by a new decree of God, by which He afterwards willed what He
had not before willed._
Of all visible things, the world is the greatest; of all invisible,
the greatest is God. But, that the world is, we see; that God is, we
believe. That God made the world, we can believe from no one more
safely than from God Himself. But where have we heard Him? Nowhere
more distinctly than in the Holy Scriptures, where His prophet said,
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."[448] Was
the prophet present when God made the heavens and the earth? No; but
the wisdom of God, by whom all things were made, was there,[449] and
wisdom insinuates itself into holy souls, and makes them the friends
of God and His prophets, and noiselessly informs them of His works.
They are taught also by the angels of God, who always behold the face
of the Father,[450] and announce His will to whom it befits. Of these
prophets was he who said and wrote, "In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth." And so fit a witness was he of God, that the
same Spirit of God, who revealed these things to him, enabled him also
so long before to predict that our faith also would be forthcoming.
But why did God choose then to create the heavens and earth which
up to that time He had not made?[451] If they who put this question
wish to make out that the world is eternal and without beginning, and
that consequently it has not been made by God, they are strangely
deceived, and rave in the incurable madness of impiety. For, though
the voices of the prophets were silent, the world itself, by its
well-ordered changes and movements, and by the fair appearance of
all visible things, bears a testimony of its own, both that it has
been created, and also that it could not have been created save by
God, whose greatness and beauty are unutterable and invisible. As
for those[452] who own, indeed, that it was made by God, and yet
ascribe to it not a temporal but only a creational beginning, so
that in some scarcely intelligible way the world should always have
existed a created world, they make an assertion which seems to them
to defend God from the charge of arbitrary hastiness, or of suddenly
conceiving the idea of creating the world as a quite new idea, or
of casually changing His will, though He be unchangeable. But I do
not see how this supposition of theirs can stand in other respects,
and chiefly in respect of the soul; for if they contend that it is
co-eternal with God, they will be quite at a loss to explain whence
there has accrued to it new misery, which through a previous eternity
had not existed. For if they said that its happiness and misery
ceaselessly alternate, they must say, further, that this alternation
will continue for ever; whence will result this absurdity, that,
though the soul is called blessed, it is not so in this, that it
foresees its own misery and disgrace. And yet, if it does not foresee
it, and supposes that it will be neither disgraced nor wretched, but
always blessed, then it is blessed because it is deceived; and a more
foolish statement one cannot make. But if their idea is that the
soul's misery has alternated with its bliss during the ages of the
past eternity, but that now, when once the soul has been set free,
it will return henceforth no more to misery, they are nevertheless
of opinion that it has never been truly blessed before, but begins
at last to enjoy a new and uncertain happiness; that is to say,
they must acknowledge that some new thing, and that an important
and signal thing, happens to the soul which never in a whole past
eternity happened it before. And if they deny that God's eternal
purpose included this new experience of the soul, they deny that He
is the Author of its blessedness, which is unspeakable impiety.
If, on the other hand, they say that the future blessedness of the
soul is the result of a new decree of God, how will they show that
God is not chargeable with that mutability which displeases them?
Further, if they acknowledge that it was created in time, but will
never perish in time,--that it has, like number,[453] a beginning
but no end,--and that, therefore, having once made trial of misery,
and been delivered from it, it will never again return thereto, they
will certainly admit that this takes place without any violation of
the immutable counsel of God. Let them, then, in like manner believe
regarding the world that it too could be made in time, and yet that
God, in making it, did not alter His eternal design.