(20) The difficulty will be raised that God would seem to have existed before thus coming into existence; if He makes Himself, then in regard to the self which He makes He is not yet in being and as maker He exists before this Himself thus made.

The answer is that we utterly must not speak of Him as made but sheerly as maker; the making must be taken as absolved from all else; no new existence is established; the Act here is not directed to an achievement but is God Himself unalloyed: here is no duality but pure unity. Let no one suspect us of asserting that the first Activity is without Essence; on the contrary the Activity is the very reality. To suppose a reality without activity would be to make the Principle of all principles deficient; the supremely complete becomes incomplete. To make the Activity something superadded to the essence is to shatter the unity. If then Activity is a more perfect thing than essence and the First is all perfect, then the Activity is the First.

By having acted, He is what He is and there is no question of "existing before bringing Himself into existence"; when He acted He was not in some state that could be described as "before existing." He was already existent entirely.

Now assuredly an Activity not subjected essence is utterly free; God's selfhood, then, is of his own Act. If his being has to be ensured by something else, He is no longer the self-existent First: if it be true to say that He is his own container, then He inducts Himself; for all that He contains is his own production from the beginning since from the beginning He caused the being of all that by nature He contains.

If there had been a moment from which He began to be, it would be possible assert his self-making in the literal sense; but, since what He is He is from before all time, his self-making is to be understood as simultaneous with Himself; the being is one and the same with the making and eternal "coming into existence."

This is the source also of his self-disposal- strictly applicable if there were a duality, but conveying, in the case of a unity, a disposing without a disposed, an abstract disposing. But how a disposer with nothing to dispose? In that there is here a disposer looking to a prior when there is none: since there is no prior, This is the First- but a First not in order but in sovereignty, in power purely self-controlled. Purely; then nothing can be There that is under any external disposition; all in God is self-willing. What then is there of his content that is not Himself, what that is not in Act, what not his work? Imagine in Him anything not of his Act and at once His existence ceases to be pure; He is not self-disposing, not all-powerful: in that at least of whose doing He is not master He would be impotent.

(1) SEEING we are now to speak of God, what he is, and where he is, we must say, that God himself is the Essence of all Essences; for all is generated or born, created and proceeded from him, and all Things take their first Beginning out of God; as the Scripture witnesses, saying, Through him, and in him are all Things. Also, The Heaven and the Heaven of Heavens are not able to contain him: Also, Heaven is my Throne, and the Earth is my Footstool: And in Our Father is mentioned, thine is the Kingdom and the Power; understand all Power.

(3) The connascent perception, therefore, of the perpetual attendance of the Gods, will be assimilated to them. Hence, as they have an existence which is always invariably the same, thus also the human soul is conjoined to them by knowledge, according to a sameness of subsistence; by no means pursuing through conjecture, or opinion, or a syllogistic process, all which originate in time, an essence which is above all these, but through the pure and blameless intellections which the soul received from eternity from the Gods, becoming united to them. You, however, seem to think, that there is the same knowledge of divine natures as of any thing else, and that one thing, rather than another, may be granted from opposites, in the same manner as it is usual to do in dialectic discussions. There is, however, no similitude whatever between the two kinds of knowledge. For the knowledge of divine natures is different from that of other things, and is separated from all opposition. It likewise neither subsists in being now granted, or in becoming to be, but was from eternity, uniformly consubsistent with the soul. And thus much I say to you concerning the first principle in us, from which it is necessary those should begin who speak or hear any thing about the natures that are superior to us.

(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.

(19) But before everything (else), know your birth. Know yourself, that is, from what substance you are, or from what race, or from what species. Understand that you have come into being from three races: from the earth, from the formed, and from the created. The body has come into being from the earth with an earthly substance, but the formed, for the sake of the soul, has come into being from the thought of the Divine. The created, however, is the mind, which has come into being in conformity with the image of God. The divine mind has substance from the Divine, but the soul is that which he (God) formed for their own hearts. For I think that it (the soul) exists as wife of that which has come into being in conformity with the image, but matter is the substance of the body, which has come into being from the earth.

(2) With respect to the powers, therefore, which remain in the heavens in the divine bodies themselves, there can be no doubt that all of them are similar. Hence, it remains that we should discuss those powers which are thence transmitted to us, and are mingled with generation. These, therefore, descend with invariable sameness for the salvation of the universe, and connectedly contain the whole of generation after the same manner. They are likewise impassive and immutable, though they proceed into that which is mutable and passive. For generation being multiform, and consisting of different things, receives the one of the Gods, and that in them which is without difference, with hostility and partibility, conformably to its own contrariety and division. It also receives that which is impassive, passively; and, in short, participates of them according to its own proper nature, and not according to their power. As, therefore, that which is generated [or has a subsistence in becoming to be,] participates of being generatively, and body participates of the incorporeal, corporeally; thus, also, the physical and material substances which are in generation, participate of the immaterial and etherial bodies, which are above nature and generation, in a confused and disorderly manner. Hence they are absurd who attribute colour, figure, and contact to intelligible forms, because the participants of them are things of this kind; as likewise are those who ascribe depravity to the celestial bodies, because their participants sometimes produce evils.

(11) And then we know also, that this World (wherein we now are and live) was generated out of the eternal Original in Time (through the pure Element) in the Fiat, and so created; and so, it is not the Substance of the holy Element, but an Out-Birth out of the eternal Limbus of God, wherein the eternal Element consists, which is before the clear Deity, wherein consists Paradise, and the Kingdom of Heaven; and yet the Limbus, together with the pure Element, is not the pure Deity, which is alone holy in itself, and has the Virtue of the eternal Light shining in it, but has no Essences (in the Light of the Clarity) in it; for the Essences are generated from the Virtue, according to the Light, as a Desire; and the Desire attracts to it, from whence the Essences proceed, as also the eternal Darkness in the Source, as is before mentioned.

(55) When thou mindest, thinkest and considerest what there is in this world, and what there is without, besides or distinct from this world, or what the essence of all beings is, then thou speculatest, contemplatest, meditatest in the whole body of God, who is the essence of all beings; and that is a beginningless, infinite being.

(16) We maintain, and it is evident truth, that the Supreme is everywhere and yet nowhere; keeping this constantly in mind let us see how it bears on our present enquiry.

If God is nowhere, then not anywhere has He "happened to be"; as also everywhere, He is everywhere in entirety: at once, He is that everywhere and everywise: He is not in the everywhere but is the everywhere as well as the giver to the rest of things of their being in that everywhere. Holding the supreme place- or rather no holder but Himself the Supreme- all lies subject to Him; they have not brought Him to be but happen, all, to Him- or rather they stand there before Him looking upon Him, not He upon them. He is borne, so to speak, to the inmost of Himself in love of that pure radiance which He is, He Himself being that which He. loves. That is to say, as self-dwelling Act and Intellectual-Principle, the most to be loved, He has given Himself existence. Intellectual-Principle is the issue of Act: God therefore is issue of Act, but, since no other has generated Him, He is what He made Himself: He is not, therefore, "as He happened to be" but as He acted Himself into being.

Again; if He preeminently is because He holds firmly, so to speak, towards Himself, looking towards Himself, so that what we must call his being is this self-looking, He must again, since the word is inevitable, make Himself: thus, not "as He happens to be" is He but as He Himself wills to be. Nor is this will a hazard, a something happening; the will adopting the Best is not a thing of chance.

That his being is constituted by this self-originating self-tendence- at once Act and repose- becomes clear if we imagine the contrary; inclining towards something outside of Himself, He would destroy the identity of his being. This self-directed Act is, therefore, his peculiar being, one with Himself. If, then, his act never came to be but is eternal- a waking without an awakener, an eternal wakening and a supra-Intellection- He is as He waked Himself to be. This awakening is before being, before Intellectual-Principle, before rational life, though He is these; He is thus an Act before Intellectual-Principle and consciousness and life; these come from Him and no other; his being, then, is a self-presence, issuing from Himself. Thus not "as He happened to be" is He but as He willed to be.

(2) For truly first of all, eternal and transcending birth, is God the universals' Maker. Second is he "after His image", Cosmos, brought into being by Him, sustained and fed by Him, made deathless, as by his own Sire, living for aye, as ever free from death. Now that which ever-liveth, differs from the Eternal; for He hath not been brought to being by another, and even if He have been brought to being, He hath not been brought to being by Himself, but ever is brought into being. For the Eternal, in that It is eternal, is the all. The Father is Himself eternal of Himself, but Cosmos hath become eternal and immortal by the Father.

(3) What, then, can this be, this something in virtue of which we declare the entire divine Realm to be Eternal, everlasting? We must come to some understanding of this perpetuity with which Eternity is either identical or in conformity.

It must at once, be at once something in the nature of unity and yet a notion compact of diversity, or a Kind, a Nature, that waits upon the Existents of that Other World, either associated with them or known in and upon them, they collectively being this Nature which, with all its unity, is yet diverse in power and essence. Considering this multifarious power, we declare it to be Essence in its relation to this sphere which is substratum or underlie to it; where we see life we think of it as Movement; where all is unvaried self-identity we call it Repose; and we know it as, at once, Difference and Identity when we recognize that all is unity with variety.

Then we reconstruct; we sum all into a collected unity once more, a sole Life in the Supreme; we concentrate Diversity and all the endless production of act: thus we know Identity, a concept or, rather, a Life never varying, not becoming what previously it was not, the thing immutably itself, broken by no interval; and knowing this, we know Eternity.

We know it as a Life changelessly motionless and ever holding the Universal content in actual presence; not this now and now that other, but always all; not existing now in one mode and now in another, but a consummation without part or interval. All its content is in immediate concentration as at one point; nothing in it ever knows development: all remains identical within itself, knowing nothing of change, for ever in a Now since nothing of it has passed away or will come into being, but what it is now, that it is ever.

Eternity, therefore- while not the Substratum - may be considered as the radiation of this Substratum: it exists as the announcement of the Identity in the Divine, of that state- of being thus and not otherwise- which characterizes what has no futurity but eternally is.

What future, in fact, could bring to that Being anything which it now does not possess; and could it come to be anything which it is not once for all?

There exists no source or ground from which anything could make its way into that standing present; any imagined entrant will prove to be not alien but already integral. And as it can never come to be anything at present outside it, so, necessarily, it cannot include any past; what can there be that once was in it and now is gone? Futurity, similarly, is banned; nothing could be yet to come to it. Thus no ground is left for its existence but that it be what it is.

That which neither has been nor will be, but simply possesses being; that which enjoys stable existence as neither in process of change nor having ever changed- that is Eternity. Thus we come to the definition: the Life- instantaneously entire, complete, at no point broken into period or part- which belongs to the Authentic Existent by its very existence, this is the thing we were probing for- this is Eternity.

(44) Seeing, now that we can find nothing in all Nature, of which we may say, This is God, or here is God, from whence we might conclude, that God might be some strange Thing; and seeing himself witnesses, that his is the Kingdom and the Power from Eternity to Eternity; and that he calls himself Father, (and the Son is begotten out of the Loins of his Father,) therefore we must seek for him in the Original, a in the Principle out of which the World was generated and created in the Beginning; and we can say no otherwise, but that the first Principle is God the Father himself.

(18) The eternal Generating is an unbeginning Birth, and it has neither Number nor End, and its Depth is bottomless, and the Band of Life incorruptible: The syderial and elementary Spirit cannot discern it, much less comprehend it; it only feels it, and sees a Glimpse of it in the Mind; which [Mind] is the Chariot of the Soul, upon which it rides in the first Principle in its own Seat in the Father's eternal Generating [or Begetting;] for its own Substance is altogether crude, without a Body, and yet it has the Form of the Body in its own spiritual Form, understand according to the Image; which Soul, if it be regenerated in the Light of God, it sees in the Light of the Father, (which Light is his Glance, Luster, or Son,) in the eternal Birth, wherein it lives and remains eternally.

(16) As we are to know, that when God would manifest the eternal Mind in the Darkness, in the third Principle nwith this World, then first all Forms in the first Principle till Fire were manifested, and that Form now which comprehended the Light, that became angelical and paradisical; but that which comprehended not the Light, that remained to be wrathful, murderous, sour and evil, every one in its own Form and Essence. For every Form desired also to be manifested, for it was the Will of the eternal Essence to manifest itself. But now one Form was not able to manifest itself alone in the eternal Birth, for the one is the Member of the other, and the one without the other would not be.

(26) He is proceeded or born of nothing, but he himself is all, in eternity; and all whatsoever is, is come from his power, which from eternity goeth forth from him.

(9) So, if thou forcest me somewhat too bold, to speak, His being is conceiving of all things and making [them]. And as without its maker its is impossible that anything should be, so ever is He not unless He ever makes all things, in heaven, in air, in earth, in deep, in all of cosmos, in every part that is and that is not of everything. For there is naught in all the world that is not He. He is Himself, both things that are and things that are not. The things that are He hath made manifest, He keepeth things that are not in Himself.

(3) Ever illuminated, receiving light unfailing, the All-Soul imparts it to the entire series of later Being which by this light is sustained and fostered and endowed with the fullest measure of life that each can absorb. It may be compared with a central fire warming every receptive body within range.

Our fire, however, is a thing of limited scope: given powers that have no limitation and are never cut off from the Authentic Existences, how imagine anything existing and yet failing to receive from them?

It is of the essence of things that each gives of its being to another: without this communication, The Good would not be Good, nor the Intellectual-Principle an Intellective Principle, nor would Soul itself be what it is: the law is, "some life after the Primal Life, a second where there is a first; all linked in one unbroken chain; all eternal; divergent types being engendered only in the sense of being secondary."

In other words, things commonly described as generated have never known a beginning: all has been and will be. Nor can anything disappear unless where a later form is possible: without such a future there can be no dissolution.

If we are told that there is always Matter as a possible term, we ask why then should not Matter itself come to nothingness. If we are told it may, then we ask why it should ever have been generated. If the answer comes that it had its necessary place as the ultimate of the series, we return that the necessity still holds.

With Matter left aside as wholly isolated, the Divine Beings are not everywhere but in some bounded place, walled off, so to speak; if that is not possible, Matter itself must receive the Divine light .

(37) Thus is the Birth (and also the first Original) of all the Creatures; and it standeth yet in such a Birth in the Essence; and after such a Manner it is, out of the eternal Thoughts (viz. the Wisdom of God) by the Fiat, brought out of the Matrix; but being come forth out of the Darkness, out of the Out-Birth, out of the Center, (which yet was generated in the Time, in the Will,) therefore it is not eternal, but corruptible [or transitory,] like a Thought; and though it be indeed material, yet every again, as it was before the Beginning.

(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.

(17) "The Lord of the Universe is not called 'Father', but 'Forefather', the beginning of those that will appear, but he (the Lord) is the beginningless Forefather. Seeing himself within himself in a mirror, he appeared resembling himself, but his likeness appeared as Divine Self-Father, and Confronter over the Confronted ones, First Existent Unbegotten Father. He is indeed of equal age the Light that is before him, but he is not equal to him in power.