If matter is uncreated, it has a claim to the same honours as God, since it must be of equal rank with Him.  Is this not the summit of wickedness, that an extreme deformity, without quality, without form, shape, ugliness without configuration, to use their own expression, should enjoy the same prerogatives with Him, Who is wisdom, power and beauty itself, the Creator and the Demiurge of the universe?  This is not all.  If matter is so great as to be capable of being acted on by the whole wisdom of God, it would in a way raise its hypostasis to an equality with the inaccessible power of God, since it would be able to measure by itself all the extent of the divine intelligence.  If it is insufficient for the operations of God, then we fall into a more absurd blasphemy, since we condemn God for not being able, on account of the want of matter, to finish His own works.  The poverty of human nature has deceived these reasoners.  Each of our crafts is exercised upon some special matter—the art of the smith upon iron, that of the carpenter on wood.  In all, there is the subject, the form and the work which results from the form.  Matter is taken from without—art gives the form—and the work is composed at the same time of form and of matter. cf. Arist., Met. vi. 7, πάντα δὲ τὰ γιγνόμενα ὑπό τέ τινος γίγνεται, καὶ ἔκ τινος, καὶ τί…τὸ δὲ ἐξ οὗ γίγνεται, ἣν λέγομεν ὕλην…τὸ δὲ ὑφ᾽ οὗ, τῶν φύσει τι ὄντων…εἶδος δὲ λέγω τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι ἑκάστον, καὶ τὴν πρώτην οὐσίαν.