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 better428    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 mirror429    Speculum. 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 ass430    Mulus. 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 formed431    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,432    Κόσμος. how can it present the image of unadorned433    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.434    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 quitted435    Recesserunt a forma ejus. its condition, by being separated from it in the transformation they have undergone.

CAPUT XL.

Dicis in melius reformatam materiam, utique de deterioribus: et vis meliora deteriorum exemplarium ferre. Confusa res erat, nunc vero composita est: et vis ex compositis incomposita praeberi. Nulla res speculum alterius rei , id est non coaequalis. Nemo se apud tonsorem pro homine mulum inspexit, nisi si qui putat in hac exstructione mundi, dispositae jam et comptae , informem et incultam materiam respondere. Quid hodie informe in mundo, 0233C quid retro speciatum in materia, ut speculum sit mundus materiae? Cum ornamenti nomine sit penes Graecos mundus , quomodo inornatae materiae imaginem 0234A refert , ut dicas totum ejus partibus cognosci? Certe ex illo toto erit etiam hoc, quod non venit in deformationem. Et supra edidisti non totam eam fabricatum . Igitur vel hoc rude et confusum et incompositum non potest in expolitis et distinctis et compositis recognosci, quae nec partes materiae appellari convenit, cum a forma ejus ex mutatione divisa recesserunt.