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(21) As we see that here out of the Earth there springs Plants, Herbs, and Fruits, which receive their Virtue from the Sun, and from the Constellation: So the Heaven or the heavenly Limbus is instead of the Earth; and the Light of God instead of the Sun; and the eternal Father instead of the Virtue of the Stars. The Depth of this Substance is without Beginning and End, its Breadth cannot be reached, there are neither Years nor Time, no Cold nor Heat; no moving of the Air; no Sun nor Stars; no Water nor Fire; no Sight of evil Spirits; no Knowledge nor Apprehension of the Affliction of this World; no stony Rock nor Earth; and yet a figured Substance of all the Creatures of this World. For all the Creatures of this World have appeared to this End, that they might be an eternal figured Similitude; not that they continue in this Spirit in their Substance, no not so: All the Creatures return into their a Ether, and the Spirit corrupts [or fades,] but the Figure and the Shadow continue eternally.

(40) For in the Beginning of the Creation, at the Time when the Earth became material, all was generated out of one only Substance, and there was no more done but a Separation made of one from another: Therefore in every Separation there must needs be always a vehement Hunger of one 1 after another. An Example whereof you have in Propagation; for the Sake whereof the Separation was so made: For you see that there is a Male and a Female; and that the one continually desires Copulation with the other, that they may generate. This is a great hidden Secret. Observe, when the Creator by the Fiat separated the Matrix from the Aquaster [or watery Mother;] for the first Form is heavenly and incorruptible, as long as the Kingdom of this World stands, and the Root of the first Form holds Paradise. vill set it down more intelligibly [or plainly] for the simplest Reader's Sake.

(31) Timaeus: Wherefore, in order that this Creature might resemble the all perfect Living Creature in respect of its uniqueness, for this reason its Maker made neither two Universes nor an infinite number, but there is and will continue to be this one generated Heaven, unique of its kind. Now that which has come into existence must needs be of bodily form, visible and tangible; yet without fire nothing could ever become visible, nor tangible without some solidity, nor solid without earth. Hence, in beginning to construct the body of the All, God was making it of fire and earth. But it is not possible that two things alone should be conjoined without a third;

(7) Consider the universe: we are agreed that its existence and its nature come to it from beyond itself; are we, now, to imagine that its maker first thought it out in detail- the earth, and its necessary situation in the middle; water and, again, its position as lying upon the earth; all the other elements and objects up to the sky in due place and order; living beings with their appropriate forms as we know them, their inner organs and their outer limbs- and that having thus appointed every item beforehand, he then set about the execution?

Such designing was not even possible; how could the plan for a universe come to one that had never looked outward? Nor could he work on material gathered from elsewhere as our craftsmen do, using hands and tools; feet and hands are of the later order.

One way, only, remains: all things must exist in something else; of that prior- since there is no obstacle, all being continuous within the realm of reality- there has suddenly appeared a sign, an image, whether given forth directly or through the ministry of soul or of some phase of soul, matters nothing for the moment: thus the entire aggregate of existence springs from the divine world, in greater beauty There because There unmingled but mingled here.

From the beginning to end all is gripped by the Forms of the Intellectual Realm: Matter itself is held by the Ideas of the elements and to these Ideas are added other Ideas and others again, so that it is hard to work down to crude Matter beneath all that sheathing of Idea. Indeed since Matter itself is in its degree, an Idea- the lowest- all this universe is Idea and there is nothing that is not Idea as the archetype was. And all is made silently, since nothing had part in the making but Being and Idea further reason why creation went without toil. The Exemplar was the Idea of an All, and so an All must come into being.

Thus nothing stood in the way of the Idea, and even now it dominates, despite all the clash of things: the creation is not hindered on its way even now; it stands firm in virtue of being All. To me, moreover, it seems that if we ourselves were archetypes, Ideas, veritable Being, and the Idea with which we construct here were our veritable Essence, then our creative power too would toillessly effect its purpose: as man now stands, he does not produce in his work a true image of himself: become man, he has ceased to be the All: ceasing to be man- we read- "he soars aloft and administers the Kosmos entire"; restored to the All he is maker of the All.

But- to our immediate purpose- it is possible to give a reason why the earth is set in the midst and why it is round and why the ecliptic runs precisely as it does, but, looking to the creating principle, we cannot say that because this was the way therefore things were so planned: we can say only that because the All is what it is, therefore there is a total of good; the causing principle, we might put it, reached the conclusion before all formal reasoning and not from any premises, not by sequence or plan but before either, since all of that order is later, all reason, demonstration, persuasion.

Since there is a Source, all the created must spring from it and in accordance with it; and we are rightly told not to go seeking the causes impelling a Source to produce, especially when this is the perfectly sufficient Source and identical with the Term: a Source which is Source and Term must be the All-Unity, complete in itself.

(31) But you will say, this is only God, and he is a Spirit, and has created all Things out of nothing. It is very true, he is a Spirit, and in our Sight he is as nothing: And if we had not some Knowledge of him by the Creation, we should know nothing of him at all. And if he himself had not been from all Eternity, there could nothing have ever been.

(53) Timaeus: fire and water and earth and air, although possessing some traces of their own nature, were yet so disposed as everything is likely to be in the absence of God; and inasmuch as this was then their natural condition, God began by first marking them out into shapes by means of forms and numbers. And that God constructed them, so far as He could, to be as fair and good as possible, whereas they had been otherwise,—this above all else must always be postulated in our account. Now, however, it is the disposition and origin

(63) For because Man was to be eternal, therefore he must also come to be out of the Eternal; for nothing is created out of the Fountain of the Heart of God. For that is the End of Nature, and has no such Essences; no comprehensible [or palpable] Thing enters therein; otherwise it would be a Filling and Darkness, and that cannot be: Also from Eternity, there has been nothing else but only the Source [or working Property] where the Deity continually rises up, as is mentioned before.

(7) Nay, the philosophers. having so heard from Moses, taught that the world was created. And so Plato expressly said, "Whether was it that the world had no beginning of its existence, or derived its beginning from some beginning? For being visible, it is tangible; and being tangible, it has a body." Again, when he says, "It is a difficult task to find the Maker and Father of this universe," he not only showed that the universe was created, but points out that it was generated by him as a son, and that he is called its father, as deriving its being from him alone, and springing from non-existence. The Stoics, too, hold the tenet that the world was created.

(2) Therefore now I direct the Reader to the Creatures, that he may search into them, and so he shall find all Things, and that more wonderfully than any Man can write or speak, if we be born of God. We must not a think with our Understanding and Skill, of God's making or creating, as of a Man that makes something, as a Potter makes a Vessel of a Lump of Clay, or a Stone-Cutter or Carver makes an Image after his Pleasure; and if it does not please him, then he breaks it again: No, the Works of God, in the Creation of the World, were altogether fixt and stedfast, good and perfect, as Moses writes: And God saw all that he had made, and behold it was very good.

(57) Since he created the realm (of heaven) and fashioned the firm earth

(6) Therefore though we speak of the Creation of the World, as if we had been by as present, and had seen it, none ought to marvel at it, nor hold it for impossible. For the Spirit that is in us, which one Man inherits from the other, that was breathed out of the Eternity into Adam, that same Spirit has seen it all, and in the Light of God it sees it still; and there is nothing that is far off, or unsearchable: For the eternal Birth, which stands hidden in the Center of Man, that does nothing [that is] new, it knows, works and does even the same that ever it did from Eternity; it labours for the Light and for the Darkness, and works in great Anguish; but when the Light shines therein, then there is mere Joy and Knowledge in its Working.

(2) And as in glass, in amber, or in crystal A sunbeam flashes so, that from its coming To its full being is no interval, So from its Lord did the triform effect Ray forth into its being all together, Without discrimination of beginning. Order was con-created and constructed In substances, and summit of the world Were those wherein the pure act was produced. Pure potentiality held the lowest part; Midway bound potentiality with act Such bond that it shall never be unbound. Jerome has written unto you of angels Created a long lapse of centuries Or ever yet the other world was made; But written is this truth in many places By writers of the Holy Ghost, and thou Shalt see it, if thou lookest well thereat. And even reason seeth it somewhat, For it would not concede that for so long Could be the motors without their perfection. Now dost thou know both where and when these Loves Created were, and how; so that extinct In thy desire already are three fires.

(3) Now when God was to create the World, and all things therein, he had no other a Matter to make it of, but his own which has neither Beginning nor End, and his Greatness and Depth is all. Yet a Spirit does nothing but ascend, flow, move, and continually generate itself, and in itself has chiefly a threefold Manner of Form in its Generating or Birth, vis. Bitterness, Harshness, and cHeat, and these three Manner of Forms are neither of them the first, second, nor third; for all these three are but one, and each of them generates the second and third. For between Harshness and Bitterness, Fire is generated: and the Wrath of the Fire is the Bitterness or Sting itself, and the Harshness is the Stock or Father of both these, and yet is generated of them both; for a Spirit is like a Will, Sense, [or Thought,] which rises up, and in its Rising beholds,perfects, and generates itself.

(22) Reason must not imagine, that God ever made any Beast out of a Lump of Earth, as a Potter makes a Pot. But he said, Let there come forth all Sorts of Beasts, every one after its Kind; that is, out of all Essences, every one after the Property of its Essence; and so also it was (by the Fiat) figured according to the Property of its own Essence; and in like Manner, all Trees, Herbs, and Grass, all at once together. How then should the image of God be made out of the fragile [or corruptible] Essences? But it [must be and] was made in the Paradise out of the eternal [Essences.]

(14) Now therefore we say (as the Scripture informs us) that God dwells in Heaven, and it is the Truth. Now mark, Moses writes, that God created the Heaven out of the Midst of the Waters, and the Scripture says, God dwells in Heaven; therefore we may now observe, that the Water has its Original from the Longing of the eternal Nature after the eternal Light of God; but the eternal Nature is made manifest by the Longing after the Light of God, as is mentioned before; and the Light of God is present every where, and yet remains hidden to Nature; for Nature receives only the Virtue of the Light, and the Virtue is the Heaven wherein the Light of God dwells and is hid, and so shines in the Darkness. The Water is the Materia, or Matter that is generated from the Heaven, and therein stands the third, which again generates a Life, and comprehensible Essence, or Substance, out of itself, viz. the Elements and other Creatures.

(33) For all Things are come to be Something out of Nothing: And every Creature has the Center, or the Circle of the Birth of Life in itself; and as the Elements lie hid in one another in one only Mother, and none of them comprehends the other, though they are Members one of another, so the created Creatures are hidden and invisible to one another. For every Creature looks but into its Mother that is fixed [or predominant] in it. The material Creature sees a material Substance, but an immaterial Substance (as the Spirits in the Fire and in the Air) it sees not; as the Body sees not the Soul, which yet dwells in it; or as the third Principle does not comprehend, nor apprehend the second Principle wherein God is; though indeed itself is in God, yet there is a Birth between: As it is with the Spirit of the Soul of Man, and the elementary Spirit in Man, the one being the Case, [Chest,] or Receptacle of the other; as you shall find, about the Creation of Man.

(37) Now you can here produce nothing, more, that God should ever use any Matter out of which to create the Devil, for then the Devil might justify himself, that he made him evil, or of evil Matter. For God created him out of nothing, but merely out of his own Essence or Substance, as well as the other Angels. As it is written, Through him, and in him, are all Things: And His only is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory; and all in him, as the holy Scripture witnesses. And if it was not thus, no Sin would be imputed to the Devil, nor Men, if they were not eternal, and both in God, and out of God himself.

(30) Therefore Moses writes, that God created the Heaven out of the Midst of the Waters: [This you must] understand [to be] out of the eternal watery Matrix, which is but a Spirit, wherein the Paradise is, and the Holy Heaven, viz. the divine Virtue, which the dark Matrix lusted after in its Hunger, out of which the visible Matrix of the four Elements is proceeded; out of which the Essence of all Essences, that now are, were created by the Fiat through the Eternal Spirit of God.

(14) But that we may so speak of the Heaven, that the Reader might come to understand what that [Heaven] is which God then created, [consider] what Moses writes of it. God made a Firmament between the Waters, and separated the Waters beneath the Firmament from the Waters above the Firmament, and the Firmament he called Heaven, which is very right; but hitherto it has been very ill understood.