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Against Hermogenes

Chapter XXXIX.--These Latter Speculations Shown to Be Contradictory to the First Principles Respecting Matter, Formerly Laid Down by Hermogenes.

Well, now, since it seems to you to be the correcter thing, ¹ let Matter be circumscribed ² by means of changes and displacements; let it also be capable of comprehension, since (as you say) it is used as material by God, ³ on the ground of its being convertible, mutable, and separable. For its changes, you say, show it to be inseparable. And here you have swerved from your own lines ⁴ which you prescribed respecting the person of God when you laid down the rule that God made it not out of His own self, because it was not possible for Him to become divided ⁵ seeing that He is eternal and abiding for ever, and therefore unchangeable and indivisible. Since Matter too is estimated by the same eternity, having neither beginning nor end, it will be unsusceptible of division, of change, for the same reason that God also is. Since it is associated with Him in the joint possession of eternity, it must needs share with Him also the powers, the laws, and the conditions of eternity. In like manner, when you say, "All things simultaneously throughout the universe ⁶ possess portions of it, ⁷ that so the whole may be ascertained from ⁸ its parts," you of course mean to indicate those parts which were produced out of it, and which are now visible to us. How then is this possession (of Matter) by all things throughout the universe effected--that is, of course, from the very beginning ⁹ --when the things which are now visible to us are different in their condition ¹⁰ from what they were in the beginning?

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Adversus Hermogenem

XXXIX.

[1] Sit nunc definitiua, sicut rectius tibi uidetur, per demutationes suas et translationes, sit et comprehensibilis, 'ut quae fabricatur,' inquis, 'a deo,' quia et conuertibilis et demutabilis et dispartibilis ---- 'Demutationes enim eius,' inquis, 'dispartibilem eam ostendunt' ----: et hic a lineis tuis excidisti quibus circa personam dei usus es praescribes deum illam non ex semetipso fecisse, quia in partes uenire non posset qui sit[a] aeternus et manens in aeuum ac per hoc immutabilis et indiuisibilis. Si et materia eadem aeternitate censetur, neque initium habens neque finem, eadem ratione non poterit pati dispertitionem et demutationem, qua nec deus; in aeternitatis consortio posita participet cum illo necesse est et uires et leges et condiciones aeternitatis. [2] Aeque cum dicis: 'Partes autem eius omnia simul ex omnibus habent, ut ex partibus totum dinoscatur,' utique eas partes intellegi uis quae ex illa prolatae sunt, quae hodie uidentur a nobis. Quomodo ergo omnia ex omnibus habent, utique ex pristinis, quando que hodie uidentur aliter habeant quam pristina fuerunt?