Origen (De Principiis, I. ii. 10) had argued that “even God cannot be called omnipotent, unless there exist those over whom He may exercise His power,” and therefore creation must have been eternal, or God could not have been eternally Omnipotent.  In other passages Origen declares it an impiety to hold that matter is co-eternal with God (De Princip. II. i. 4), and yet maintains that there were other worlds before this, and that there was never a time when there was no world existing. Methodius, in a fragment of his work On things Created, preserved by Photius, and quoted by Bishop Bull (Def. Fid. Nic. II. xiii. 9), argues against these theories of Origen, that in John i. 2 the words “The same was in the beginning with God” indicate the authority (τὸ ἐξουσιαστικόν) of the Word which He had with the Father before the world came into existence; since from all eternity God the Father, together with His Word, possessed the Almighty power whereby whenever He would He could create worlds to rule over. Dean Church remarks that “On the other hand Tertullian, contra Hermog. 3, considering the attributes in question to belong not to the Divine Nature, but Office, denies that God was Almighty (Lord?) from eternity; while the Greeks affirmed this (vid. Cyril Alex. in Joann. xvii. 8, p. 963; Athan. Orat. ii. 12–14), as understanding by the term the inherent but latent attribute of doing what He had not yet done, τὸ ἐξουσιαστικόν.” Cleopas, the Jerusalem Editor, regards the passage as directed against Paul of Samosata, who asserted that Christ had become God, and received His kingdom and Lordship only after His Incarnation, and remarks:—“S. Cyril evidently regards the Lordship of Jesus Christ as twofold:  one that which from eternity belonged to Him as God, which he calls natural, according to which ‘He was ever both Lord and King, as being by nature God’ (Cyril Alex. in Johann. cap. xvii.); and the other the Lordship in time relative to the creatures, by which He exercises dominion over the works created by Him, as being their Maker.“