On the Trinity 3

This God, then, we acknowledge and know, the Maker of all things: Lord because of his power, and Father because of his creating. This is he, I say, who spoke and all things were made; who commanded and all things came forth; of whom it is written, “In wisdom you have made all things”; of whom Moses says, “God in heaven above and on the earth below”; who, according to Isaiah, measured the heaven with his palm and the earth with his fist; who looks on the earth and makes it tremble; who holds the circle of the earth and those who dwell in it as locusts; who weighs the mountains in a balance and the groves in scales, that is, by the sure judgment of the divine ordering; and, lest the mass, lying unevenly, should easily fall into ruin if it were not balanced with equal weights, he evened out this burden of the earthly bulk with due measure. It is he who says through the prophet, “I am God, and there is none besides me.” It is he who declares through the same prophet, “For I will not give my majesty to another”, so as to exclude all heathens and heretics together with their fabrications, proving that he is not God who has been made by the hand of an artisan, nor he who has been fashioned by the invention of a heretic. For he is not God for whose existence an artisan must be sought. And he further added through the prophet, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet: what house will you build for me, or what is the place of my rest?”, to show that a temple cannot hold him whom the world cannot hold; and he says this not to boast of himself but for our knowledge. For he does not desire from us the glory of greatness, but wishes, as a Father, to confer on us religious wisdom.

And further, wishing to draw our wild spirits, swollen and harsh with rustic savagery, to gentleness, he says, “And upon whom will my Spirit rest, but upon the humble and quiet, and him who trembles at my words?”, so that man may in some measure know how great God is, while he learns to fear him through the Spirit that is given. In the same way, wishing still more to come to our knowledge and stirring our minds to worship him, he said, “I am the Lord, who made light and created darkness”, so that we should not suppose some nature or other to be the artisan of those alternations by which nights and days are governed, but should rather acknowledge God (as was truer) as their Maker. Since we cannot see him with the gaze of our eyes, we learn of him from the greatness, power, and majesty of his works. “For his invisible things,” says the apostle Paul, “from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood through the things that have been made; his eternal power also and divinity”, so that the human mind, learning hidden things from things manifest, might from the greatness of the works it sees contemplate with the eyes of the mind the greatness of the Artisan. Of him the same apostle says, “Now to the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory.” For he who has surpassed the greatness of thought has escaped the gaze of the eyes. “For,” he says, “from him and through him and in him are all things.” For by his command all things exist, so that they are from him; and by his word they are ordered, so that they are through him; and all things fall back under his judgment, so that, while they wait in him for liberty, when corruption has been laid aside, they may be seen to have been called back to him.