Chapter XXXIX.—These Latter Speculations Shown to Be Contradictory to the First Principles Respecting Matter, Formerly Laid Down by Hermogenes.

Well, now, since it seems to you to be the correcter thing,418    Rectius. let Matter be circumscribed419    Definitiva. by means of changes and displacements; let it also be capable of comprehension, since (as you say) it is used as material by God,420    Ut quæ fabricatur, inquis, a Deo. on the ground of its being convertible, mutable, and separable. For its changes, you say, show it to be inseparable. And here you have swerved from your own lines421    Lineis. Tertullian often refers to Hermogenes’ profession of painting. which you prescribed respecting the person of God when you laid down the rule that God made it not out of His own self, because it was not possible for Him to become divided422    In partes venire. seeing that He is eternal and abiding for ever, and therefore unchangeable and indivisible. Since Matter too is estimated by the same eternity, having neither beginning nor end, it will be unsusceptible of division, of change, for the same reason that God also is. Since it is associated with Him in the joint possession of eternity, it must needs share with Him also the powers, the laws, and the conditions of eternity.  In like manner, when you say, “All things simultaneously throughout the universe423    Omnia ex omnibus. possess portions of it,424    i.e. of Matter. that so the whole may be ascertained from425    Dinoscatur ex. its parts,” you of course mean to indicate those parts which were produced out of it, and which are now visible to us.  How then is this possession (of Matter) by all things throughout the universe effected—that is, of course, from the very beginning426    Utique ex pristinis.—when the things which are now visible to us are different in their condition427    Aliter habeant. from what they were in the beginning?

CAPUT XXXIX.

Sit nunc definitiva, sicut rectius tibi videtur, per demutationes 0233A suas et translationes: sit et comprehensibilis, ut quae fabricatur, inquis, a Deo, quia et convertibilis, et demutabilis, et dispartibilis. Demutationes enim ejus, inquis, dispartibilem eam ostendunt . Et hic a lineis tuis excidisti , quibus circa personam Dei usus es, praescribens Deum illam non ex semetipso fecisse, quia in partes venire non posset qui sit aeternus et manens in aevum, ac per hoc immutabilis et indivisibilis. Si et materia eadem aeternitate censetur, neque initium habens neque finem, eadem ratione non poterit pati dispertitionem et demutationem, qua nec Deus. In aeternitatis consortio posita, participet cum illo necesse est et vires, et leges et conditiones aeternitatis. Aeque cum dicis: Partes autem ejus omnia simul ex omnibus 0233B habent, ut ex partibus totum dignoscatur: utique eas partes intelligi vis, quae ex illa prolatae sunt, quae hodie videntur a nobis. Quomodo ergo omnia ex omnibus habent, utique ex pristinis, quando quae hodie videntur, aliter habeant quam pristina fuerunt?