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38. But others, to whom these words are no longer a nest, but
shady fruit-bowers, see the fruits concealed in them, fly around
rejoicing, and chirpingly search and pluck them. For they see when
they read or hear these words, O God, that all times past and future
are surmounted by Thy eternal and stable abiding, and still that there
is no temporal creature which Thou hast not made. And by Thy will,
because! it is that which Thou art, Thou hast made all! things,
not by any changed will, nor by a will which before was not, not
out of Thyself, in Thine own likeness, the form of all things, but
out of nothing, a formless unlikeness which should be formed by Thy
likeness (having recourse to Thee the One, after their settled
capacity, according as it has been given to each thing in his kind),
and might all be made very good; whether they remain around Thee,
or, being by degrees removed in time and place, make or undergo
beautiful variations. These things they see, and rejoice in the light
of Thy truth, in the little degree they here may.
39. Again, another of these directs his attention to that which is
said, "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth," and
beholdeth Wisdom,- the Beginning,' because It also speaketh unto
us. Another likewise directs his attention to the same words, and by
"beginning" understands the commencement of things created; and
receives it thus,- In the beginning He made, as if it were said,
He at first made. And among those who understand "In the
beginning" to mean, that "in Thy Wisdom Thou bast created heaven
and earth," one believes the matter out of which the heaven and earth
were to be created to be there called "heaven and earth;" another,
that they are natures already formed and distinct; another, one formed
nature, and that a spiritual, under the name of heaven, the other
formless, of corporeal matter, under the name of earth.
But they who under the name of "heaven and earth" understand matter
as yet formless, out of which were to be formed heaven and earth, do
not themselves understand it in one manner; but one, that matter out
of which the intelligible and the sensible creature were to be
completed; another, that only out of which this sensible corporeal
mass was to come, holding in its vast bosom these visible and prepared
natures. Nor are they who believe that the creatures already set in
order and arranged are in this place called heaven and earth of one
accord; but the one, both the invisible and visible; the other, the
visible only, in which we admire the luminous heaven and darksome
earth, and the things that are therein.
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