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| Hermogenes Pursued to Another Passage of Scripture. The Absurdity of His Interpretation Exposed.
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Chapter XXIII.—Hermogenes Pursued to Another Passage of
Scripture. The Absurdity of His Interpretation Exposed.
But he draws an argument from the following words,
where it is written: “And the earth was without form, and
void.”6349
For he
resolves6350
the word
earth into Matter, because that which is made out of it is the
earth. And to the word was he gives the same direction, as
if it pointed to what had always existed unbegotten and unmade. It was
without form, moreover, and void, because he will have
Matter to have existed shapeless and confused, and without the finish
of a maker’s hand.6351
| 6351 Inconditam: we have
combined the two senses of the word. | Now these opinions
of his I will refute singly; but first I wish to say to him, by way of
general answer: We are of opinion that Matter is pointed at in these
terms. But yet does the Scripture intimate that, because Matter was in
existence before all, anything of like condition6352
was even formed out of it? Nothing of the
kind. Matter might have had existence, if it so pleased—or rather
if Hermogenes so pleased. It might, I say, have existed, and yet God
might not have made anything out of it, either as it was unsuitable to
Him to have required the aid of anything, or at least because He is not
shown to have made anything out of Matter. Its existence must therefore
be without a cause, you will say. Oh, no! certainly6353
not without cause. For even if the world
were not made out of it, yet a heresy has been hatched there from; and
a specially impudent one too, because it is not Matter which has
produced the heresy, but the heresy has rather made Matter
itself.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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