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24. For they say, "Although these things be true, yet Moses
regarded not those two things, when by divine revelation he said, '
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.. Under the
name of heaven he did not indicate that spiritual or intellectual
creature which always beholds the face of God; nor under the name of
earth, that shapeless matter." '' What then?" "'that man,"
say they, "meant as we say; this it is that he declared by those
words." "What is that?" "By the name of heaven and earth," say
they, "did he first wish to set forth, universally and briefly, all
this visible world, that afterwards by the enumeration of the days he
might distribute, as if in detail, all those things which it pleased
the Holy Spirit thus to reveal. For such men were that rude and
carnal people to which he spoke, that he judged it prudent that only
those works of God as were visible should be entrusted to them."
They agree, however, that the earth invisible and formless, and the
darksome deep (out of which it is subsequently pointed out that all
these visible things, which are known to all, were made and set in
order during those" days"), may not unsuitably be understood of this
formless matter.
25. What, now, if another should say "That this same
formlessness and confusion of matter was first introduced under the name
of heaven and earth, because out of it this visible world, with all
those natures which most manifestly appear in it, and which is wont to
be called by the name of heaven and earth, was created and perfected
"? But what if another should say, that "That invisible and
visible nature is not inaptly called heaven and earth; and that
consequently the universal creation, which God in His wisdom hath
made, that is, ' in the begining,' was comprehended under
these two words. Yet, since all things have been made, not of the
substance of God, but out of nothings (because they are not that same
thing that God is, and there is in them all a certain mutability,
whether they remain, as doth the eternal house of God, or. be
changed, as are the soul and body of man), therefore, that the
common matter of all things invisible and visible, as yet
shapeless, but still capable of form, out of which was to be
created heaven and earth (that is, the invisible and visible creature
already formed), was spoken of by the same names by which the earth
invisible and formless and the darkness upon the deep would be called;
with this difference, however, that the earth invisible and formless
is understood as corporeal matter, before it had any manner of form,
but the darkness upon the deep as spiritual matter, before it was
restrained at all of its unlimited fluidity, and before the
enlightening of wisdom."
26. should any man wish, he may still say, "That the already
perfected and formed natures, invisible and visible, are not signified
under the name of heaven and earth when it is read, ' In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth;' but that the yet
same formless beginning of things, the matter capable of being formed
and made, was called by these names, because contained in it there
were these confused things not as yet distinguished by their qualities
and forms, the which now being digested in their own orders, are
called heaven and earth, the former being the spiritual, the latter
the corporeal creature. ' '
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