Page:Ante-Nicene Christian Library Vol 6.djvu/55

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Plato [lays down] that there are three originating principles of the universe, [namely] God, and matter, and exemplar; God as the Maker and Regulator of this universe, and the Being who exercises providence over it; but matter, as that which underlies all [phenomena], which [matter] he styles both receptive and a nurse, out of the arrangement of which proceeded the four elements of which the world consists; [I mean] fire, air, earth, water, from which all the rest of what are denominated concrete substances, as well as animals and plants, have been formed. And that the exemplar, which he likewise calls ideas, is the intelligence of the Deity, to which, as to an image in the soul, the Deity attending, fabricated all things. God, he says, is both incorporeal and shapeless, and comprehensible by wise men solely; whereas matter is body potentially, but with potentiality not as yet passing into action, for being itself without form and without quality, by assuming forms and qualities, it became body. That matter, therefore, is an originating principle, and coeval with the Deity, and that in this respect the world is uncreated. For [Plato] affirms that [the world] was made out of it. And that [the attribute of] imperlshableness necessarily belongs to (literally "follows") that which is uncreated. So far forth, however, as body is supposed to be compounded out of both many qualities and ideas, so far forth it is both created and perishable. But some of the followers of Plato mingled both of these, employing some such example as the following: That as a waggon can always continue undestroyed, though undergoing partial repairs from time to time, so that even the parts each in turn perish, yet itself remains always complete; so after this manner the world also, although in parts it perishes, yet the things that