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    • An Eulogy on the Wisdom and Word of God, by Which God Made All Things of Nothing.
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    Chapter XVIII.—An Eulogy on the Wisdom and Word of God, by Which God Made All Things of Nothing.

    If any material was necessary to God in the creation of the world, as Hermogenes supposed, God had a far nobler and more suitable one in His own wisdom6291

    6291 Sophiam suam scilicet.

    —one which was not to be gauged by the writings of6292

    6292 Apud.

    philosophers, but to be learnt from the words or prophets. This alone, indeed, knew the mind of the Lord. For “who knoweth the things of God, and the things in God, but the Spirit, which is in Him?”6293

    6293 1 Cor. ii. 11.

    Now His wisdom is that Spirit. This was His counsellor, the very way of His wisdom and knowledge.6294

    6294 Isa. xl. 14.

    Of this He made all things, making them through It, and making them with It.  “When He prepared the heavens,” so says (the Scripture6295

    6295 Or the “inquit” may indicate the very words of “Wisdom.”

    ), “I was present with Him; and when He strengthened above the winds the lofty clouds, and when He secured the fountains6296

    6296 Fontes. Although Oehler prefers Junius’ reading “montes,” he yet retains “fontes,” because Tertullian (in ch. xxxii. below) has the unmistakable reading “fontes” in a like connection.

    which are under the heaven, I was present, compacting these things6297

    6297 Compingens.

    along with Him. I was He6298

    6298 Ad quem: the expression is masculine.

    in whom He took delight; moreover, I daily rejoiced in His presence: for He rejoiced when He had finished the world, and amongst the sons of men did He show forth His pleasure.”6299

    6299 Prov. viii. 27–31.

    Now, who would not rather approve of6300

    6300 Commendet.

    this as the fountain and origin of all things—of this as, in very deed, the Matter of all Matter, not liable to any end,6301

    6301 “Non fini subditam” is Oehler’s better reading than the old “sibi subditam.”

    not diverse in condition, not restless in motion, not ungraceful in form, but natural, and proper, and duly proportioned, and beautiful, such truly as even God might well have required, who requires His own and not another’s? Indeed, as soon as He perceived It to be necessary for His creation of the world, He immediately creates It, and generates It in Himself. “The Lord,” says the Scripture, “possessed6302

    6302 Condidit: created.

    me, the beginning of His ways for the creation of His works. Before the worlds He founded me; before He made the earth, before the mountains were settled in their places; moreover, before the hills He generated me, and prior to the depths was I begotten.”6303

    6303 See Prov. viii.

    Let Hermogenes then confess that the very Wisdom of God is declared to be born and created, for the especial reason that we should not suppose that there is any other being than God alone who is unbegotten and uncreated. For if that, which from its being inherent in the Lord6304

    6304 Intra Dominum.

    was of Him and in Him, was yet not without a beginning,—I mean6305

    6305 Scilicet.

    His wisdom, which was then born and created, when in the thought of God It began to assume motion6306

    6306 Cœpti agitari.

    for the arrangement of His creative works,—how much more impossible6307

    6307 Multo magis non capit.

    is it that anything should have been without a beginning which was extrinsic to the Lord!6308

    6308 Extra Dominum.

    But if this same Wisdom is the Word of God, in the capacity6309

    6309 Sensu.

    of Wisdom, and (as being He) without whom nothing was made, just as also (nothing) was set in order without Wisdom, how can it be that anything, except the Father, should be older, and on this account indeed nobler, than the Son of God, the only-begotten and first-begotten Word?  Not to say that6310

    6310 Nedum.

    what is unbegotten is stronger than that which is born, and what is not made more powerful than that which is made.  Because that which did not require a Maker to give it existence, will be much more elevated in rank than that which had an author to bring it into being. On this principle, then,6311

    6311 Proinde.

    if evil is indeed unbegotten, whilst the Son of God is begotten (“for,” says God, “my heart hath emitted my most excellent Word”6312

    6312 On this version of Ps. xlv. 1., and its application by Tertullian, see our Anti-Marcion (p. 299, note 5).

    ), I am not quite sure that evil may not be introduced by good, the stronger by the weak, in the same way as the unbegotten is by the begotten. Therefore on this ground Hermogenes puts Matter even before God, by putting it before the Son. Because the Son is the Word, and “the Word is God,”6313

    6313 John i. 1.

    and “I and my Father are one.”6314

    6314 John x. 30.

    But after all, perhaps,6315

    6315 Nisi quod.

    the Son will patiently enough submit to having that preferred before Him which (by Hermogenes), is made equal to the Father!

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