{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/003/0030503.htm","path":"chr/ecf/003/0030503.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/003/0030503.htm","text":"Chapter XXXIV.\u2014A Presumption that All Things Were Created by God Out of Nothing Afforded by the Ultimate Reduction of All Things to Nothing. Scriptures Proving This Reduction Vindicated from Hermogenes\u2019 Charge of Being Merely Figurative.\nBesides, 6489 the belief that everything was made from nothing will be impressed upon us by that ultimate dispensation of God which will bring back all things to nothing. For \u201cthe very heaven shall be rolled together as a scroll;\u201d 6490 nay, it shall come to nothing along with the earth itself, with which it was made in the beginning. \u201cHeaven and earth shall pass away,\u201d 6491 says He. \u201cThe first heaven and the first earth passed away,\u201d 6492 \u201cand there was found no place for them,\u201d 6493 because, of course, that which comes to an p. 497 end loses locality. In like manner David says, \u201cThe heavens, the works of Thine hands, shall themselves perish. For even as a vesture shall He change them, and they shall be changed.\u201d 6494 Now to be changed is to fall from that primitive state which they lose whilst undergoing the change. \u201cAnd the stars too shall fall from heaven, even as a fig-tree casteth her green figs 6495 when she is shaken of a mighty wind.\u201d 6496 \u201cThe mountains shall melt like wax at the presence of the Lord;\u201d 6497 that is, \u201cwhen He riseth to shake terribly the earth.\u201d 6498 \u201cBut I will dry up the pools;\u201d 6499 and \u201cthey shall seek water, and they shall find none.\u201d 6500 Even \u201cthe sea shall be no more.\u201d 6501 Now if any person should go so far as to suppose that all these passages ought to be spiritually interpreted, he will yet be unable to deprive them of the true accomplishment of those issues which must come to pass just as they have been written. For all figures of speech necessarily arise out of real things, not out of chimerical ones; because nothing is capable of imparting anything of its own for a similitude, except it actually be that very thing which it imparts in the similitude. I return therefore to the principle 6502 which defines that all things which have come from nothing shall return at last to nothing. For God would not have made any perishable thing out of what was eternal, that is to say, out of Matter; neither out of greater things would He have created inferior ones, to whose character it would be more agreeable to produce greater things out of inferior ones,\u2014in other words, what is eternal out of what is perishable. This is the promise He makes even to our flesh, and it has been His will to deposit within us this pledge of His own virtue and power, in order that we may believe that He has actually 6503 awakened the universe out of nothing, as if it had been steeped in death, 6504 in the sense, of course, of its previous non-existence for the purpose of its coming into existence. 6505\nIsa. 34:4, Matt. 24:29, 2 Pet. 3:10, Rev. 6:14.\n496:6491 496:6492 496:6493 497:6494 497:6495\nAcerba sua \u201cgrossos suos\u201d (Rigalt.). So our marginal reading.\n497:6496 497:6497 497:6498 497:6499 497:6500 497:6501\nEtiam mare hactenus, Rev. xxi. 1.\n497:6502 497:6503 497:6504 497:6505\nIn hoc, ut esset. Contrasted with the \u201cnon erat\u201d of the previous sentence, this must be the meaning, as if it were \u201cut fieret.\u201d","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol III: Tertullian: Part II: A Pres...","type":"page"}