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| Hermogenes Held to His Theory in Order that Its Absurdity May Be Exposed on His Own Principles.
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Chapter VII.—Hermogenes Held to His Theory in Order that Its
Absurdity May Be Exposed on His Own Principles.
When he contends that matter is less than God, and
inferior to Him, and therefore diverse from Him, and for the same
reason not a fit subject of comparison with Him, who is a greater and
superior Being, I meet him with this prescription, that what is eternal
and unborn is incapable of any diminution and inferiority, because it
is simply this which makes even God to be as great as He is, inferior
and subject to none—nay, greater and higher than all. For,
just as all things which are born, or which come to an end, and are
therefore not eternal, do, by reason of their exposure at once to an
end and a beginning, admit of qualities which are repugnant to
God—I mean diminution and inferiority, because they are born and
made—so likewise God, for this very reason, is unsusceptible of
these accidents, because He is absolutely unborn,6194
and also unmade. And yet such also is the
condition of Matter.6195
| 6195 Of course, according
to Hermogenes, whom Tertullian refutes with an argumentum ad
hominem. | Therefore, of the
two Beings which are eternal, as being unborn and unmade—God and
Matter—by reason of the identical mode of their common condition
(both of them equally possessing that which admits neither of
diminution nor subjection—that is, the attribute of eternity), we
affirm that neither of them is less or greater than the other, neither
of them is inferior or superior to the other; but that they both stand
on a par in greatness, on a par in sublimity, and on the same
level of that complete and perfect felicity of which eternity is
reckoned to consist. Now we must not resemble the heathen in our
opinions; for they, when constrained to acknowledge God, insist on
having other deities below Him. The Divinity, however, has no degrees,
because it is unique; and if it shall be found in Matter—as being
equally unborn and unmade and eternal—it must be resident in both
alike,6196
because in no case
can it be inferior to itself. In what way, then, will Hermogenes have
the courage to draw distinctions; and thus to subject matter to God, an
eternal to the Eternal, an unborn to the Unborn, an author to the
Author? seeing that it dares to say, I also am the first; I too am
before all things; and I am that from which all things proceed; equal
we have been, together we have been—both alike without beginning,
without end; both alike without an Author, without a God.6197
| 6197 That is, having no God
superior to themselves. | What God, then, is He who subjects me to a
contemporaneous, co-eternal power? If it be He who is called God, then
I myself, too, have my own (divine) name. Either I am God, or He is
Matter, because we both are that which neither of us is. Do you
suppose, therefore, that he6198
has not made Matter
equal with God, although, forsooth, he pretends it to be inferior to
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