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| These Latter Speculations Shown to Be Contradictory to the First Principles Respecting Matter, Formerly Laid Down by Hermogenes. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
XXXIX.—These Latter Speculations Shown to Be Contradictory to the
First Principles Respecting Matter, Formerly Laid Down by
Hermogenes.
Well, now, since it seems to you to be the
correcter thing,6546 let Matter be
circumscribed6547 by means of changes
and displacements; let it also be capable of comprehension, since (as
you say) it is used as material by God,6548
6548 Ut quæ
fabricatur, inquis, a Deo. | on
the ground of its being convertible, mutable, and separable. For its
changes, you say, show it to be inseparable. And here you have swerved
from your own lines6549
6549 Lineis. Tertullian
often refers to Hermogenes’ profession of painting. | which you
prescribed respecting the person of God when you laid down the rule
that God made it not out of His own self, because it was not possible
for Him to become divided6550 seeing that He is
eternal and abiding for ever, and therefore unchangeable and
indivisible. Since Matter too is estimated by the same eternity, having
neither beginning nor end, it will be unsusceptible of division, of
change, for the same reason that God also is. Since it is associated
with Him in the joint possession of eternity, it must needs share with
Him also the powers, the laws, and the conditions of eternity. In
like manner, when you say, “All things simultaneously throughout
the universe6551 possess portions of
it,6552 that so the whole may be ascertained
from6553 its parts,” you of course mean to
indicate those parts which were produced out of it, and which are now
visible to us. How then is this possession (of Matter) by all
things throughout the universe effected—that is, of course, from
the very beginning6554
6554 Utique ex
pristinis. | —when the
things which are now visible to us are different in their
condition6555 from what they were
in the beginning?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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