First Complete Latin Philo

within himself he outlines almost all the parts of the city to be: temples, gymnasia, town halls, marketplaces, harbors, shipyards, streets and alleys, the placement of the walls, and the buildings both private and public. Then, with the images of each thing impressed as if in wax upon his mind, he fashions an intelligible city; recalling its image by innate memory, and having thus impressed the likenesses upon himself even more, like a good craftsman, looking back at the model once proposed, he undertakes his designated structure from stones and timber, representing those incorporeal ideas in the individual parts of the work. In nearly the same way we must think concerning God, who, when he decreed to found this vast city, first conceived its forms; from which, after he established the intelligible world, he founded this sensible one according to that model. Just as, therefore, that city pre-figured in the architect had no place outside, being only impressed on the mind of the craftsman; in the same way, not even that world consisting of ideas could have a place elsewhere than in the Word of God which adorned all these things. For what other place of the powers of God could be suitable for conceiving, I do not say all the ideas, but even any one of them, the simplest? Moreover, there is a power that is the maker of the world, arising from the true Good as from a fountain. For if anyone should wish to search out the cause of this universal workmanship, he would not, I think, miss the mark if he said what a certain ancient sage said: that the Father and Founder is good, and therefore by the goodness of his own nature he did not grudge his goodness to a substance having nothing of good from itself, which nevertheless was capable of becoming anything. For it was of itself devoid of all quality, unformed, inanimate, full of roughness, confusion, and discord; but capable of alteration and change into the best contrary state—namely, order, quality, life, likeness, identity, adaptation, and harmony, and the other things which pertain to the better idea. Then God, with no one advising him (for who else was there?), by his own counsel decreed to pour out the riches of his grace copiously and bountifully upon a nature capable of no good thing of itself without divine munificence. Yet he is not a benefactor according to the magnitude of his grace, which is indeed infinite and incomprehensible, but he tempers himself to the strengths of those whom he deems worthy of his beneficence. For just as God is inclined by nature to do good, so the creature is not as capable of receiving benefits. For his power far exceeds them, while the infirmity of the creature is unequal to their magnitude, and would succumb unless God moderated his grace according to the portion of each. But if any one should please to use plainer words, he would say that the intelligible world is nothing other than the Word of God already founding the world. For the intelligible city is nothing else than that reasoning of the architect, who is already thinking of founding the city conceived in his mind. For this is the opinion of Moses, not mine. Therefore, having begun to write of the generation of man, in the course of his discourse he expressly confesses that he was formed certainly according to the image of God. But if the part is an image of an image, it is clear that even this whole species—namely, this universal world, which more than man reflects the divine image—is likewise so. It is evident, then, that the archetypal seal, which we say is the intelligible world, is itself that archetypal model, the idea of ideas, the Word of God. For he relates how in the beginning God made heaven and earth, using "beginning" not, as some think, according to the significance of time—for time did not exist before the world, but either was made together with it, or after it.