Against Hermogenes

He cannot say that it was as its Lord that God employed Matter for His creative works, for He could not have been the Lord of a substance which was co-equal with Himself. Well, but perhaps it was a title derived from the will of another, which he enjoyed— a precarious holding, and not a lordship, and that to such a degree, that although Matter was evil, He yet endured to make use of an evil substance, owing, of course, to the restraint of His own limited power, which made Him impotent to create out of nothing, not in consequence of His power; for if, as God, He had at all possessed power over Matter which He knew to be evil, He would first have converted it into good— as its Lord and the good God— that so He might have a good thing to make use of, instead of a bad one.

But being undoubtedly good, only not the Lord withal, He, by using such power as He possessed, showed the necessity He was under of yielding to the condition of Matter, which He would have amended if He had been its Lord. Now this is the answer which must be given to Hermogenes when he maintains that it was by virtue of His Lordship that God used Matter— even of His non-possession of any right to it, on the ground, of course, of His not having Himself made it. Evil then, on your terms, must proceed from God Himself, since He is— I will not say the Author of evil, because He did not form it, but— the permitter thereof, as having dominion over it. If indeed Matter shall prove not even to belong to God at all, as being evil, it follows, that when He made use of what belonged to another, He used it either on a precarious title because He was in need of it, or else by violent possession because He was stronger than it.

For by three methods is the property of others obtained—by right, by permission, by violence; in other words, by lordship, by a title derived from the will of another, by force. Now, as lordship is out of the question, Hermogenes must choose which (of the other methods) is suitable to God. Did He, then, make all things out of Matter, by permission, or by force? But, in truth, would not God have more wisely determined that nothing at all should be created, than that it should be created by the mere sufferance of another, or by violence, and that, too, with a substance which was evil?