Against Hermogenes

This first shadow—plainly without light—that most wretched painter colored with those arguments, laying down beforehand that the Lord made all things either from Himself, or from nothing, or from something: so that when he had shown that He could have made them neither from Himself nor from nothing, he might from that point confirm what remains, namely that He made them from something, and that that something was therefore matter. He denies that He could have made from Himself: because whatever the Lord had made from Himself would have been parts of Himself. Furthermore, He does not come into parts, being indivisible and immutable, and always the same as Lord. Besides, if He had made something from Himself, that something would have been His own.

But both what was being made and what was making would have to be considered imperfect; because it would be making from a part, and making as a part: or if the whole had made the whole, He would have had to be at once both the whole and not the whole; because it would be necessary both that He be the whole, in order to make Himself, and that He not be the whole, in order to be made from Himself. But this is most difficult. For if He existed, He would not be coming into being, for He would already exist; but if He did not exist, He would not be making, because He would be nothing. But He who always exists does not come into being, but exists unto ages of ages. Therefore He did not make from Himself—He who was not of that condition that He could have made from Himself.

Likewise he contends that He could not have made from nothing, defining the Lord as good and most good, who both wills to make things good and most good, even as He is; nay, that He wills and makes nothing that is not good and most good. Therefore all things good, all things ought to have been made by Him good and most good, in accordance with His own condition. But evil things also are found to have been made by Him; certainly not from choice, nor from will: because if from choice and will, He would make nothing incongruous and unworthy of Himself. What therefore He did not make by His own choice, must be understood to have been made from the fault of some thing—it is from matter, without doubt.

He adds also another argument: that God was always God and also Lord, never not God. But in no way could He have been held to be always Lord, just as He is also always God, if there had not always been something beforehand of which He was always held to be Lord; therefore matter always existed for God the Lord. I shall hasten to destroy this conjecture of his from this point, which I have thought fit to add thus far for the sake of those who do not understand, so that they may know that the remaining arguments also are as intelligible as they are refutable. We say that the name of God was always with Himself and in Himself, but that of Lord not always: for the condition of each is different.

God is the name of His very substance, that is, of His divinity; but Lord is a name not of substance but of power—the substance having always existed with its own name, which is God; afterwards Lord, by reason of the mention of something that has come in addition. For from the time that those things began to exist upon which the power of the Lord might act, from that time, by the accession of power, He was both made and called Lord: because God is also Father, and God is also Judge; yet He is not therefore always Father and always Judge, because He is always God. For neither could He be Father before the Son, nor Judge before the offence. But there was a time when both the offence and the Son did not exist, which would make Him Judge, and which would make Him Father and Lord.

So also Lord not before those things of which He would be Lord, but only to be Lord at some future time—just as Father through the Son, just as Judge through the offence; so also Lord through those things which He had made to serve Him. I seem to you to be arguing, Hermogenes. Scripture vigorously supports us, which has distinguished both names for Him and shown each in its proper time. For God—what He always was—it names immediately: In the beginning God made heaven and earth. And thereafter, as long as He was making those things of which He was to be Lord, it puts only God: And God said, and God made, and God saw, and nowhere yet Lord. But when He had completed all things, and above all man himself, who was especially to recognize the Lord, He is also named Lord. Then He also added the name Lord: And the Lord God took the man whom He had formed. And the Lord God commanded.

And from that point He who before was only God became Lord, from the time He had something to be Lord of. For He was God to Himself; but to things He was then God when He was also Lord. Therefore, in as much as he will suppose that matter always existed because the Lord always existed, in so much will it be established that nothing existed, because it is established that the Lord did not always exist. I will add something further for the sake of those who do not understand, of whom Hermogenes is the last in the line, and indeed I will turn his own epinoemata against him. For since he denies that matter was born or made, I likewise find that the name of Lord did not befit God in relation to matter; because that which has no origin must necessarily be free, having had no author of what it was, serving no one.

And so from the time that God exercised His power upon it by making from matter, from that time matter, having experienced God as Lord, demonstrates that He was not Lord for as long as it existed.

From this point then I shall begin to treat of matter, in that God places it alongside Himself as likewise unborn, likewise unmade, likewise eternal, set forth without beginning and without end. For what other attribute of God is there than eternity? What other condition of eternity than to have always existed and to be about to exist, by the prerogative of no beginning and no end? If this is proper to God, because even if it be ascribed to another, it will no longer be proper to God, but common with him to whom it is also ascribed. For even if there are those who are called gods whether in heaven or on earth, by name; yet there is one God the Father, from whom are all things: all the more ought that which is proper to God to belong, among us, to God alone; and, as I said, it would no longer be proper, because it would belong to another.

But if it is God's, it must of necessity be unique, so that it may belong to one: for what will be unique and singular, except that to which nothing will be equal? What will be supreme, except that which is above all things, except that which is before all things, and from which are all things? These things God alone possesses, and by possessing them alone, He is one. If another has possessed them, there will now be as many gods as there are those who have possessed what belongs to God. Thus Hermogenes introduces two gods. He introduces matter as equal to God. But God must be one, because that which is supreme is God: but it will not be supreme unless it is unique: but it cannot be unique if something is equal to it; but matter will be equal to God when it is reckoned as eternal.

But God is God; matter is matter: as though a difference of names resists comparison, if the same status is claimed. Let the nature also be different, let the form also not be the same, provided the principle of that status itself be one. God is unborn—is not matter also unborn? God is eternal—is not matter also eternal? Both without beginning, both without end, both also authors of the universe—both He who made, and that from which He made. For matter cannot but be reckoned also as the author of all things, since the universe consists of it. How will he answer? That matter is not straightway compared to God if it has something of God's, because by not having the whole it does not rise to the fullness of comparison? What has he left to God beyond this, so as not to seem to have given to matter the whole of what belongs to God?

Or in what way, he says, even with matter having this, is God's authority and substance kept safe, by which He alone and as first author is reckoned Lord of all? But truth thus requires the defense of one God, so that whatever belongs to Him belongs to Him alone. For it will be His in this way, if it has been His alone: and on this account another god cannot be admitted, since it is lawful for no one to have anything of God. Therefore, you say, neither do we have anything of God. Nay, we do have, and we shall have, but from Him, not from ourselves. For we also shall be gods, if we have deserved to be those of whom He declared: I said: Ye are gods; and, God stood in the assembly of gods: but by His grace, not by our own property, because He alone is the one who makes gods.

But matter makes its own what it has in common with God: or if it received from God what belongs to God—I mean the order of eternity—one can believe both that it has something in common with God, and that it is not God. But what sort of thing is it, when he confesses that something is held in common with God, and yet wishes that to belong to God alone which he does not deny that matter possesses?

He says that it is consistent with God that He alone exists, and is first, and is author of all things, and Lord of all things, and is to be compared with no one; which things he presently ascribes to matter also. I am God, God will protest, and He swore sometimes by Himself that there is no other such as He: but Hermogenes will make Him a liar. For matter also will be such as God—uncreated, unborn, having no beginning and no end. Will God say: I am the first? And how first, when matter is coeval with Him? But among those who are coeval and contemporaneous there is no order, or matter also is first. I stretched out the heaven alone: and yet not alone, for He stretched it out together with that from which He also stretched it.

When he proposes that matter existed while God's status remains safe; see whether it is not returned to him by us, that God likewise existed while matter's status remains safe—yet with a common status of both. Safe therefore will it also be for matter, that it too existed, but together with God, because God also is alone, but together with it. And it too is first together with God, because God also is first together with it: but it too is incomparable together with God, because God also is incomparable together with it, and it is author together with God, and lord together with God. Thus, by his saying that matter has something and not the whole, he has left nothing to it that he has not also conferred upon matter: so that it is not matter that is compared to God, but rather God who is compared to matter.

And indeed, since those things which we claim as proper to God—to have always existed, without beginning, without end, and to have been first, and alone, and author of all things—belong also to matter; I ask what different and alien thing, and therefore exclusive to matter, it has possessed, by which it is not compared to God? In which all the proper attributes of God are enumerated, they sufficiently prejudge the remaining comparison.

If he contends that matter is lesser and inferior to God, and therefore incomparable to Him, as to one greater and superior, I lay down the rule that what is eternal and unbegotten cannot admit any diminution and abasement: because this is what makes God as great as He is, inferior to none, subject to none, but rather greater and more exalted than all things. For just as other things that are born also come to an end, and therefore are not eternal, being once subjected to an end—things which also admit a beginning—they admit what God does not admit, namely diminution and subjection, because they are born and made: so also God does not admit these things, because He was neither born at all nor made. But the condition of matter is such.

Therefore, with two eternal things, as unbegotten, as unmade—God and matter—sharing by the same reason a common condition, possessing equally that which admits neither diminution nor subjection, that is, eternity: we say that neither is lesser than the other, nor greater, neither more abased than the other, nor more exalted, but that both stand equally great, equally sublime, equally possessed of that solid and perfect blessedness which eternity is reckoned to be. For we shall not be close to the opinions of the nations, who, if ever they are compelled to confess God, yet wish others to be below Him. But divinity admits no degree, being unique; and if it shall also be in matter—as likewise unbegotten and unmade and eternal—it will be present in both, because it can nowhere be less than itself.

How then will Hermogenes dare to distinguish, and so to subject matter to God—the eternal to the eternal, the unbegotten to the unbegotten, the source to the author?—matter daring to say: "I am first," and "I am before all things," and "I am that from which all things come: we were equals, we existed together, both without beginning, without end: both without an author, unless God be one? What God subjects me to one of the same time, of the same age? If He is called God, I too have my own name. Either I am God, or He is matter: because we both are what the other of us is." Do you think then that matter has not been compared with God, when he is about to subject it to Him?

But indeed he even sets matter before God, and rather subjects God to matter, when he wishes Him to have made all things from matter. For if He used it for the works of the world, then matter is found to be superior, in that it furnished Him the means of working, and God appears subject to matter, whose substance He needed. For no one fails to need that of which he makes use; no one fails to be subject to that which he needs, in order to be able to use it: so also no one who uses what belongs to another is not thereby lesser than that of which he makes use. And no one who grants the use of his own property is not in this respect superior to the one to whom he grants the use.

And so matter itself had no need of God, but presented itself to God when He needed it—rich and abundant and generous to one who was, I suppose, lesser and weak and less capable of making from nothing what He wished. A great benefit indeed it conferred upon God, that He might have through it the means by which God is known today and called omnipotent: except that He is now not omnipotent, if He is not also capable of this—of bringing forth all things from nothing. Surely matter also conferred something upon itself, that it too might be acknowledged alongside God as equal to God, indeed even as His helper: except that Hermogenes alone has known it, and the philosophers who are the patriarchs of heretics. For it has been hidden from prophets and apostles until now, and I think from Christ as well.

He cannot say that God used matter as Lord for the works of the world: for He could not have been Lord of a substance equal to Himself. But perhaps He used it by sufferance. And therefore by sufferance, not by lordship—so that, since it was evil, He nevertheless endured to use it though evil, namely out of the necessity of His own limitation, by which He was unable to work from nothing; not out of power, which, had He possessed it fully as God over matter which He knew to be evil, He would have converted it beforehand from evil to good as Lord and as good, so as to use what was good, not what was evil. But because He was indeed good, yet not Lord, therefore, using it such as He found it, He showed His own necessity yielding to the condition of matter: which, had He been Lord, He would have corrected.

For so must Hermogenes be answered, when he defends God's use of matter on the ground of lordship, and of a thing not His own, namely not made by Himself. Now therefore evil comes from Him who, if not the author of evil because not its maker, is at least its permitter, because He is its ruler. But if matter is not His either, whereby the evil is not God's: then He used what belonged to another either by sufferance, as needing it; or even by force, as prevailing over it. For by these three means are the things of others taken: by right, by sufferance, by compulsion; that is, by lordship, by permission, by violence. Lordship being unavailable, let Hermogenes choose what befits God—whether He made all things from matter by sufferance or by force. Would it not then have been better for God to judge that nothing should be made at all, rather than that it should be made by sufferance or by force, and indeed from what is evil?

Would He not, even if matter had been most excellent, have judged it equally unbecoming to Himself to use what belonged to another, even if good? It is quite foolish, if He undertook the making of the world for the sake of His own glory in such a way as to show Himself a debtor to a substance not His own, and indeed not a good one.

"Therefore," he says, "let Him make from nothing, so that evils too may be charged to His will?" Great, in good faith, is the blindness of heretics for an argument of this kind, since they wish either another God to be believed good and most good, because they consider the Creator to be the author of evil; or they set forth matter alongside the Creator, so as to derive evil from matter and not from the Creator: when no god whatsoever is freed by this question from appearing to be the author of evil—whoever he may be who, even if he did not himself make the evil, nevertheless suffered it to be made by whomsoever and from whatever source. Let Hermogenes therefore hear, while we treat the question of evil elsewhere, that in the meantime he too has accomplished nothing by this his objection.

For behold, even if God is found not the author but the abettor of evil, who endured so long the evil of matter before the constitution of the world, when as good and as the enemy of evil He ought to have corrected it: for either He could correct it but was unwilling; or He was willing, but could not—an infirm God. If He could and was unwilling, He too is evil, because He favored evil; and so He is now held to be its author, because, though He did not establish it, yet since, had He been unwilling for it to exist, it would not have existed, He Himself caused to exist what He was unwilling should not exist: than which what is more shameful? If He willed to exist what He Himself was unwilling to have made, He acted against Himself, since He both willed to exist what He was unwilling to have made, and was unwilling to have made what He willed to exist.

As something good He willed it to exist, and as something evil He was unwilling to have made it. By not making it He judged it evil; by enduring it He pronounced it good—enduring evil in place of good and not rather rooting it out, He was found its champion: shamefully, if through will; basely, if through necessity. God will be either the servant of evil or its friend; since He consorts with the evil of matter, and moreover even works from its evil.

And yet how does Hermogenes persuade us that matter is evil? For he will not be able to avoid calling evil that to which he ascribes evil. For we define that what is eternal cannot admit diminution and subjection, so as to be reckoned inferior to another co-eternal thing. So also now we say that evil cannot befit it, because it cannot be subjected on this account either, since it can in no way be subjected, because it is eternal. But since it is otherwise established that what is eternal is the highest good, as God is—through which alone He is God, in that He is eternal, and thus good in that He is God—how shall evil be present in matter, which, as eternal, must necessarily be believed to be the highest good? Or, if what is eternal can also be capable of evil, this can also be believed of God: and it was pointless to be eager to transfer evil from God, if it befits the eternal, by befitting matter.

Moreover, if what is eternal can be believed evil, evil will be invincible and insuperable as being eternal: and so we labor in vain to remove evil from ourselves, and God too commands and enjoins this in vain: indeed God has also established judgment in vain, since He will punish with injustice. But if there will then be an end of evil, when its ruler the devil departs into the fire which God has prepared for him and his angels, first banished into the pit of the abyss, when the revelation of the sons of God shall have redeemed creation from evil, subjected as it is to vanity; when, with the innocence and integrity of creation restored, cattle shall have made compact with wild beasts and little children shall have played with serpents; when the Father shall have placed the enemies under the feet of the Son, namely the workers of evil—if then an end befits evil, it is necessary that a beginning also befitted it, and matter will have a beginning, having also an end of evil.

For things that are assigned to evil are reckoned according to the condition of evil.

Come now, let us believe matter to be evil and most evil, by nature of course; just as we believe God to be good and most good, likewise by nature: furthermore, nature will have to be held as fixed and settled, persevering in evil in the case of matter just as it is unconvertible and unchangeable in good in the case of God. Evidently, because if nature in matter shall be changed from evil to good, it will be possible for it to be changed also in God from good to evil. At this point someone will say: Therefore sons of Abraham will not be raised up from stones, and the offspring of vipers will not bring forth fruit of repentance, and sons of wrath will not become sons of peace, if nature is not to be mutable.

You look rashly to those examples, O man; for things that are born—stones, and vipers, and men—do not apply to the case of matter, which is unbegotten: for the nature of these things, having a beginning, can also have an end.

But hold matter once for all as determined to be eternal, as unmade, as unbegotten; and therefore to be believed of an unchangeable and incorruptible nature, even by the very argument of Hermogenes himself which he advances, when he denies that God could have made from Himself; because what is eternal is not changed, since it would lose what it had been, while by change it becomes what it was not—which would not be the case if it were not eternal: and that the eternal Lord cannot be anything other than what He always is. By this very definition I shall rightly strike him: I equally reproach matter, since from it—evil and most evil—even good and most good things are made by God: "And God saw that it was good, and God blessed them", as most good certainly, not as evil and most evil. Matter therefore admitted change, and if so, it lost the condition of eternity: it died, in short, without its own form.

But eternity cannot be lost: because, unless it cannot be lost, it is not eternity. Therefore it could not have admitted change either: because, if it is eternity, it can in no way be changed.

And it will be asked: How were good things made from it, which were in no way made by change? Whence in what is evil and most evil the seed of what is good and most good? Surely a good tree does not bring forth evil fruits, because neither is God other than good: nor does an evil tree bring forth good fruits, because neither is matter other than most evil. Or if we grant to them some seed of good as well, then it will no longer be of a uniform nature, that is, evil throughout, but also so far twofold, that is, of a good and evil nature. And it will be asked again, whether in good and evil there can be agreement between light and darkness, between sweet and bitter.

Or if the diversity of both good and evil could have come together, and the nature of matter could have been twofold, fertile in the fruits of both, then not even the good things will be attributed to God, just as the evil things are not imputed to Him: but each kind, taken from the property of matter, will belong to matter. In which case, we shall owe God neither gratitude for good things nor reproach for evil things, since He worked nothing from His own design.

By which it will be manifestly proved that he has been a servant to matter. For even if it be said that, though on the occasion of matter, he yet brought forth good things by his own will, as though he had found good in matter—although even this is shameful—certainly when he also brings forth evil things from the same matter, he serves matter at least in bringing forth these things not from his own will, having no other option than to bring them forth from evil; unwilling, inasmuch as he is good; acting from necessity, inasmuch as he is unwilling; and from servitude, inasmuch as from necessity. What then is more worthy: that he created evil things from necessity, or from will? If indeed he created them from necessity, then from matter; from will, if from nothing. For now you labor without cause to prevent God from being established as the author of evils: because, even if he made them from matter, they will be charged to him who made them, precisely insofar as he made them.

Clearly, it matters thus where he made them from, just as if he had made them from nothing; and it does not matter where he made them from, so long as he made them from that source which was more fitting for him. But it was more fitting for him to have made them from will than from necessity, that is, from nothing rather than from matter. It is more worthy to believe God to be a free author even of evils than a slave. Whatever power befits him, how little befits him servitude. If we also concede in this way that matter indeed had nothing good, but that the Lord, if he produced anything good, produced it by his own power, other questions will equally arise. First, if good was not at all in matter, then good was not made from matter, since matter plainly did not have it. Next, if not from matter, then it was made from God. If not from God either, then it was made from nothing.

For this is what remains according to Hermogenes' arrangement.

Furthermore, if good was neither made from matter, because it was not in matter as in something evil; nor from God, because nothing could be made from God, as Hermogenes defines: then good is found to have been made from nothing, as made from no source, as neither from matter nor from God. And if good is from nothing, why not evil also? Indeed, why not all things from nothing, if something is from nothing? Unless the divine power was insufficient to produce all things, since it brought forth something from nothing. Or if good proceeded from evil matter, because it was neither from nothing nor from God, it will follow that it proceeded from a conversion of matter, contrary to the denied conversion of the eternal. Thus, from the very source whence good was established, Hermogenes will now deny that it could have been established from there. But it must have proceeded from one of those sources from which he denied it could proceed.

Moreover, if evil is not from nothing, lest it become God's—since it will seem to depend on his will—but from matter, so that it belongs to that from whose substance it was made: here too, as I said, God will be held the author of evil, who, since with the same power and will he ought to have brought forth all good things from matter, or at least only good things, yet not all good, would have brought forth evil things as well; either willing that evils exist, if he could have brought it about that they did not; or unable to make all things good, if he willed it and did not do it: since it makes no difference whether the Lord became the author of evil through weakness or through will. Or what was the reason that, having made good things as one who is good, he also brought forth evil things as one who is not good, when he produced only things incongruous with himself?

What need was there, after bringing forth his own work, to also attend to the business of matter, and thus to bring forth evil as well—just as, in order that he might be known as good from good, matter might not be known as evil from evil? Good would have flourished more without the breath of evil. For Hermogenes himself refutes the arguments of certain persons who say that evils were necessary for the illumination of good things, which are understood by means of contraries.

Therefore either there was no occasion for bringing forth evil on that account either, or if some other reason requires that it be introduced, why could it not also have been introduced from nothing—the very reason that would excuse the Lord from being thought the author of evil, which now excuses him when he works evils from matter: if it excuses him. So everywhere and from every side the question is driven to where those do not wish it who, by not examining the very reason for evil, nor discerning how they attribute it either to God or separate it from God, expose God to more numerous and more unworthy destructions.

Therefore, in the preliminary establishment of this point—to be treated elsewhere perhaps as well—I for my part define that either both the good and the evil which he made from matter must be ascribed to God, or to matter itself from which he made them; or both to both, because both are mutually bound—he who made and that from which he made; or one to the other; for there is no third party besides matter and God.

Furthermore, if both belong to God, God will appear to be the author of evil as well: but God, as good, will not be the author of evil; if both belong to matter, matter will appear to be the matrix of good as well; but matter, being wholly evil, will not be the matrix of good; if both belong to each, then each will have both; in this too matter will be compared to God, and both will be partners, equally related to evil and good; but matter ought not to be equated with God, lest it make two gods; if one belongs to the other—namely, good to God and evil to matter—then neither is evil ascribed to God nor good to matter: and yet God, in making both good and evil things from matter, makes them together with it.

If these things are so, I do not see by what opinion Hermogenes can escape—he who does not think that God, in whatever way he created evil from matter, whether by will, or by necessity, or by reason, is the author of evil. Furthermore, if the author of evil is he himself who made it, with matter plainly as his associate through the supply of substance, you thereby exclude the reason for introducing matter. For nonetheless, even through matter, God is shown to be the author of evil, if matter was presupposed so that God might not appear to be the author of evil. Matter being thus excluded, since its reason is excluded, it remains that God made all things from nothing. We shall see whether also evil things, when it shall appear what evils are, and whether those things which you suppose to be evil are indeed evil in the meantime.

For it is more worthy that he produced even these things by his own will, producing them from nothing, than under the constraint of another's prior claim, had he produced them from matter. Freedom, not necessity, befits God: he would rather have willed to have created evils from himself than to have been unable not to create them.

The status of the one God vindicates this rule: not otherwise one, except because he is sole; not otherwise sole, except because nothing exists with him; thus he will also be first, because all things are after him; thus all things are after him, because all things are from him; thus from him, because from nothing—so that the testimony of Scripture also holds: Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor? Or whom did he consult? Or who showed him the way of understanding and knowledge? Who has given to him, and it shall be repaid to him? No one, certainly: because no force, no matter, no nature of any other substance was present with him. Furthermore, if he worked from something, he must necessarily have received from that very thing both the counsel and the plan of his arrangement, as well as the way of understanding and knowledge.

For he would have had to work according to the quality of the thing and according to the nature of the matter, not according to his own will: so that he also made evil things according to the nature not of himself but of the substance.

If matter is necessary to God for the works of the world, as Hermogenes supposed, God had matter far more worthy and suitable—not to be estimated among the philosophers, but to be understood among the prophets—namely, his own Wisdom: for she alone knew the mind of the Lord. For who knows the things of God, and those that are in him, except the spirit that is in him? But Wisdom is spirit; she was his counsellor, she is the way of understanding and knowledge. From her he made, making through her and making with her. When he prepared the heaven, she says, I was present with him; and when he made the mighty things above the winds, the clouds on high, and when he set firm the fountains of that which is under heaven, I was joining together with him. I was she in whom he rejoiced, and daily I was delighted in his presence: when he was delighted after he had completed the world, and was delighted in the sons of men.

Who would not commend this rather as the source and origin of all things, and matter of matters—not subject to another, not different in condition, not restless in motion, not formless in appearance, but innate and proper and ordered and beautiful—such as God could have needed, needing what was his own rather than what was another's? Finally, as he perceived her to be necessary for the works of the world, he straightway creates and begets her within himself: The Lord, she says, created me as the beginning of his ways for his works; before the ages he founded me, before he made the earth, before the mountains were set in place; but before all the hills he begat me; but I was born before the abyss. Let Hermogenes therefore acknowledge that Wisdom of God is also proclaimed to have been born and created for this reason: lest we should believe anything uncreated and unconditioned besides God alone.

For if even that which was from him and in him within the Lord was not without a beginning—namely, his own Wisdom, born and created from him, from the time when she began to be stirred in the mind of God for the ordering of the works of the world—much more does it not admit that anything which was outside the Lord could have existed without a beginning. But if the same Wisdom of God is the Word, Wisdom in meaning, and without him nothing that was made was made, just as nothing was arranged without Wisdom, how is it that anything could have been more ancient than the only-begotten and first-born Son of God, the Word, besides the Father: and in this way assuredly more noble—not to mention that what is unbegotten is stronger than the begotten, and what is unmade is more powerful than the made?

Because that which needed no author in order to exist will be far more exalted than that which had some author in order to exist: accordingly, if evil is indeed unbegotten, but the Word of God is begotten—for He belched forth, it says, the best Word—I do not know whether evil can be brought against good, the stronger against the weaker, the unbegotten against the begotten. Thus also on this ground Hermogenes places matter before God, by placing it before the Son. For the Son is the Word, and God is the Word; and: I and the Father are one: except that the Son will endure with equanimity that she be placed before him who is equated with the Father.

But I will also appeal to the original document of Moses, from which the opposing party likewise strives, against its will, to prop up its suspicions, lest it should seem not to be instructed from the source from which it ought to be. And so it has seized upon occasions from certain words, as heretics are generally wont to twist everything that is straightforward. For they wish even the very beginning, in which God made heaven and earth, to have been something quasi-substantial and corporeal, which might be interpreted as matter. But we vindicate to each word its own proper meaning: that "beginning" is a beginning, and that it was fitting to be so placed at the start of things that were beginning to be made. For nothing that is to be made can exist without a beginning, since its very beginning is that moment when it starts to be made. Thus "beginning" or "commencement" is a word of inception, not the name of any substance.

Now then, if the principal works of God are heaven and earth, which God made before all things, it is fitting that those things which were made first should properly be called the beginning of His works; and so Scripture rightly prefaces: In the beginning God made heaven and earth; just as it would have said: In the end God made heaven and earth, if He had made them after all other things. Or if "beginning" is some substance, then "end" will also be some matter. Of course it may be permissible for something to be called the beginning of another thing in a substantive sense, when that other thing is to come from it, as clay is the beginning of a pot, as seed is the beginning of a plant. But when we use the word "beginning" in the sense of origin rather than of order, we add also the specific mention of the very thing which we wish to call the beginning of another thing.

Otherwise, if we were to say, for example: In the beginning the potter made a basin or a jar; then "beginning" would not signify matter—for I did not name clay as the beginning, but the order of the work; because the potter made the basin and jar first before all other things, intending thereafter to make the rest also—the word "beginning" would pertain to the ordering of the works, not to the origin of substances. I can also interpret "beginning" in another way, and not without reason: for even in Greek the word for beginning, which is arche, admits not only an ordinal but also an authoritative sense of primacy. Hence they also call rulers and magistrates archontas. Therefore according to this signification as well, "beginning" will be taken for primacy and power. For in primacy and in power God made heaven and earth.

But even if the Greek word signifies nothing other than "beginning," and "beginning" admits nothing other than "commencement," we have also that passage to acknowledge as a beginning, which says: The Lord founded me as the beginning of His ways for His works. For if all things were made through the Wisdom of God, then God also, in making heaven and earth in the beginning, that is, in the commencement, made them in His Wisdom. Finally, if "beginning" signified matter, Scripture would not have written: In the beginning God made, but out of the beginning. For He would have made not in matter, but out of matter. But of Wisdom it could be said, in the beginning. For He made first in Wisdom, in which by thinking and ordering He had already made them; since even if He had been going to make them out of matter, He had already made them beforehand in Wisdom by thinking and ordering.

Since Wisdom was indeed the beginning of the ways, because the thought and ordering of Wisdom is the first operation, establishing by thought a way for the works, I claim for myself from this also the authority of Scripture, in that while showing both God who made and the things which He made, it does not likewise testify whence He made them. For since in every act of making there are three principal elements—the one who makes, and what is made, and that from which it is made—three names must be set forth in a proper account of the work: the person of the maker, the form of the thing made, the nature of the material. If the material is not set forth, where both the works and the worker are set forth, it is apparent that He worked from nothing. For that from which He worked would likewise be set forth, if He had worked from something.

Finally, when the Gospel is brought in as a supplement to the old document, in which, or rather in which all the more, it ought to have been shown that God made all things from some matter, since there also it is revealed through whom He made all things: In the beginning was the Word, in which beginning, namely, God made heaven and earth. And the Word was with God, and God was the Word. All things were made through Him, and without Him was made nothing. Since therefore here also both the maker, that is God, and the things made, that is all things, and through whom, that is the Word, are made manifest; would not the order of things have required the declaration of whence all things were made by God through the Word, if they had been made from something? Thus what did not exist, Scripture could not declare. And by not declaring it, Scripture has sufficiently proved that it did not exist, because it would have declared it if it had existed.

Therefore, you say, if you prejudge that all things were made from nothing because there is no manifest record of something having been made from pre-existing matter, see lest the opposing party contend on the same grounds that all things were made from matter, because it is likewise not openly signified that anything was made from nothing. Of course certain things can easily be turned back upon us: yet they are not immediately to be admitted on equal terms, where there is a difference of cause. For I say that, even if Scripture did not openly declare that all things were made from nothing, just as it did not declare from matter either, there was not so great a necessity to openly signify that all things were made from nothing as there would have been if they had been made from matter.

Because what is made from nothing, by the very fact that it is not shown to have been made from something, is manifestly made from nothing: and there is no danger of its being thought to have been made from something, when it is not demonstrated from what it was made. But what is made from something, unless it is openly declared that it was made from something, while that from which it was made is not shown, will first be in danger of appearing to have been made from nothing, because that from which it was made is not set forth. Then, even if the condition is such that it cannot appear not to have been made from something, it will likewise be in danger of appearing to have been made from something quite different from that from which it was actually made, while that from which it was made is not stated.

Thus, if God could not have made all things from nothing even if Scripture had not added that He made them from nothing; He would in every way have had to declare that He made them from matter, if He had also made them from matter, because the former could be understood in its entirety even if not signified; but the latter would remain in doubt unless signified.

And indeed the Holy Spirit has established this principle of His Scripture, that when something is made from something, He also records from what it is made. Let the earth, He says, bring forth the herb of grass, sowing seed according to its kind and according to its likeness, and the fruit-bearing tree making fruit, whose seed is in it in its likeness. And it was so. And the earth brought forth the herb of grass sowing seed according to its kind, and the fruit-bearing tree making fruit, whose seed is in it in its likeness. And again: And God said: Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls, and flying things flying above the earth through the firmament of heaven. And it was so. And God made great sea-monsters, and every soul of creeping animals, which the waters brought forth according to their kind.

Likewise after these things: And God said: Let the earth bring forth a living soul according to its kind, four-footed creatures and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kind. If therefore, when God was bringing forth other things from things already made, He showed through the prophet and declared what He brought forth from what (although we might be able to estimate from what those things were brought forth, since they were not from nothing; for certain things had already been made, from which they might appear to have been brought forth): if the Holy Spirit expended such great care for our instruction, that we might know what proceeded from what, would He not likewise have made us fully aware concerning heaven and earth as well, by signifying from what material He had worked in making them, if the origin of those things from some matter were established?

So that all the more He might appear to have worked them from nothing, inasmuch as nothing had yet been made from which He might appear to have worked. And so, just as He shows whence those things which were brought forth from something were brought forth, so He confirms that those things of which He does not show whence they were brought forth were brought forth from nothing. Therefore in the beginning God made heaven and earth. I adore the fullness of Scripture, which manifests to me both the maker and the things made. In the Gospel moreover I find additionally both the minister and the steward of the ruler in the Word. But whether all things were made from some underlying matter, I have nowhere yet read. Let the workshop of Hermogenes show it to be written. If it is not written, let him fear that woe destined for those who add to or take away from it.

But he argues from what follows, because it is written: Now the earth was invisible and unformed. For he reduces even the name of earth to matter, because the earth is what was made from it. And he directs "was" in this passage as though it had always previously been innate and uncreated. But "invisible and rude," because he wishes matter to have been formless and confused and disordered. I shall refute these opinions of his one by one, but in the meantime I wish to answer him thus. We suppose that matter is demonstrated by these two clauses. Yet does Scripture signify that it existed before all things, and that something of such a kind was made from it? But it signifies nothing of the sort.

Let matter have existed, as much as it is permitted to itself, or rather to Hermogenes: it could both have existed, and yet God have made nothing from it; either because it was not fitting for God to have needed anything, or certainly because it is not shown that He made anything from matter. Without purpose then it would have been, you say. Not entirely without purpose. For even if the world was not made from it, a heresy was made from it, and indeed all the more shameless in this, that the heresy was not made from matter, but rather matter itself was made by the heresy.

I return now to the individual clauses by which he supposed matter to have been signified. And first I shall take issue with the names. For of these we read the one, which is "earth"; the other, which is "matter," we do not find. I ask therefore, since the designation "matter" does not appear in Scripture, how the designation "earth" is also accommodated to it, being born in an already different genus of substance? All the more ought the designation "matter" also to have appeared, following upon the designation "earth" as well, so that I might know that "earth" is a name shared with matter, lest I should claim it for that substance alone whose proper name it is, in which it is better known, or lest I should be able to extend it to any other species whatsoever, nor indeed share it with all matter, if I wished.

For when the proper name of the thing to which a common name is ascribed does not appear, the more that thing to which it is ascribed is absent, the more it can be ascribed to any other thing. Thus Hermogenes, even if he were to show that matter was named, would need to prove that the same was also called earth, so as to claim both names for it.

He wishes, therefore, to propose two earths in this scripture: one, which God made in the beginning; another, the matter from which He made it, of which it was said: But the earth was invisible and unformed. If indeed I ask, of the two, to which one the name of earth ought to be applied, it will be said that the one which was made from that from which it was made derived its designation, because it is more plausible that the offspring should be named from its origin rather than the origin from the offspring. If this is so, another question wraps itself around us: whether it is fitting that this earth which God made should have derived its name from that from which He made it. For I hear among Hermogenes and other materialist heretics that that earth was indeed formless and invisible and unformed, but that this earth of ours accordingly received both form and appearance and cultivation from God. Therefore it was made something other than that from which it was made.

Moreover, having been made something other, it could not be associated in name with that from whose condition it had departed. If the proper name of that matter was earth, this thing which is not matter, having been made something else, does not take on the alien name of earth, which is foreign to its own state. But matter made, that is, earth, shared in the name of its origin, just as also in its kind. Not so. For even a pot, though made from clay, I shall no longer call clay but a pot; and electrum, though forged from gold and silver, I shall call neither silver nor gold, but electrum: what departs from the character of a thing likewise withdraws from its designation, by the property of its appellation as well as of its condition.

How far this earth has passed from the state of that earth, that is, of matter, is evident even from this: that this earth in Genesis receives the testimony of good—And God saw that it was good—whereas that one, according to Hermogenes, is reckoned as the origin and cause of evils. Finally, if this is earth because that also is, why is not this also matter, because that is? Indeed, then, even heaven and all things, if they consist of matter, ought to have been called both earth and matter. Enough of this concerning the name of earth (in which he wished matter to be understood), a name which everyone knows belongs to one element, nature first and then Scripture teaching, unless one must also believe that Silenus who, according to Theopompus, asserted to King Midas the existence of another world. But the same author also reports many gods.

But for us there is one God and one earth, which God made in the beginning, whose account Scripture, beginning to run through it, first declares it made, then sets forth its quality, just as it also professed heaven to have been made first: In the beginning God made heaven, and then superimposes its arrangement: And He separated between the water which was below the firmament and that which was above the firmament, and God called the firmament heaven—the very thing He had made in the beginning. Likewise also concerning man: And God made man: in the image of God He made him. Then it renders how He made him: And God formed man from the clay of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And certainly it is fitting for a narrative to begin thus: first to state beforehand, then to follow through; to name, then to describe.

Otherwise it would be pointless if, of a thing of which he had premised no mention—that is, of matter, not even its very name—he suddenly proclaimed its form and appearance: he narrates what sort it was before it existed; he shows the figure of the deformed; he conceals the name. But how much more credible, according to our view, that Scripture subjoined the arrangement of that thing whose institution and at the same time naming it had premised beforehand. How complete, finally, is the sense: In the beginning God made heaven and earth, but the earth was invisible and unformed—the earth, namely, which God made, of which Scripture had just been speaking. For even the word but itself is set against the connection of the narrative like a clasp of a connective particle—but the earth. For by this word it returns to that of which it had spoken above, and binds the sense.

So much so that remove but from here, and the connection is dissolved, so that it could then seem to have been said of another earth: The earth was invisible and unformed.

But you, raising your eyebrows higher, with a nod of the finger accommodated to the gesture, and as it were tossing them back, say: It was, as though it had always been—innate, that is, and unmade, and therefore to be believed to be matter. But I, without any artifice of delivery, will answer plainly: of every thing it can be said it was, even of that which has been made, which has been born, which at some time did not exist, and which is not matter. For everything that has being, from whatever source it has it, whether through a beginning or without a beginning, by this very fact that it is, will also be said it was. To that to which the primary position of the verb belongs in definition, the inflection of the same verb will also run in relation. Is is the head of definition; was serves for relation. These are the subtleties and refinements of heretics, twisting the simplicity of common words into a question.

A great question indeed, whether the earth which was made, was. Certainly it must be examined whether it is fitting that it should have been invisible and unformed—whether to that which was made, or to that from which it was made—so that the was belongs to the same as that which it was.

And yet we shall not only prove that this condition was fitting for this earth, but also that it was not fitting for that other one. For if bare matter lay subject to God, with no element obstructing it—since indeed nothing yet existed except it and God—it certainly could not be invisible. Because even if he wishes darkness to have been in the substance of matter (to which point we shall have to respond in its proper order), even to man darkness is visible. For this very thing that darkness is, is seen—much more so to God. And certainly if it were invisible, its quality could in no way be known. Whence, then, did Hermogenes discover that it was formless and confused and disordered, which lay hidden as invisible? Or if this was revealed to him by God, he ought to prove it. So also I demand whether it could have been called unformed. For certainly that is unformed which is imperfect. Certainly that cannot be imperfect except what has been made.

For what has been made less than fully is imperfect. Certainly, you say. Therefore matter, which had not been made at all, could not be imperfect. What was not imperfect was also not unformed. Having no beginning because it was not made, it also lacked rudimentary state. For rudimentary state is an accident of beginning. But the earth which was made deserved also to be called unformed. For as soon as it was made, it held the place of the imperfect, before perfection.

Since God completed all His works in order, first with the elements uncultivated, as it were staking out the world, then with them adorned, as it were dedicating it. For He did not immediately fill the light with the splendour of the sun, nor did He immediately temper the darkness with the solace of the moon, nor did He immediately mark the sky with constellations and stars, nor did He immediately populate the seas with sea-creatures, nor did He immediately endow the earth itself with varied fruitfulness: but first He granted it to be, then He filled out its being not unto emptiness. For thus also Isaiah says: He did not make it in vain, but to be inhabited. After it was made, therefore, being yet to be perfected, it was for the time invisible and unformed. Unformed indeed, by this very fact also that it was invisible, as not yet perfect even for sight, and at the same time as not yet furnished in the rest.

Invisible, however, as still covered over by waters, as by a protection of generative moisture: in which form also our flesh, akin to it, is brought forth. For David also sings thus: The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and all who dwell therein. He founded it upon the seas, and prepared it upon the rivers. For with the waters gathered into the hollowing of the deep places, the dry land, which had previously been covered by the waters, shone forth more brightly. From that point, therefore, it also becomes visible, God saying: Let the water be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear. Let it appear, He says, not, let it be made. For it had already been made, but invisible until then it endured to be seen. But the dry land, which was to come from the separation of the moisture, was nevertheless earth. And God called the dry land earth, not matter.

So also, having afterwards attained perfection, it ceases to be held unformed, when God pronounces: Let the earth bring forth the herb of grass sowing seed according to kind and according to likeness, and the fruit-bearing tree making fruit, whose seed is in it according to likeness. Likewise: Let the earth bring forth a living soul according to kind, and four-footed creatures, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to kind. Divine Scripture therefore fulfilled its own order. For to that which it had foretold as invisible and unformed, it also restored both vision and perfection. But matter was not invisible and unformed. Therefore matter will afterwards be visible and perfect. I wish therefore to see matter; for it has been made visible. I wish also to recognise it as perfect, so that from it I may pluck even the herb of grass, and from it the fruit-bearing tree; and from it animals may serve my use. But matter is nowhere; the earth, however, this one, that is, before us.

This I see, this I enjoy, from the time it ceased to be invisible and unformed, of which Isaiah most plainly says: Thus says the Lord who made heaven. This is the God who showed forth the earth and made it. Certainly He showed forth the same one which He also made. How did He show it forth? Surely by saying: Let the dry land appear. Why does He command it to appear, unless because previously it was not seen?—so that He had not made it in vain either, by making it visible, and thus fit for use. And so it is proved to us in every respect that this earth which we inhabit is the same both made by God and shown forth, and that no other was unformed and invisible than that which was both made and shown forth; and thus, but the earth was invisible and unformed, pertains to that which God separated together with heaven.

So also the following words will seem to furnish material for Hermogenes' conjecture: And darkness was upon the abyss, and the Spirit of God was borne upon the waters—as though these confused substances too portend proofs of that mass-like bulk. And yet, defining individually the darkness, the abyss, the Spirit of God, the waters, so divided a relation of certain and distinct elements causes nothing confused, nor anything uncertain in confusion, to be supposed. This moreover, when he ascribes to them their proper positions—darkness above the abyss, the Spirit above the waters—he denied the confusion of substances, by demonstrating whose arrangement he also demonstrated their distinction. Most vain it is, finally, that matter, which is introduced as formless, should be asserted to be formless from the designations of so many forms, without disclosing what that body of confusion is, which must certainly be believed to be single, if it is formless: for what is formless is uniform.

But what is formless, having been confused out of variety, must have one appearance; which does not have an appearance, while it has one appearance out of many. Otherwise, either matter had within itself those forms, from whose designations it was to be understood—I mean darkness, and the abyss, and the spirit, and the waters—or it did not have them. For if it had them, how is it introduced as not having forms? If it did not have them, how is it recognised?

But this too will certainly be seized upon: that Scripture signified only heaven and this earth as having been made by God in the beginning, but nothing of the kind concerning the aforementioned species; and therefore those which are not signified as made belong to unformed matter. We shall answer this scruple as well. Divine Scripture would have said enough if it had commended the very summits of things made by God—heaven and earth—which have their own proper contents that could be understood within those very summits. Now the contents of heaven and earth were at that time first: darkness, and the abyss, and the spirit, and the waters. For the abyss and darkness lay beneath the earth. For if the abyss is below the earth, and darkness is above the abyss, then without doubt both darkness and the abyss are below the earth.

But the spirit and the waters lay beneath the heaven: for if the waters are above the earth, which had covered it, and the spirit is above the waters, then likewise both the spirit and the waters are above the earth. But what is above the earth is certainly below heaven. And just as the earth brooded over and encompassed the abyss and darkness, so too did heaven brood over and encompass the spirit and the waters. And so it is nothing new that only what contains should be named, as the summit; while within it is understood also what is contained, as the portion. Behold, if I say: The city built a theatre and a circus; and the stage was of such and such a kind, and statues were carried above the Euripus, and an obelisk was borne above all things: because I did not also declare these details to have been made by the city, will they therefore not belong to it along with the circus and the theatre?

Or did I therefore not add that these details too were made, because they were contained within those things which I had already said were made, and could be understood to be within those things in which they were contained? But let this example stand aside as a human one; I shall take another from the authority of Scripture itself. God made man from the earth, it says, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul. It names his face here, but did not say that even it was made by God; yet it speaks afterwards of the rib and bones, and flesh, and eyes, and sweat, and blood, which it likewise did not signify as made by God at that time. What will Hermogenes answer? Will the members of man also belong to matter, because they are not recorded as made by name? Or are these too reckoned within the making of man?

In the same way, the abyss and darkness, the spirit and the waters, will be members of heaven and earth. For in bodies, members are made; in bodies, members are also named. No element fails to be a member of that element by which it is contained; but all elements are contained by either heaven or earth.

These things I would answer on behalf of the present Scripture, insofar as it here seems to commend the making of the bodies of heaven and earth alone. It knew that there would be those who would readily recognize the members within the bodies, and therefore it used a brief expression. Yet it also made provision for the dull and the crafty, who, by concealing the silent understanding, would demand even for the individual members an explicit word of making. And so, for their sake too, it teaches in other places that the individual species were made. You have Wisdom saying: But I was brought forth before the abyss: so that you may believe the abyss also to have been brought forth, that is, made, since we also make children, though we beget them. It makes no difference whether the abyss was made or born, so long as a beginning is given to it, which would not be given if it were subject to matter. Concerning darkness, the Lord himself says through Isaiah: I who fashioned light and made darkness.

Concerning the spirit likewise, Amos: Who solidifies the thunder and creates the spirit, and announces to men his Christ: showing that spirit to have been created which was assigned to the created lands, which was borne above the waters, the balancer and breather and animator of the universe—not, as some think, that God himself is signified as spirit, because God is spirit. For the waters would not have been sufficient to bear the Lord; but he speaks of that spirit from which the winds also were constituted, as he says through Isaiah: Because the spirit went forth from me and I made every breath. Likewise concerning the waters, the same Wisdom: And when he was setting firm her fountains which are under heaven, I was harmonizing with him.

Since, therefore, we also prove those species to have been made by God, even though in Genesis they are only named without mention of making, we shall perhaps be answered from the other side: That they were indeed made, but from matter: so that the pen of Moses—And darkness was over the abyss, and the spirit of God was borne over the waters—may sound like matter; while the other Scriptures may show in scattered places what species were made from matter. Therefore, just as earth came from earth, so also the abyss from an abyss, and darkness from darkness, and spirit and waters from spirit and waters were constituted.

And as we said above, matter could not have been formless if it had species, such that other species were also fashioned from it; unless indeed they were not other species but the very same ones from themselves—since it does not admit that those things which are set forth under the same names were different, whereby the divine operation might already seem idle, if it made what already existed; whereas it would be more excellent to make what did not exist, if things that were not were to come into being. Therefore, to conclude: either Moses then signified matter when he writes, And darkness was over the abyss, and the spirit of God was borne over the waters; or, since these species are shown elsewhere to have been made by God, they ought equally to have been shown to have been made from the matter which Moses had set forth beforehand; or if Moses signified those species, and not matter, I ask where matter has been shown.

But while Hermogenes finds it among his colors—for he could not find it among the Scriptures of God—it is enough that all things are established as made by God, and it is not established that they are from matter: which even if it had existed, we would have believed it too to have been made by God, because, prescribing that nothing is unbegotten except God, we would prevail. Up to this point there is room for reconsideration, until the exhibition of matter, challenged to the Scriptures, fails. The sum is settled: I find nothing made from nothing, because what I find to have been made, I recognize as having not existed. Even if something was made from something, it derives its account from what was made, as grass from earth, and fruit, and cattle, and the very fashioning of man, as swimming and flying souls from the waters. The origins of things brought forth from these I may be able to call materials; but themselves also made by God.

Moreover, that all things were constituted from nothing will finally be urged by that divine dispensation which is to reduce all things to nothing. For indeed heaven shall be rolled up like a book, nay, shall be nowhere, together with the very earth with which it was made in the beginning. Heaven and earth shall pass away, he says. The first heaven and the first earth passed away, and no place was found for them, because, that is, what also ends loses its place. So also David: The heavens, the works of your hands, shall themselves perish. For even if he shall change them like a covering, and they shall be changed; yet to be changed is to perish to the former state, which they lose when they are changed. And the stars shall fall from heaven, as a fig tree, when shaken by a strong wind, sheds its unripe fruit. But the mountains shall melt like wax before the face of the Lord, when he shall rise to crush the earth.

But also, I will dry up the marshes, he says, and they shall seek water and not find it: and the sea likewise. All these things, even if another person should think they must be interpreted spiritually, he will nevertheless not be able to take away the truth of their coming to pass just as they are written. For if there are figures, they must necessarily consist of things that exist, not of things that are empty: because nothing can furnish to another a likeness from itself unless it itself is that which it furnishes by such a likeness. I return therefore to the argument, which defines that all things were brought forth from nothing and will arrive at nothing.

For from the eternal—that is, from matter—God would not have made anything perishable, nor would he have founded lesser things from greater, he to whom it is more fitting to produce greater things from lesser, that is, the eternal from the perishable—which he also promises to our flesh, and of which power and might of his he willed to have placed this pledge already in us, that we might believe also that he raised up the universe from nothing as though from death—which, that is, did not exist—into this, that it should exist.

Concerning the remaining state of matter, even if it need not be re-examined—for it was first necessary that its existence be established—yet as if it were established, the order must be pursued: so that it may be the more evident that it does not exist, since not even its remaining state holds together, and at the same time so that Hermogenes may recognize his own contradictions. At first sight, he says, matter seems to us to be incorporeal; but upon careful and correct reasoning, it is found to be neither corporeal nor incorporeal. What is this correct reasoning, which reports nothing correct, that is, nothing certain? For unless I am mistaken, every thing must necessarily be either corporeal or incorporeal—granting for the moment that something incorporeal exists among substances, since substance itself is the body of each thing—certainly after the corporeal and the incorporeal there is no third thing. Come now, let there also be a third thing, which that correct Hermogenian reasoning has discovered, which makes matter neither corporeal nor incorporeal: where is it?

What is it like? What is it called? How is it described? How is it understood? This alone has reasoning reported: that matter is neither corporeal nor incorporeal.

But behold, he subjoins the contrary, or perhaps another reasoning occurs to him, reporting matter to be in part corporeal and in part incorporeal. Now therefore, lest it be neither, is matter to be reckoned as both? For it will be corporeal and incorporeal, contrary to the report of that correct reasoning of his, which plainly gives no reason for its judgment, just as it gives none for the others. For he wishes the corporeal aspect of matter to be that from which bodies are produced; but the incorporeal, its disordered motion. For if, he says, it were body only, nothing incorporeal would appear in it, that is, motion. But if it had been wholly incorporeal, no body could come from it. How much more correct is this reasoning!—except that if you draw lines as straight as this reasoning does, Hermogenes, no painter is more clumsy than you. For who grants you to assign motion to a second part of substance?

Since it is not a substantial thing, because it is not corporeal; but is perhaps an accident of substance and body, as action, as impulse, as sliding, as falling, so also motion. For whether something is moved by itself, its motion is its action, certainly not a part of its substance, as you make motion an incorporeal substance of matter. All things in the end are moved, either by themselves, as living things; or by others, as inanimate things: yet we shall not say that either a man or a stone is both corporeal and incorporeal, because it has both a body and motion, but one form for all of the sole corporeality, which is the substantial thing: if any incorporeal things are present in them—their actions, or passions, or functions, or desires—we do not reckon them as portions. To what end, therefore, does it serve to assign a portion of matter to motion, which does not pertain to substance but to the condition of substance?

For what if it had pleased you to introduce matter as immovable—would immobility then seem to be a second part of its form? So likewise neither is motion: but concerning motion it will be permitted to speak elsewhere.

For now I see you returning again to another line of reasoning, which has been accustomed to report nothing certain to you. For just as you assert matter to be neither corporeal nor incorporeal, so likewise you allege it to be neither good nor bad: and accordingly, arguing further: "For if," you say, "it had been good, which it had always been, it would not have desired the ordering of God: if it had been by nature evil, it would not have received translation into something better: nor would God have applied any part of his ordering to it, given such a nature: for he would have labored in vain." These are your words: of which you ought to have been mindful also elsewhere, lest you introduce anything contrary to them. But since we have treated something in previous passages concerning the ambiguity of evil and good with respect to matter, I shall now respond to your present and sole proposition and argumentation.

Nor shall I say that here too you ought to have pronounced something certain—either good, or evil, or some third thing—but that having pronounced what you pleased concerning these things, you should have kept to it. For you rescind what you pronounced, namely that it is neither good nor evil: because when you say, If it had been good, it would not have desired to be ordered by God, you portend it to be evil: and when you add, If it had been evil by nature, it would not have admitted translation into something better, you hint it to be good: and so you have established it as akin to both good and evil, though you pronounced it neither good nor evil. But in order to blunt the argumentation by which you thought you would confirm your proposition, I also oppose this: If matter had always been good, why would it not have desired to be reformed into something better?

Does what is good not desire, or not seek, or not receive advancement? So that from good it may become better. Likewise, if it had been evil by nature, why could it not have been converted by God, as by one more powerful, as by him who is able to convert even the nature of stones into children of Abraham? Surely then you not only compare God to matter, but also subject him to it, by whom the nature of matter could not have been overcome and tamed into something better. But also what you here refuse to be evil by nature, you will deny having confessed elsewhere.

Concerning the location of matter I treat the same point as concerning its motion, so that it may expose your perversity. You make matter subject to God, and assign to it a place which is below God. Matter is therefore in a place. If in a place, then within a place: if within a place, then it is bounded by the place within which it is: if it is bounded, it has an outermost line, which, as a painter properly speaking, you acknowledge to be the limit of every thing whose outermost line it is. Matter therefore will not be infinite, which, while it is in a place, is bounded by the place, and while it is bounded by it, undergoes its outermost line. But you make it infinite, saying: It is infinite, moreover, in that it always exists. And if any of your disciples should wish to argue that you mean infinity in terms of duration, not of bodily extent: yet that you mean it to be bodily infinite, bodily immense and uncircumscribed, the following words show.

Hence, you say, not all of it is fashioned, but parts of it. So it is infinite in body, not in time. And you are caught out, making it infinite in body, while by assigning it a place, you enclose it within a place and within the outermost line of that place. But yet, why God did not form all of it, I do not know, unless because he was either too weak or too grudging. And so I seek to know the half of that which was not wholly formed, that I may learn what the whole was like. For God ought, as an exemplar of antiquity, to have made it openly manifest for the glory of his work.

Let it now be definable, as seems more correct to you, through its changes and translations: let it also be comprehensible, as that which is fashioned, you say, by God, because it is also convertible, and changeable, and divisible into parts. For its changes, you say, show it to be divisible. And here you have fallen away from your own lines, which you employed concerning the person of God, laying down as a rule that God did not make it from himself, because he who is eternal and abiding forever, and thereby immutable and indivisible, could not come into parts. If matter also is reckoned by the same eternity, having neither beginning nor end, by the same reasoning it will not be able to undergo division and change, any more than God can. Placed in the fellowship of eternity, it must necessarily share with him also the powers, and laws, and conditions of eternity.

Likewise when you say: But its parts all have everything from all things, so that the whole may be recognized from the parts: you surely wish those parts to be understood which have been brought forth from it, which are seen by us today. How then do all things have everything from all things—surely from the original things—when those which are seen today have a different constitution than the original things had?

You say that matter has been reformed into something better, that is, from something worse: and you wish the better things to serve as exemplars of the worse. It was a confused thing, but now it is ordered: and you wish the unordered to be presented from the ordered. No thing is a mirror of another thing, that is, of something not its equal. No one has looked at himself in a barber's shop and seen a mule instead of a man, unless someone thinks that in this present structure of the world, already ordered and adorned, the formless and uncultivated matter is reflected. What today in the world is formless, what formerly was given shape in matter, that the world should be a mirror of matter? Since among the Greeks the world bears the name of ornament, how does it reflect the image of unadorned matter, so that you say the whole of it is known from its parts? Certainly from that whole there will also be this, which has not come into deformation.

And above you declared that not all of it was fashioned. Therefore even this rough and confused and unordered part cannot be recognized in the polished and distinct and ordered things, which it is not fitting to call parts of matter, since they have departed from its form through change.

I return to motion, to show you slippery at every point. The motion of matter was disordered, and confused, and turbulent. For so you also apply the likeness of a pot boiling on all sides. And how is something else affirmed by you elsewhere? For when you wish to introduce matter as neither good nor evil: therefore, matter lying beneath, having motion of equal weight, inclines neither much toward good nor toward evil. If of equal weight, then it is no longer turbulent, nor pot-like, but ordered and temperate; namely, being agitated between good and evil by its own impulse, yet inclining and rushing headlong toward neither side, it was borne with balanced impetus, as they say, of middle scales. This, you will say, is not the case; this turbulence and passivity is not present; but rather moderation, and restraint, and justice of a motion inclining toward neither side.

Plainly, if it were to incline this way and that, or more toward one side, then it would deserve to be marked with the note of disorder, and inequality, and turbulence. Furthermore, if the motion was not more prone toward good or toward evil, it was surely moving between good and evil: so that from this too it appears that matter is determinable, whose motion, prone neither to evil nor to good, because it inclined toward neither, was suspended between both and dependent on both. And on this account was bounded by both. But also you place good and evil in a location, when you say that the motion of matter was not inclined toward either of them: for matter, which was in a place, neither turning this way nor that, was not turning into the places in which good and evil were. But by assigning a place to good and evil, you make them corporeal by making them local; because those things which have a place must first be corporeal.

Finally, incorporeal things would not have a proper place except in a body, when they are accidents of a body. But with matter not inclining toward good and evil, it was not turning toward them as either corporeal or local things. You err, therefore, if you wish good and evil to be substances. For you make them substances by assigning places to them. But you assign places to them when you suspend the motion of matter from the region of both.

You have scattered everything, lest things contrary to one another should shine forth in close proximity. But I will gather them one by one and compare them. You assert the motion of matter to be disordered, and add that it pursues formlessness: then elsewhere, that it desires to be ordered by God. Does that which pursues formlessness desire formation, or does that which desires formation pursue formlessness? You do not wish God to appear to be equated with matter, and yet you assert that it has communion with God. For it is impossible, you say, that it, not having something in common with God, should be adorned by him. Yet if it had something in common with God, it would not have desired to be adorned by him, being, of course, a part of God through communion. Or God could also have been adorned by matter, having something in common with it himself as well; and already in this you subject God to necessity, if there was something in matter on account of which he would form it.

But the common ground between them you make to be this: that they are moved of themselves and always. What less do you ascribe to matter than to God? The entire fellowship of divinity will consist in this: freedom and eternity of motion. But God moves in an ordered manner, matter in a disordered manner. Yet divine in like manner, with motion likewise free and eternal. Yet you give more to matter, to which it was permitted to move in a way that was not permitted to God.

Concerning motion I would also note this. For, according to the likeness of the pot, such was, you say, the motion of matter before it was ordered—dense, restless, ungraspable, by reason of the excess of its striving. Then you add: But it came to rest at God's ordering, and had its ungraspable motion settled, by reason of the slowness of the disordered motion. To the striving you add above the motion, receive this. Above you say: But if matter had been evil by nature, it would not have received translation into something better, nor would God have accommodated any ordering to it; for he would have labored in vain. You therefore concluded two propositions: that matter is not evil by nature, and that its nature could not have been converted by God. Unmindful of these, you afterwards introduce: But when it received ordering from God and was adorned, it ceased from its nature.

If it was reformed into good, it was surely reformed from evil; and if through the ordering of God it ceased from an evil nature, then its nature ceased, and therefore it was evil by nature before the ordering, and was able to cease from its nature after the reformation.

But it also follows that I show in what manner you represent God as having worked. You plainly depart from the philosophers, but also from the prophets. For the Stoics hold that God ran through matter as honey through honeycombs. But you say: Not, you say, by passing through it does he make the world, but solely by appearing and drawing near to it, as does beauty by merely appearing, and the lodestone by merely drawing near. What resemblance is there between God fashioning the world, and beauty wounding the soul, or a magnet attracting iron? For even if God appeared to matter, he did not wound it, as beauty wounds the soul: and if he drew near, he did not adhere to it, as a magnet to iron. Suppose now that your examples are apt. Certainly, if by appearing and drawing near to matter God made the world from it, then surely from the moment he appeared he made it, and from the moment he drew near.

Therefore when he had not yet made it previously, he had neither appeared to it nor drawn near to it. And who can believe that God had not appeared to matter? Or that he had been far from that which is consubstantial with himself through eternity? Far from it, he whom we believe to be everywhere and to appear everywhere? To whom even inanimate and incorporeal things sing praises in Daniel. How great is this space, in which God was so far from matter that he neither appeared nor drew near before the fashioning of the world? I believe he journeyed to it from afar, when he first wished to appear to it and draw near to it.

But the prophets and apostles do not hand down that the world was made by God merely by appearing and drawing near to matter—they who named no matter at all—but first that Wisdom was established as the beginning of his ways unto his works: then also that the Word was brought forth, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. Finally, by his word the heavens were established, and by the breath of his mouth all their powers. This is the right hand of God and both hands by which he wrought the things which he devised. For the works of thy hands, he says, are the heavens; by which hands he also measured the earth, and the heaven with a span. Do not so flatter God as to wish that he brought forth so many and so great substances by sight alone and approach alone, and did not establish them by his own proper powers.

For so also Jeremiah commends him: God making the earth in his strength, preparing the world in his understanding, and in his wisdom stretched out the heaven. These are his powers, by which, straining forth, he founded all this. Greater is his glory if he laboured. Finally, on the seventh day he rested from his works. Each thing after its own manner. Or if by merely appearing and drawing near he made this world, did he not, when he ceased to make it, again cease to appear and draw near? And yet he began rather to appear more, and God is met everywhere, from the time the world was made.

You see therefore how all things subsist by the operation of God, by the strength of him who makes the earth, the understanding of him who prepares the world, and the wisdom of him who stretches out the heaven: not of one merely appearing, nor drawing near, but bringing to bear such great efforts of his mind—wisdom, strength, understanding, word, spirit, power—which would not have been necessary for him, if he had proceeded by merely appearing and drawing near. But these are his invisible things, which according to the apostle from the founding of the world are perceived through the things that are made, not some matter or other, but his own intelligible attributes. For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Concerning which he exclaims: O the depth of riches and of wisdom, how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

What do these things more plainly signify, than that all things were made from nothing?—things which could be neither found out nor investigated except by God alone; otherwise they would be investigable, if they had been investigated and found out from matter. Therefore, inasmuch as it has been established that there was no matter, also from the fact that there could not have been such matter as is introduced, to that same degree it is proved that all things were made by God from nothing—except that Hermogenes, in describing the same condition of matter which he himself is in—disordered, confused, turbulent, of wavering and headlong and feverish motion—while displaying a specimen of his art, has painted himself.