These things
they see, and rejoice, in the little degree they here may, in the
light of Thy truth.
Another bends his mind on that which is said, In the Beginning God
made heaven and earth; and beholdeth therein Wisdom, the Beginning
because It also speaketh unto us. Another likewise bends his mind on
the same words, and by Beginning understands the commencement of
things created; In the beginning He made, as if it were said, He at
first made. And among them that understand In the Beginning to mean,
"In Thy Wisdom Thou createdst heaven and earth," one believes the
matter out of which the heaven and earth were to be created, to be
there called heaven and earth; another, natures already formed and
distinguished; another, one formed nature, and that a spiritual, under
the name Heaven, the other formless, a corporeal matter, under the
name Earth. They again who by the names heaven and earth, understand
matter as yet formless, out of which heaven and earth were to be
formed, neither do they understand it in one way; but the one, that
matter out of which both the intelligible and the sensible creature
were to be perfected; another, that only, out of which this sensible
corporeal mass was to he made, containing in its vast bosom these
visible and ordinary natures.
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