{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th3/th303.htm","path":"gno/th3/th303.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th3/th303.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 3, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\n(I have added the title, the excerpt not being found in Patrizzi.\nText: Stob., Flor., lxxx. [lxxviii.] 9, under the heading: \u201cOf Hermes from the [Book] to Tat\u201d; G. iii. 135; M. iii. 104, 105. 1\nM\u00e9nard, Livre IV., No. x. of \u201cFragments from the Books of Hermes to his Son Tat,\u201d p. 256.)\n[Her.] To understand 2 God is difficult, to speak [of Him] impossible.\nFor that the Bodiless can never be expressed in body, the Perfect never can be comprehended by that which is imperfect, and that \u2019tis difficult for the Eternal to company with the ephemeral.\nThe one is for ever, the other doth pass; the one is in [the clarity of] Truth, the other in the shadow of appearance.\nSo far off from the stronger [is] the weaker,\nthe lesser from the greater [is so far], as [is] the mortal [far] from the Divine.\nIt is the distance, then, between the two that dims the Vision of the Beautiful.\nFor \u2019tis with eyes that bodies can be seen, with tongue that things seen can be spoken of; but That which hath no body, that is unmanifest, and figureless, and is not made objective [to us] out of matter,\u2014cannot be comprehended by our sense.\nI have it in my mind, O Tat, I have it in my mind, that what cannot be spoken of, is God.\nJustin Martyr quotes these opening words of our excerpt verbatim, assigning them to Hermes (Cohort., 38; Otto, ii. 122). 1\nThe substance of the second sentence is given twice by Lactantius in Latin (Div. Institt., ii. 8; Ep. 4); in the second passage the Church Father also quotes verbatim the first sentence of our excerpt, and from his introductory words we learn that they were the beginning of a written sermon from Hermes to his son (Tat).\nThe first four sentences are also quoted in almost identical words (there being two variants of reading and two slight additions) by Cyril,\u2014Contra Julianum, i. 31 (Migne, col. 549 B), who, moreover, gives some additional lines, beginning (Frag. xi.): \u201cIf, then, there be an incorporeal eye,\u201d etc.\nIf, furthermore, we are right in supposing that Frag. xv. (Cyril, ibid., i. 33) is from the same sermon, then this sermon is the \u201cFirst Sermon of the Expository [Sermons] to Tat,\u201d and the Stob\u00e6an heading, \u201cFrom the [Book] to Tat,\u201d will mean the collection of Expository Sermons (see Comment, on Frag. xv.).\n14:1 Hense\u2019s text ends with xlii. 17; the second part has apparently never been published.\n14:2 Or think of.\n15:1 Which see for Commentary under \u201cFragments.\u201d","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 3: I. Excerpts by Stob\u00e6us: Excerpt II. Of the Ineffability of God","type":"page"}