98 HERMES TPJSMEGISTUS. 



6. For if the Maker is nothing else beside that making, 

 only, simple, incomposite, it is of necessity that He make 

 this same for Himself; since generation is the making by 

 the Maker, and every the generate it is impossible to be 

 generate by itself. Generate must be generated by another. 

 Without Him making, the generated neither is generated, 

 nor is. For the one without the other hath lost its proper 

 nature by deprivation of the other. If then the Entities 

 are acknowledged to be Two, 1 That Generate and That 

 Making, One are they by the Union (a); this indeed 

 preceding but that following. Preceding indeed God The 

 Maker but following That Generate, whatever it may be. 



7. And because of the variety of those generate thou 

 shouldst not be scrupulous, fearing to attribute meanness 

 and dishonour to The God. For His Glory is One The 

 Making all things, and this is of The God as it were body, 



. The Making; but to Him The Maker nothing evil or base is 

 "^ to be imputed. For these are the passions following upon 

 the generation, as rust on the brass and dirt on the body. 

 For neither did the brass worker make the rust, nor 

 those having generated the dirt, nor The God the evil- 

 ness ; but the vicissitude (&) of the generation makes 

 them as it were to effloresce (c) ; and because of this 

 The God made the change, as it were a purgation of the 

 J generation. 



f 8. Besides indeed to the same limner (d) it is allowed 

 both to make Heaven, and Gods, and earth, and sea, and 

 men, and all the brutes (e), and the inanimate, and the 

 trees ; but to The God is it impossible to make these ? O 

 the much silliness and ignorance, this about The God ! For 

 such sort suffer the most dreadful of all things. For 

 affirming that they both reverence and praise The God, by 

 not ascribing (/) to Him the making of all things they 

 neither know The God, and in addition to the not know- 

 ing, also in the greatest degree are they impious towards 



(a) TJ5 evatrei. (b) S;a^o;/3j. (c) i^ew&tiv. 



(d) faypatya. {&) cihoyct. (/) 



1 See Cyrill. Alex. Contr. Jul., 63 E, (post, Peart III.). 



