But it is not thus that the prophets and the apostles have told us that the world was made by God merely appearing and approaching matter. They did not even mention any matter but [said] that Wisdom was first set up, the beginning of his ways, for his works. Then that the Word was produced, "through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made." Indeed, "by the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all their hosts by the breath of his mouth." He is the Lord's right hand, indeed his two hands, by which he worked and constructed the universe. "For," he says, "the heavens are the works of your hands." Wherewith "he has measured out the heaven, and the earth with a span." Do not be willing so to cover God with flattery, as to contend that he produced by his mere appearance and simple approach so many vast substances, instead of rather forming them by his own energies. For this is proved by Jeremiah when he says, "God has made the earth by his power; he has established the world by his wisdom and has stretched out the heaven by his understanding." These are the energies by the stress of which he made this universe. His glory is greater if he labored.

In like manner David says, "The heavens, the works of your hands, shall themselves perish. For even as a garment shall he change them, and they shall be changed." Now to be changed is to fall from that primitive state that they lose while undergoing the change. "And the stars too shall fall from heaven, even as a fig tree casts its green figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind." "The mountains shall melt like wax at the presence of the Lord"; that is, "when he rises to shake terribly the earth." "But I will dry up the pools"; and "they shall seek water, and they shall find none." Even "the sea shall be no more." Now if any person should go so far as to suppose that all these passages ought to be spiritually interpreted, he will still be unable to deprive them of the true accomplishment of those issues that must come to pass just as they have been written. For all figures of speech necessarily arise out of real things, not out of chimerical ones; because nothing is capable of imparting anything of its own for a similitude, except it actually be that very thing that it imparts in the similitude. I return therefore to the principle that defines that all things that have come from nothing shall return at last to nothing.

Now John is not blamed, because he did this from love, but he is taught to know the difference between the strong and the weak. And therefore our Lord though He rewards the stronger, yet does not exclude the weak; as it follows, And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not, for he that is not against you is for you. True, O Lord. For both Joseph and Nicodemus, through fear Thy secret disciples, when the time came, did not refuse their offices. But still since Thou saidst elsewhere, He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth, (Luke 11:23.) explain unto us lest the two seem contrary to one another. And it seems to me, if any one considers the Searcher of hearts, he cannot doubt that every man’s action is distinguished by the motive of his heart.