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| He Did Not, However, Create It by a Sounding and Passing Word.
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Chapter VI.—He Did Not, However,
Create It by a Sounding and Passing Word.
8. But how didst Thou speak? Was it in that
manner in which the voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is
my beloved Son”?1031
For that voice was uttered and
passed away, began and ended. The syllables sounded and passed by,
the second after the first, the third after the second, and thence
in order, until the last after the rest, and silence after the
last. Hence it is clear and plain that the motion of a creature
expressed it, itself temporal, obeying Thy Eternal will. And these
thy words formed at the time, the outer ear conveyed to the
intelligent
mind, whose inner ear lay attentive to Thy eternal word. But it
compared these words sounding in time with Thy eternal word in
silence, and said, “It is different, very different. These words
are far beneath me, nor are they, since they flee and pass away;
but the Word of my Lord remaineth above me for ever.” If, then,
in sounding and fleeting words Thou didst say that heaven and earth
should be made, and didst thus make heaven and earth, there was
already a corporeal creature before heaven and earth by whose
temporal motions that voice might take its course in time. But
there was nothing corporeal before heaven and earth; or if there
were, certainly Thou without a transitory voice hadst created that
whence Thou wouldest make the passing voice, by which to say that
the heaven and the earth should be made. For whatsoever that were
of which such a voice was made, unless it were made by Thee, it
could not be at all. By what word of Thine was it decreed that a
body might be made, whereby these words might be made?
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