Chapter XLIV.—Curious Views Respecting God’s Method of Working with Matter Exposed. Discrepancies in the Heretic’s Opinion About God’s Local Relation to Matter.

But it remains that I should show also how you make God work. You are plainly enough at variance with the philosophers; but neither are you in accord with the prophets. The Stoics maintain that God pervaded Matter, just as honey the honeycomb. You, however, affirm that it is not by pervading Matter that God makes the world, but simply by appearing, and approaching it, just as beauty affects461    Facit quid decor. a thing by simply appearing, and a loadstone by approaching it. Now what similarity is there in God forming the world, and beauty wounding a soul, or a magnet attracting iron? For even if God appeared to Matter, He yet did not wound it, as beauty does the soul; if, again, He approached it, He yet did not cohere to it, as the magnet does to the iron. Suppose, however, that your examples are suitable ones. Then, of course,462    Certe. it was by appearing and approaching to Matter that God made the world, and He made it when He appeared and when He approached to it. Therefore, since He had not made it before then,463    Retro. He had neither appeared nor approached to it.  Now, by whom can it be believed that God had not appeared to Matter—of the same nature as it even was owing to its eternity? Or that He had been at a distance from it—even He whom we believe to be existent everywhere, and everywhere apparent; whose praises all things chant, even inanimate things and things incorporeal, according to (the prophet) Daniel?464    Dan. iii. 21. How immense the place, where God kept Himself so far aloof from Matter as to have neither appeared nor approached to it before the creation of the world! I suppose He journeyed to it from a long distance, as soon as He wished to appear and approach to it.

CAPUT XLIV.

Sed et qualiter operatum facias Deum, sequitur ut ostendam. Plane a philosophis recedis, sed tamen et a prophetis. Stoici enim volunt Deum sic per materiam decucurrisse, quomodo mel per favos. At tu: Non, inquis, pertransiens illam facit mundum, sed solummodo apparens et appropinquans ei, sicut facit qui decor solummodo apparens, et magnes lapis solummodo appropinquans. Quid simile Deus fabricans mundum, et decor vulnerans animum, aut magnes adtrahens ferrum? Nam etsi apparuit Deus 0236C materiae, sed non vulneravit illam, quod decor animam: et si adpropinquavit, sed non cohaesit illi, quod magnes ferro. Puta nunc exempla tua competere. Certe, si apparendo et appropinquando materiae, fecit ex illa Deus mundum, utique ex quo apparuit fecit, et ex quo appropinquavit. Ergo quando non fecerat retro, nec apparuerat illi, nec adpropinquaverat. Et cui credibile est, Deum non apparuisse materiae? vel qua consubstantiali suae per aeternitatem? ab ea longe fuisse quem credimus ubique esse, et ubique apparere ? cui etiam inanimalia et incorporalia laudes canunt apud Danielem (Dan., III). Quantus hic locus, in 0237A quo Deus a materia tantum distabat, ut neque adpareret neque adpropinquaret ante mundi molitionem? Credo, peregrinatus est ad illam de longinquo, cum primum ei voluit adparere et adpropinquare.