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Against Hermogenes

Tertullian, ANF 3

Shapeless Matter an Incongruous Origin for God’s Beautiful Cosmos. Hermogenes Does Not…

You say that Matter was reformed for the better¹ -from a worse condition, of course; and thus you would make the better a copy of the worse. Everything was in confusion, but now it is reduced to order; and would you also say, that out of order, disorder is produced? No one thing is the exact mirror² of another thing; that is to say, it is not its co-equal. Nobody ever found himself in a barber’s looking-glass look like an ass³ instead of a man; unless it be he who supposes that unformed and shapeless Matter answers to Matter which is now arranged and beautified in the fabric of the world. What is there now that is without form in the world, what was there once that was formed⁴ in Matter, that the world is the mirror of Matter? Since the world is known among the Greeks by a term denoting ornament,⁵ how can it present the image of unadorned⁶ Matter, in such a way that you can say the whole is known by its parts? To that whole will certainly belong even the portion which has not yet become formed; and you have already declared that the whole of Matter was not used as material in the creation.⁷ It follows, then, that this rude, and confused, and unarranged portion cannot be recognized in the polished, and distinct and well-arranged parts of creation, which indeed can hardly with propriety be called parts of Matter, since they have quitted⁸ its condition, by being separated from it in the transformation they have undergone.

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