75 



nor shall the heavens accord with the course of the stars, 

 nor the course of the stars continue in the heavens. Every 

 divine voice shall be dumb by a necessary silence, the fruits of 

 the earth shall be corrupted, nor shall the earth be prolific, 

 and the air itself shall languish with a sorrowful torpor. 

 These events and such an old age of the world as this shall 

 take place, such irreligion, inordination, and unreasonable- 

 ness of all good. When all these things shall happen, O 

 Asclepius, then that lord and father, the God who is first in 

 power, and the one governor of the world, looking into the 

 manners and voluntary deeds [of men], and by his will, 

 which is the benignity of God, resisting vices, and recalling 

 the error arising from the corruption of all things ; washing 

 away likewise all malignity by a deluge, or consuming it by 

 fire, or bringing it to an end by disease and pestilence dis- 

 persed in different places, will recall the world to its ancient 

 form, in order that the world itself may appear to be an 

 adorable and admirable production, and God, the fabricator 

 and restorer of so great a work, may be celebrated, by all that 

 shall then exist, with frequent solemn praises and benedic- 

 tions. For this geniture * of the world is the reformation of 

 all good things, and the most holy and religious restitution 

 of the nature of it, the course of time being accomplished t; 

 since time is perpetual, and always was without a beginning. 

 For the will of God is without beginning, is always the 

 same, and is everywhere eternal." 



Of this very remarkable extract, it is necessary to observe, 

 in the first place, that it was principally made by me from 



* By the geniture of the world, the greater apocatastasis is sig- 

 nified, as is evident from the preceding extract from Julius Fir- 

 micus. 



f i. e. a mundane period being finished. 



