Statement of the True Doctrine Concerning Matter. Its Relation to God's Creation of the World

But although Hermogenes finds it amongst his own colourable pretences⁶⁴⁸² (for it was not in his power to discover it in the Scriptures of God), it is enough for us, both that it is certain that all things were made by God, and that there is no certainty whatever that they were made out of Matter. And even if Matter had previously existed, we must have believed that it had been really made by God, since we maintained (no less) when we held the rule of faith to be,⁶⁴⁸³ that nothing except God was uncreated.⁶⁴⁸⁴ Up to this point there is room for controversy, until Matter is brought to the test of the Scriptures, and fails to make good its case.⁶⁴⁸⁵ The conclusion of the whole is this: I find that there was nothing made, except out of nothing; because that which I find was made, I know did not once exist. Whatever⁶⁴⁸⁶ was made out of something, has its origin in something made: for instance, out of the ground was made the grass, and the fruit, and the cattle, and the form of man himself; so from the waters were produced the animals which swim and fly. The original fabrics⁶⁴⁸⁷ out of which such creatures were produced I may call their materials,⁶⁴⁸⁸ but then even these were created by God.

Chapter XXXIV.—A Presumption that All Things Were Created by God Out of Nothing Afforded by the Ultimate Reduction of All Things to Nothing. Scriptures Proving This Reduction Vindicated from Hermogenes' Charge of Being Merely Figurative.

Besides,⁶⁴⁸⁹ the belief that everything was made from nothing will be impressed upon us by that ultimate dispensation of God which will bring back all things to nothing. For "the very heaven shall be rolled together as a scroll;"⁶⁴⁹⁰ nay, it shall come to nothing along with the earth itself, with which it was made in the beginning. "Heaven and earth shall pass away,"⁶⁴⁹¹ says He. "The first heaven and the first earth passed away,"⁶⁴⁹² "and there was found no place for them,"⁶⁴⁹³ because, of course, that which comes to an end loses locality. In like manner David says, "The heavens, the works of Thine hands, shall themselves perish. For even as a vesture shall He change them, and they shall be changed."⁶⁴⁹⁴ Now to be changed is to fall from that primitive state which they lose whilst undergoing the change. "And the stars too shall fall from heaven, even as a fig-tree casteth her green figs⁶⁴⁹⁵ when she is shaken of a mighty wind."⁶⁴⁹⁶ "The mountains shall melt like wax at the presence of the Lord;"⁶⁴⁹⁷ that is, "when He riseth to shake terribly the earth."⁶⁴⁹⁸ "But I will dry up the pools;"⁶⁴⁹⁹ and "they shall seek water, and they shall find none."⁶⁵⁰⁰ Even "the sea shall be no more."⁶⁵⁰¹ Now if any person should go so far as to suppose that all these passages ought to be spiritually interpreted, he will yet be unable to deprive them of the true accomplishment of those issues which must come to pass just as they have been written. For all figures of speech necessarily arise out of real things, not out of chimerical ones; because nothing is capable of imparting anything of its own for a similitude, except it actually be that very thing which it imparts in the similitude. I return therefore to the principle⁶⁵⁰² which defines that all things which have come from nothing shall return at last to nothing. For God would not have made any perishable thing out of what was eternal, that is to say, out of Matter; neither out of greater things would He have created inferior ones, to whose character it would be more agreeable to produce greater things out of inferior ones,—in other words, what is eternal out of what is perishable. This is the promise He makes even to our flesh, and it has been His will to deposit within us this pledge of His own virtue and power, in order that we may believe that He has actually⁶⁵⁰³ awakened the universe out of nothing, as if it had been steeped in death,⁶⁵⁰⁴ in the sense, of course, of its previous non-existence for the purpose of its coming into existence.⁶⁵⁰⁵