Tertullian, Against Hermogenes
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Chapter IV.—Hermogenes Gives Divine Attributes to Matter, and So Makes Two Gods.
Chapter VIII.—On His Own Principles, Hermogenes Makes Matter, on the Whole, Superior to God.
Chapter IX.—Sundry Inevitable But Intolerable Conclusions from the Principles of Hermogenes.
Chapter XIII.—Another Ground of Hermogenes that Matter Has Some Good in It. Its Absurdity.
Chapter XIV.—Tertullian Pushes His Opponent into a Dilemma.
Chapter XVIII.—An Eulogy on the Wisdom and Word of God, by Which God Made All Things of Nothing.
Chapter XXIV.—Earth Does Not Mean Matter as Hermogenes Would Have It.
Chapter XXVII.—Some Hair-Splitting Use of Words in Which His Opponent Had Indulged.
Chapter XXXV.—Contradictory Propositions Advanced by Hermogenes Respecting Matter and Its Qualities.
Chapter XXXIII.—Statement of the True Doctrine Concerning Matter. Its Relation to God’s Creation of the World.
But although Hermogenes finds it amongst his own colourable pretences354 (for it was not in his power to discover it in the Scriptures of God), it is enough for us, both that it is certain that all things were made by God, and that there is no certainty whatever that they were made out of Matter. And even if Matter had previously existed, we must have believed that it had been really made by God, since we maintained (no less) when we held the rule of faith to be,355 that nothing except God was uncreated.356 Up to this point there is room for controversy, until Matter is brought to the test of the Scriptures, and fails to make good its case.357 The conclusion of the whole is this: I find that there was nothing made, except out of nothing; because that which I find was made, I know did not once exist. Whatever358 was made out of something, has its origin in something made: for instance, out of the ground was made the grass, and the fruit, and the cattle, and the form of man himself; so from the waters were produced the animals which swim and fly. The original fabrics359 out of which such creatures were produced I may call their materials,360 but then even these were created by God.
CAPUT XXXIII.
Sed dum illam Hermogenes inter colores suos invenit (inter Scripturas enim Dei invenire non potuit , satis est quod omnia et facta a Deo constat, et ex materia non constat: quae etiam si fuisset, ipsam quoque a Deo factam credidissemus, quia nihil 0228B innatum praeter Deum praescribentes, obtineremus. In hunc usque articulum locus est retractatui, donec ad Scripturas provocata deficiat, exhibitio materiae. Expedita summa est: nihil invenio factum nihil ex nihilo, quia quod factum invenio, non fuisse cognosco. Etiamsi quid ex aliquo factum est, ex facto habet censum, ut ex terra herba, et fructus, et pecudes, et figuratio hominis ipsius, ut ex aquis natatiles et volatiles animae. Hujusmodi origines rerum ex his prolatarum, potero materias appellare; sed factas a Deo et ipsas.