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| Further Exposure of Inconsistencies in the Opinions of Hermogenes Respecting the Divine Qualities of Matter. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter XLII.—Further Exposure of Inconsistencies in the
Opinions of Hermogenes Respecting the Divine Qualities of
Matter.
You have thrown out all your views loosely and at
random,6575 in order that it
might not be apparent, by too close a proximity, how contrary they are
to one another. I, however, mean to gather them together and compare
them. You allege that motion in Matter is without regularity,6576 and you go on to say that Matter aims at a
shapeless condition, and then, in another passage, that it desires to
be set in order by God. Does that, then, which affects to be without
form, want to be put into shape? Or does that which wants to be put
into shape, affect to be without form? You are unwilling that God
should seem to be equal to Matter; and then again you say that it has a
common condition6577 with God.
“For it is impossible,” you say, “if it has nothing
in common with God, that it can be set in order by Him.” But if
it had anything in common with God, it did not want to be set in
order,6578 being, forsooth, a
part of the Deity through a community of condition; or else even God
was susceptible of being set in order6579 by
Matter, by His having Himself something in common with it. And now you
herein subject God to necessity, since there was in Matter something on
account of which He gave it form. You make it, however, a common
attribute of both of them, that they set themselves in motion by
themselves, and that they are ever in motion. What less do you ascribe
to Matter than to God? There will be found all through a fellowship of
divinity in this freedom and perpetuity of motion.
Only in God motion is regular,6580 in Matter irregular.6581 In
both, however, there is equally the attribute of Deity—both alike
having free and eternal motion. At the same time, you assign more to
Matter, to which belonged the privilege of thus moving itself in a way
not allowed to God.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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