Shapeless Matter an Incongruous Origin for God's Beautiful Cosmos. Hermogenes Does Not Mend His Argument by Supposing that Only a Portion of Matter Was Used in the Creation.

Chapter XL.—Shapeless Matter an Incongruous Origin for God’s Beautiful Cosmos. Hermogenes Does Not Mend His Argument by Supposing that Only a Portion of Matter Was Used in the Creation.

You say that Matter was reformed for the better ⁶⁵⁵⁶ —from a worse condition, of course; and thus you would make the better a copy of p. 500 the worse. Everything was in confusion, but now it is reduced to order; and would you also say, that out of order, disorder is produced? No one thing is the exact mirror ⁶⁵⁵⁷ of another thing; that is to say, it is not its co-equal. Nobody ever found himself in a barber’s looking-glass look like an ass ⁶⁵⁵⁸ instead of a man; unless it be he who supposes that unformed and shapeless Matter answers to Matter which is now arranged and beautified in the fabric of the world. What is there now that is without form in the world, what was there once that was formed ⁶⁵⁵⁹ in Matter, that the world is the mirror of Matter? Since the world is known among the Greeks by a term denoting ornament, ⁶⁵⁶⁰ how can it present the image of unadorned ⁶⁵⁶¹ Matter, in such a way that you can say the whole is known by its parts? To that whole will certainly belong even the portion which has not yet become formed; and you have already declared that the whole of Matter was not used as material in the creation. ⁶⁵⁶² It follows, then, that this rude, and confused, and unarranged portion cannot be recognized in the polished, and distinct and well-arranged parts of creation, which indeed can hardly with propriety be called parts of Matter, since they have quitted ⁶⁵⁶³ its condition, by being separated from it in the transformation they have undergone.

Footnotes

499:6556

In melius reformatam.

500:6557

Speculum.

500:6558

Mulus.

500:6559

Speciatum: εἰδοποιηθέν, “arranged in specific forms.”

500:6560

Κόσμος.

500:6561

Inornatæ: unfurnished with forms of beauty.

500:6562

Non totam eam fabricatam.

500:6563

Recesserunt a forma ejus.