Oddparts Press

For of the fulness of Thy goodness, doth Thy creature subsist,
that so a good, which could no ways profit Thee, nor was of Thee (lest
so it should be equal to Thee), might yet be since it could be made of
Thee. For what did heaven and earth, which Thou madest in the
Beginning, deserve of Thee? Let those spiritual and corporeal
natures which Thou madest in Thy Wisdom, say wherein they deserved
of Thee, to depend thereon (even in that their several inchoate and
formless state, whether spiritual or corporeal, ready to fall away
into an immoderate liberty and far-distant unlikeliness unto Thee;
-the spiritual, though without form, superior to the corporeal
though formed, and the corporeal though without form, better than were
it altogether nothing), and so to depend upon Thy Word, as formless,
unless by the same Word they were brought back to Thy Unity, indued
with form and from Thee the One Sovereign Good were made all very
good. How did they deserve of Thee, to be even without form, since
they had not been even this, but from Thee?

How did corporeal matter deserve of Thee, to be even invisible and
without form? seeing it were not even this, but that Thou madest it,
and therefore because it was not, could not deserve of Thee to be
made. Or how could the inchoate spiritual creature deserve of Thee,
even to ebb and flow darksomely like the deep, -unlike Thee, unless it
had been by the same Word turned to that, by Whom it was created,
and by Him so enlightened, become light; though not equally, yet
conformably to that Form which is equal unto Thee? For as in a body,
to be, is not one with being beautiful, else could it not be deformed;
so likewise to a created spirit to live, is not one with living
wisely; else should it be wise unchangeably. But good it is for it
always to hold fast to Thee; lest what light it hath obtained by
turning to Thee, it lose by turning from Thee, and relapse into life
resembling the darksome deep. For we ourselves also, who as to the
soul are a spiritual creature, turned away from Thee our light, were
in that life sometimes darkness; and still labour amidst the relics of
our darkness, until in Thy Only One we become Thy righteousness,
like the mountains of God. For we have been Thy judgments, which are