Against Hermogenes (Adversus Hermogenem)

assign locality; but you assign locality when you keep motion in Matter poised equally distant from both sides.

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 God. Does that, then, which affects to be without form, want to be put into shape? Or does that which wants to be put into shape, affect to be without form? You are unwilling that God should seem to be equal to Matter; and then again you say that it has a common condition with God. "For it is impossible," you say, "if it has nothing in common with God, that it can be set in order by Him." But if it had anything in common with God, 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.

Only in God motion is regular, in Matter irregular. In both, however, there is equally the attribute of Deity - both alike having free and eternal 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 God.

On the subject of motion I would make this further remark. Following the simile 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, "But it waited for the regulation of God, and kept its irregular motion incomprehensible, owing to the tardiness of its irregular motion." Just before you ascribe commotion, here tardiness, to motion. Now observe how many slips you make respecting the nature of Matter. In a former passage you say, "If Matter were naturally evil, 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." You therefore concluded your two opinions, that Matter was not by nature evil, and that its nature was incapable of being changed by God; and then, forgetting them, you afterwards drew this inference: "But when it received adjustment from God, and was reduced to order, it relinquished its nature." Now, inasmuch as it was transformed to good, it was of course transformed from evil; and if by God's setting it in order it relinquished the nature of evil, it follows that its nature came to an end; now its nature was evil before the adjustment, but after the transformation it might have relinquished that nature.

But it remains that I should show also how you make God work. You are plainly enough at variance with the philosophers; but neither are you in accord with the prophets. The Stoics 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 soul, or a magnet attracting iron? For even if God appeared to Matter, He yet did not wound it, as beauty does the soul; 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 believed that God had not appeared to Matter - of the same nature as it even was owing to its eternity? Or that He had been at a distance from it - even He whom we believe to be existent everywhere, and everywhere apparent; whose praises all things chant, even inanimate things and things incorporeal, according to (the prophet) Daniel? 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.

But it is not thus that the prophets and the apostles have told us that the world was made by God 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. Then that the Word was produced, "through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made." Indeed, "by the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all their hosts by the breath of His mouth." He is the Lord's right hand, indeed His two hands, by which He worked and constructed the universe. "For," says He, "the heavens are the works of Thine hands," wherewith "He hath meted out the heaven, and the earth with a span." 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 proved by Jeremiah when he says, "God hath made the earth by His power, He hath established the world by His wisdom, and hath stretched out the heaven by His understanding." These are the energies by the stress of which He made this universe. His glory 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 "made the earth by His power, who established the world by His wisdom, and stretched out the heaven by His understanding;" not appearing merely, nor approaching, but applying the almighty efforts of His mind, 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 "invisible things," which, according to the apostle, "are from the creation of the world clearly seen by the things that are made;" they are no parts of a nondescript Matter, but they are the sensible evidences of Himself. "For who hath known the mind of the Lord," of which (the apostle) exclaims: "O the depth of the riches both of His wisdom and knowledge! how unsearchable are

His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" Now what clearer truth do these words indicate, than that all things were made out of nothing? They are incapable of being found out or investigated, except by God alone. Otherwise, if they were traceable or discoverable in Matter, they would be capable of investigation. Therefore, in as far as it has become evident that Matter had no prior existence (even from this circumstance, that it is impossible for it to have had such an existence as is assigned to it), in so far is it proved that all things were made by God 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.