XXIII. Again, where do you get your
Unbegotten and Unoriginate, those two citadels of your position, or we
our Immortal? Show me these in so many words, or we shall either
set them aside, or erase them as not contained in Scripture; and you
are slain by your own principle, the names you rely on being
overthrown, and therewith the wall of refuge in which you
trusted. Is it not evident that they are due to passages which
imply them, though the words do not actually occur? What are
these passages?—I am the first, and I am the last, Isa. xli. 4. and before Me there was no God, neither
shall there be after Me. Ib. xliii.
10. For all that
depends on that Am makes for my side, for it has neither beginning nor
ending. When you accept this, that nothing is before Him, and
that He has not an older Cause, you have implicitly given Him the
titles Unbegotten and Unoriginate. And to say that He has no end
of Being is to call Him Immortal and Indestructible. The first
pairs, then, that I referred to are accounted for thus. But what
are the things which neither exist in fact nor are said? That God
is evil; that a sphere is square; that the past is present; that man is
not a compound being. Have you ever known a man of such stupidity
as to venture either to think or to assert any such thing? It
remains to shew what are the things which exist, both in fact and in
language. God, Man, Angel, Judgment, Vanity (viz., such arguments
as yours), and the subversion of faith and emptying of the
mystery.