Do not so flatter God as to wish that He brought forth so many and so great substances by sight alone and by approach alone, and did not establish them by His own powers. For thus also Jeremiah commends Him: 'God making the earth in His strength, preparing the world in His understanding, and by His wisdom He stretched out the heavens.' These are His powers, by which, exerting Himself, He founded this whole. His glory is the greater, if He laboured; and finally, on the seventh day He rested from His works -- both in His own manner. Or if only by appearing and drawing near He made this world, did He then, when He ceased to make it, again cease to appear and to draw near? Nay rather, God has begun the more to appear and to be met with everywhere from the time when the world was made.
You see, therefore, how by the operation of God the universe consists -- by the strength of Him who makes the earth, by the understanding of Him who prepares the world, and by the discernment of Him who stretches out heaven -- not of Him who merely appears nor of Him who merely draws near, but of Him who applies such great exertions of His mind: wisdom, strength, discernment, word, spirit, power -- which would not have been necessary to Him, had He accomplished it merely by appearing and drawing near. And these are His invisible things, which, according to the apostle, from the foundation of the world are seen through His works -- not of some matter or other, I know not what, but His own perceptible attributes; for who has known the mind of the Lord, concerning which he exclaims: 'O the depth of the riches and of the wisdom, how unsearchable are His judgments and untraceable His ways!'
What savours more of these things than this: that all things were made out of nothing? Things which could be neither found out nor searched out save by God alone; otherwise they would be traceable and discoverable, if they had been searched out and found out of matter. Therefore, in so far as he establishes that no matter existed -- and from this too, that it is not fitting that even such a matter existed as is introduced -- in so far it would be proved that all things were made by God out of nothing; save that Hermogenes, in describing the same condition of matter as he himself is -- unordered, confused, turbulent, of a wavering and headlong and seething motion -- while he displays a document of his own art, has painted his own portrait. Text edited by J.H. Waszink, 1956. Scanned by Roger Pearse, Ipswich, 2003.