Chapter VI.—The Shifts to Which Hermogenes is Reduced, Who Deifies Matter, and Yet is Unwilling to Hold Him Equal with the Divine Creator.

He declares that God’s attribute is still safe to Him, of being the only God, and the First, and the Author of all things, and the Lord of all things, and being incomparable to any—qualities which he straightway ascribes to Matter also. He is God, to be sure. God shall also attest the same; but He has also sworn sometimes by Himself, that there is no other God like Him.60    Isa. xlv. 23. Hermogenes, however, will make Him a liar. For Matter will be such a God as He—being unmade, unborn, without beginning, and without end. God will say, “I am the first!”61    Isa. xli. 4; xliv. 6; xlviii. 12. Yet how is He the first, when Matter is co-eternal with Him? Between co-eternals and contemporaries there is no sequence of rank.62    Ordo. Is then, Matter also the first? “I,” says the Lord, “have stretched out the heavens alone.”63    Isa. xliv. 24. But indeed He was not alone, when that likewise stretched them out, of which He made the expanse. When he asserts the position that Matter was eternal, without any encroachment on the condition of God, let him see to it that we do not in ridicule turn the tables on him, that God similarly was eternal without any encroachment on the condition of Matter—the condition of Both being still common to Them. The position, therefore, remains unimpugned64    Salvum ergo erit. both in the case of Matter, that it did itself exist, only along with God; and that God existed alone, but with Matter.  It also was first with God, as God, too, was first with it; it, however, is not comparable with God, as God, too, is not to be compared with it; with God also it was the Author (of all things), and with God their Sovereign. In this way he proposes that God has something, and yet not the whole, of Matter. For Him, accordingly, Hermogenes has reserved nothing which he had not equally conferred on Matter, so that it is not Matter which is compared with God, but rather God who is compared with Matter. Now, inasmuch as those qualities which we claim as peculiar to God—to have always existed, without a beginning, without an end, and to have been the First, and Alone, and the Author of all things—are also compatible to Matter, I want to know what property Matter possesses different and alien from God, and hereby special to itself, by reason of which it is incapable of being compared with God? That Being, in which occur65    Recensentur. all the properties of God, is sufficiently predetermined without any further comparison.

CAPUT VI.

Dicit salvum Deo esse , ut et solus sit, et primus, et omnium auctor, et omnium dominus, et nemini 0202C comparandus; quae mox materiae quoque adscribit . Ego quidem Deus , contestabitur Deus, et juravit nonnumquam per semetipsum, quod alius non sit qualis ipse (Deut. XXXII, 39, 40): sed mendacem eum faciet Hermogenes. Erit enim et materia qualis Deus, infecta, innata, initium non habens, nec finem. Dicet Deus: Ego primus (Is. XLI, XLIV, XLVIII)? et quomodo primus, cui materia coaetanea est? Inter coaetaneos autem et contemporales ordo non est, aut 0203A et materia prima est. Extendi, inquit, coelum solus (Is. XLIV): atquin non solus, cum ea enim extendit de qua et extendit. Cum proponit salvo Dei statu fuisse materiam ; vide ne ei reddatur a nobis, proinde salvo statu materiae fuisse Deum, communi tamen statu amborum. Salvum ergo erit et materiae, ut et ipsa fuerit, sed cum Deo, quia et Deus solus, sed cum illa. Et ipsa prima cum Deo, quia et Deus primus cum illa: sed et illa incomparabilis cum Deo, quia et Deus incomparabilis cum illa, et auctrix cum Deo, et domina cum Deo. Sic aliquid et non totum materiae habere, ita illi nihil reliquit Hermogenes, quod non et materiae contulisset: ut non materia Deo, sed Deus potius materiae comparetur. Atque adeo, cum ea 0203B quae propria Dei vindicamus, semper fuisse, sine initio, sine fine, et primum fuisse, et solum, et omnium auctorem, materiae quoque competant; quaero quid diversum et alienum a Deo, ac per hoc privatum materia possederit, per quod Deo non comparetur? In qua omnia Dei propria recensentur, satis praejudicant de reliqua comparatione.