Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

RESURRECTION OF CULTURED HEATHENISM 143fter,' c shall be ' and ' has been/ confess that tlno real being. . . . Now of God we must say, He is,and is in no time, but in a motionless, timeless, unin-clined eternity, in whom there is neither before norafter, neither future nor past, neither older nor younger.Being One lie fills eternity with one now.1 Andhat alone is which in such wise truly is, neither pnor future, nor beginning, nor ending. So oughthippers to salute and address it, or indeed assome of the ancients, saying, e Thou art one/ For thedeity is not many things, as each of us, a heterogene-mixed collection, made up of countless differenceswhich spring from being subject to passion. Butthat which is must be One, as that which is One,must be."To the God so conceived every moral perfection isattributed, " Being2 perfectly good, he wants notue, least of all justice and friendship;" and " thblessedness of the eternal life which God posseconsists in his knowledge never failing by the suesion of things, for if knowledge and wisdom were taaway, immortality would not be life, but mere time."Yet this God, though the orderer and arranger andin this sense the maker of things, is not their creator.Outside of him and independent of him he foundmatter, and something moreover within matter whichhe could not entirely tame and reduce to his will. Thisprinciple is called by the most different names, by thePersians Ahrimanes, by the Egyptians Typho, by theGreek mythology Hades and Ares, by EmpedoclesConflict, by the Pythagoreans the Second, by AristotlePrivation, by Plato the Other, and, which is best of all,1 dXX' els (iv evl ry vvv TO det2 On the failure o/ Oracles, 24 ; On Isis, I.