(8) And from the same Cause of all, are the higher and lower intellectual essences of the godlike angels; and those of the souls; and the natures of the whole Cosmos; all things whatsoever said to be either in others, or by reflection. Yea, even the all holy and most honoured Powers veritably being, and established, as it were, in the vestibule of the superessential Triad, are from It, and in It; and have the being and the godlike being; and after them, as regards Angels, the subordinate, subordinately, and the remotest, most remotely, but as regards ourselves, supermundanely. And the souls, and all the other beings, according to the same rule, have their being, and their well-being; and are, and are well; by having from the Pre-existing their being and their well-being. And in It are both being and well-being; and from It, beginning; and in It, guarded; and to It, terminated. And the prerogatives of being he distributes to the superior beings, which the Oracles call even eternal. But being itself never at any time fails all existing beings. And even self-existent being is from the Pre-existent, and of Him is being, and He is not of being;--and in Him is being, and He is not in being; and being possesses Him, and not He possesses being; and He is both age and beginning, and measure of being; being essentiating Source, and Middle and End, of pre-essence, and being and age and all things. And for this reason, by the Oracles, the veritably Pre-existing is represented under many forms, according to every conception of beings, and the "Was" and the "Is," and the "Will be," and the "Became," and the "Becomes," and the "Will become," are properly sung respecting Him. For all these, to those who think worthily of God, signify by every conception His being superessentially, and Cause in every way of things existing. For He is not this, but not that; nor is He in some way, but not in some other; but He is all things, as Cause of all, and containing and pre-holding in Himself all governments, all controls, of all existing things. And He is above all, as superessentially super-being before all. Wherefore, also, all things are predicated of Him and together, and He is none of them all; of every shape, of every kind, without form, without beauty, anticipating in Himself, beginnings and middles, and ends of things existing, irresistibly and preeminently; and shedding forth without flaw, (the light of) being to all, as beseems a One and super-united Cause. For, if our sun, at the same time that he is one and sheds a uniform light, renews the essences and qualities of sensible creatures, although they are many and various, and nourishes and guards, and perfects and distinguishes, and unites, and fosters, and makes to be productive, and increases, and transforms, and establishes, and makes to grow, and awakens, and gives life to all; and each of the whole, in a manner appropriate to itself, participates in the same and one sun; and the one sun anticipated in himself, uniformly, the causes of the many participants; much more with regard to the Cause of it and of all things, ought we to concede that It first presides over, as beseems One superessential Oneness, all the exemplars, of things existing; since He produces even essences, as beseems the egression from essence. But, we affirm that the exemplars are the methods in God, giving essence to things that be, and pre-existing uniformly, which theology calls predeterminations, and Divine and good wills, which define and produce things existing; according to which (predeterminations) the Superessential both predetermined and brought into existence everything that exists.

(1) COME then, if you please, let us sing the good and eternal Life, both as wise, and as wisdom's self; yea, rather, as sustaining all wisdom, and being superior to all wisdom and understanding. For, not only is Almighty God superfull of wisdom, and of His understanding there is no number, but He is fixed above all reason and mind and wisdom. And, when the truly divine man, the common sun of us, and of our leader, had thought this out, in a sense above nature, he says, "the foolishness of God is wiser than men," (meaning) not only that all human intelligence is a sort of error, when tried by the stability and durability of the Divine and most perfect conceptions, but that it is even usual with the theologians to deny, with respect to God, things of privation, in an opposite sense. Thus, the Oracles declare, the All-luminous Light, invisible, and Him, Who is often sung, and of many names, to be unutterable and without name, and Him, Who is present to all, and is found of all, to be incomprehensible and past finding out. In this very way, even now, the Divine Apostle is said to have celebrated as "foolishness of God," that which appears unexpected and absurd in it, (but) which leads to the truth which is unutterable and before all reason. But, as I elsewhere said, by taking the things above us, in a sense familiar to ourselves, and by being entangled by what is congenial to sensible perceptions, and by comparing things Divine with our own conditions, we are led astray through following the Divine and mystical reason after a mere appearance. We ought to know that our mind has the power for thought, through which it views things intellectual, but that the union through which it is brought into contact with things beyond itself surpasses the nature of the mind. We must then contemplate things Divine, after this Union, not after ourselves, but by our whole selves, standing out of our whole selves, and becoming wholly of God. For it is better to be of God, and not of ourselves. For thus things Divine will, be given to those who become dear to God. Celebrating then, in a superlative sense, this, the irrational and mindless and foolish Wisdom, we affirm that It is Cause of all mind and reason, and all wisdom and understanding; and of It is every counsel, and from It every knowledge and understanding; and in It all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden. For, agreeably to the things already spoken, the super-wise, and all-wise Cause is a mainstay even of the self-existing Wisdom, both the universal and the individual.

(6) Those of whom he first thought that they should attain knowledge and the good things which are in it, they were planning - which is the wisdom of the Father, - that they might experience the evil things and might train themselves in them, as a [...] for a time, so that they might receive the enjoyment of good things for eternity. They hold change and persistent renunciation and the cause of those who fight against them as an adornment and marvelous quality of those who are exalted, so that it is manifest that the ignorance of those who will be ignorant of the Father was something of their own. He who gave them knowledge of him was one of his powers for enabling them to grasp that knowledge in the fullest sense is called "the knowledge of all that which is thought of" and "the treasure" and "the addition for the increase of knowledge," "the revelation of those things which were known at first," and "the path toward harmony and toward the pre-existent one," which is the increase of those who have abandoned the greatness which was theirs in the organization of the will, so that the end might be like the beginning.

(2) But see that none of the uninitiated listen to these things--those I mean who are entangled in things being, and fancy there is nothing superessentially above things being, but imagine that they know, by their own knowledge, Him, Who has placed darkness as His hiding-place. But, if the Divine initiations are above such, what would any one say respecting those still more uninitiated, such as both portray the Cause exalted above all, from the lowest of things created, and say that It in no wise excels the no-gods fashioned by themselves and of manifold shapes, it being our duty both to attribute and affirm all the attributes of things existing to It, as Cause of all, and more properly to deny them all to It, as being above all, and not to consider the negations to be in opposition to the affirmations, but far rather that It, which is above every abstraction and definition, is above the privations.

(18) Seeking Him, seek nothing of Him outside; within is to be sought what follows upon Him; Himself do not attempt. He is, Himself, that outer, He the encompassment and measure of all things; or rather He is within, at the innermost depth; the outer, circling round Him, so to speak, and wholly dependent upon Him, is Reason-Principle and Intellectual-Principle-or becomes Intellectual-Principle by contact with Him and in the degree of that contact and dependence; for from Him it takes the being which makes it Intellectual-Principle.

A circle related in its path to a centre must be admitted to owe its scope to that centre: it has something of the nature of that centre in that the radial lines converging on that one central point assimilate their impinging ends to that point of convergence and of departure, the dominant of radii and terminals: the terminals are of one nature with the centre, separate reproductions of it, since the centre is, in a certain sense, the total of terminals and radii impinging at every point upon it; these lines reveal the centre; they are the development of that undeveloped.

In the same way we are to take Intellectual-Principle and Being. This combined power springs from the Supreme, an outflow and as it were development from That and remaining dependent upon that Intellective nature, showing forth That which, in the purity of its oneness, is not Intellectual-Principle since it is no duality. No more than in the circle are the lines or circumference to be identified with that Centre which is the source of both: radii and circle are images given forth by indwelling power and, as products of a certain vigour in it, not cut off from it.

Thus the Intellective power circles in its multiple unity around the Supreme which stands to it as archetype to image; the image in its movement round about its prior has produced the multiplicity by which it is constituted Intellectual-Principle: that prior has no movement; it generates Intellectual-Principle by its sheer wealth.

Such a power, author of Intellectual-Principle, author of being- how does it lend itself to chance, to hazard, to any "So it happened"?

What is present in Intellectual-Principle is present, though in a far transcendent mode, in the One: so in a light diffused afar from one light shining within itself, the diffused is vestige, the source is the true light; but Intellectual-Principle, the diffused and image light, is not different in kind from its prior; and it is not a thing of chance but at every point is reason and cause.

The Supreme is cause of the cause: it is cause preeminently, cause as containing cause in the deepest and truest mode; for in it lie the Intellective causes which are to be unfolded from it, author as it is not of the chance- made but of what the divine willed: and this willing was not apart from reason, was not in the realm of hazard and of what happened to present itself.

Thus Plato, seeking the best account of the necessary and appropriate, says they are far removed from hazard and that what exists is what must exist: if thus the existence is as it must be it does not exist without reason: if its manner of being is the fitting, it is the utterly self-disposing in comparison with its sequents and, before that, in regard to itself: thus it is not "as it happened to be" but as it willed to be: all this, on the assumption that God wills what should be and that it is impossible to separate right from realization and that this Necessary is not to God an outside thing but is, itself, His first Activity manifesting outwardly in the exactly representative form. Thus we must speak of God since we cannot tell Him as we would.

(1) Prior to truly existing beings and total principles [or principles that rank as wholes], there is one God, prior to [that deity who is generally believed to be] the first God and king, immoveable, and abiding in the solitude of his own unity. For neither is the intelligible connected with him, nor any thing else; but he is established as the paradigm of the God who is the father of himself, is self begotten, is father alone, and is truly good. For he is something even greater and prior to this, is the fountain of all things, and the root of the first intelligible forms. But from this one deity, the God who is sufficient to himself unfolds himself, into light. For this divinity, also, is the principle and God of Gods, a monad from the one , prior to essence, and the principle of essence. For from him entity and essence are derived; and hence, also, he is denominated the principle of intelligibles. These, therefore, are the most ancient principles of all things, which Hermes arranges prior to the etherial, empyrean, and celestial Gods. He likewise delivered to us the history of the empyrean Gods in one hundred books; of the etherial in an equal number; and of the celestial in a thousand books.

(5) Summing up, then, let us say, that the being to all beings and to the ages, is from the Preexisting. And every age and time is from Him. And of every age and time, and of everything, howsoever existing, the Pre-existing is Source and Cause. And all things participate in Him, and from no single existing thing does He stand aloof. And He is before all things, and all things in Him consist. And absolutely, if anything is, in any way whatsoever, it both is, and is contemplated, and is preserved in the Pre-existing. And, before all the other participations in Him, the being is pre-supposed. And self-existent Being has precedence of the being self-existent Life; and the being self-existent Wisdom; and the being self-existent Divine Likeness; and the other beings, in whatever gifts participating, before all these participate in being; yea, rather, all self-existent things, of which existing things participate, participate in the self-existent Being. And there is nothing existent, of which the self-existent Being is not essence and age. Naturally, then, more chiefly than all the rest, Almighty God is celebrated as Being, from the prior of His other gifts; for pre-possessing even pre-existence, and super-existence, and super-possessing being, He pre-established all being, I mean self-existent being; and subjected everything, howsoever existing, to Being Itself. And then, all the sources of beings, as participating in being, both are, and are sources, and first are, and then are sources. And, if you wish to say, that the self-existent Life is source of living things, as living; and the self-existent Similitude, of things similar as similar; and the self-existent Union, of things united, as united; and the self-existent Order, of things ordered, as ordered and of the rest, as many as, by participating in this or that, or both, or many, are this or that, or both, or many, you will find the self-existent participations themselves, first participating in being, and by their being, first remaining;--then being sources of this or that, and by their participating in being, both being, and being participated. But, if these are by their participation of being, much more the things participating in them.

(1) Anything existing after The First must necessarily arise from that First, whether immediately or as tracing back to it through intervenients; there must be an order of secondaries and tertiaries, in which any second is to be referred to The First, any third to the second.

Standing before all things, there must exist a Simplex, differing from all its sequel, self-gathered not inter-blended with the forms that rise from it, and yet able in some mode of its own to be present to those others: it must be authentically a unity, not merely something elaborated into unity and so in reality no more than unity's counterfeit; it will debar all telling and knowing except that it may be described as transcending Being- for if there were nothing outside all alliance and compromise, nothing authentically one, there would be no Source. Untouched by multiplicity, it will be wholly self-sufficing, an absolute First, whereas any not-first demands its earlier, and any non-simplex needs the simplicities within itself as the very foundations of its composite existence.

There can be only one such being: if there were another, the two would resolve into one, for we are not dealing with two corporal entities.

Our One-First is not a body: a body is not simplex and, as a thing of process cannot be a First, the Source cannot be a thing of generation: only a principle outside of body, and utterly untouched by multiplicity, could be The First.

Any unity, then, later than The First must be no longer simplex; it can be no more than a unity in diversity.

Whence must such a sequent arise?

It must be an offspring of The First; for suppose it the product of chance, that First ceases to be the Principle of All.

But how does it arise from The First?

If The First is perfect, utterly perfect above all, and is the beginning of all power, it must be the most powerful of all that is, and all other powers must act in some partial imitation of it. Now other beings, coming to perfection, are observed to generate; they are unable to remain self-closed; they produce: and this is true not merely of beings endowed with will, but of growing things where there is no will; even lifeless objects impart something of themselves, as far as they may; fire warms, snow chills, drugs have their own outgoing efficacy; all things to the utmost of their power imitate the Source in some operation tending to eternity and to service.

How then could the most perfect remain self-set- the First Good, the Power towards all, how could it grudge or be powerless to give of itself, and how at that would it still be the Source?

If things other than itself are to exist, things dependent upon it for their reality, it must produce since there is no other source. And further this engendering principle must be the very highest in worth; and its immediate offspring, its secondary, must be the best of all that follows.

Since everyone—the gods of the world and people—says that nothing existed prior to chaos, I shall demonstrate that they all are mistaken, since they do not know the origin of chaos and its root. Here is the demonstration. How agreeable it is to all people to say that chaos is darkness! But actually chaos comes from a shadow that has been called darkness. The shadow comes from something existing from the beginning. So it is obvious that something in the beginning existed before chaos came into being, and that chaos came after what was in the beginning. Now let us consider the facts of the matter, and in particular what was in the beginning, from which chaos came. In this way the truth will be clearly demonstrated.

(1) In the first place, therefore, you say, “ it must be granted that there are Gods .” Thus to speak, however, is not right on this subject. For an innate knowledge of the Gods is coexistent with our very essence; and this knowledge is superior to all judgment and deliberate choice, and subsists prior to reason and demonstration. It is also counited from the beginning with its proper cause, and is consubsistent with the essential tendency of the soul to the good . If, indeed, it be requisite to speak the truth, the contact with divinity is not knowledge. For knowledge is in a certain respect separated [from its object] by otherness . But prior to the knowledge, which as one thing knows another, is the uniform connexion with divinity, and which is suspended from the Gods, is spontaneous and inseparable from them. Hence, it is not proper to grant this, as if it might not be granted, nor to admit it as ambiguous (for it is always unically established in energy); nor are we worthy thus to explore it, as if we had sufficient authority to approve or reject it. For we are comprehended in it, or rather we are filled by it, and we possess that very thing which we are, [or by which our essence is characterized] in knowing the Gods.

(9) But, if the Philosopher Clemens thinks good, that the higher amongst beings should be called exemplars in relation to something, his statement advances, not through correct and perfect and simple names. But, when we have conceded even this, to be correctly said, we must call to mind the Word of God, which says, "I have not shewn thee these things for the purpose of going after them, but that through the proportionate knowledge of these we may be led up to the Cause of all, as we are capable." We must attribute, then, all existing things to It, as beseems One Union pre-eminent above all, since by starting from Being, the essentiating Progression and Goodness, both penetrating all, and filling all things with Its own being, and rejoicing over all things being, pre-holds all things in Itself, rejecting all duplicity by an one superfluity of simplicity. But It grasps all things in the same way, as beseems its super-simplified Infinity, and is participated in by all uniquely, even as a voice, whilst being one and the same, is participated in by many ears as one.

(2) From It the contemplated and contemplating powers of the angelic Minds have their simple and blessed conceptions; collecting their divine knowledge, not in portions, or from portions, or sensible perceptions, or detailed reasonings, or arguing from something common to these things, but purified from everything material and multitudinous, they contemplate the conceptions of Divine things intuitively, immaterially and uniformly, and they have their intellectual power and energy resplendent with the unmixed and undefiled purity, and see at a glance the Divine conceptions indivisibly and immaterially, and are by the Godlike One moulded, as attainable by reason of the Divine Wisdom, to the Divine and Super-wise Mind and Reason. And souls have their reasoning power, investigating the truth of things by detailed steps and rotation, and through their divided and manifold variety falling short of the single minds, but, by the collection of many towards the One, deemed worthy, even of conceptions equal to the angels, so far as is proper and attainable to souls. But, even as regards the sensible perceptions themselves, one would not miss the mark, if one called them an echo of wisdom. Yet, even the mind of demons, qua mind, is from It; but so far as a mind is irrational, not knowing, and not wishing to attain what it aspires to, we must call it more properly a declension from wisdom. But, since the Divine Wisdom is called source, and cause, and mainstay, and completion and guard, and term of wisdom itself, and of every kind, and of every mind and reason, and every sensible perception, how then is Almighty God Himself, the super-wise, celebrated as Mind and Reason and Knowledge? For, how will He conceive any of the objects of intelligence, seeing He has not intellectual operations? or how will He know the objects of sense, seeing He is fixed above all sensible perception? Yet the Oracles affirm that He knoweth all things, and that nothing escapes the Divine Knowledge. But, as I have been accustomed to say many times before, we must contemplate things Divine, in a manner becoming God. For the mindless, and the insensible, we must attribute to God, by excess--not by defect, just as we attribute the irrational to Him Who is above reason; and imperfection, to the Super-perfect, and Pre-perfect; and the impalpable, and invisible gloom, to the light which is inaccessible on account of excess of the visible light. So the Divine Mind comprehends all things, by His knowledge surpassing all, having anticipated within Himself the knowledge of all, as beseems the Cause of all; before angels came to being, knowing and producing angels; and knowing all the rest from within; and, so to speak, from the Source Itself, and by bringing into being. And, this, I think, the sacred text teaches, when it says, "He, knowing all things, before their birth." For, not as learning existing things from existing things, does the Divine Mind know, but from Itself, and in Itself, as Cause, it pre-holds and pre-comprehends the notion and knowledge, and essence of all things; not approaching each several thing according to its kind, but knowing and containing all things, within one grasp of the Cause; just as the light, as cause, presupposes in itself the notion of darkness, not knowing the darkness otherwise than from the light. The Divine Wisdom then, by knowing Itself, will know all things; things material, immaterially, and things divisible, indivisibly, and things many, uniformly; both knowing and producing all. things by Itself, the One. For even, if as becomes one Cause, Almighty God distributes being to all things that be, as beseems the self-same, unique Cause, He will know all things, as being from Himself, and pre-established in Himself, and not from things that be will He receive the knowledge of them; but even to each of them, He will be provider of the knowledge of themselves, and of the mutual knowledge of each other. Almighty God, then, has not one knowledge, that of Himself, peculiar to Himself, and another, which embraces in common all things existing; for the very Cause of all things, by knowing Itself, will hardly, I presume, be ignorant of the things from Itself, and of which It is Cause. In this way then, Almighty God knows existing things, not by a knowledge of things existing, but by that of Himself. For the Oracles affirm, that the angels also know things on the earth, not as knowing them by sensible perceptions, although objects of sensible perception, but by a proper power and nature of the Godlike Mind.

(6) The first beginning is for the sake of the last end. God Himself doth not rest because He is the beginning, but because He is the end and goal of all creation. This end is concealed in the darkness of the everlasting Godhead, and is unknown, and never was known, and never will be known. God Himself remains unknown; the light of the everlasting Father shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. May the truth of which we have spoken lead us to the truth. Amen.