EXCERPTS BY STOB^US. 103 



" True, O Father !" 



" What, then, would anyone call the Sun, alone beyond 

 nil other things not changed, but abiding of itself, Truth ? 

 Wherefore, also, because it alone hath been entrusted (a) 

 with the creation of all things in the world, ruling all 

 things, and making all things, which I both reverence and 

 ftlso salute (6) the truth of it, 1 and after The One and First, 

 1 acknowledge this creator. 



"What, then, may be the first Truth, O Father?" 



" One and only, Tatius ! Him not from matter, Him 

 not in body, the colourless (c), the very figureless (d), the 

 irreversible, the 2 unalterable, the ever-being. But the 

 falsehood, O Child I is corrupted. For corruption hath 

 laid hold of all things that are upon earth, and encom- 

 passes them (e) and the providence of the True will en- 

 compass. For apart from corruption (/) neither can 

 generation be sustained, since upon all generation corrup- 

 tion follows, that it may again be generate ; for it is neces- 

 sity that things generate be generated from those cor- 

 rupted; but it is necessity that things generate be cor- 

 rupted, that the generation of the things being do not 

 stop. Acknowledge this First Creator for the generation 

 of the Entities. Those things, then, generated from cor- 

 ruption, would be (y) falsehoods, because sometimes, in- 

 deed, becoming other things, then other things; for to 

 become the self-same things is impossible ; but that not 

 itself (Ji) how can it be true? One ought, then, to call 

 such things phantasies, 3 Child ! If we rightly designate 



(b) Trpoaxwu. (c) 



(g) tin. (h) civro. 



1 This is a quotation from Aristotle, Pint, 770: " *a/ Kpo<rx,vvZ: ye 

 Bourne, ftsy rov 5j?uoj>." 



2 " The Father of Light, with Whom there can be no variation, 

 neither shadow that is cast by turning " (James i. 17). See Poem- 

 andres iv. 2, and note. 



3 Plato writes thus in Sophistes," 263 : " Thought (d,^ ,), 

 opinion (do'!*), and phantasy (<poe,irrotffiet) are all generate in the souls. 

 Is not thought and speech the same, except that one within the soul 



