For of the plenitude of Your goodness Your creature subsists, that a good, which could profit You nothing, nor though of You was equal to You, might yet be, since it could be made of You. For what did heaven and earth, which You made in the beginning, deserve of You? Let those spiritual and corporeal natures, which Thou in Your wisdom made, declare what they deserve of You to depend thereon — even the inchoate and formless, each in its own kind, either spiritual or corporeal, going into excess, and into remote unlikeness unto You (the spiritual, though formless, more excellent than if it were a formed body; and the corporeal, though formless, more excellent than if it were altogether nothing), and thus they as formless would depend upon Your Word, unless by the same Word they were recalled to Your Unity, and endued with form, and from You, the one sovereign Good, were all made very good. How have they deserved of You, that they should be even formless, since they would not be even this except from You? How has corporeal matter deserved of You, to be even invisible and formless, 1Genesis 1:2 since it were not even this had Thou not made it; and therefore since it was not, it could not deserve of You that it should be made? Or how could the inchoate spiritual creature deserve of You, that even it should flow darksomely like the deep — unlike You, had it not been by the same Word turned to that by Whom it was created, and by Him so enlightened become light, although not equally, yet conformably to that Form which is equal unto You? For as to a body, to be is not all one with being beautiful, for then it could not be deformed; so also to a created spirit, to live is not all one with living wisely, for then it would be wise unchangeably. But it is good for it always to hold fast unto You, lest, in turning from You, it lose that light which it has obtained in turning to You, and relapse into a light resembling the darksome deep. For even we ourselves, who in respect of the soul are a spiritual creature, having turned away from You, our light, were in that life sometimes darkness; 2Ephesians 5:8 and do labour amidst the remains of our darkness, until in Your Only One we become Your righteousness, like the mountains of God . For we have been Your judgments, which are like the great deep. Chapter 3. Genesis I. 3 — Of Light, — He Understands as It is Seen in the Spiritual Creature. But what Thou said in the beginning of the creation, Let there be light, and there was light, 3Genesis 1:3 I do not unfitly understand of the spiritual creature; because there was even then a kind of life, which You might illuminate. But as it had not deserved of You that it should be such a life as could be enlightened, so neither, when it already was, has it deserved of You that it should be enlightened. For neither could its formlessness be pleasing unto You, unless it became light — not by merely existing, but by beholding the illuminating light, and cleaving unto it; so also, that it lives, and lives happily, it owes to nothing whatsoever but to Your grace ; being converted by means of a better change unto that which can be changed neither into better nor into worse; the which Thou only art because Thou only simply art, to whom it is not one thing to live, another to live blessedly, since You are Yourself Your own Blessedness.
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