Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

132 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMThe God thus conceived by Philo is one, simple,eternal, unoriginated; He is self-existent and absolutelydistinct from the world, which is His work.Whoever holds the world itself for the Lord God, isfallen into error and wickedness. God is in His ownbeing incomprehensible ; we can only know that He is,not what He is. We can only predicate of Him thatHe is " He who is." He is most pure and absolutemind, better than virtue and better than knowledge,better than the idea of goodness and the idea ofbeauty. " He is His own place, and full of Himself,and sufficient for Himself, filling up and embracing11 that is deficient, or empty, but Himself embracedby nothing, as being Himself one person, and yeteverything." iFurthermore as lie is the Maker and Father of the1, so is He likewise its p >r, governor, re-warder, and punisher. inisher. " Those wh would make theworld to be unoriginated, cut away, without beingf it. the most usef d necessary of all the constitents of piety, t t th belief i Providence.P that what h gin is cared for byts father and mak For a father is anxious f< thlife of his children, and a workman aims at theduration of his works, and employs every deviceimaginable to ward off everything that is perniciousor injurious, and is desirous by every means in hispower to provide everything which is useful or profitablefor them. But with regard to what has had noorigin, there is no feeling of interest, as if it were hisown, n the breast of him who has not made it. Itis a worthless and pernicious doctrine to establish inthe world what would be anarchy in a city to have no1are etj /ecu TO irav avrbs &v. Legis AUcyor. I, xiv. p. 52.