Homilies on the Epistle to the Hebrews

^3. And again he says: “You Lord in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of Your hands. They shall perish, but You remain, and they shall all wax old as a garment, and as a vesture shall You fold them up, and they shall be changed: but You are the same and Your years shall not fail.”

Lest hearing the words, “and when He brings in the First-Begotten into the world”; you should think it as it were a Gift afterwards super-added to Him; above, he both corrected this beforehand, and again further corrects, saying, “in the beginning”: not now, but from the first. See again he strikes both Paul of Samosata and also Arius a mortal blow, applying to the Son the things which relate to the Father. And withal he has also intimated another thing by the way, greater even than this. For surely he has incidentally pointed out also the transfiguration of the world, saying, “they shall wax old as a garment, and as a vesture You shall fold them up, and they shall be changed.” Which also he says in the Epistle to the Romans, that he shall transfigure the world. And showing the facility thereof, he adds, as if a man should fold up a garment so shall He both fold up and change it. But if He with so much ease works the transfiguration and the creation to what is better and more perfect, needed He another for the inferior creation? How far does your shamelessness go? At the same time too this is a very great consolation, to know that things will not be as they are, but they all shall receive change, and all shall be altered, but He Himself remains ever existing, and living without end: “and Your years,” he says, “shall not fail.”