4. On the Universe
4. On the Universe Come, let us celebrate creation by the mighty God, opposing lying opinions with contending argument. There is one God. It is a feeble tale to suggest, as was thought by some wise Greeks, that matter and forms should be conceived as sharing his unoriginate status. Such of those revered shapes as they imagine to be gods never were so, but came into existence through the will of the mighty God. Now who has ever seen matter without form or an immaterial shape, even if he has toiled over many concepts whirling about in his mind? I have never discovered a body devoid ofcolour, any more than a disembodied hue.
Who has madea distinction where nature does not, but firmly unites?
But suppose we do makea division. Consider, | ask you, if things were once totally separate, how did they ever come together in a unity, or what world order came to stand in respect ofa totality ofthings utterly divided in two? But ifthe elements were mixed, how did they come to be mixed? Who brought about the mixing, apart from God? Ifitis God who combines them, then accept that he is also the creator of the universe. Even the potter imparts form to the clay when he whirls his wheel, as the goldsmith with his gold and sculptor with his stone.
Allow to God something more than our human mind, you who favour uncaused principles. Matter amounts to something more when joined to forms in motion. God exercised his mind and objects came into existence complete with their forms. It was divine intelligence, the subtle mother of the universe. For it is not likely that God, as if he were some painter, should produce a form resembling some other form, while observing before him objects which his mind alone did not paint.
As for you, evil Manichaean darkness, you were never originally a rival for the throne of supreme light. IfGod was in existence, darkness was not. For it is not fitting that evil should set itself against God. If you recognize darkness, you do not recognize God. Any agreement spells an end of order. If powers are in conflict, the better opponent will win. But ifthey are equally matched, what third force is there to bring unity through its wisdom and resolve the conflict? It would surely be very surprising, when once you had roused this deadly strife, ifyou should then restore agreement and forget the battle.
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4. ON THE UNIVERSE up of soul and body; the one is a particle of the boundless light of Godhead, while the other, you would have it, has been formed from the root of darkness. You have brought together into a unity elements which lie far apart. If 1 am a common nature, then I resolve conflict. If there is dreadful and unremitting conflict, then
I am no longer a nature interwoven of both these elements. For there is no common offspring of two warring elements; rather must it come from mutual love. Such is the murky state ofyour mind. But I hold that there is one
God, who is without beginning, beyond reach of strife, one perfect light, the strength of simple and composite minds, those moving swiftly on high in heaven and others here on earth. But darkness came late on the scene, not a self-existent nature with its own boundaries, but evil on our part. Now evil comes with breaching ofthe commandment, as night comes with the setting ofthe sun and feeble age with the fading of youth and as the sun's course in the north brings awful winter. But he who was first among the heavenly lights and who by his insolence forfeited his glorious light maintains constant hatred of the human race. For it was through his murderous agency when he fanned my human flame by his trickery that the first mortal came to taste evil and death.
This is the nature of evil born late in time of which he is the father.
It is the contagion rust brings to strong iron. In acts ofself-destruction I have produced the contagion of evil, deceived by his cleverness into falling in with my envious enemy's tricks. World, if you had been in existence as long as the Trinity, being close to the glory of the God who has no beginning, how is it that men inspired by Christ and those endowed with knowledge ofdivine matters have assigned you a place so far distant from it that no great number of circling years can be counted since the mighty Word of God established you? If then you were at that point established, let us ponder to what concern divine reflection was stirred (for I believe that God is neither idle nor ineffectual), before this universe stood in place and had been ordered by visible forms. He who was ruling in highest power over empty ages was active in contemplating his own splendour of beauty, one equal gleam of A. HEPI KOZMOY 421, tpiscodaots Oedrytos éudv aéAas icodépiozoyr, ws pouvy Oedryt Kai uv Oeds Ear apidnAov.
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4. ON THE UNIVERSE excellence expressed in the threefold light of Godhead, as is manifest to that Godhead alone and to those whose God he is. The worldcreating Mind was stirred and gazed within his mighty thoughts upon the forms of the world to come into existence later, a world present to God. All things stand before God, future, past, and presently existing.
For me, time has created division between events which come before and after. But where God is concerned, all things come together into unity and within the arms of his powerful Godhead they are supported. Therefore, I ask you, my listeners, to be aware of the point my mind has reached. It was Mind which brought forth the universe when later, at the right time, the fruit oftravail burst into existence, the mighty Word of God revealing it. He willed to establish intelligent nature, both heavenly and earthly, a translucent mirror of the primal light. The one nature gleams above, servant of the heavenly King, great and full oflight, whereas the other has its glory in this world. He poured forth from its source his own Godhead, that it might rule over more numerous heavenly beings and reach to more beings as the blissful gift of light. For it is the nature of my Lord to bestow happiness.
But lest a created being in approaching God should yearn for a nature like God's and thus lose the light and glory already granted (to keep within set bounds is best and the worst conduct is to stray beyond them), for this reason the lofty Word, with kindly thought for generations to come, firmly placed at a distance from the Trinity whatever light surrounds the throne, separating human nature from the angelic choirs. The angelic he set at a lesser distance, to assist him, whereas our nature was placed much farther away, since we came into existence out ofearth mingled with Godhead. Uncompounded nature is better. Of the worlds, one is older, that is heaven, the place visible to minds alone, occupied by those who possess God, the world, full of light, to which the mortal who belongs to God journeys when he leaves this world to become God, once he has cleansed mind and flesh. This world of ours, however, was established as mortal for mortal beings, when the beauty of heavenly lights was intended to find its place and A'. TIEPI KOZMOY aorioeobar daéwv re ydpis Kipve re Ocoio, KaAdei re peyéber re, Kai eixdvos éuBacirAevpanpwros 8' dardrids ve Geot peydAoto Adyo.at.
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