Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

62 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMboth that on which the action takes effect and thatwhich is an agent, is a body.1 If it is a body, it isgood." . . . For " we are of opinion that there is nogood which consists of separated things. For the onegood must be contained and ruled by one spirit: theprinciple of this one good must be one. . . . Andwhy should you not think that something divineexists in him who is part of God ? This whole, inwhich we are contained, is both one and God. Weare both his fellows and his members. Such is ourmind's capacity. »To make the above expressions clear, we must havepresent to us the absolute Stoic conception of God.It is this.3 The opposition between God and Matteris only secondary. If we take in the conception ofthe Godhead in its full meaning, it must be describedas the Primal Matter as well as the Primal Force. Thecollective mass of the Actual is nothing else but theDivine Breath which moves forth out of itself and backinto itself. The Godhead itself is the Primal Firewhich bears within itself in germ God and Matter,is the world in its primal state of spirit, the UniversalSubstance, which changes itself into particularconcretions, and restores itself back from them again.Considered, therefore, in its pure form, or as God,it embraces at one time the All, at another timeonly a portion of the Actual. Thus Origen speaks ofthe Stoics as introducing a corruptible God, as terminghis substance a body, subject to change, conversion,and transformation, as at some particular perioddestroying all things, and reducing God to solitariness.1 " Nam et quod fit et quod facit corpus est."8 Nat. Quasi. Pro}. 13 ; Ibid. ii. 45 ; Epist. Ixv. 2, 12, 23 ; cxvii.2, 10; cii. 7 ; xcii. 30. 3 Zeller, iv. 133.