to or take away from <em>the written word</em>. <span class="stiki" id="note036348"><a href="../bible/rev022.htm#verse18">Revelation 22:18-19</a></span> </p> <h2>Chapter 23. Hermogenes Pursued to Another Passage of Scripture. The Absurdity of His Interpretation Exposed</h2> <p>But he draws an argument from the following words, where it is written: <q>And the earth was without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>, and void.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036349"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse2">Genesis 1:2</a></span> For he resolves the word <em>earth</em> into Matter, because that which is made out of it is the earth. And to the word <em>was</em> he gives the same direction, as if it pointed to what had always <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existed</a> unbegotten and unmade. It was <em>without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a></em>, moreover, <em>and</em> void, because he will have Matter to have <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existed</a> shapeless and confused, and without the finish of a maker's hand. Now these opinions of his I will refute singly; but first I wish to say to him, by way of general answer: We are of opinion that Matter is pointed at in these terms. But yet does the <a href="../bible/index.html">Scripture</a> intimate that, because Matter was in <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a> before all, anything of <em>like</em> condition was even formed out of it? Nothing of the kind. Matter might have had <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a>, if it so pleased — or rather if Hermogenes so pleased. It might, I say, have <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existed</a>, and yet God might not have made anything out of it, either as it was unsuitable to Him to have required the aid of anything, or at least because He is not shown to have made anything out of Matter. Its <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a> must therefore be without a <a href="../cathen/03459a.htm">cause</a>, you will say. Oh, no! certainly not without <a href="../cathen/03459a.htm">cause</a>. For even if the world were not made out of it, yet a <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heresy</a> has been hatched there from; and a specially impudent one too, because it is not Matter which has produced the <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heresy</a>, but the <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heresy</a> has rather made Matter itself.</p> <h2>Chapter 24. Earth Does Not Mean Matter as Hermogenes Would Have It</h2> <p>I now return to the several points by means of which he thought that Matter was signified. And first I will inquire about the terms. For we read only of one of them, <em>Earth</em>; the other, namely <em>Matter</em>, we do not meet with. I ask, then, since Matter is not mentioned in Scripture, how the term earth can be applied to it, which marks a substance of another kind? There is all the greater need why mention should also have been made of Matter, if this has acquired the further sense of Earth, in order that I may be sure that Earth is one and the same name as Matter, and so not claim the designation for merely one substance, as the proper name thereof, and by which it is better <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">known</a>; or else be unable (if I should feel the inclination), to apply it to some particular species of Matter, instead, indeed, of making it the common term of all Matter. For when a proper name does not exist for that thing to which a common term is ascribed, the less apparent is the object to which it may be ascribed, <em>the more</em> capable will it be of being applied to any other object whatever. Therefore, even supposing that Hermogenes could show us the <em>name</em> Matter, he is bound to prove to us further, that the same object has the <em>surname</em> Earth, in order that he may claim for it both designations alike.</p> <h2>Chapter 25. The Assumption that There are Two Earths Mentioned in the History of the Creation, Refuted</h2> <p>He accordingly maintains that there are two earths set before us in the passage in question: one, which <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> made in the beginning; the other being the Matter of which <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> made the world, and concerning which it is said, <q>And the earth was without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>, and void.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036360"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse2">Genesis 1:2</a></span> Of course, if I were to ask, to which of the two earths the name <em>earth</em> is best suited, I shall be told that the earth which was made derived the appellation from that of which it was made, on the ground that it is more likely that the offspring should get its name from the original, than the original from the offspring. This being the case, another question presents itself to us, whether it is right and proper that this earth which <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> made should have derived its name from that out of which He made it? For I find from Hermogenes and the rest of the <em>Materialist</em> <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heretics</a>, that while the one earth was indeed <q>without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>, and void,</q> this one of ours obtained from God in an equal degree both form, and beauty, and symmetry; and therefore that the earth which was created was a different thing from that out of which it was created. Now, having become a different thing, it could not possibly have shared with the other in its name, after it had declined from its condition. If <em>earth</em> was the proper name of the (original) Matter, this world of ours, which is not Matter, because it has become another thing, is unfit to bear the name of earth, seeing that that name belongs to something else, and is a stranger to its nature. But (you will tell me) Matter which has undergone creation, that is, our earth, had with its original a community of name no less than of kind. By no means. For although the pitcher is formed out of the clay, I shall no longer call it clay, but a pitcher; so likewise, although <em>electrum</em> is compounded of gold and silver, I shall yet not call it either gold or silver, but <em>electrum</em>. When there is a departure from the <a href="../cathen/10715a.htm">nature</a> of anything, there is likewise a relinquishment of its name — with a propriety which is alike demanded by the designation and the condition. How great a change indeed from the condition of that earth, which is Matter, has come over this earth of ours, is plain even from the fact that the latter has received this testimony to its goodness in Genesis, <q>And God saw that it was <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a>;</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036365"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse31">Genesis 1:31</a></span> while the former, according to Hermogenes, is regarded as the origin and <a href="../cathen/03459a.htm">cause</a> of all <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evils</a>. Lastly, if the one is Earth because the other is, why also is the one not Matter as the other is? Indeed, by this rule both the heaven and all creatures ought to have had the names of <em>Earth</em> and <em>Matter</em>, since they all consist of Matter. I have said enough touching the designation Earth, by which he will have it that Matter is understood. This, as everybody <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knows</a>, is the name of one of the elements; for so we are taught by nature first, and afterwards by Scripture, except it be that credence must be given to that Silenus who talked so confidently in the presence of king Midas of another world, according to the account of Theopompus. But the same author informs us that there are also several gods.</p> <h2>Chapter 26. The Method Observed in the History of the Creation, in Reply to the Perverse Interpretation of Hermogenes</h2> <p>We, however, have but one <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and but one earth too, which in the beginning God made. <span class="stiki" id="note036366"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse1">Genesis 1:1</a></span> The Scripture, which at its very outset proposes to run through the order thereof tells us as its first information that it was created; it next proceeds to set forth what sort of earth it was. In like manner with respect to the heaven, it informs us first of its creation — <q>In the beginning God made the heaven:</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036368"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse1">Genesis 1:1</a></span> it then goes on to introduce its arrangement; how that God both separated <q>the water which was below the firmament from that which was above the firmament,</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036369"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse7">Genesis 1:7</a></span> and called the firmament heaven, — the very thing He had created in the beginning. Similarly it (afterwards) treats of man: <q>And God created man, in the image of God made He him.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036371"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse27">Genesis 1:27</a></span> It next reveals how He made him: <q>And (the Lord) God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living <a href="../cathen/14153a.htm">soul</a>.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036372"><a href="../bible/gen002.htm#verse7">Genesis 2:7</a></span> Now this is undoubtedly the correct and fitting mode for the narrative. First comes a prefatory statement, then follow the details in full; first the subject is named, then it is described. How absurd is the other view of the account, when even before he had premised any mention of his subject, <em>i.e.</em> Matter, without even giving us its name, he all on a sudden promulged its form and condition, describing to us its quality before mentioning its <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a> — pointing out the figure of the thing formed, <em>but</em> concealing its name! But how much more credible is our opinion, which holds that Scripture has only subjoined the arrangement of the subject after it has first duly described its formation and mentioned its name! Indeed, how full and complete is the meaning of these words: <q>In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; but the earth was without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>, and void,</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036380"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse1">Genesis 1:1-2</a></span> — the very same earth, no <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a>, which <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> made, and of which the <a href="../bible/index.html">Scripture</a> had been speaking at that very moment. For that very <q> <em>but</em></q> is inserted into the narrative like a clasp, (in its function) of a conjunctive particle, to connect <em>the two sentences indissolubly together</em>: <q> <em>But</em> the earth.</q> This word carries back the mind to that earth of which mention had just been made, and binds the sense thereunto. Take away this <q>but,</q> and the tie is loosened; so much so that the passage, <q>But the earth was without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>, and void,</q> may then seem to have been meant for any other earth.</p> <h2>Chapter 27. Some Hair-Splitting Use of Words in Which His Opponent Had Indulged</h2> <p>But you next praise your eyebrows, and toss back your head, and beckon with your finger, in characteristic disdain, and say: There is the <em>was</em>, looking as if it pointed to an <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a> <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a> — making its subject, of course, unbegotten and unmade, and on that account worthy of being supposed to be Matter. Well now, for my own part, I shall resort to no affected protestation, but simply reply that <q> <em>was</em></q> may be predicated of everything — even of a thing which has been created, which was born, which once was not, and which is not <em>your</em> Matter. For of everything which has being, from whatever source it has it, whether it has it by a beginning or without a beginning, the word <q> <em>was</em></q> will be predicated from the very fact that it exists. To whatever thing the first tense of the verb is applicable for <em>definition</em>, to the same will be suitable the later form of the verb, when it has to descend to <em>relation</em>. <q>Est</q> (it is) forms the essential part of a definition, <q>erat</q> (it was) of a relation. Such are the trifles and subtleties of <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heretics</a>, who wrest and bring into question the simple meaning of the commonest words. A grand question it is, to be sure, whether <q>the earth <em>was</em>,</q> which was made! The real point of discussion is, whether <q>being without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>, and void,</q> is a state which is more suitable to that which was created, or to that of which it was created, so that the predicate (<em>was</em>) may appertain to the same thing to which the subject (<em>that which was</em>) also belongs. </p> <h2>Chapter 28. A Curious Inconsistency in Hermogenes Exposed. Certain Expressions in The History of Creation Vindicated in The True Sense</h2> <p>But we shall show not only that this condition agreed with this earth of ours, but that it did not agree with that other (insisted on by Hermogenes). For, inasmuch as pure Matter was thus subsistent with <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, without the interposition indeed of any element at all (because as yet there <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existed</a> nothing but itself and God), it could not of course have been invisible. Because, although <em>Hermogenes</em> contends that darkness was inherent in the substance of Matter, a position which we shall have to meet in its proper place, yet darkness is visible even to a <a href="../cathen/09580c.htm">human</a> being (for the very fact that there is the darkness is an evident one), much more is it so to <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. If indeed it had been invisible, its quality would not have been by any means discoverable. How, then, did Hermogenes find out that that substance was <q>without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>,</q> and confused and disordered, which, as being invisible, was not palpable to his senses? If this <a href="../cathen/10662a.htm">mystery</a> was revealed to him by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, he ought to give us his <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proof</a>. I want to <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">know</a> also, whether (the substance in question) could have been described as <q>void.</q> That certainly is <q>void</q> which is imperfect. Equally certain is it, that nothing can be imperfect but that which is made; it is imperfect when it is not fully made. Certainly, you admit. Matter, therefore, which was not made at all, could not have been imperfect; and what was not imperfect was not <q>void.</q> Having no beginning, because it was not made, it was also unsusceptible of any void-condition. For this void-condition is an accident of beginning. The earth, on the contrary, which was made, was deservedly called <q>void.</q> For as soon as it was made, it had the condition of being imperfect, previous to its completion.</p> <h2>Chapter 29. The Gradual Development of Cosmical Order Out of Chaos in the Creation, Beautifully Stated</h2> <p><a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, indeed, consummated all His works in a due order; at first He paled them out, as it were, in their unformed elements, and then He arranged them in their finished beauty. For He did not all at once inundate light with the splendour of the sun, nor all at once temper darkness with the moon's assuaging ray. The heaven He did not all at once bedeck with constellations and stars, nor did He at once fill the seas with their teeming monsters. The earth itself He did not endow with its varied fruitfulness all at once; but at first He bestowed upon it being, and then He filled it, that it might not be made in vain. For thus says Isaiah: <q>He created it not in vain; He formed it to be inhabited.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036405"><a href="../bible/isa045.htm#verse18">Isaiah 45:18</a></span> Therefore after it was made, and while awaiting its perfect state, it was <q>without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>, and void:</q> <q>void</q> indeed, from the very fact that it was without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a> (as being not yet perfect to the sight, and at the same time unfurnished as yet with its other qualities); and <q>without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>,</q> because it was still covered with waters, as if with the rampart of its fecundating moisture, by which is produced our flesh, in a form allied with its own. For to this purport does David say: <q>The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the world, and all that dwell therein: He has founded it upon the seas, and on the streams has He established it.</q> It was when the waters were withdrawn into their hollow abysses that the dry land became conspicuous, which was hitherto covered with its watery envelope. Then it immediately becomes <q>visible,</q> God saying, <q>Let the water be gathered together into one mass, and let the dry land appear.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036414"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse9">Genesis 1:9</a></span> <q> <em>Appear</em>,</q> says He, not <q> <em>be made</em>.</q> It had been already made, only in its invisible condition it was then waiting to appear. <q>Dry,</q> because it was about to become such by its severance from the moisture, but yet <q>land.</q> <q>And God called the dry land <em>Earth</em>,</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036416"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse10">Genesis 1:10</a></span> not Matter. And so, when it afterwards attains its perfection, it ceases to be accounted void, when God declares, <q>Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed after its kind, and according to its likeness, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit, whose seed is in itself, after its kind.</q> Again: <q>Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, after their kind.</q> Thus the <a href="../bible/index.html">divine Scripture</a> accomplished its full order. For to that, which it had at first described as <q>without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a> (invisible) and void,</q> it gave both visibility and completion. Now no other Matter was <q>without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a> (invisible) and void.</q> Henceforth, then, Matter will have to be visible and complete. So that I must see Matter, since it has become visible. I must likewise recognize it as a completed thing, so as to be able to gather from it the herb bearing seed, and the tree yielding fruit, and that living creatures, made out of it, may minister to my need. Matter, however, is nowhere, but the Earth is here, confessed to my view. I see it, I enjoy it, ever since it ceased to be <q>without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a> (invisible), and void.</q> Concerning it most certainly did Isaiah speak when he said, <q>Thus says the Lord that created the heavens, He was the God that formed the earth, and made it.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036421"><a href="../bible/isa045.htm#verse18">Isaiah 45:18</a></span> The same earth for certain did He form, which He also made. Now how did He form it? Of course by saying, <q>Let the dry land appear.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036423"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse9">Genesis 1:9</a></span> Why does He command it to appear, if it were not previously invisible? <em>His purpose was</em> also, that He might thus prevent His having made it in vain, by rendering it visible, and so fit for use. And thus, throughout, <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proofs</a> arise to us that this earth which we inhabit is the very same which was both created and formed by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and that none other was <q>Without form, and void,</q> than that which had been created and formed. It therefore follows that the sentence, <q>Now the earth was without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>, and void,</q> applies to that same earth which <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> mentioned separately along with the heaven. </p> <h2>Chapter 30. Another Passage in the Sacred History of the Creation, Released from the Mishandling of Hermogenes</h2> <p>The following words will in like manner apparently corroborate the conjecture of Hermogenes, <q>And darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the <a href="../cathen/07409a.htm">Spirit of God</a> moved upon the face of the water;</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036426"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse2">Genesis 1:2</a></span> as if these blended substances, presented us with arguments for his massive pile <em>of Matter</em>. Now, so discriminating an enumeration of certain and distinct elements (as we have in this passage), which severally designates <q>darkness,</q> <q>the deep,</q> <q>the <a href="../cathen/07409a.htm">Spirit of God</a>,</q> <q>the waters,</q> forbids the inference that anything confused or (from such confusion) uncertain is meant. Still more, when He ascribed to them their own places, <q>darkness <em>on the face of</em> the deep,</q> <q>the Spirit <em>upon the face of</em> the waters,</q> He repudiated all confusion in the substances; and by demonstrating their separate position, He demonstrated also their distinction. Most absurd, indeed, would it be that Matter, which is introduced to our view as <q>without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>,</q> should have its <q>formless</q> condition maintained by so many words indicative of form, without any intimation of what that confused body is, which must of course be supposed to be unique, since it is without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>. For that which is without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a> is uniform; but even that which is without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>, when it is blended together from various component parts, must necessarily have one outward appearance; and it has not any appearance, until it has the one appearance (which comes) from many parts <em>combined</em>. Now Matter either had those specific parts within itself, from the words indicative of which it had to be understood — I mean <q>darkness,</q> and <q>the deep,</q> and <q>the <a href="../cathen/07409a.htm">Spirit</a>,</q> and <q>the waters</q> — or it had them not. If it had them, how is it introduced as being <q>without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>?</q> If it had them not, how does it become <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">known</a>? </p> <h2>Chapter 31. A Further Vindication of the Scripture Narrative of the Creation, Against a Futile View of Hermogenes</h2> <p>But this circumstance, too, will be caught at, that Scripture meant to indicate of the heaven only, and this earth of yours, that <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> made it in the beginning, while nothing of the kind <em>is said</em> of the above-mentioned specific parts; and therefore that these, which are not described as having been made, appertain to unformed Matter. To this point also we must give an answer. <a href="../bible/index.html">Holy Scripture</a> would be sufficiently explicit, if it had declared that the heaven and the earth, as the very highest works of creation, were made by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, possessing of course their own special appurtenances, which might be understood to be implied in these highest works themselves. Now the appurtenances of the heaven and the earth, made then in the beginning, were the darkness and the deep, and the spirit, and the waters. For the depth and the darkness underlay the earth. Since the deep was under the earth, and the darkness was over the deep, undoubtedly both the darkness and the deep were under the earth. Below the heaven, too, lay the spirit and the waters. For since the waters were over the earth, which they covered, while the spirit was over the waters, both the spirit and the waters were alike over the earth. Now that which is over the earth, is of course under the heaven. And even as the earth brooded over the deep and the darkness, so also did the heaven brood over the spirit and the waters, and embrace them. Nor, indeed, is there any novelty in mentioning only that which contains, as pertaining to the whole, and understanding that which is contained as included in it, in its character of a portion. Suppose now I should say the city built a theatre and a circus, but the stage was of such and such a kind, and the <a href="../cathen/13641b.htm">statues</a> were on the canal, and the obelisk was reared above them all, would it follow that, because I did not distinctly state that these specific things were made by the city, they were therefore not made by it along with the circus and the theatre? Did I not, indeed, refrain from specially mentioning the formation of these particular things because they were implied in the things which I had already said were made, and might be understood to be inherent in the things in which they were contained? But this example may be an idle one as being derived from a <a href="../cathen/09580c.htm">human</a> circumstance; I will take another, which has the authority of Scripture itself. It says that <q><a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> made man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living <a href="../cathen/14153a.htm">soul</a>.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036452"><a href="../bible/gen002.htm#verse7">Genesis 2:7</a></span> Now, although it here mentions the nostrils, it does not say that they were made by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>; so again it speaks of skin and bones, and flesh and eyes, and sweat and blood, in subsequent passages, and yet it never intimated that they had been created by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. What will Hermogenes have to answer? That the <a href="../cathen/09580c.htm">human</a> limbs must belong to Matter, because they are not specially mentioned as objects of creation? Or are they included in the formation of man? In like manner, the deep and the darkness, and the spirit and the waters, were <em>as</em> members of the heaven and the earth. For in the bodies the limbs were made, in the bodies the limbs too were mentioned. No element but what is a member of that element in which it is contained. But all elements are contained in the heaven and the earth.</p> <h2>Chapter 32. The Account of the Creation in Genesis a General One, Corroborated, However, by Many Other Passages of the Old Testament, Which Give Account of Specific Creations. Further Cavillings Confuted</h2> <p>This is the answer I should give in defense of the <a href="../bible/index.html">Scripture</a> before us, for seeming here to set forth the formation of the heaven and the earth, as if (they were) the sole bodies <em>made</em>. It could not but <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">know</a> that there were those who would at once in the bodies understand their several members also, and therefore it employed this concise mode of speech. But, at the same time, it foresaw that there would be stupid and crafty men, who, after paltering with the virtual meaning, would require for the several members a word descriptive of their formation too. It is therefore because of such <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">persons</a>, that <em>Scripture</em> in other passages teaches us of the creation of the individual parts. You have Wisdom saying, <q>But before the depths was I brought forth,</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036458"><a href="../bible/pro008.htm#verse24">Proverbs 8:24</a></span> in order that you may <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">believe</a> that the depths were also <q>brought forth</q> — that is, created — just as we create sons also, though we <q>bring them forth.</q> It matters not whether the depth was made or born, so that a beginning be accorded to it, which <em>however</em> would not be, if it were subjoined to matter. Of darkness, indeed, the Lord Himself by Isaiah says, <q>I formed the light, and I created darkness.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036460"><a href="../bible/isa045.htm#verse7">Isaiah 45:7</a></span> Of the wind also Amos says, <q>He that strengthens the thunder , and creates the wind, and declares His Christ unto men;</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036464"><a href="../bible/amo004.htm#verse13">Amos 4:13</a></span> thus showing that that wind was created which was reckoned with the formation of the earth, which was wafted over the waters, balancing and refreshing and animating all things: not (as some suppose) meaning God Himself by <em>the spirit</em>, on the ground that <q><a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> is a Spirit,</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036466"><a href="../bible/joh004.htm#verse24">John 4:24</a></span> because the waters would not be able to bear up their Lord; but He speaks of that spirit of which the winds consist, as He says by <a href="../cathen/08179b.htm">Isaiah</a>, <q>Because my spirit went forth from me, and I made every blast.</q> In like manner the same Wisdom says of the waters, <q>Also when He made the fountains strong, things which are under the sky, I was fashioning them along with Him.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036470"><a href="../bible/pro008.htm#verse28">Proverbs 8:28</a></span> Now, when we prove that these particular things were created by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, although they are only mentioned in Genesis, without any intimation of their having been made, we shall perhaps receive from the other side the reply, that these were made, it is <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">true</a>, but out of Matter, since the very statement of <a href="../cathen/10596a.htm">Moses</a>, <q>And darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters,</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036472"><a href="../bible/gen001.htm#verse2">Genesis 1:2</a></span> refers to Matter, as indeed do all those other Scriptures here and there, which demonstrate that the separate parts were made out of Matter. It must follow, then, that as earth consisted of earth, so also depth consisted of depth, and darkness of darkness, and the wind and waters of wind and waters. And, as we said above, Matter could not have been without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>, since it had specific parts, which were formed out of it — although as separate things — unless, indeed, they were not separate, but were the very same with those out of which they came. For it is really impossible that those specific things, which are set forth under the same names, should have been diverse; because in that case the operation of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> might seem to be useless, if it made things which <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existed</a> already; since that alone would be a creation, when things came into being, which had not been (previously) made. Therefore, to conclude, either <a href="../cathen/10596a.htm">Moses</a> then pointed to Matter when he wrote <em>the words</em>: <q>And darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters;</q> or else, inasmuch as these specific parts <em>of creation</em> are afterwards shown in other passages to have been made by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, they ought to have been with equal explicitness shown to have been made out of the Matter which, <em>according to you</em>, <a href="../cathen/10596a.htm">Moses</a> had previously mentioned; or else, <em>finally</em>, if <a href="../cathen/10596a.htm">Moses</a> pointed to those specific parts, and not to Matter, I want to <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">know</a> where Matter has been pointed out <em>at all</em>.</p> <h2>Chapter 33. Statement of the True Doctrine Concerning Matter. Its Relation to God's Creation of the World</h2> <p>But although Hermogenes finds it among his own colorable pretences (for it was not in his power to discover it in the <a href="../bible/index.html">Scriptures</a> of God), it is enough for us, both that it is certain that all things were made by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and that there is no certainty whatever that they were made out of Matter. And even if Matter had <em>previously</em> <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existed</a>, we must have <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">believed</a> that it had been really made by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, since we maintained (no less) when we held the rule of <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> to be, that nothing except God was uncreated. Up to this point there is room for controversy, until Matter is brought to the test of the <a href="../bible/index.html">Scriptures</a>, and fails to make good its case. The conclusion of the whole is this: I find that there was nothing made, except out of nothing; because that which I find was made, I <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">know</a> did not <em>once</em> exist. Whatever was made out of something, has its origin in something made: for instance, out of the ground was made the grass, and the fruit, and the cattle, and the form of man himself; so from the waters were produced the animals which swim and fly. The original fabrics out of which such creatures were produced I may call their <em>materials</em>, but then even these were created by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>.</p> <h2>Chapter 34. A Presumption that All Things Were Created by God Out of Nothing Afforded by the Ultimate Reduction of All Things to Nothing. Scriptures Proving This Reduction Vindicated from Hermogenes' Charge of Being Merely Figurative</h2> <p>Besides, the belief that everything was made from nothing will be impressed upon us by that ultimate dispensation of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> which will bring back all things to nothing. For <q>the very heaven shall be rolled together as a scroll;</q> nay, it shall come to nothing along with the earth itself, with which it was made in the beginning. <q><a href="../cathen/07170a.htm">Heaven</a> and earth shall pass away,</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036491"><a href="../bible/mat024.htm#verse35">Matthew 24:35</a></span> says He. <q>The first heaven and the first earth passed away,</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036492"><a href="../bible/rev021.htm#verse1">Revelation 21:1</a></span> <q>and there was found no place for them,</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036493"><a href="../bible/rev020.htm#verse11">Revelation 20:11</a></span> because, of course, that which comes to an end loses locality. In like manner David says, <q>The heavens, the works of Your hands, shall themselves perish. For even as a vesture shall He change them, and they shall be changed.</q> Now to be changed is to fall from that primitive state which they lose while undergoing the change. <q>And the stars too shall fall from heaven, even as a fig-tree casts her green figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036496"><a href="../bible/rev006.htm#verse13">Revelation 6:13</a></span> <q>The mountains shall melt like wax at the presence of the Lord;</q> that is, <q>when He rises to shake terribly the earth.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036498"><a href="../bible/isa002.htm#verse19">Isaiah 2:19</a></span> <q>But I will dry up the pools;</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036499"><a href="../bible/isa042.htm#verse15">Isaiah 42:15</a></span> and <q>they shall seek water, and they shall find none.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036500"><a href="../bible/isa041.htm#verse17">Isaiah 41:17</a></span> Even <q>the sea shall be no more.</q> Now if any person should go so far as to suppose that all these passages ought to be spiritually interpreted, he will yet be unable to deprive them of the <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">true</a> accomplishment of those issues which must come to pass just as they have been written. For all figures of speech necessarily arise out of real things, not out of chimerical ones; because nothing is capable of imparting anything of its own for a similitude, except it actually be that very thing which it imparts in the similitude. I return therefore to the principle which defines that all things which have come from nothing shall return at last to nothing. For God would not have made any perishable thing out of what was <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a>, that is to say, out of Matter; neither out of greater things would He have created inferior ones, to whose character it would be more agreeable to produce greater things out of inferior ones — in other words, what is <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a> out of what is perishable. This is the promise He makes even to our flesh, and it has been His <a href="../cathen/15624a.htm">will</a> to deposit within us this pledge of His own <a href="../cathen/15472a.htm">virtue</a> and power, in order that we may <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">believe</a> that He has actually awakened the <a href="../cathen/15183a.htm">universe</a> out of nothing, as if it had been steeped in death, in the sense, of course, of its previous non-<a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a> for the purpose of its coming into <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a>. </p> <h2>Chapter 35. Contradictory Propositions Advanced by Hermogenes Respecting Matter and Its Qualities</h2> <p>As regards all other points touching Matter, although there is no necessity why we should treat of them (for our first point was the manifest <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proof</a> of its <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a>), we must for all that pursue our discussion just as if it did exist, in order that its non-<a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a> may be the more apparent, when these other points concerning it prove inconsistent with each other, and in order at the same time that Hermogenes may acknowledge his own contradictory positions. Matter, says he, at first sight seems to us to be incorporeal; but when examined by <em>the light of</em> right reason, it is found to be neither corporeal nor incorporeal. What is this right reason of yours, which declares nothing right, that is, nothing certain? For, if I mistake not, everything must of necessity be either corporeal or incorporeal (although I may for the moment allow that there is a certain incorporeality in even substantial things, although their very substance is the body of particular things); at all events, after the corporeal and the incorporeal there is no third <em>state</em>. But if it be contended that there is a third state discovered by this right reason of Hermogenes, which makes Matter neither corporeal nor incorporeal, (I ask,) Where is it? What sort of thing is it? What is it called? What is its description? What is it understood to be? This only has his reason declared, that Matter is neither corporeal nor incorporeal.</p> <h2>Chapter 36. Other Absurd Theories Respecting Matter and Its Incidents Exposed in an Ironical Strain. Motion in Matter. Hermogenes' Conceits Respecting It</h2> <p>But see what a contradiction he next advances (or perhaps some <em>other</em> reason occurs to him), when he declares that Matter partly corporeal and partly incorporeal. Then must Matter be considered (to embrace) both conditions, in order that it may not have either? For it will be corporeal, and incorporeal in spite of the declaration of that antithesis, which is plainly above giving any reason for its opinion, just as that <q>other reason</q> also was. Now, by the corporeal part of Matter, he means that of which bodies are created; but by the incorporeal part <em>of Matter</em>, he means its uncreated motion. If, says he, <em>Matter</em> were simply a body, there would appear to be in it nothing incorporeal, that is, (no) motion; if, on the other hand, it had been wholly incorporeal no body could be formed out of it. What a peculiarly right reason have we here! Only if you make your sketches as right as you make your reason, Hermogenes, no painter would be more stupid than yourself. For who is going to allow you to reckon <em>motion</em> as a moiety of <em>Matter</em>, seeing that it is not a substantial thing, because it is not corporeal, but an accident (if indeed it be even that) of a substance and a body? Just as action is, and impulsion, just as a slip is, or a fall, so is motion. When anything moves even of itself, its motion is the result of impulse; but certainly it is no part of its substance in your sense, when you make motion the incorporeal part of matter. All things, indeed, have motion — either of themselves as animals, or of others as inanimate things; but yet we should not say that either a man or a stone was both corporeal and incorporeal because they had both a body and motion: <em>we should say</em> rather that all things have one form of simple corporeality, which is the essential quality of substance. If any incorporeal <em>incidents</em> accrue to them, as actions, or <a href="../cathen/11534a.htm">passions</a>, or functions, or desires, we do not reckon these parts as of the things. How then does he contrive to assign an <em>integral</em> portion of Matter to <em>motion</em>, which does not pertain to substance, but to a certain condition of substance? Is not this incontrovertible? Suppose you had taken it into your head to represent matter as immoveable, would then the immobility seem to you to be a moiety of its form? <em>Certainly not</em>. Neither, in like manner, could motion. But I shall be at liberty to speak of motion elsewhere. </p> <h2>Chapter 37. Ironical Dilemmas Respecting Matter, and Sundry Moral Qualities Fancifully Attributed to It</h2> <p>I see now that you are coming back again to that reason, which has been in the <a href="../cathen/07099b.htm">habit</a> of declaring to you nothing in the way of certainty. For just as you introduce to our notice Matter as being neither corporeal nor incorporeal, so you allege of it that it is neither good nor <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>; and you say, while arguing further on it in the same strain: <q>If it were good, seeing that it had ever been so, it would not require the arrangement of itself by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>; if it were naturally <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, it would not have admitted of a change for the better, nor would God have ever applied to such a nature any attempt at arrangement of it, for His labour would have been in vain.</q> Such are your words, which it would have been well if you had remembered in other passages also, so as to have avoided any contradiction of them. As, however, we have already treated to some extent of this ambiguity of good and <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> touching Matter, I will now reply to the only proposition and argument of yours which we have before us. I shall not stop to repeat my opinion, that it was your bounden duty to have said for certain that Matter was either good or bad, or in some third condition; but (I must observe) that you have not here even kept to the statement which you chose to make before. Indeed, you retract what you declared — that Matter is neither good nor <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>; because you imply that it is <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> when you say, <q>If it were good, it would not require to be set in order by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>;</q> so again, when you add, <q>If it were naturally <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, it would not admit of any change for the better,</q> you seem to intimate that it is <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a>. And so you attribute to it a close relation to good and <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, although you declared it neither good nor <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>. With a view, however, to refute the argument whereby you thought you were going to clinch your proposition, I here contend: If Matter had always been good, why should it not have <em>still</em> wanted a change for the better? Does that which is <a href="../cathen/06636b.htm">good</a> never desire, never wish, never feel able to advance, so as to change its good for a better? And in like manner, if <em>Matter</em> had been by nature <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, why might it not have been changed by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> as the more powerful Being, as able to convert the <a href="../cathen/10715a.htm">nature</a> of stones into children of <a href="../cathen/01051a.htm">Abraham</a>? <span class="stiki" id="note036532"><a href="../bible/mat003.htm#verse9">Matthew 3:9</a></span> Surely by such means you not only compare the Lord with Matter, but you even put Him below it, since you affirm that the <a href="../cathen/10715a.htm">nature</a> of Matter could not possibly be brought under control by Him, and trained to something better. But although you are here disinclined to allow that Matter is by nature <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, yet in another passage you will deny having made such an admission. </p> <h2>Chapter 38. Other Speculations of Hermogenes, About Matter and Some of Its Adjuncts, Shown to Be Absurd. For Instance, Its Alleged Infinity</h2> <p>My observations touching the <em>site</em> of Matter, as also concerning its <em>mode</em> have one and the same object in view — to meet and refute your perverse positions. You put Matter below <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and thus, of course, you assign a place to it below God. Therefore Matter is local. Now, if it is local, it is within locality; if within locality, it is bounded by the place within which it is; if it is bounded, it has an outline, which (painter as you are in your special vocation) you <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">know</a> is the boundary to every object susceptible of outline. Matter, therefore, cannot be <a href="../cathen/08004a.htm">infinite</a>, which, since it is in space, is bounded by space; and being thus determinable by space, it is susceptible of an outline. You, however, make it <a href="../cathen/08004a.htm">infinite</a>, when you say: <q>It is on this account <a href="../cathen/08004a.htm">infinite</a>, because it is always existent.</q> And if any of your <a href="../cathen/05029a.htm">disciples</a> should choose to meet us by declaring your meaning to be that Matter is <a href="../cathen/08004a.htm">infinite</a> in time, not in its corporeal mass, still what follows will show that (you mean) corporeal infinity <em>to be an attribute of Matter</em>, that it is in respect of bulk immense and uncircumscribed. <q>Wherefore,</q> say you, <q>it is not fabricated as a whole, but <em>in</em> its parts.</q> In bulk, therefore, is it <a href="../cathen/08004a.htm">infinite</a>, not in time. And you contradict yourself when you make <em>Matter</em> <a href="../cathen/08004a.htm">infinite</a> in bulk, and at the same time ascribe place to it, including it within space and local outline. But yet at the same time I cannot tell why God should not have entirely formed it, unless it be because He was either impotent or <a href="../cathen/08326b.htm">envious</a>. I want therefore to <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">know</a> the moiety of that which was not wholly formed (by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>), in order that I may understand what kind of thing the entirety was. It was only right that <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> should have made it <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">known</a> as a model of antiquity, to set off the <a href="../cathen/06585a.htm">glory</a> of His work.</p> <h2>Chapter 39. These Latter Speculations Shown to Be Contradictory to the First Principles Respecting Matter, Formerly Laid Down by Hermogenes</h2> <p>Well, now, since it seems to you to be the correcter thing, let Matter be circumscribed by means of changes and displacements; let it also be capable of comprehension, since (as you say) it is used as material by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, on the ground of its being convertible, mutable, and separable. For its changes, you say, show it to be inseparable. And here you have swerved from your own lines which you prescribed respecting the person of God when you laid down the rule that <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> made it not out of His own self, because it was not possible for Him to become divided seeing that He is <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a> and abiding for ever, and therefore unchangeable and indivisible. Since Matter too is estimated by the same <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternity</a>, having neither beginning nor end, it will be unsusceptible of division, of change, for the same reason that God also is. Since it is associated with Him in the joint possession of <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternity</a>, it must needs share with Him also the powers, the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a>, and the conditions of <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternity</a>. In like manner, when you say, <q>All things simultaneously throughout the <a href="../cathen/15183a.htm">universe</a> possess portions of it, that so the whole may be ascertained from its parts,</q> you of course mean to indicate those parts which were produced out of it, and which are now visible to us. How then is this possession (of Matter) by all things throughout the <a href="../cathen/15183a.htm">universe</a> effected — that is, of course, from the very beginning — when the things which are now visible to us are different in their condition from what they were in the beginning?</p> <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <h2>Chapter 40. Shapeless Matter an Incongruous Origin for God's Beautiful Cosmos. Hermogenes Does Not Mend His Argument by Supposing that Only a Portion of Matter Was Used in the Creation</h2> <p>You say that Matter was reformed for the better — from a worse condition, of course; and <em>thus</em> you would make the better a copy of the worse. Everything was in confusion, but now it is reduced to order; and would you also say, that out of order, disorder is produced? No one thing is the exact mirror of another thing; that is to say, it is not its co-equal. Nobody ever found himself in a barber's looking-glass look like an ass instead of a man; unless it be he who supposes that unformed and shapeless Matter answers to Matter which is now arranged and beautified in the fabric of the world. What is there now that is without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a> in the world, what was there once that was formed in Matter, that the world is the mirror of Matter? Since the world is <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">known</a> among the Greeks by a term denoting <em>ornament</em>, how can it present the image of unadorned Matter, in such a way that you can say the whole is <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">known</a> by its parts? To that whole will certainly belong even the <em>portion</em> which has not yet become formed; and you have already declared that the whole <em>of Matter</em> was not used as material <em>in the creation</em>. It follows, then, that this rude, and confused, and unarranged portion cannot be recognized in the polished, and distinct and well-arranged <em>parts of creation</em>, which indeed can hardly with propriety be called parts of Matter, since they have quitted its condition, by being separated from it in the transformation they have undergone.</p> <h2>Chapter 41. Sundry Quotations from Hermogenes. Now Uncertain and Vague are His Speculations Respecting Motion in Matter, and the Material Qualities of Good and Evil</h2> <p>I come back to the point of <em>motion</em>, that I may show how slippery you are at every step. Motion in Matter was disordered, and confused, and turbulent. This is why you apply to it the comparison of a boiler of hot water surging over. Now how is it, that in another passage another sort of motion is affirmed by you? For when you want to represent Matter as neither good nor <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, you say: <q>Matter, which is the substratum (of creation) possessing as it does motion in an equable impulse, tends in no very great degree either to good or to <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>.</q> Now if it had this equable impulse, it could not be turbulent, nor be like the boiling water of the caldron; it would rather be even and regular, oscillating indeed of its own accord between good and <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, but yet not prone or tending to either side. It would swing, as the phrase is, in a <a href="../cathen/08571c.htm">just</a> and exact balance. Now this is not unrest; this is not turbulence or inconstancy; but rather the regularity, and evenness, and exactitude of a motion, inclining to neither side. If it oscillated this way and that way, and inclined rather to one particular side, it would plainly in that case merit the reproach of unevenness, and inequality, and turbulence. Moreover, although the motion <em>of Matter</em> was not prone either to good or to <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, it would still, of course, oscillate between good and <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>; so that from this circumstance too it is obvious that Matter is contained within certain limits, because its motion, while prone to neither good nor <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, since it had no natural bent either way, oscillated from either between both, and therefore was contained within the limits of the two. But you, in fact, place both good and <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> in a local habitation, when you assert that motion in Matter inclined to neither of them. For Matter which was local, when inclining neither hither nor there, inclined not to the places in which good and <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> were. But when you assign locality to good and <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, you make them corporeal by making them local, since those things which have local space must needs first have bodily substance. In fact, incorporeal things could not have any locality of their own except in a body, when they have access to a body. But when Matter inclined not to good and <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, it was as corporeal or local <em>essences</em> that it did not incline to them. You <a href="../cathen/05525a.htm">err</a>, therefore, when you will have it that good and <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> are substances. For you make substances of the things to which you assign locality; but you assign locality when you keep motion in Matter poised equally distant from both sides. </p> <h2>Chapter 42. Further Exposure of Inconsistencies in the Opinions of Hermogenes Respecting the Divine Qualities of Matter</h2> <p>You have thrown out all your views loosely and at random, in order that it might not be apparent, by too close a proximity, how contrary they are to one another. I, however, mean to gather them together and compare them. You allege that motion in Matter is without regularity, and you go on to say that Matter aims at a shapeless condition, and then, in another passage, that it desires to be set in order by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. Does that, then, which affects to be without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>, want to be put into shape? Or does that which wants to be put into shape, affect to be without <a href="../cathen/06137b.htm">form</a>? You are unwilling that <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> should seem to be equal to Matter; and then again you say that it has a common condition with <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. <q>For it is impossible,</q> you say, <q>if it has nothing in common with <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, that it can be set in order by Him.</q> But if it had anything in common with <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, it did not want to be set in order, being, forsooth, a part of the Deity through a community of condition; or else even God was susceptible of being set in order by Matter, by His having Himself something in common with it. And now you herein subject God to necessity, since there was in Matter something on account of which He gave it form. You make it, however, a common attribute of both of them, that they set themselves in motion by themselves, and that they are ever in motion. What less do you ascribe to Matter than to God? There will be found all through a fellowship of divinity in this freedom and perpetuity of motion.</p> <p>Only in God motion is regular, in Matter irregular. In both, however, there is equally the attribute of Deity — both alike having free and <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternal</a> motion. At the same time, you assign more to Matter, to which belonged the privilege of thus moving itself in a way not allowed to <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>.</p> <h2>Chapter 43. Other Discrepancies Exposed and Refuted Respecting the Evil in Matter Being Changed to Good</h2> <p>On the subject of motion I would make this further remark. Following the <em>simile</em> of the boiling caldron, you say that motion in Matter, before it was regulated, was confused, restless, incomprehensible by reason of excess in the commotion. Then again you go on to say, <q>But it waited for the regulation of <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and kept its irregular motion incomprehensible, owing to the tardiness of its irregular motion.</q> Just before you ascribe commotion, here tardiness, to motion. Now observe how many slips you make respecting the <a href="../cathen/10715a.htm">nature</a> of Matter. In a former passage you say, <q>If Matter were naturally <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, it would not have admitted of a change for the better; nor would God have ever applied to it any attempt at arrangement, for His labour would have been in vain.</q> You therefore concluded your two opinions, that Matter was not by nature <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, and that its nature was incapable of being changed by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>; and then, forgetting them, you afterwards drew this inference: <q>But when it received adjustment from <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>, and was reduced to order, it relinquished its nature.</q> Now, inasmuch as it was transformed to good, it was of course transformed from <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>; and if by God's setting it in order it relinquished the <a href="../cathen/10715a.htm">nature</a> of <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a>, it follows that its nature came to an end; now its nature was <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> before the adjustment, but after the transformation it might have relinquished that nature.</p> <h2>Chapter 44. Curious Views Respecting God's Method of Working with Matter Exposed. Discrepancies in the Heretic's Opinion About God's Local Relation to Matter</h2> <p>But it remains that I should show also how you make God work. You are plainly enough at variance with the <a href="../cathen/12025c.htm">philosophers</a>; but neither are you in accord with the <a href="../cathen/12477a.htm">prophets</a>. The <a href="../cathen/14299a.htm">Stoics</a> maintain that God pervaded Matter, just as honey the honeycomb. You, however, affirm that it is not by pervading Matter that God makes the world, but simply by appearing, and approaching it, just as beauty affects a thing by simply appearing, and a loadstone by approaching it. Now what similarity is there in God forming the world, and beauty wounding a <a href="../cathen/14153a.htm">soul</a>, or a magnet attracting iron? For even if God appeared to Matter, He yet did not wound it, as beauty does the <a href="../cathen/14153a.htm">soul</a>; if, again, He approached it, He yet did not cohere to it, as the magnet does to the iron. Suppose, however, that your examples are suitable ones. Then, of course, it was by appearing and approaching to Matter that God made the world, and He made it when He appeared and when He approached to it. Therefore, since He had not made it before then, He had neither appeared nor approached to it. Now, by whom can it be <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">believed</a> that God had not appeared to Matter — of the same nature as it even was owing to its <a href="../cathen/05551b.htm">eternity</a>? Or that He had been at a distance from it — even He whom we <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">believe</a> to be existent everywhere, and everywhere apparent; whose praises all things chant, even inanimate things and things incorporeal, according to (the <a href="../cathen/12477a.htm">prophet</a>) Daniel? <span class="stiki" id="note036592"><a href="../bible/dan003.htm#verse21">Daniel 3:21</a></span> How immense the place, where God kept Himself so far aloof from Matter as to have neither appeared nor approached to it before the creation of the world! I suppose He journeyed to it from a long distance, as soon as He wished to appear and approach to it.</p> <h2>Chapter 45. Conclusion. Contrast Between the Statements of Hermogenes and the Testimony of Holy Scripture Respecting the Creation. Creation Out of Nothing, Not Out of Matter</h2> <p>But it is not thus that the <a href="../cathen/12477a.htm">prophets</a> and the <a href="../cathen/01626c.htm">apostles</a> have told us that the world was made by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> merely appearing and approaching Matter. They did not even mention any Matter, but (said) that Wisdom was first set up, the beginning of His ways, for His works. <span class="stiki" id="note036593"><a href="../bible/pro008.htm#verse22">Proverbs 8:22-23</a></span> Then that the Word was produced, <q>through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036594"><a href="../bible/joh001.htm#verse3">John 1:3</a></span> Indeed, <q>by the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all their hosts by the breath of His mouth.</q> He is the Lord's right hand, <span class="stiki" id="note036596"><a href="../bible/isa048.htm#verse13">Isaiah 48:13</a></span> indeed His two hands, by which He worked and constructed <em>the <a href="../cathen/15183a.htm">universe</a></em>. <q>For,</q> says He, <q>the heavens are the works of Your hands,</q> wherewith <q>He has meted out the heaven, and the earth with a span.</q> Do not be willing so to cover God with flattery, as to contend that He produced by His mere appearance and simple approach so many vast substances, instead of rather forming them by His own energies. For this is <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proved</a> by Jeremiah when he says, <q><a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> has made the earth by His power, He has established the world by His wisdom, and has stretched out the heaven by His understanding.</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036599"><a href="../bible/jer051.htm#verse15">Jeremiah 51:15</a></span> These are the energies by the stress of which He made this <a href="../cathen/15183a.htm">universe</a>. His <a href="../cathen/06585a.htm">glory</a> is greater if He laboured. At length on the seventh day He rested from His works. Both one and the other were after His manner. If, on the contrary, He made this world simply by appearing and approaching it, did He, on the completion of His work, cease to appear and approach it any more. Nay rather, God began to appear more conspicuously and to be everywhere accessible from the time when the world was made. You see, therefore, how all things consist by the operation of that God who <q>made the earth by His power, who established the world by His wisdom, and stretched out the heaven by His understanding;</q> not appearing merely, nor approaching, but applying the almighty efforts of His <a href="../cathen/10321a.htm">mind</a>, His wisdom, His power, His understanding, His word, His Spirit, His might. Now these things were not necessary to Him, if He had been perfect by simply appearing and approaching. They are, however, His <q>invisible things,</q> which, according to the apostle, <q>are from the creation of the world clearly seen by the things that are made;</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036604"><a href="../bible/rom001.htm#verse20">Romans 1:20</a></span> <em>they are no parts</em> of a nondescript Matter, but they are the sensible evidences of Himself. <q>For who has <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">known</a> the mind of the Lord,</q> <span class="stiki" id="note036607"><a href="../bible/rom011.htm#verse34">Romans 11:34</a></span> of which (the apostle) exclaims: <q>O the depth of the riches both of His wisdom and <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knowledge</a>! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!</q> Now what clearer <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">truth</a> do these words indicate, than that all things were made out of nothing? They are incapable of being found out or investigated, except by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> alone. Otherwise, if they were traceable or discoverable in Matter, they would be capable of investigation. Therefore, in <em>as</em> far as it has become evident that Matter had no prior <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a> (even from this circumstance, that it is impossible for it to have had such an <a href="../cathen/05543b.htm">existence</a> as is assigned to it), in <em>so</em> far is it <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proved</a> that all things were made by <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> out of nothing. It must be admitted, however, that Hermogenes, by describing for Matter a condition like his own — irregular, confused, turbulent, of a doubtful and precipate and fervid impulse — has displayed a specimen of his own art, and painted his own portrait.</p> <div class='catholicadnet-728x90' id='fathers-728x90-bottom' style='display: flex; height: 100px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; '></div> <div class="pub"> <h2>About this page</h2> <p id="src"><strong>Source.</strong> <span id="srctrans">Translated by Peter Holmes.</span> From <span id="srcwork">Ante-Nicene Fathers</span>, <span id="srcvolume">Vol. 3.</span> <span id="srced">Edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe.</span> (<span id="srcpublisher">Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co.,</span> <span id="srcyear">1885.</span>) <span id="kk">Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight.</span> <span id="srcurl"><http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0313.htm>.</span></p> <p id="contactus"><strong>Contact information.</strong> The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 <em>at</em> newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.</p> </div> </div> <div id="ogdenville"><table summary="Bottom bar" width="100%" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td class="bar_white_on_color"><center><strong>Copyright © 2023 by <a href="../utility/contactus.htm">New Advent LLC</a>. 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