Thou
therefore, Lord, madest them; who art beautiful, for they are
beautiful; who art good, for they are good; who art, for they are; yet
are they not beautiful nor good, nor are they, as Thou their Creator
art; compared with Whom, they are neither beautiful, nor good, nor
are. This we know, thanks be to Thee. And our knowledge, compared with
Thy knowledge, is ignorance.
But how didst Thou make the heaven and the earth? and what the
engine of Thy so mighty fabric? For it was not as a human artificer,
forming one body from another, according to the discretion of his
mind, which can in some way invest with such a form, as it seeth in
itself by its inward eye. And whence should he be able to do this,
unless Thou hadst made that mind? and he invests with a form what
already existeth, and hath a being, as clay, or stone, or wood, or
gold, or the like. And whence should they be, hadst not Thou appointed
them? Thou madest the artificer his body, Thou the mind commanding the
limbs, Thou the matter whereof he makes any thing; Thou the
apprehension whereby to take in his art, and see within what he doth
without; Thou the sense of his body, whereby, as by an interpreter, he
may from mind to matter, convey that which he doth, and report to
his mind what is done; that it within may consult the truth, which
presideth over itself, whether it be well done or no.
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