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| Hermogenes Coquets with His Own Argument, as If Rather Afraid of It. After Investing Matter with Divine Qualities, He Tries to Make It Somehow Inferior to God. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
V.—Hermogenes Coquets with His Own Argument, as If Rather Afraid
of It. After Investing Matter with Divine Qualities, He Tries to Make
It Somehow Inferior to God.
But God is God, and Matter is Matter. As if a mere
difference in their names prevented equality,6178
when an identity of condition is claimed for them! Grant that their
nature is different;
assume, too, that their form is not identical,—what matters it so
long as their absolute state have but one mode?6179
God is unborn; is not Matter also unborn? God ever exists; is not
Matter, too, ever existent? Both are without beginning; both are
without end; both are the authors of the universe—both He who
created it, and the Matter of which He made it. For it is impossible
that Matter should not be regarded as the author6180 of all things, when the universe is composed
of it. What answer will he give? Will he say that Matter is not then
comparable with God as soon as6181 it has something
belonging to God; since, by not having total (divinity), it cannot
correspond to the whole extent of the comparison? But what more has he
reserved for God, that he should not seem to have accorded to Matter
the full amount of the Deity?6182 He says in reply,
that even though this is the prerogative of Matter, both the authority
and the substance of God must remain intact, by virtue of which He is
regarded as the sole and prime Author, as well as the Lord of all
things. Truth, however, maintains the unity of God in such a way
as to insist that whatever belongs to God Himself belongs to Him alone.
For so will it belong to Himself if it belong to Him alone; and
therefore it will be impossible that another god should be admitted,
when it is permitted to no other being to possess anything of God.
Well, then, you say, we ourselves at that rate possess nothing of God.
But indeed we do, and shall continue to do—only it is from Him
that we receive it, and not from ourselves. For we shall be even gods,
if we, shall deserve to be among those of whom He declared, “I
have said, Ye are gods,”6183 and, “God
standeth in the congregation of the gods.”6184 But this comes of His own grace, not from
any property in us, because it is He alone who can make gods. The
property of Matter, however, he6185 makes to be
that which it has in common with God. Otherwise, if it received from
God the property which belongs to God,—I mean its
attribute6186 of
eternity—one might then even suppose that it both possesses an
attribute in common with God, and yet at the same time is not God. But
what inconsistency is it for him6187
6187 Quale autem est:
“how comes it to pass that.” | to allow that
there is a conjoint possession of an attribute with God, and also to
wish that what he does not refuse to Matter should be, after all, the
exclusive privilege of God!E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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