Preparation for the Gospel — Book VII

Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

1.1| It is time now to sketch the Hebrews: their manner of life, and the philosophy and piety found among them, which we have valued above everything we inherited from our fathers.

1.2| We have taken our stand, having made our departure from the false theology of all Greeks and barbarians alike, not by an irrational judgment but by a discerning and sober reasoning. Now, then, it is time to answer the second charge, by giving the reason why we have taken the Hebrew teachings as our own.

1.3| That we incur no reproach by taking what is useful from barbarians we shall show when there is proper leisure for it, by demonstrating that the Greeks, and above all their much-trumpeted philosophers, obtained from barbarians all their philosophical learning, together with whatever else is of general use and profitable for the needs of civic life. But that nothing whatever like the good which has been provided for us by the Hebrews has yet turned up among any nations at all will become plain in the following way.

2.1| All the rest of mankind, from the first establishment of human life and on through time, gave their attention to the perception of their bodies alone. Because they had grasped nothing concerning the soul that is in them, and supposed that nothing existed among real things beyond what is seen, they assigned the honorable, the useful, and the only good to the pleasure of the body. Having made this alone the object of their eager pursuit, as the only good, gentle and sweet and sufficient to enjoy a happy life, they held it to be the greatest of the gods and made a god of it. They did not want even life itself unless it had a share in the pleasure of the body; they welcomed living not for the sake of living but for the sake of living pleasantly, and prayed that this might be present for their own children too, as the only good.

2.2| Hence some, supposing that the sun and moon and stars were the suppliers of our life in the flesh, and somehow overawed as well by the sight of their light, proclaimed them the first gods and declared them the sole causes of all things. Others gave the title of gods to the fruits of the earth, to the moist and dry and hot substance, and to the other parts of the world through which their bodies were fed and fattened and with which they hunted after life in the flesh and pleasure together. Others, long before these, barefaced and with head uncovered, deified their own passions and their mistress pleasure, love and longing and lust, saying that these rule even the gods themselves. Others made gods, both while they still lived and after their death, of certain tyrants and potentates who had become the suppliers and inventors of pleasant things for them, because of the comforts they had received from them. Others, having become the playthings of wicked spirits and daemons, swelled still further the passionate part of their souls, procuring pleasures from these beings too through the worship customarily paid them. Others, putting up with none of this, introduced atheism as far better than such a theology. And others, more shameless still than all the rest, declared that the philosophic and thrice-blessed life is none other than the pleasant life, and defined pleasure as the end of all goods.

2.3| In this way the whole race of men, enslaved to pleasure as to a bitter and most cruel mistress, pleasure the god, or rather a shameful and licentious daemon, was mired in miseries of every kind. For their women, as the holy apostle says, exchanged the natural use of the female for what is against nature; and in the same way the men also, abandoning the natural use of the female, were inflamed in their lust for one another, men committing shamelessness with men and receiving in themselves the due recompense of their error.

2.4| In this way Greeks and barbarians, wise and unlettered alike, fell to the ground on their bellies and worshiped pleasure as a god. Flinging themselves down headlong like creeping things, they held her to be a god that none could resist or appease, and they loved her. In songs and hymns, at the festivals of the gods and at the public shows, they were initiated into and celebrated the orgies and indecent mysteries of shameful and licentious pleasure alone, so that this too, if anything ever was, has rightly been done away with among us. 'For the devising of idols is the beginning of fornication.'

2.5| So the theology of the other nations had taken on, to put it briefly, this great variety: fastened to one origin, foul and unclean pleasure, but carried out, like a many-necked and many-headed hydra, into many and varied divisions and branches.

2.6| Since, then, they had put forward so great an error, it is only natural that, having pleasure for a god and an evil daemon, they piled evil on evil: they wallowed their whole life in madness for women and the corruption of males, in marriages with mothers and unions with daughters, and overcame even the wild and bestial nature by the excess of their depravity. Such was the manner of the ancient nations and of their falsified theology, as was demonstrated earlier from the Greek historians and philosophers we have collected.

3.1| If, then, you have taken in at a glance the life of the ancients, now consider in your mind that among so many only the children of the Hebrews went the opposite way.

3.2| For these were the first and only of all men, from the first founding of life, to devote their minds to rational contemplation and to apply themselves reverently to the study of nature as a whole. First, the elements of bodies, earth, water, air, and fire, out of which they observed this universe to be composed, and then the sun, the moon, and the stars, they reasoned to be works of God, and not gods. They grasped that corporeal substance by its nature is not merely irrational but lifeless as well, in that it is fluid and perishable; and then they reasoned that the ordering of the whole world, so well and wisely fitted together and filled with living creatures, rational and irrational, cannot be ascribed to a spontaneous cause, nor can the productive source of living things be supposed lifeless, nor the maker of rational beings irrational.

3.3| Since a building of wood and stones would never stand of its own accord, nor a garment be finished without a weaver, nor cities and constitutions without laws and the arrangement of rulers, nor a vessel without a pilot, nor the smallest tool of a craft exist except through a craftsman, nor would a ship ever reach a safe harbor except with a good pilot, so neither will the nature of the universal elements, being lifeless and irrational, ever of itself lay hold of reason and life apart from the supreme wisdom of God. Having thought these and similar thoughts, the fathers of the Hebrew piety, from the grandeur and beauty of created things, with purified mind and the clear eyes of the soul, worshiped God, the Maker of all.

4.1| Then, perceiving that they themselves were no small part of the whole, they judged that one part of themselves was precious (this being the true man, understood according to the soul), while the other held the place of a covering; this is the body. Having made this division, they brought all their care and zeal to the life of the inner man.

4.2| They reasoned that this is dear to God, the Maker of all, by whom human nature has been given dominion over all things on earth, not by strength of body but by virtue of soul. Some things that exist are lifeless, like stones and wood; others share in a vital power, like the plants of the earth; others have a portion of sensation and imaginative impulse, like the irrational animals. All these he has made subject to the single race of men for service, not compelled by bodily strength and force, but by reason and the virtue of the soul, by which they found that the ruling and kingly privilege over all things on earth had been granted from above by the cause of all.

4.3| Setting out from there, they resolved to honor the body and the pleasures of bodies no more than the other creatures of the earth, but took pains only for the ruling part within them, as being akin to the ruler of all, and the rational and intellectual part of the soul, divine and capable of knowledge, as bearing the likeness of the God over all.

4.4| Then, thinking of no other good apart from God, the provider of all goods, they declared that the end of all happiness is knowledge of him and friendship with him, because he alone is the one on whom depends the cause of life itself, of soul and body, and of what these require.

4.5| To him, then, they dedicated themselves entire, in body and soul, hanging their whole life upon him, and thinking it right to attend to him alone and to none of the things seen.

4.6| Having thus shown themselves lovers of God and beloved of God, they were declared to be true servants and priests of the Most High God, and were even thought worthy to be called a chosen race, a royal priesthood of God, and a holy nation, having left the seed of this true piety to their later descendants as well.

4.7| Do we seem to you, then, to have acted on reasoned judgment in preferring these men to the Greek ones, and in welcoming the Hebrew accounts of pious men rather than the gods of the Phoenicians and Egyptians and the unspeakable absurdities told about the gods?

5.1| See, then, to what height of God-beloved virtue these men are reported to have advanced. The divine, having approved the men for the rest of their pious life and philosophy and their service of it, deemed them worthy now also of more divine oracles, manifestations of God, and visions of angels, setting right what was lacking in mortal nature by instructions about what to do, and unveiling to them the knowledge of doctrines and teachings fit for God, so that their minds were illumined no longer by syllogisms or conjectures but by the shining forth of truth itself. Thus, inspired by God, they could already behold the grasp of things to come as if present, and prophesy the general events that would befall the human race.

5.2| Such is the account of the Hebrews' virtue that their much-celebrated and truly God-beloved oracles contain, and these we have preferred to the myths and nonsense of the Greeks and of our ancestors; for the latter contained the most shameful things about gods, the former the pious teachings about God-beloved men.

6.1| Now these things were known long before, before even Moses and the Jewish race came to be, from a far distant age among the forefathers of the Jews. And it is good to make this distinction too: that Judaism did not yet exist at that time, but those we are speaking of were Hebrews, in name and in manner of life alike, while Jews they neither were yet nor were so called.

6.2| You might learn the difference between Hebrews and Jews in this way. The one group took its name from Judah, from whose tribe the Jewish kingdom was established long afterward; the other was named from Eber, who was a forefather of Abraham.

6.3| The sacred writings teach that the Hebrews came before the Jews. As for the way of piety, Moses was the first to begin the legislation for the Jews: he handed down a sabbath day, with a very strict observance of it as a reminder of leisure for the sacred writings, a distinction between animals that may be eaten and those that may not, annual feasts, certain purifications of the body, and another long cycle carried out in more divine fashion according to certain symbols. The Hebrews, however, who were earlier than Moses in time and had no knowledge of the whole legislation through Moses, practiced a free and unconstrained way of piety, adorned with a life according to nature, so that they needed no laws to rule them because of the soul's supreme freedom from passion, and had received true knowledge of the doctrines about God. But with this said in this way, it is time to turn to the written records.

7.1| Moses, then, the great theologian, a Hebrew from Hebrews, who knew the ancestral traditions well if anyone did, handed down in the preface to the sacred laws, in imperishable records, the lives of the Hebrew forefathers, the good things they were deemed worthy of from God, and, on the other hand, the ways and punishments of others who were godless and impious. He thought this a necessary lesson for those who were to be educated by his laws, to avoid imitating the wicked and to encourage the life of the pious.

7.2| Moreover, one must not fail to recognize that even before his written laws, several of the forefathers had already been adorned by right reasoning with the virtue of godliness; having been called prophets and friends of God, they obtained eternal remembrance with him; and those for whom he was establishing the laws were not foreign to them in race.

7.3| Therefore all the more ought they, being descended from God-beloved and righteous men, to show themselves zealous imitators of their forefathers' piety, and to hasten to obtain from God the same things as their parents, rather than grow numb or shrink back, despairing of the hope of good things as if they were impossible;

7.4| for these things were possible, and had been fully achieved by their own forefathers. He handed down to those being taught divine things the images of these men, recounting the lives of the ancients and outlining the particular virtue of each one as in pictures.

8.1| Nothing prevents us from running briefly over this history as well. Before the flood, then, it is as Moses' own writing contains it. And I think we ought to examine the ancestral matters of the Hebrews from no other source than their own, since we learn Egyptian matters from Egyptians and Phoenician matters from their own people, and again Greek matters from those who are distinguished among them, and the matters of philosophers from philosophers and not from those inexperienced in philosophy; and from where else would it be fitting to inquire about medicine than from those with knowledge of it? So, consistently, I think we should accept the matters of the Hebrews from the oracles of the Hebrews, and not from anywhere else.

8.2| As the account held among them has it, from the beginning, prior to the flood, from the first generation of men and in the successions that followed, there were some God-beloved men and a number of righteous ones. Of these, one 'hoped to call on the name of the Lord God.'

8.3| This shows that he ascribed to no one but the Maker of all things the title of master and God of the universe together. For he was persuaded that He had not only set the whole in good order by his creative power, but also, like a master, as of a great city, rules over the whole, managing it and presiding over it as household master, being Lord and King and God together.

8.4| The notion and title of Lord and God, which that God-beloved man was the first to conceive in his mind, he held in place of all possessions, titles, and wealth, or rather in place of every good: 'he hoped to call on the name of the Lord God,' having provided himself with this as a treasure of goods for soul and body alike.

8.5| For this reason he is recorded as the first to be called a true man among the Hebrews. He is named Enos, which means 'true man,' by a name that hits the mark. For they say that no one else should be thought and called a true man than the one who has attained knowledge of God and piety, the truly knowing and pious man.

8.6| Indeed, those who are not such, who differ in nothing from irrational cattle, cast down prone to belly and pleasure, the scripture of the Hebrews teaches us to name them beasts rather than men, as it is accustomed to use names in their proper sense.

8.7| Hence it is accustomed to call such people sometimes wolves and dogs, sometimes swine that use and delight in filth, and again reptiles and snakes, in keeping with the manifold forms of vice.

8.8| And if it ever has to indicate man in general, the common and numerous man, the race itself, it again uses a proper and fitting name and signifies the whole of man by the name of Adam, because this is the proper and fitting name of the ancestor and forefather of all men, and it indicates, in its transposition into the Greek tongue, the earth-born.

8.9| Enos, at any rate, is recorded as the first of the God-beloved among the Hebrews, since he was the first to hope to call on the name of the Lord God, showing a soul that is truly rational and knowing and skilled in piety toward the divine; of which the first would be proof of true knowledge of God, the second of hope in the God who has been known.

8.10| For not to neglect or put in second place the matters of divine knowledge, but always and continually to hope to call on the name of the Lord God, in the one way as servants call on a master, in the other as on a gracious and good father, this would be the thrice-blessed end of all.

8.11| Such is the first and true man introduced among the Hebrews: not the earth-born man surnamed Adam, who by transgression of God's commandment fell from the lot of the better, but the first of the God-beloved, who hoped to call on the name of the Lord God.

8.12| Having judged with sober reasoning, we too have been glad to emulate such a man and have welcomed the narrative of scripture as profitable and most beneficial to us, making it our prayer, in likeness to the image of the man described, to call on the name of the Maker and Master of all with a firm and good hope.

8.13| But after the one mentioned, another was well pleasing to the Lord, and 'was not found,' in the words of Moses, 'because God translated him,' on account of the supreme perfection of his virtue. For the truly wise man is hard to find.

8.14| This would be the man perfect in God, who has been removed from the dwelling-place of the many. For the man who is not such, pursuing markets and law courts, shopkeeping and trade, and the great crowd, pushed and pushing, is swallowed up in the midst of the depth of vice itself; but the one taken by God and removed from things here to there, invisible and not to be found among men, having become a friend to God, is found by God.

8.15| This man the Hebrews are accustomed to call Enoch, and the name would signify 'grace of God.' And so we have counted it blessed to emulate his life too, as that of a good image.

8.16| Third after these, another righteous man appeared, Noah, who is attested as righteous in his generation. The following would be evidence of his righteousness. A great drought and darkness of unspeakable wickedness had seized the whole race of men, and the giants who are on everyone's lips performed, by godless and impious undertakings, the battles against God that are famed down to this day. Already too those responsible for their birth, whether they were of some higher lot than mortal nature or were made in some other way, having introduced meddlesome teaching among men, are said to have handed down to life the devices of sorcery and of the other wicked magic arts, so that the whole human race came under one verdict of judgment before God.

8.17| And thus, when all were on the point of being destroyed at one nod, this man alone, whom we now describe, was found righteous in his generation along with his household. When everything on earth was being destroyed by the flood and the earth itself purified of its earlier evils by the massed overflow of waters, the God-beloved man, together with his sons and their wives, was preserved by God, most wonderfully, as a living seed for the life that followed.

8.18| He, too, would be an archetypal image, living and animate, having offered to his descendants an example of a God-beloved way of life.

8.19| Such were those before the flood; and after it there were others again, distinguished in piety, whose memory the sacred oracles preserve. One of these is recorded as priest of the Most High God, who bore in the Hebrews' tongue the name 'righteous king.'

8.20| In all these there was no account at all of circumcision of the body, nor of the Jewish commandments of Moses. For this reason it is not right to call them Jews, nor Greeks either, since they did not hold many gods as the Greeks and the other nations did. They would more properly be called Hebrews, either from Eber, or, better, from the interpretation of the name.

8.21| For 'Hebrews' is interpreted as 'those who cross over,' those who set out on the passage from things here toward contemplating the God of the universe. For, guiding the right course of virtue by natural reasoning and unwritten laws, they are recorded as having crossed beyond the pleasures of the flesh to the all-wise and God-fearing life.

8.22| Among all these let there be counted also Abraham, the celebrated founder of the whole nation, to whom the oracles bear witness of righteousness, not the righteousness again from the law of Moses, since that did not yet exist (Moses appeared in the seventh generation after Abraham), but he too is recorded as righteous and pious, if anyone is, like those mentioned above.

8.23| The scripture says, then: 'Abraham put his faith in God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.' The divine oracle foretells that he will be the father of many nations, and says in express terms that in him all the earth's nations and all the tribes will be blessed, plainly prophesying what is now being fulfilled in our time.

8.24| But that Abraham, after attaining perfection in righteousness, achieved not through the law of Moses but through faith, and after the recorded manifestations of God, when in his old age he was about to become the father of a legitimate son, was the first of all to be circumcised in the body by oracle, and he handed down the practice to those born from him, whether as a visible sign of the multitude of his descendants, or so that his children might have an ancestral mark, whether living in zeal for their forefathers or falling short of their virtue, or for some other reasons, which there is no leisure now to look into.

8.25| Such, then, is he who is set before us for imitation. After him Isaac is shown to be the successor of his father's knowledge of God and friendship with God alike, having received from his father the fairest and most blessed of all inheritances. The divine oracles say that he lived with one wife and had children by one conception only; by it he became the father of twins, and for that reason, it is said, he confined his intercourse with his wife within it, out of excess of self-control.

8.26| Here let Jacob also be brought forward, who is also Israel, a man with two names owing to the distinguished progress of his own virtues. At the time when he was exercising himself in practical conduct and ways of life and making trial of labors for piety, his name was Jacob, which, translated into Greek, means 'one in training' and 'athlete'.

8.27| But when at last he had won the victory over his adversaries and was crowned, and was already enjoying the goods of contemplation, at that time God who addressed him changed his name too, deeming him worthy of the vision of God and bestowing through the title the rewards of more divine prizes and honors.

8.28| The oracle says to him: 'Your name shall be called Jacob no longer, but Israel shall be your name, for you have prevailed with God and are mighty with men,' signifying by Israel the man who sees and contemplates; for the name, once changed, means 'a man seeing God.'

8.29| Such a man, then, was he from whom the twelve-tribe race of the Jewish nation took its beginning. Countless things could be said about the lives of these men, their philosophic endurance and their discipline, some viewed according to the letter, others allegorized through hidden meanings; others have spoken about these things, and we too in our work on the many children of the ancients. Such, then, were these men.

8.30| I can mention to you another, beside them, named Job, whom the sacred oracles attest to have been a blameless man, true, righteous, God-fearing, abstaining from every evil thing. This man, though in no way belonging to the Jewish race, is attested in all the achievements of piety.

8.31| The sons of Jacob, moreover, who cherished the ancestral knowledge and worship of God, carried the fame of the Hebrews of old to great renown, so that they had already laid hold of the rule over all Egypt.

8.32| For Joseph, crowned beforehand with the prizes of self-control, and then receiving the governance of the Egyptians, displayed the God-beloved way of the Hebrews; and we have made it our prayer also to emulate him, a man who had been made a slave through a plot of his own kin and a slave of an Egyptian.

8.33| The other gifts he was fortunate to have, of beauty and strength of body and fine form, I pass over, though the oracles record that he surpassed everyone in the bloom of beauty; but how could anyone write of the matters of his soul, if he set out to give praise worthy of the man's virtue?

8.34| The account has it that the mark of a free man was his by nature, and that the nobility of his character blossomed in his face. He was exceptionally trained in the adornments that distinguish piety, so that his soul shone with self-control, justice, prudence, and courage, and long before these with knowledge and piety toward the God of all; these his parents are said to have laid in his soul from the cradle.

8.35| When his master's wife was seized with desire for him and tried to drag his young body into licentious and amorous dealings, first attempting to deceive him with words, then pleading with entreaties, and finally daring to lay hands on him with greater violence, and employing now shameless and brazen embraces, the hero recalled the pious teaching of his fathers, showed himself in deed and word a God-fearing and true Hebrew, and shook off the shameful and licentious woman, passing her by with a stronger hand; and, as if escaping from some terrible, rabid beast, he secured his safety by flight.

8.36| Then he reasons within himself with sober calculation and says: 'If my lord, because of me, knows nothing of what is in his house, and has given all that is in it into my hands, how shall I do this great wicked thing and sin before God?' For this the God of the universe crowned him as victor with the prizes of virtue and handed over to him the kingship and governance over his own masters and over Egypt itself. Yet this man too, a Hebrew from Hebrews and not a Jew, since Jewish matters did not yet exist, is counted among the most God-beloved and thrice blessed.

8.37| After the Hebrews mentioned, when the race of descendants grew into a multitude, and the Jewish nation, having by now taken shape from them, increased and multiplied day by day, the pious way of life of the long-ago God-beloved forefathers gradually weakened and grew dull among them, while the sojourn among the Egyptians so far overpowered the multitude in question that the ancestral virtue passed into forgetfulness, and their lives were swept into likeness with the Egyptians, so that in no respect did they seem to differ from the Egyptians in manner.

8.38| Then, when they had come to such a state, the God of their forefathers sent out Moses as leader and lawgiver, confirming the promises made through oracles to their ancestors; and afterwards, having accomplished through him the recorded miracles and wonderful signs from God, he put before them a law suited to the character of those who were to hear it.

8.39| They, not having emulated the ancestral virtue through dullness, as being sick and passionate in their souls, received a fitting constitution, in which Moses ordained some things plainly and openly, and hinted at others through hidden meanings, laying down symbols and shadows, and not the naked truth, for them to guard and observe.

8.40| And so the Jewish polity, beginning from Moses at about this point, endures, in accord with the voices of its own prophets, until the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ, since this too was a decree of Moses himself and of the prophets after him: that the statutes and ordinances of Moses were not to give out before those of Christ appeared, namely those of the new covenant proclaimed to all the nations through our Savior; and these have indeed reached fulfillment, as is proclaimed.

8.41| But since we have briefly gone through the Hebrews’ life before Moses and set forth the character of their piety, it is time to examine their doctrinal manner from the writing of Moses and the prophets after him.

9.1| To begin with, then, that admirable theologian and lawgiver himself, laying down for the Jewish nation through his own writing a constitution suited to piety, did not think he should use the common and well-worn openings of discourse. Ahead of any law commanding what is to be done and forbidding what is not to be done, and ahead of the public and civil ordinances about contracts with one another, he thought he should make the beginning of his teaching from the ancestral theology, judging that no other instruction was proper to laws befitting piety than the theology that had come down to him from the forefathers of old.

9.2| He begins, therefore, from God, according to the ancestral theology of the Hebrew forefathers, not as was dear to the Egyptians and Phoenicians and the other nations, who scatter the venerable title among a multitude and think of gods as the visible luminaries in heaven, or invisible and unseen beings, either those who have passed away from humankind, or the earthly and aerial daemons, as we showed earlier.

9.3| Rather, he makes the beginning of his whole discourse from the cause of all things, the Maker of things invisible and visible, and teaches that this one is the lawgiver for the organization of the all, having established him as the king of the cosmos, as if of a single great city.

9.4| He therefore teaches, at the very start, that we should regard him as the author and master not only of the laws that he will shortly ordain for men, but also of those in the nature of the whole.

10.1| For he presents him as king and lawgiver of the entire world: by his nod and power the being of all things came to be, and by his laws and boundaries again the whole age is steered in due way and order.

10.2| For by the word and law of God the heaven was first of all made firm, and the heavy and solid mass of the earth, contrary to its own nature, is wonderfully suspended in the finer elements. By the word and divine law the reciprocal course of night and day revolves; by the word and law of God the sun itself, the moon, and the chorus of the other stars complete their fitting course in seemly order; by the law of the King of all, the changes of the solstices, the alternations of the seasons, the cycles of the year and the yearly seasons are fulfilled in the all-harmonious concord of the whole. By the law of God winter yields to spring, and this to the turnings of the seasons nearest it; the depths of the sea, surging in winter floods, are by divine law shut up within their own waters, so that they do not dare to cross the limits of the sacred laws; and the dry land, watered by rainy streams and snows that are again supplied in due measure by divine law, brings forth countless kinds of plants and animals.

10.3| In a word, the all-mothering nature of the universe, enslaved to God's command, yields to divine laws and to the will of God, the ruler of all. For so great an order does not stand by chance, or at random, or by spontaneous and irrational motion, nor is this great and most beautiful work of craftsmanship the product of a nature without a cause; it is the creation of the supremely wise architect of the whole, and is steered by his sacred words and laws.

10.4| Beginning from here, the prophet, setting out the laws concerning the nature of the whole even before the legislation for men, urged first of all that we give heed to God, the King of all, and not be negligent about his laws; because even the sun itself, the heaven, the world, the earth, and everything on earth, and whatever is held to be the works of nature, are subject to his commandments and ordinances, to his sacred laws and words.

10.5| Therefore all the more should mankind, which is no small part of the whole, consistently give heed to the divine ordinances, and not be inferior to the individual elements. For he who said at the beginning, 'Let the earth bring forth the herb of grass, sowing seed according to its kind, and the fruitful tree bearing fruit,' laid down the law for the earth; and she, showing at the very word her obedience to the law, has not until now neglected the divine ordinance.

10.6| So too with the watery substance: God having said, 'Let the waters bring forth reptiles of living souls, and winged creatures flying across the firmament of heaven,' it gave the work at the word, and is still seen, even to this day, showing its obedience to the law.

10.7| And if the sun and moon and stars, when the divine law has assigned them to render their own courses and to be for signs, for seasons, for days, and for years, do not neglect the legislation, what excuse would still be left for you, if you disregard the divine laws?

10.8| Having given this preliminary instruction, that admirable man won us over and made us, reasonably, zealous for his knowledge of God and for his piety, since we could discover nothing resembling it among the theologians of the nations spoken of before.

10.9| Once the first theology is done, he moves on to the second doctrine, which is natural and philosophical alike. After the knowledge of God and the ordering of the universe, he proceeds in order to what is second in nature: this was the subject of the nature of man, since after knowledge of God it is necessary for a person to know himself. Accordingly he goes on to teach what man is, what leads him to knowledge and piety toward God, and what the life of man is that chiefly belongs to him. Dividing the account of soul and body, he defines the true man as being in the soul, partaking of an intellectual, incorporeal, and rational substance, as made in the image of God; the body is an earthy covering of the soul; and beyond these he adds a third element, the breath of life, a kind of uniting power joining what was taken from the earth to that which was made in the image of God.

10.10| He relates that the first dwelling of the man in question was in God's thrice-blessed paradise, which was filled with immortal and eternal goods; but that he too, made subject to God's law like the other things at the beginning of the universe, was deprived of that thrice-desired life through inattention and transgression of the divine commandment.

10.11| These are the things Moses philosophizes in the preface of the sacred laws, all but proclaiming that we should not neglect our own dignity and the likeness to the divine that we have obtained, by which the immortality of the soul too has been allotted to us.

10.12| For it is not permitted that the image of a king be defaced. The archetype, the true image of the universal God, is his Word, who is wisdom itself, life itself, light and truth, and whatever fair and good thing anyone might conceive; and the image of this image is the human mind, on account of which it is acknowledged that man was made in the image of God.

10.13| He thought it necessary that those who are to give heed to the sacred laws be taught in advance these things: to remember what part of them was taken from the earth and will be dissolved into earth again, and what part in us is better and godlike, and how each of the two ought to be treated; not to outrage and act impiously against the man made in God's image, nor to defile himself with shameful and unlawful deeds, but to bear always a longing for that first and thrice-blessed dwelling and life, and to hasten back, praying to attain that first life and dignity, thrice blessed; and to prepare from now on for the journey there, because it is not otherwise possible for the profane and the unpurified to set foot in those sacred places, from which the first man fell through inattention, having despised the divine commandment.

10.14| To this the hierophant adds another doctrine of the greatest weight, teaching us not to be in doubt that there is for each person an evil daemon lying in wait, envious, hating what is good, and a plotter against human salvation from the beginning.

10.15| He names him dragon and serpent, black, at home in darkness, full of venom and wickedness. Out of envy of our God-inspired life, he says, he still now tries to trip up and drag down each of those who attend to God; by his deceit the first ancestors of our race also fell from the more divine lot; wherefore we must be on watch at all times against the evil-crafted tricks of the one described.

10.16| But why should we anticipate these things, when we ought at last to go through each of the pronouncements from the writings themselves? Let us begin, then, first with God, calling upon him as our helper before all else through our Savior.

11.1| Their account sets out the beginning of theology from the power that produced and fashioned the universe, not by syllogisms or plausible arguments, but in a manner more dogmatic and instructive, speaking as one divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit. Carried by him, Moses began the theology thus: 'In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth.'

11.2| Then he says: 'Let there be light, said God, and there was light.' Then: 'Let there be a firmament, said God, and so it was.' Then: 'God said, Let the earth put forth the herb of grass, sowing seed after its kind and likeness, and every fruitful tree bearing fruit, whose seed is in itself, after its kind, upon the earth, and so it was.' Then: 'God said, Let there be luminaries in the firmament of heaven, to shine upon the earth, and let them serve for signs, for seasons, for days, and for years, and so it was.' Then: 'God said, Let the waters put forth reptiles of living souls after their kind, and every winged creature of heaven after its kind, and so it was.' Then: 'Let the earth put forth four-footed creatures, reptiles and the earth's wild beasts according to their kind, and so it was.'

11.3| In these passages the scripture, in saying 'God said,' shows the divine nod and God's willing that things come to be in just this way; yet one need not suppose that he spoke with voice and syllables. Summing up the whole account, it says: 'Here is the book of the origin of heaven and earth, on the day when God made heaven and earth and everything in them.'

11.4| Such is the Hebrew theology, teaching that all things came to be by the creative Word of God. Next it teaches that the whole world is not left desolate, like an orphan abandoned by its father, by the one who made it, but is governed forever by God's providence, so that God is not only the Maker and Creator of the universe but also its Savior, Steward, King, and Ruler, presiding through the ages over the sun itself, the moon, the stars, and the whole heaven and world, looking on all things with a great eye and divine power, present to all things heavenly and earthly, and ordering and governing everything in the world.

11.5| So too, naturally, the prophets who came after, themselves uttering inspired words in harmony with these, at one time cried out from the divine person itself, saying: “I am a God who draws near, says the Lord, and not a God from afar. If a man does something in secret places, shall I not know it? Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord.”

11.6| At another time, speaking of God somewhat in this way: “Who measured the water with his hand, the heaven by a span, and all the earth by a handful? Who has set the mountains in a balance and the valleys on scales? Who has known the mind of the Lord, and who has been his counselor?” And again: “He who set up the heaven like a vault, and stretched it out like a tent for dwelling.” And once more: “Lift your eyes up to the height, and see who has displayed all these things.” And next: “The Lord, the Lord God, who made the heaven and fixed it firm, who made the earth steadfast and all that is in it, and gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk on it: I am the Lord God.” And next: “I stretched out the heaven, I alone, and made the earth firm. I am the Lord God, and there is none besides me.”

11.7| And again: “Thus you shall say to them: Let those gods who did not make heaven and earth perish from the surface of the earth and from beneath the heaven. It is the Lord who made the earth in his strength, who set the world upright in his wisdom, who spread out the heaven in his understanding, and who raised clouds from the farthest part of the earth, who made lightning flashes for the rain, and brought out the winds from his storehouses. Every man has been made foolish, away from knowledge.”

11.8| And again: “Where shall I go from your spirit, and from your face where shall I hide? If I climb up to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Hades, you are present. If I take up my wings at daybreak and make my dwelling at the farthest parts of the sea, even there your hand will guide me.”

11.9| Now these utterances and others like them belong to the theologians who came after Moses, who were themselves Hebrews and spoke of God in harmony with their most ancient forefathers. But as for the God-beloved and thrice-blessed men before Moses, who were the first Hebrews, and first of all Abraham, who is called the forefather of the whole Jewish nation, hear this.

11.10| “Abraham spoke to the king of Sodom: I shall extend my hand to God the Most High, who created heaven and earth.” And even before Abraham, Melchizedek is brought in as priest of God Most High, blessing Abraham with these words: “Blessed be Abraham by the Most High God, who handed your enemies over to you; and blessed be the God who made heaven and earth.”

11.11| Furthermore, the scripture introduces Abraham speaking to his servant in this way: “Place your hand beneath my thigh, and I shall have you swear by the Lord who is God of heaven and God of earth.” And he continues: “The Lord who is God of heaven and God of earth, who took me out of my father’s house and out of the land where I was born.”

11.12| On top of all this, in the theophany granted to Moses, when Moses asked what he must believe God to be, the oracle says: “I am he who is. Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel: He who is has sent me to you.”

11.13| Let this, then, out of countless instances, be set out from the Hebrew theology. Is it then worthy to set beside it, for comparison, the theologies of the wise Greeks? Some of them asserted that there is no god whatever; others said the stars are gods, which they also say are red-hot lumps of metal fixed in the heaven like nails and plates; others said god is an artistic fire proceeding along a path; some said the universe is not governed by the providence of God but by a certain irrational nature; others said that only the heavenly things are governed by God, not the things on earth; and again that the world is ungenerated and did not come to be by God at all but exists of its own accord and by chance; and others that the constitution of the whole came about from atoms and fine bodies, lifeless and irrational.

11.14| Such, then, in brief, are the sayings of the Hebrews about the God of the universe. Next we must also consider what the Hebrews have taught about the beginning of created things after the God of the universe.

12.1| Thales of Miletus declared that water is the first principle of all things, Anaximenes air, Heraclitus fire, Pythagoras numbers, Epicurus together with Democritus indivisible bodies, and Empedocles the four elements. Let us look, then, at the sayings of the Hebrews as well.

12.2| After the essence of the God of the universe, which has no beginning and is ungenerated, unmixed and beyond all comprehension, they introduce a second essence and divine power, the first beginning of all created things, which came into subsistence first and was generated from the first cause, and they name it Word, Wisdom, and Power of God.

12.3| Job is the first to teach this, saying: “But wisdom, where was it found? And of what sort is the place of understanding? Mortal man does not know its way, nor was it found among men; we have heard only its fame. The Lord established its way, and he himself knows its place.

12.4| And David too, somewhere in the psalms, calling Wisdom by a different name, says: “By the Lord’s Word the heavens were strengthened,” thus extolling the Maker of all things as the Word of God. And not only so, but his son Solomon, in this way, brings Wisdom herself forward as a speaking person: “I, Wisdom, have pitched my tent together with counsel and knowledge, and I called on understanding. Through me kings reign, and rulers write down justice.”

12.5| And again: “The Lord created me as a beginning of his ways, for the sake of his works; before the age he laid my foundation, at the beginning, before he had made the earth, before the abysses were brought into being, before the mountains were set firm; before all hills he begets me. When he prepared the heaven I stood beside him, and when he set the fountains securely under heaven, I was with him, fitting things together. I was the one in whom he took delight, day by day, and I rejoiced before him at every moment, when he rejoiced, having completed the inhabited world.”

12.6| This is what Solomon says in Proverbs. And somewhere these words too are spoken in his own person: “What wisdom is, and how she came to be, I will declare, and I will not conceal mysteries from you; rather I will search her out from creation's beginning.” After these words he goes on: “For she is a spirit, intelligent, holy, only-begotten, manifold, subtle, nimble, clear, undefiled, all-powerful, all-seeing, and passing through all spirits that are intelligent, pure, and most subtle.

12.7| For Wisdom is more mobile than any movement, and she pervades and passes through all things because of her purity. For she is a vapor of God's power and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled falls into her. For she is a radiance of eternal light, a spotless mirror of God's working, and an image of his goodness. She reaches from one end to the other with strength, and orders all things well.”

12.8| And indeed the divine Scripture presents this God-inspired Word as sent in various ways by the Father for the salvation of men. It records that he showed himself to Abraham, to Moses, and to the other God-beloved prophets, and instructed them largely through oracles and foretold things to come, whenever it records that God and Lord appeared and came into conversation with the prophets.

12.9| That he would also become known to all men, sent by the greater one as a savior of the sick and physician of souls, it prophesies somewhere in this manner: “He sent forth his Word, and healed them, and rescued them from their corruptions.” And again, on another occasion, it says: “His Word will run swiftly.” Hence the gospel teaching too, renewing the prophetic and ancestral doctrine, makes its theology clear in this way: “In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was in God's presence; and the Word was God. This one was in the beginning in God's presence. Everything came to be through him, and apart from him not one thing came to be that has come to be. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.”

12.10| Fittingly, then, Moses too, the all-wise, by the same Spirit, beginning his account of the origin of the world, says that in the beginning already described God made heaven and earth; and he brings in God conversing, at the making of man, with his own firstborn Word, as with one close to him, in the following words: “And God spoke: Let us make man according to our own image and likeness.”

12.11| The psalmist hinted at this too, when, speaking of the first cause, he says: “He spoke, and they were begotten; he commanded, and they were created.” This plainly presupposes an ordinance and command from the first cause to the second, as from a father to a son. For it is surely quite clear that everyone who says something says it to another, and that whoever gives a command gives it to someone other than himself.

12.12| And again Moses, explicitly mentioning two Lords together, namely the Father and the Son, relates somewhere in this way, in speaking of the punishment of the impious: “And the Lord rained from the Lord on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire.”

12.13| In harmony with this David also sang: “The Lord said to my Lord: Take your seat at my right, until I place your enemies as a footstool beneath your feet.” And proceeding further he hinted at his hidden generation, unspeakable to all, saying: “From the womb, before the morning star, I begot you.”

12.14| But lest you suppose that I am inventing these things cleverly, I shall present to you, as interpreter of what the Scripture means, a Hebrew man, one who knows his own people’s traditions accurately from his fathers and learned the doctrine from teachers, if Philo is such a man in your eyes. Listen, then, to him as well, and to how he interprets the divine utterances.

13.1| “Why does he say, as if speaking of another god, ‘I made man in the image of God,’ and not ‘in his own’? This oracle is given most beautifully and wisely. For nothing mortal could be formed in the likeness of the Most High and Father of all, but only of the second god, who is his Word.

13.2| For the rational impression in the soul of man had to be engraved by a divine Word, since the God who is before the Word surpasses every rational nature; and it is not permitted that anything generated be made like the one who stands above the Word in the best and most exceptional form.”

13.3| Let this, then, be my citation from the first book of Philo’s Questions and Solutions. And the same author also calls this firstborn Word of God his Son, in the first book On Husbandry, in this fashion: “All these things God, the shepherd and king, leads according to justice, setting over them as law his right Word and firstborn Son, who will take over the care of this sacred flock like a viceroy of a great king.”

13.4| And in the second book the same man writes again, word for word, as follows: “If anyone wishes to escape the perversities that lie in the difficulties raised, let him say with boldness that nothing material is strong enough to bear the world's burden. But the eternal Word of the eternal God is the most secure and firmest support of the universe.

13.5| Stretched from the center to the ends and from the extremities back to the center, he runs the unconquered course of nature, gathering all the parts together and binding them tight. For the Father who begot him made him an unbreakable bond of the whole.

13.6| Reasonably, then, the whole earth will not be dissolved by all the water that its hollows have received, nor will fire be quenched by air, nor again will air be set ablaze by fire, since the divine Word places himself as a boundary, a vowel among the voiceless elements, so that the whole, as in written music, may sound in concert, mediating and arbitrating by persuasion the threats of the opposites as they come together.”

13.7| So says Philo. And Aristobulus, another sage of the Hebrews, who flourished in the time of the Ptolemies’ rule, confirms the doctrine as ancestral, addressing to Ptolemy himself his exposition of the sacred laws, in which he says:

14.1| “The same could be applied to wisdom too, for all light comes from her. Hence some of those belonging to the school of the Peripatetics have said that she holds the place of a lamp; for by following her continually they will be kept untroubled throughout their whole life. And one of our forefathers, Solomon, said more clearly and more beautifully that she exists before heaven and earth; and this agrees with what was said above.”

14.2| Such then are the things, and others like them, that even the children of the Hebrews have philosophized about him. Would not this, then, be the most God-befitting of all accounts, which assigns the origin of the universe's constitution to God's rational and all-wise power, or rather to Wisdom herself and the very Word of God, rather than to lifeless and irrational elements?

14.3| But such are the Hebrews’ teachings about the origin of the universe. Let us consider also what they teach about the constitution of rational beings, those that come after the first principle.

15.1| After the essence of God, the universal King, which has no beginning and is unbegotten, they teach that there is a beginning begotten from no other than the Father, who is firstborn and fellow worker in the Father’s counsel, and formed in the likeness of him.

15.2| This one holds first place among all that were generated afterward; for this reason they are accustomed to call him image of God, power of God, wisdom of God, and Word of God, and indeed also chief commander of the power of the Lord and angel of great counsel.

15.3| The intellectual and rational powers that come after this beginning cannot be described by human nature, because of their multitude and their difference in kind, except in so far as it is possible to approach them by examples drawn from the analogy of visible things: sun and moon and stars, and heaven itself, which encloses within itself everything beneath it.

15.4| “For the glory of the sun is one, that of the moon another, and that of the stars another,” the divine apostle says; “for star differs from star in glory.”

15.5| In some such way, then, we must also conceive the order among incorporeal and intellectual essences: the ineffable and boundless power of the God of the universe embraces all things together, while the creative and at once illuminating power of the divine Word holds second place after the Father. For this reason the Hebrews love to name him true light and sun of righteousness.

15.6| The Holy Spirit stands now in a third place after the second essence, in the position of the moon; they reckon it too in the first and royal rank and honor of the sovereignty of the universe, as a beginning for the things generated afterward, I mean those lower and needing its supply, and it too has been set in place by the Maker of the universe.

15.7| Holding the third rank, it supplies the lower beings with the greater powers that are in it, yet it also receives from another, namely from the Word of God, who is higher and greater, and whom we said holds second place after the supreme and unbegotten nature of God, the universal King. Supplied by him, God the Word, drawing as from an ever-flowing spring that wells up divinity, gives to all together, and to the Holy Spirit himself, who attends him more than all the rest and is nearest to him, and then to the intellectual and divine powers that follow, a share in the gleams of his own light, abundantly and without grudging.

15.8| As for the unbegotten source of the universe, being the fountain of all good things, the cause of divinity and of life and light and every virtue together, the first of the first and the beginning of beginnings, or rather beyond beginning and first and every conception that can be spoken or grasped: all that it contains within its unspeakable powers it shares with the first offspring alone, since he alone is able to contain and receive the Father’s abundance of good things, which the others cannot reach or contain.

15.9| The particular gifts it provides to those who are worthy in particular, through the ministry and mediation of the second, each according to what he can attain. Of these, the perfect and supremely holy gifts have been bestowed on the one who is third from him, but ruler and leader of those that follow, and who receives through the Son what comes from the Father.

15.10| Hence all the theologians of the Hebrews, after the God over all and after his firstborn Wisdom, deify the third, holy power, calling it Holy Spirit, by whom they were enlightened, being inspired by God.

15.11| Next after the heaven and the sun and the moon, they say, star differs from star in glory. A mortal nature cannot discover the number of the stars; but the oracles of the Hebrews declare that God, the universal King, is not ignorant of the multitudes and the names of the host in heaven either. For this reason it is said among them: “He who counts the multitudes of the stars and calls them all by name.”

15.12| So after the first of the stars conceived among incorporeal powers, outstanding in the power and essence of intellectual light, there is a great difference, beyond our comprehension, and tribes and kinds without number; but not so for the Maker of the universe.

15.13| Therefore one of the theologians, ascribing the comprehension of them to God alone, says: “Ten thousand times ten thousand ministered to him, and a thousand thousands stood before him,” indicating by the number what God can comprehend of them, and by the amount how limitless they are to us; and for this reason we are accustomed to call things many and limitless “myriad,” as an emphatic exaggeration.

15.14| Another prophet, discussing their essence, speaks of the Maker of all in this way, saying: “O Lord my God, how greatly you have been magnified! You have put on thanksgiving and majesty, clothing yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heaven like a skin; who makes spirits of his angels, and a flame of fire of his servants.”

15.15| Do not suppose that what is meant shares in the essence of our mortal, earthly fire, or of the winds of air, which come from irrational nature. Rather, just as they name God himself as incorporeal and immaterial and self-intelligent, or rather beyond mind and beyond all reason in his nature, and call him more figuratively spirit and fire and light and by other names suited to mortal ears, so the divine oracles, calling the intellectual and rational essences angels and archangels, spirits and divine powers, heavenly hosts, principalities and authorities, thrones and dominions, as though they were stars and luminaries in myriads upon myriads, say that the sun of righteousness rules over all and presides, and with him his partner, the Holy Spirit.

15.16| All things together, along with the Son himself and the Holy Spirit (the intellectual and rational living beings, with those that appear in heaven, heaven itself, and all that it holds enclosed within it), the divine and prophetic Scripture commands to render the fitting hymn and proper theology to the God over all alone, to the universal King and sovereign ruler through all and in all, the cause of the whole, as to the Maker, Creator, Provider, and Savior of all things, saying:

15.17| “Praise God out of the heavens, praise him in the highest places. Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his powers. Praise him, O sun and moon; praise him, all the stars and light. Praise him, heavens of heavens, and let the waters above the heavens give praise to the name of the Lord, for he spoke, and they were begotten; he commanded, and they were created. He established them forever and ever; he set a decree, and it will not pass away.”

15.18| Such are the Hebrews' doctrines, which we have placed above the polytheistic and demonic error of the Greeks. We know the divine powers to be attendants and ministers of the universal King, God, and honor them as is fitting, but we confess one God only and worship him alone, whom heaven itself and everything in heaven and all that is beyond heaven has been taught to worship, to hymn, and to speak of in theology. For the only-begotten of God himself, the firstborn of all and the beginning of all things, commands us to hold his Father alone to be the true God and to worship him alone.

16.1| Next we must consider what the oracles of the Hebrews hand down concerning the opposing power. They teach that the divine powers which by the Father’s nod stand over the whole world, the ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit the kingdom, the holy angels and archangels of God, and the whole intellectual essence that ministers the good, luminous as it is and the servant of all the good things given by God to men, form the bodyguard of God, the universal King of all; and then, like the stars in heaven, they move around the sun of righteousness and the Holy Spirit, his partner, and enjoy the light these supply; for this reason they are fittingly compared to the luminaries in heaven.

16.2| But the power that turned aside from these, deprived of the company of the better ones through its own wickedness, and taken darkness in exchange for light, the opposite of what it was at first, Scripture names with names that fit the baseness of its character.

16.3| The one, then, who began the fall and became the cause of defection from the better, both for himself and for others, having utterly fallen to the ground from the piety of the more divine ones, having made himself the author of the poison of vice and impiety, and having become the maker of darkness and irrationality by his willful withdrawal from the light, Scripture is accustomed to call dragon and serpent, black and crawling, the begetter of deadly venom, a wild beast, a man-devouring lion, and again the basilisk among reptiles.

16.4| The divine oracles say that the occasion of his fall was madness of mind and derangement of thought, and they narrate his fall and his mental ruin together in some such way as this: “How has the morning star, who rose at dawn, fallen from heaven? He who sent out to all the nations has been crushed to the earth. But you said in your mind: I will go up to heaven; above the stars of heaven I will set my throne; I will be like the Most High.”

16.5| And again: “Thus says the Lord: Because your heart was lifted up and you said, I am a god; I have made my home in a dwelling of God.” And again: “You were the seal of likeness and a crown of beauty; you came to be in the delight of the paradise of God; you were bound with every precious stone,” and so on.

16.6| To this it adds: “You were on the holy mountain of God; you were born in the midst of fiery stones. You were blameless in your days, from the day you were created until iniquities were found in you. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; your knowledge was corrupted along with your beauty; because of the multitude of your sins I cast you to the earth.”

16.7| Through these words we have learned plainly the former dwelling of the one described among the more divine powers, and his fall from the better ones through his own boasting and war against God. And there is another kind beneath him, countless in number, guilty of similar offenses, which because of its impiety fell from the portion of the pious, and which, in exchange for its shining and more divine clothing of old, its honor in the royal courts, and its life in the company of the blessed and angelic choirs, received, according to the just judgment and decree of the great God, the place that suits the impious, to dwell in Tartarus, which the divine oracles call the abyss, and darkness: not the darkness we know, but the kind indicated by the divine sayings.

16.8| A short and small portion of these, left behind around the earth and the air beneath the moon for the training of the athletes of piety, has become a contributing cause of the polytheistic error among men, which differs in no way from atheism.

16.9| Divine Scripture has given these also fitting names: in plain terms, when it calls them evil spirits and demons, principalities and authorities, world rulers, and spiritual forces of wickedness; and symbolically, when it urges the God-beloved man not to fear the host of hostile demons at all, saying: “You shall tread on the asp and the basilisk, and trample the lion and the dragon.”

16.10| A proof of their enmity toward God is that they want to be proclaimed gods themselves and snatch for themselves the honors due to God, and try by divinations and oracles, as by certain charms and bait, to entice the easily led, to drag them away from gazing up to the God of the universe, and pull them down into the utterly ruinous abyss of impious and godless superstition. Therefore the Hebrews alone have made it their earnest concern from ancient times to flee headlong from their deceits, and they explicitly teach that all the nations' gods are demons.

16.11| But now, God willing, through the gospel teaching of our Savior all the nations everywhere in the world, freed from the bonds of the demons, hymn the God whom we have learned alone to be Savior and King and God of the universe.

17.1| Here again, the animal-generation theory of the Phoenicians and Egyptians introduced the spontaneous origin of all living creatures on earth, animals and men alike, describing one and the same nature as coming forth from the earth by chance, and supposing that the irrational does not differ at all from the rational in soul and essence.

17.2| This at any rate is what the passages from their writers set out above made clear. The children of the Hebrews, on the other hand, we have rightly preferred, since they have grasped most beautifully, wisely, and truly the account of the first constitution of men,

17.3| for they say that of what is in us one part is divine and immortal, fleshless in nature and incorporeal; that this is the true man, who came into being according to the image of God and his likeness; that he is God's work, and not that of chance or spontaneous nature, but of the cause of the universe himself, who by divine decision willed that things on earth also should not lack an intellectual and rational essence, so that through all beings, those of heaven and of the upper air and the rational ones on earth who perceive his divinity, the fitting hymn might be sent up to him.

17.4| Thus the oracles of the Hebrews contain: “And God said: Let us make a human being after our image and likeness. And God made the human being; he made him after God's image.” And again: “And God, taking dust from the earth, molded man, and breathed into his face a breath of life, and man came to be a living soul.” And these things the Hebrew Philo interprets again, adding to the passages already set out these further words:

18.1| “Others, saying that our mind is a portion of the ethereal nature, have linked man in kinship with the upper air. But the great Moses likened the form of the rational soul to none of the things that have come to be; he said that it is a genuine coin of that invisible and divine Spirit, marked and stamped with the seal of God, whose impression is the Eternal One. ‘For he breathed,’ says God, ‘the breath of life into his face, and the man became a living soul,’ so that the recipient must needs be made in the likeness of the one who sends.

18.2| This is why man is said to have been made in the image of God, and not in the image of any created thing. It followed, then, that once the soul of man had been formed after the archetypal Word of the cause, the body also, raised upright toward the purest part of the universe, heaven, lifted up its eyes.”

18.3| So says he. Reasonably, then, the divine Scripture also says that man was not made as the other living creatures. For some came forth from the earth at a single command of God, the universal King, and others flew up from the watery element, again at his nod; but of the living creatures on earth only the one most beloved by God, ourselves, has a soul that came into being after God's image and likeness. For this reason we are seen to be by nature ruling and royal, and alone among earthly creatures rational, creative, judging, legislating, and capable of grasping arts and sciences. For the soul in man alone is an intellectual and rational essence, which the other living creatures on earth do not share.

18.4| Therefore they serve, and act as servants to man, while he, as master and leader, enslaves and subjects those that are much superior in bodily strength but inferior through lack of intellectual essence.

18.5| This man, they say, was brought into being by God himself in the image and likeness of God, with a certain surpassing excellence. For this reason he has thoughts of God that come to mind, grasps wisdom and justice and every virtue, and is able to count the cycles of days and seasons and the paths of sun and moon and stars, because of the kinship with things above that man alone among mortals displays.

18.6| But what has been molded around him on the outside is of a different kind of essence, earth-born, and is also the work of God, taken from the earth and returning to it. Therefore one should care for it as for an irrational animal that is burdensome to its master, lead it gently, and feed it as a slave well disposed to serving human life; but the master within, being noble and kin to God in nature, one should honor in ways befitting the free, since he has been honored by the cause of all things.

18.7| The oracles say, then, that the universal King, having adorned the first nature of man with divine powers and likeness to God, allotted to him, as fitting to what he had given, his first dwelling in life, in the paradise of good things, and enrolled him among divine choirs.

18.8| And while the all-good Father had given him these things at the beginning, man fell away from the better things by his own voluntary choice, and exchanged the divine place for the mortal one through disregard of the divine commandment.

18.9| For this reason it is most fitting to lay claim to piety before all else, to correct the first offense by favorable second efforts, and to hasten to the return and restoration to what is one’s own. For the end of human nature is not to be brought to corruption and destruction here on earth, but to return to the place from which the first man fell.

18.10| Hence we must recover again the pure and God-like part of the intellectual essence in us, toward which all men who care for piety and virtue should eagerly strive upward with all their strength.

18.11| Such were the philosophical teachings of the Hebrews about the nature of man from ancient times, before the Greeks had even come among men, those men of yesterday, very young, who popped up out of the earth and, intending to plunder the barbarians, did not keep their hands off the Hebrews either, as the argument will shortly show as it proceeds.

18.12| But since it was a peculiar feature of the Hebrew doctrines that the God over all is held to be the Maker of everything, including the very essence that underlies bodies, which the Greeks call matter, and since countless barbarians and Greeks alike stood against this, some declaring matter to be the source of evil and unbegotten, others that in its own nature it is without quality and shape and that by the power of God the world took on its qualities, we must show that the opinion of the Hebrews is far superior, supporting the question with rational demonstration and refuting the opposing account with sound reasoning.

18.13| I shall set down the words of men before us who have worked out this doctrine precisely, and first those of Dionysius, who in the first of his treatises Against Sabellius writes in these terms on the matter at hand:

19.1| “Nor are those pious who hand matter over to God, as something unbegotten, to be ordered into a world; for they say that since it is changeable and passible, it yields to the alterations God makes.

19.2| Let them explain from where likeness and unlikeness belong to God and to matter. For one must conceive something superior to each, which it is not even lawful to think of in the case of God. For the unbegotten, which is said to be alike in both and is conceived as other than each, from where did it come to be in them?

19.3| For if God is himself the unbegotten, and his essence is, so to speak, unbegottenness, then matter would not be unbegotten, since matter and God are not identical; but if each is what it is, matter and God, and unbegottenness belongs to both, it is clear that it is something other than each, and older and higher than both.

19.4| Moreover the difference in their opposite condition completely overthrows their coexistence, or rather the view that matter exists by itself as something other than God.

19.5| Let them state the reason why, when both are unbegotten, God is impassible, unchangeable, unmoved, and productive, while matter has the opposite qualities: passible, changeable, unstable, and subject to transformation.

19.6| And how did they fit together and come to agree? Did God, having made himself akin to the nature of matter, fashion it by art? But this is absurd: that God should work by hand, like men who work in gold and stone and the other crafts, whatever materials can be shaped and stamped.

19.7| But if he gave matter the quality he himself wished, according to his own wisdom, stamping on it the manifold and many-colored form and the pattern of his own workmanship, then this account, in turn, is reverent and true, and moreover it also confirms that God is the unbegotten subsistence of the universe.

19.8| For to the fact of being unbegotten he has attached also the fact of being in a certain way. There is much to say against these people, but it is not our present task. In comparison with the utterly godless polytheists, however, these are more reverent.” This, then, is from Dionysius; hear now from Origen as well.

20.1| “If anyone is troubled, on account of human craftsmen, at being unable to accept that God constructs existing things without an unbegotten matter lying beneath, since a sculptor cannot make his own work without bronze, nor a carpenter without wood, nor a builder without stones, he must be asked about the power of God: whether, when God wishes to bring into being what he wills, his will being neither at a loss nor weak, he is unable to bring into being what he wills.

20.2| For by the very reasoning by which, as all who introduce providence agree, he brings into being by his ineffable power and wisdom the qualities that did not exist, as he wishes, for the ordering of the universe, by this same reasoning his will is sufficient to make the essence come to be, in whatever quantity he needs.

20.3| For we shall be at a loss in face of those who do not want these things to be so, unless it follows for them that God was lucky, having found an unbegotten essence, which, if the unbegotten had not lain beneath him, he could have made no work at all, but would have remained no maker, no father, no benefactor, not good, nor anything else of what is rightly said of God.

20.4| And from where comes the measuring of the underlying essence to just the quantity sufficient for the constitution of so great a world? For there will necessarily be a kind of providence older than God, which laid matter beneath God, taking care that the art present in him should not be idle for want of an essence on which he could work when he adorned the beauty of so great a world.

20.5| And from where did matter become receptive of every quality that God wishes, unless God himself made it for himself of just such a quantity and kind as he wished it to have?

20.6| Accepting, then, for the sake of argument that matter is unbegotten, we shall say this to those who want it so: if matter became such as it is without any providence laying the essence beneath God, then if a providence did exist, what more would it have done than what happened by itself?

20.7| And if God himself wished, with no matter existing, to construct it, what more would his wisdom and divinity have done than what came into being from the unbegotten? For if it turns out that providence would have brought about exactly what came to be without providence, why should we not dismiss the Maker and craftsman in the case of the world too?

20.8| For just as it is absurd to say of the world, which is so artistically constructed, that it came to be such without a wise craftsman, so it is equally irrational to say that matter, of such quantity and kind and so yielding to the craftsman Word of God, came to exist unbegotten.

20.9| To those who object that no maker works without matter, we must say that their comparison is unlike. For providence lays matter beneath every craftsman, coming from some earlier art, either divine or human. This will suffice for the present against those who, because it is said, “The earth was invisible and unformed,” suppose the bodily nature to be unbegotten.” So much from him too. And the Hebrew Philo, in his work On Providence, goes through these points about matter:

21.1| “As for the quantity of the essence, if it really came to be, this must be said. God aimed, for the coming to be of the world, at a matter that was entirely sufficient, so that it should be neither lacking nor in excess. For it would be absurd that particular craftsmen, whenever they make something, especially of the costly sort, should weigh how much material is enough, while the one who discovered numbers and measures and the equalities within them should take no care for what is sufficient.

21.2| I shall say with confidence that the world required neither less nor more essence for its construction, since otherwise it would have been neither perfect nor complete in every part, whereas, well crafted, it was brought to completion from a perfect essence. For it is the mark of an all-wise art to see, before beginning any construction, that the material is sufficient.

21.3| A man, even if he surpasses others in knowledge, cannot altogether escape the error natural to mortals, and may perhaps be mistaken about the quantity of matter when he works, sometimes adding because there was too little, sometimes taking away because there was too much; but he who is a fountain of knowledge would never lay beneath himself anything lacking or superfluous, using measures all of which were worked out supremely and precisely, and are praiseworthy.

21.4| Anyone who wishes to talk nonsense otherwise would soon be blaming the works of all craftsmen as well, on the grounds that they would have turned out better in construction by some addition or subtraction in the materials. But it is the business of sophistry to hunt for clever objections, and of wisdom to investigate each of the things in nature.”

21.5| Let Philo’s words stand thus. And Maximus, a man of no small note in the Christian school, wrote a treatise of his own, On Matter. From it I think I shall usefully set down a moderate portion, for the precise examination of the question.

22.1| “That two unbegotten things cannot exist at once, I think you too are not unaware, even though you seem to have added in advance to your argument that it is necessary by all means to assert one of two alternatives: that God is separate from matter, or else that he is not divided from it.

22.2| If someone, then, wishes to claim that God is united with it, he will be saying that the unbegotten is one; for each of the two will be a part of its neighbor; and since they are parts of one another, there will not be two unbegotten things, just as different parts broken up into many do not make many generated things, but, as the argument requires, we say that man is one generated thing with many parts, made by God. Thus, were God not separate from matter, the unbegotten must be said to be one.

22.3| But if someone says that he is separate, there must be something between the two, which itself shows their separation. For it is impossible for one thing to be considered as standing apart from another unless there is a third in respect of which the distance of each comes about; and this does not stop at that one alone but goes on to very many.

22.4| For the argument we gave about two unbegotten things must proceed in the same way if three unbegotten things are granted. For about these too I would ask whether they are separate from one another, or again whether each is united with its neighbor.

22.5| If someone wishes to say that they are united, he will hear the same argument as the first; and if instead that they are separate, he will not escape positing the necessary existence of some separating thing.”

22.6| “But if someone should propose a third account as suitable for speaking of the unbegotten, namely that God is neither separate from matter nor joined to it as a part, but that God is in matter as in a place, or matter in God, let him hear the decisive point: if we say that matter is the place of God, we must necessarily say that he is contained and circumscribed by matter.

22.7| Moreover he must also be carried about disorderly in the same way as matter, and neither stand nor remain by himself, since that in which he is is carried about now one way and now another. And besides, we must say that God was in worse conditions. For if matter was at one time without order, and he ordered it, choosing to turn it to the better, then there was a time when God was among things unordered.

22.8| I might rightly ask this question too: did God fill matter, or was he in some part of matter? If someone wishes to say that God was in some part of matter, he is saying that God is vastly smaller than matter, if a part of it contained him whole; but if he says that he was in all matter, he must explain how he fashioned it. For one must say either that God underwent some contraction, after which he fashioned that from which he had withdrawn, or that he fashioned himself along with matter, having no place to withdraw into.

22.9| If someone says that matter is in God, we must similarly ask whether this is as if God is divided from himself, as kinds of animals exist in air, which is divided and parted to receive what comes to be in it, or as in a place, in the way that water is in the earth.

22.10| For if we say ‘as in air,’ we must say that God is divisible; and if ‘as water in earth,’ then, since matter was disordered and unarranged and moreover contained evils, we must say that God is the place of the disordered and of evils. This seems to me not reverent but rather dangerous. For you want matter to exist so as not to call God the maker of evils, and in choosing to avoid this you call him the container of evils.”

22.11| “If you had said that you supposed matter to be unbegotten from the things that have come into being, I would have made a long argument about it to prove that it is impossible for it to be unbegotten. But as you declared the origin of evils to be the cause of such a supposition, I think I should come to the examination of these. For once it is made clear how evils exist, and that it is not possible to call God free of responsibility for evils by supposing matter under him, I think that this supposition is removed.

22.12| You say, then, that a matter without quality exists together with God, out of which he fashioned the coming to be of this world. So it seems to me.

22.13| Then if matter was without quality, and the world was made by God, and in the world there are qualities, God became the maker of the qualities. That is so.

22.14| Since I also heard you say earlier that it is impossible for anything to come to be out of what does not exist, answer my question: does it seem to you that the qualities of the world did not come to be out of qualities underlying them? It seems so. And do they exist as something other than the essences? That is so.

22.15| So if God fashioned the qualities neither from underlying qualities nor from the essences, since they are not themselves essences, one must say that they were made by God out of things that do not exist. So you seemed to me to be speaking needlessly when you said it was impossible to suppose that anything was made by God out of what does not exist.

22.16| But let the argument on this point stand so. For among us too we see men making something out of what does not exist, even if they seem above all to be making it in something. Let us take builders as an example. These men build cities not from cities, and likewise temples not from temples.

22.17| If you think that because essences lie beneath them they make these things out of existing things, you are mistaken in your reasoning. For it is not the essence that makes the city, or again the temples, but the art concerned with the essence; and the art does not come from some art already underlying in the essences, but comes to be in them out of an art that does not exist.

22.18| You will answer me, I think, in this way: that the craftsman makes the art in the essence out of the art that he has. To this I think it right to say that not even in the man does the art come from some underlying art. For one cannot grant that art exists by itself; it belongs to the accidents, and to the things that receive their being only when they come to be in an essence.

22.19| For a man can exist even without the art of building; but the art cannot exist unless there is first a man. Hence one must say that the arts naturally come to be in men out of what does not exist. If, then, we have shown that this is so in the case of men, how is it not fitting to say that God can make not only qualities but also essences out of what does not exist? For by the fact that it is shown possible for something to come to be out of what does not exist, it is shown that essences too are so.

22.20| Since you have a desire to inquire into the origin of evils, I shall come to the account of them, and I wish to ask you a few questions. Do the evils seem to you to be essences, or qualities of essences? It seems right to me to say they are qualities of essences.

22.21| And matter was without quality and without shape. So I said in my earlier statement. Then if evils are qualities of essences, and matter was without quality, and you said that God is the maker of qualities, God will also be the maker of evils. Since, then, God cannot be called blameless for evils even on this basis, I find it needless to link matter with him. But if you have some reply to make to this, take up the argument.

22.22| If our inquiry were being conducted out of contentiousness, I would not ask you to define evils a second time; but since we conduct the examination of the arguments rather for the sake of friendship and of benefit to our neighbor, I ask you to allow me to define these matters from the beginning. My purpose, and my earnestness in discussions, I think have long been clear to you: that I do not wish to win by speaking a plausible falsehood, but to have the truth shown by exact examination; and I know clearly that you are likewise disposed. So whatever method you think you can use to find the truth, use it without any embarrassment. For by using the better course you will not only benefit yourself, but certainly me as well, in matters I do not know.

22.23| You seem to me to have made it clear that evils too are certain essences; for I do not see them existing apart from essences. Since, then, my friend, you say that evils are essences, we must examine the account of essence. Does it seem to you that essence is a certain bodily constitution? It does.

22.24| And does the bodily constitution exist by itself, needing nothing in which it comes to be in order to receive its being? That is so.

22.25| And do evils seem to you to be activities of something? So it appears to me.

22.26| And do activities receive their being when the one who acts is present? That is so.

22.27| And if there is no one acting, will what he does not exist either? It will not.

22.28| Then if essence is a certain bodily constitution, and this needs nothing in which it must come to be in order to receive its being, while evils are activities of something, and activities need something in which they come to be in order to receive their being, evils will not be essences.

22.29| But if evils are essences, and murder counts as an evil, then murder will be an essence. Yet murder is the activity of someone; murder, then, is not an essence. If you want the agents to be essences, I agree. For example, the murderer is a man, and in so far as he is a man he is an essence; but the murder he commits is not an essence, but a work of the essence.

22.30| We call a man at one time bad because he commits murder, and at another, again, good because he does good. And these names are tacked on to the essence from the accidents belonging to it, which are not the essence itself. For neither murder is the essence, nor adultery, nor any similar evil. Rather, just as from grammar a man is called a grammarian, from rhetoric an orator, and from medicine a physician, the essence being neither medicine nor rhetoric nor grammar but taking its designation from the accidents belonging to it, and not being either of them, so it seems to me likewise that the essence receives a name even from what are held to be evils, without being either of them.

22.31| Conceive it likewise for me if you imagine in your mind some other cause of evils for men: he too, in so far as he works in them and prompts them to do evil, is himself evil from what he does. For that one too is called evil because he is the maker of evils. But what someone does is not he himself, but his activities, from which he takes the designation of being called evil.

22.32| For if we said that he is what he does, and what he does is murders, adulteries, thefts, and things like these, he himself will be these things; and if he is these things, and these have their constitution when they are done, and cease to be when they are not done, and they are done by men, then men will be the makers of these things, and the cause both of their being and of their ceasing to be.

22.33| But if you say that these are his activities, and that from what he does he is evil, and not from what makes up his essence, we said that he is called evil from the accidents of the essence, which are not the essence, as the physician is named from medicine.

22.34| And if each one is evil from what he does, and what he does takes a beginning of existence, then that one too began to be evil, and these evils also began. If this is so, he will not be evil without beginning, nor will evils be unbegotten, since we have said that they were generated by him.

22.35| Against the other party, my friend, you seem to me to have made the argument adequately; for from what you assumed in the discussion you seemed to draw your conclusion well. For truly, if matter was without quality, and God is the maker of the qualities, and evils are qualities, God will be the maker of evils.

22.36| Let this argument be well said against him; but to me it seems false to say that matter is without quality. For it is not possible to say of any essence whatever that it is without quality. For in saying that it is without quality he reveals its quality, describing what kind of thing matter is, which is a kind of quality.

22.37| So, if you please, take up the argument against me from the beginning. For to me matter seems to have qualities without beginning. For in this way I say also that evils come from its outflow, so that God is not responsible for evils, and matter is the cause of all of them.

22.38| I accept your eagerness, my friend, and I praise your earnestness in discussions. For it is truly fitting that each lover of learning should not agree simply and at random with what is said, but make an exact examination of the arguments. For even if the one asking questions has set out a definition unreasonably and thereby given the other party an opening to draw conclusions as he wishes, this should not persuade the listener; he will say whatever seems possible to be well said. Of the two outcomes one will result: either, hearing what he seems to be moved toward, he will be fully benefited, or he will convict the one conversing with him of not speaking the truth.

22.39| But you do not seem to me to have said rightly that matter has qualities from the beginning. For if that is so, of what thing will God be the maker? If we say essences, we say these existed already; if again qualities, these exist too.

22.40| So, if essence and qualities exist, it seems to me superfluous to call God a maker. But so that I may not seem to be constructing an argument of my own, answer now to my question: in what way do you say God is a maker? Is it because he changed the essences so that they no longer were what they once were, but others different from them came to be, or because he preserved the essences as they were before, but changed their qualities?

22.41| It does not seem to me that any change of essences occurred, for this seems to me absurd to say; but I say that a certain change of the qualities occurred, according to which I say God is a maker, just as one might say that a house was made from stones, in which case one cannot say that the stones no longer remain stones in essence when they have become a house.

22.42| For I say that the house came to be by the quality of their arrangement, the stones' former quality having plainly been altered. So it seems to me that God, the essence remaining, made a certain change in its qualities, according to which I say the coming to be of this world was brought about by God.

22.43| Since, then, you say that a certain change of the qualities was brought about by God, answer me as I wish to ask a few questions. Tell me, do evils seem to you also to be qualities of the essences? They do.

22.44| And were these qualities in matter from the beginning, or did they come into existence at some beginning? I say these qualities coexisted with matter unbegotten.

22.45| And do you not say that God made a certain change in the qualities? I say so.

22.46| Toward the better, then, or toward the worse? It seems to me one should say toward the better.

22.47| Then if evils are qualities belonging to matter, and its qualities were changed by God toward the better, where must we seek evils from? For the qualities did not remain such as they were by nature. Or if there were previously no evil qualities, and you say that from the change made by God the first qualities became of this kind in matter, God will be the cause of evils, having changed qualities that were not evil into being evil.

22.48| Or do you think that God did not change the evil qualities toward the better, and say that he changed only the remaining ones, as many as were indifferent for the sake of the ordering? So I held from the beginning.

22.49| How, then, do you say that he left the qualities of the bad things as they were? Was he able to remove those as well, but did not wish to, or did he not have the ability? For if you say he was able but did not wish to, you must say that he himself is responsible for them, since being able to make evils not exist, he allowed them to remain as they were, especially when he began to fashion matter.

22.50| For if he had no concern at all for matter, he would not be responsible for what he allowed to remain; but since he fashioned one part of it and let another part be so, though able to turn those too toward the better, he seems to me to deserve blame, having left a part of matter wicked, to the destruction of the part he fashioned.

22.51| Moreover the greatest wrong seems to me to have been done in this very part, the part of matter that he constructed, which now perceives evils. For if one examines the matter exactly, he will find that matter now suffers more grievously than in its earlier disorder. For before it was separated out, it did not even perceive evils; but now each of its parts receives perception of evils.

22.52| Take the example of man for me. Before he was formed and became a living creature by the art of the maker, he had by nature no perception of any evils; but since he became man by God, he has also acquired perception of evil as it approaches, and this, which you say came about through God for matter's benefit, is found to have come to it rather for the worse.

22.53| If you say that evils have not ceased because God cannot remove them, you will be saying that God is powerless. And the powerlessness will be either that he is weak by nature, or that he is conquered, enslaved by fear of someone stronger.

22.54| If, then, you dare to call God weak by nature, you seem, in my judgment, to be putting your very salvation in danger; and if you say it is because he is overcome by fear of something greater, then evils will be greater than God, since they overpower the impulse of his will. That seems to me absurd to say about God.

22.55| For why should these not rather be gods, since on your account they are able to overcome God, if indeed we give the name of God to that which holds authority over all things?

22.56| I also want to put a few brief questions to you about matter itself. Come, tell me: was matter something simple, or composite? For the variety among the things that have come into being brings me round to this line of inquiry. For if matter was something simple and uniform, while the world is composite and has its constitution from different essences and mixtures * * * for what is composite points to a mixture of certain simple things.

22.57| If, on the other hand, you would rather call matter composite, you will certainly say that it was put together from certain simple things. And if it was put together from simple things, then the simple things once existed on their own, and matter came into being when they were put together; and from this it is shown to be generated.

22.58| For if matter is composite, and composite things have their constitution from simple ones, there once was a period when matter did not exist, namely before the simple things came together. And if there once was a period when matter did not exist, while there was never a time when the unbegotten did not exist, then matter will not be unbegotten.

22.59| From this it will follow that the unbegotten things are many. For if God was unbegotten, and so were the simple things from which matter was put together, the unbegotten things will not be two only. Does it seem to you that nothing that exists is opposed to itself? It does.

22.60| And is water opposed to fire? It seems to me to be opposed. And likewise darkness to light, and hot to cold, and moist to dry as well? So it seems to me.

22.61| Then if nothing that exists is opposed to itself, these will not be one matter, nor yet come from one matter. Again, I want to ask you a question much like this one. Does it seem to you that parts are not destructive of one another? It does.

22.62| And that fire and water, and likewise the rest, are parts of matter? That is so. What then? Does it not seem to you that water is destructive to fire, and light to darkness, and so with all the other things like these? It does.

22.63| Then if parts are not destructive of one another, these will not be parts of one another; and if they are not parts of one another, they will not belong to one matter. Nor, indeed, will they themselves be matter, since nothing that exists is destructive of itself, on the principle of opposition.

22.64| For nothing is opposed to itself; opposites are by nature opposed to other things. White, for example, is not opposed to itself, but is said to be opposed to black; light likewise is shown not to be opposed to itself, but plainly stands so toward darkness; and the same holds for a great many other things. If, then, matter were some one thing, it would not be opposed to itself. And since this is how opposites stand, it is shown that matter does not exist.” So much from the writer named above. Now that the argument has been brought to a sufficient close, we shall pass on to the Preparation for the Gospel, to its eighth book, and there, calling on God as our ally, we shall supply what is still lacking in the inquiry before us.

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