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| On His Own Principles, Hermogenes Makes Matter, on the Whole, Superior to God. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter VIII.—On His Own
Principles, Hermogenes Makes Matter, on the Whole, Superior to
God.
Nay more,6199 he even prefers
Matter to God, and rather subjects God to it, when he will have it that
God made all things out of Matter. For if He drew His resources
from it6200 for the creation of
the world, Matter is already found to be the superior, inasmuch as it
furnished Him with the means of effecting His works; and God is thereby
clearly subjected to Matter, of which the substance was indispensable
to Him. For there is no one but requires that which he makes use
of;6201 no one but is subject to the thing which he
requires, for the very purpose of being able to make use of it. So,
again, there is no one who, from using what belongs to another, is not
inferior to him of whose property he makes use; and there is no one who
imparts6202 of his own for
another’s use, who is not in this respect superior to him to
whose use he lends his property. On this principle,6203 Matter itself, no doubt,6204 was not in want of God, but rather lent
itself to God, who was in want of it—rich and abundant and
liberal as it was—to one who was, I suppose, too small, and too
weak, and too unskilful, to form what He willed out of nothing. A grand
service, verily,6205 did it confer on
God in giving Him means at the present time whereby He might be known
to be God, and be called Almighty—only that He is no longer
Almighty, since He is not powerful enough for this, to produce all
things out of nothing. To be sure,6206 Matter
bestowed somewhat on itself also—even to get its own self
acknowledged with God as God’s co-equal, nay more, as His
helper; only there is this
drawback, that Hermogenes is the only man that has found out this fact,
besides the philosophers—those patriarchs of all heresy.6207
6207 They are so deemed in
the de Præscript. Hæret. c. vii. | For the prophets knew nothing about it, nor
the apostles thus far, nor, I suppose, even Christ.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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