Chapter XXXIV.—A Presumption that All Things Were Created by God Out of Nothing Afforded by the Ultimate Reduction of All Things to Nothing.  Scriptures Proving This Reduction Vindicated from Hermogenes’ Charge of Being Merely Figurative.

Besides,361    Ceterum. the belief that everything was made from nothing will be impressed upon us by that ultimate dispensation of God which will bring back all things to nothing. For “the very heaven shall be rolled together as a scroll;”362    Isa. xxxiv. 4; Matt. xxiv. 29; 2 Pet. iii. 10; Rev. vi. 14. nay, it shall come to nothing along with the earth itself, with which it was made in the beginning. “Heaven and earth shall pass away,”363    Matt. xxiv. 35. says He. “The first heaven and the first earth passed away,”364    Rev. xxi. 1. “and there was found no place for them,”365    Rev. xx. 11. because, of course, that which comes to an end loses locality. In like manner David says, “The heavens, the works of Thine hands, shall themselves perish.  For even as a vesture shall He change them, and they shall be changed.”366    Ps. cii. 25, 26. Now to be changed is to fall from that primitive state which they lose whilst undergoing the change. “And the stars too shall fall from heaven, even as a fig-tree casteth her green figs367    Acerba sua “grossos suos” (Rigalt.). So our marginal reading. when she is shaken of a mighty wind.”368    Rev. vi. 13. “The mountains shall melt like wax at the presence of the Lord;”369    Ps. xcvii. 5. that is, “when He riseth to shake terribly the earth.”370    Isa. ii. 19. “But I will dry up the pools;”371    Isa. xlii. 15. and “they shall seek water, and they shall find none.”372    Isa. xli. 17. Even “the sea shall be no more.”373    Etiam mare hactenus, Rev. xxi. 1. Now if any person should go so far as to suppose that all these passages ought to be spiritually interpreted, he will yet be unable to deprive them of the true accomplishment of those issues which must come to pass just as they have been written. For all figures of speech necessarily arise out of real things, not out of chimerical ones; because nothing is capable of imparting anything of its own for a similitude, except it actually be that very thing which it imparts in the similitude. I return therefore to the principle374    Causam. which defines that all things which have come from nothing shall return at last to nothing. For God would not have made any perishable thing out of what was eternal, that is to say, out of Matter; neither out of greater things would He have created inferior ones, to whose character it would be more agreeable to produce greater things out of inferior ones,—in other words, what is eternal out of what is perishable. This is the promise He makes even to our flesh, and it has been His will to deposit within us this pledge of His own virtue and power, in order that we may believe that He has actually375    Etiam. awakened the universe out of nothing, as if it had been steeped in death,376    Emortuam. in the sense, of course, of its previous non-existence for the purpose of its coming into existence.377    In hoc, ut esset. Contrasted with the “non erat” of the previous sentence, this must be the meaning, as if it were “ut fieret.”

CAPUT XXXIV.

Caeterum, omne ex nihilo constitisse, illa postremo divina dispositio suadebit, quae omnia in nihilum redactura est. Si quidem et coelum convolvetur ut liber (Is. XXXIV, 4), imo nusquam fiet cum ipsa 0228C terra, cum qua primordio factum est (Matth. XXIV, 21, 35). Coelum et terra praeteribunt, inquit. Coelum primum, et terra prima abierunt, et locus non est inventus illis (Apocal. XXI, 1), quia scilicet quod et finit, locum amittit. Sic et David, Opera manuum tuarum 0229A coeli et ipsi peribunt (Ps. CI, 26, 27). Nam etsi mutabit illos velut opertorium, et mutabuntur; sed mutari, perire est pristino statui, quem dum mutantur, amittunt. Et stellae quidem de coelo ruent, sicut fici arbor, cum valido commota vento, acerba sua amittit (Apoc. VI, 13). Montes vero tamquam cera liquescent a conspectu Domini (Ps. XCVII, 5): cum surrexerit scilicet confringere terram (Is. II, 19). Sed et paludes, inquit, arefaciam; et quaerent aquam, nec invenient (Is. XCI, 17; XCII, 15): etiam mare hactenus . Quae omnia etsi alter putaverit spiritaliter interpretanda, non tamen poterit auferre veritatem ita futurorum, quomodo scripta sunt. Si quae enim figurae sunt, ex rebus consistentibus fiant necesse est, non ex vacantibus: quia nihil potest 0229B alii similitudinem de suo praestare , nisi sit ipsum quod tali similitudine praestet. Revertor igitur ad caussam, definientem omnia ex nihilo edita, in nihilum perventura. Ex aeterno enim, id est ex materia, nihil Deus interibile fecisset, nec ex majoribus minora condidisset, cui magis congruat ex minoribus majora producere, id est ex interibili aeternum, quod et carni nostrae pollicetur, cujus virtutis et potestatis suae hunc jam arrhabonem voluit in nobis collocasse, ut credamus etiam illum universitatem ex nihilo velut emortuam, quae scilicet non erat , in hoc ut esset, suscitasse.