And true too, that whatsoever is mutable, gives us to
understand a certain want of form, whereby it receiveth a form, or
is changed, or turned. It is true, that that is subject to no times,
which so cleaveth to the unchangeable Form, as though subject to
change, never to be changed. It is true, that that formlessness
which is almost nothing, cannot be subject to the alteration of times.
It is true, that that whereof a thing is made, may by a certain mode
of speech, be called by the name of the thing made of it; whence
that formlessness, whereof heaven and earth were made, might be called
heaven and earth. It is true, that of things having form, there is not
any nearer to having no form, than the earth and the deep. It is true,
that not only every created and formed thing, but whatsoever is
capable of being created and formed, Thou madest, of Whom are all
things. It is true, that whatsoever is formed out of that which had no
form, was unformed before it was formed.
Out of these truths, of which they doubt not whose inward eye Thou
hast enabled to see such things, and who unshakenly believe Thy
servant Moses to have spoken in the Spirit of truth; -of all these
then, he taketh one, who saith, In the Beginning God made the heaven
and the earth; that is, "in His Word coeternal with Himself, God
made the intelligible and the sensible, or the spiritual and the
corporeal creature.
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