And now what other or better reconciliation of these
seeming contrarieties than his own explanation, to those
that are willing to apprehend it? For he declares to have
been without beginning the never procreated soul, that
moved all things confusedly and in an irregular manner
before the creation of the world. But as for that which
God composed out of this and that other permanent and
choicest substance, making it both prudent and orderly,
and adding of his own, as if it were for form and beauty's
sake, intellect to sense, and order to motion, and which he
constituted prince and chieftain of the whole,—that he
acknowledges to have had a beginning and to have proceeded from generation. Thus he likewise pronounces the
body of the world in one respect to be eternal and without
beginning, in another sense to be the work of creation. To
which purpose, where he says that the visible structure,
never in repose at first but restless in a confused and tempestuous motion, was at length by the hand of God disposed
and ranged into majestic order,—where he says that the
four elements, fire and water, earth and air, before the
stately pile was by them embellished and adorned, caused
a prodigious fever and shivering ague in the whole mass of
matter, that labored under the combats of their unequal
[p. 337]
mixtures,—by his urging these things, he gives those
bodies room in the vast abyss before the fabric of the
universe.
Again, when he says that the body was younger than
the soul, and that the world was created, as being of a
corporeal substance that may be seen and felt,—which sort
of substances must necessarily have a beginning and be
created,—it is evidently demonstrable from thence that he
ascribes original creation to the nature of bodies. But he
is far from being repugnant or contradictory to himself in
these sublimest mysteries. For he does not contend, that
the same body was created by God or after the same manner, and yet that it was before it had a being,—which
would have been to act the part of a juggler; but he instructs us what we ought to understand by generations and
creation. Therefore, says he, at first all these things were
void of measure and proportion; but when God first
began to beautify the whole, the fire and water, earth and
air, having perhaps some prints and footsteps of their
forms, lay in a huddle jumbled all together,—as probable
it is that all things are, where God is absent,—which then
he reduced to a comely perfection varied by number and
order. Moreover, having told us before that it was a work
not of one but of a twofold proportion to bind and fasten
the bulky immensity of the whole, which was both solid
and of a prodigious profundity, he then comes to declare
how God, after he had placed the water and the earth in
the midst between the fire and the air, incontinently closed
up the heavens into a circular form. Out of these materials, saith he, being four in number, was the body of the
world created, agreeing in proportion, and so amicably corresponding together, that being thus embodied and confined within their proper bounds, it is impossible that any
dissolution should happen from their own contending force,
unless he that riveted the whole frame should go about
[p. 338]
again to rend it in pieces;—most apparently teaching us,
that God was not the parent and architect of the corporeal
substance only, or of the bulk and matter, but of the
beauty and symmetry and similitude that adorned and graced
the whole. The same we are to believe, he thought, concerning the soul; that there is one which neither was
created by God nor is the soul of the world, but a certain
self-moving and restless efficacy of a giddy and disorderly
agitation and impetuosity, irrational and subject to opinion;
while the other is that which God himself, having accoutred and adorned it with suitable numbers and proportions,
has made queen regent of the created world, herself the
product of creation also.
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