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Adversus Praxean

CAP. 6.

[1] Haec vis et haec divini sensus dispositio apud scripturas etiam in sophiae nomine ostenditur. quid enim sapientius ratione dei sive sermone? itaque sophiam quoque exaudi, ut secundam personam conditam : primo, Dominus creavit me initium viarum in opera sua, priusquam terram faceret, priusquam montes collocarentur; ante omnes autem colles generavit me - in sensu suo scilicet condens et generans.

[2] dehinc adsistentem eam ipsa separatione cognosce: Cum pararet, inquit, caelum aderam illi simul; et quomodo fortia faciebat super ventos quae sursum nubila, et quomodo tutos ponebat fontes eius quae sub caelo, ego eram cum illo compingens, ego eram ad quam gaudebat; cottidie autem oblectabar in persona ipsius.

[3] nam ut primum deus voluit ea quae cum sophia et ratione et sermone disposuerat intra se in substantias et species suas edere, ipsum primum protulit sermonem habentem in se individuas suas rationem et sophiam, ut per ipsum fierent universa per quem erant cogitata atque disposita, immo et facta iam quantum in dei sensu: hoc enim eis deerat, ut coram quoque in suis speciebus atque substantiis cognoscerentur et tenerentur.

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Against Praxeas

Chapter VI.--The Word of God is Also the Wisdom of God. The Going Forth of Wisdom to Create the Universe, According to the Divine Plan.

This power and disposition ¹ of the Divine Intelligence ² is set forth also in the Scriptures under the name of Sophia, Wisdom; for what can be better entitled to the name of Wisdom ³ than the Reason or the Word of God? Listen therefore to Wisdom herself, constituted in the character of a Second Person: "At the first the Lord created me as the beginning of His ways, with a view to His own works, before He made the earth, before the mountains were settled; moreover, before all the hills did He beget me;" ⁴ that is to say, He created and generated me in His own intelligence. Then, again, observe the distinction between them implied in the companionship of Wisdom with the Lord. "When He prepared the heaven," says Wisdom, "I was present with Him; and when He made His strong places upon the winds, which are the clouds above; and when He secured the fountains, (and all things) which are beneath the sky, I was by, arranging all things with Him; I was by, in whom He delighted; and daily, too, did I rejoice in His presence." ⁵ Now, as soon as it pleased God to put forth into their respective substances and forms the things which He had planned and ordered within Himself, in conjunction with His Wisdom's Reason and Word, He first put forth the Word Himself, having within Him His own inseparable Reason and Wisdom, in order that all things might be made through Him through whom they had been planned and disposed, yea, and already made, so far forth as (they were) in the mind and intelligence of God. This, however, was still wanting to them, that they should also be openly known, and kept permanently in their proper forms and substances.