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| Shapeless Matter an Incongruous Origin for God's Beautiful Cosmos. Hermogenes Does Not Mend His Argument by Supposing that Only a Portion of Matter Was Used in the Creation.
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Chapter XL.—Shapeless
Matter an Incongruous Origin for God’s Beautiful Cosmos.
Hermogenes Does Not Mend His Argument by Supposing that Only a Portion
of Matter Was Used in the Creation.
You say that Matter was reformed for the
better6556
| 6556 In melius
reformatam. | —from a worse
condition, of course; and thus you would make the better a copy
of the worse.
Everything was in confusion, but now it is reduced to order; and would
you also say, that out of order, disorder is produced? No one thing is
the exact mirror6557
of another thing;
that is to say, it is not its co-equal. Nobody ever found himself in a
barber’s looking-glass look like an ass6558
instead of a man; unless it be he who supposes that unformed and
shapeless Matter answers to Matter which is now arranged and beautified
in the fabric of the world. What is there now that is without form in
the world, what was there once that was formed6559
| 6559 Speciatum: εἰδοποιηθέν,
“arranged in specific forms.” | in
Matter, that the world is the mirror of Matter? Since the world is
known among the Greeks by a term denoting ornament,6560
how can it present the image of
unadorned6561
| 6561 Inornatæ:
unfurnished with forms of beauty. | Matter, in such a
way that you can say the whole is known by its parts? To that whole
will certainly belong even the portion which has not yet become
formed; and you have already declared that the whole of Matter
was not used as material in the creation.6562
| 6562 Non totam eam
fabricatam. | It follows, then, that this rude, and
confused, and unarranged portion cannot be recognized in the polished,
and distinct and well-arranged parts of creation, which indeed
can hardly with propriety be called parts of Matter, since they have
quitted6563
| 6563 Recesserunt a forma
ejus. | its condition, by
being separated from it in the transformation they have
undergone.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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