Asclepius

qualities, quantities, the depths of the sea, and the force of fire, and knowing the effects of all these natures, may adore, worship, and praise the divine art and mind. To know music, indeed, is nothing other than to know the order of all things, and what divine reason has allotted. For the order of singular things, brought together into the one reason of the artificer, will compose the sweetest and truest things with a certain divine melodic concent. Asclepius What, therefore, will humans be after us? TRISMEGISTUS Deceived by the cunning of sophists, will they be turned away from true, pure, and holy philosophy? For to worship divinity with a simple mind and soul, to perform their sole veneration, and to give thanks also to the will of God, which is alone most full of goodness—this is philosophy, not violated by any importunate vice of the mind. And about these things, enough so far. About spirit, indeed, and about similar things, let us take the beginning from here. There is God and hyle matter, which in Greek is believed to be the world, and spirit accompanied the world. But not in the same way as God, nor are these of God, of which the world is, while they were not yet, since they were not born, but they were already in that place from which they were to be born. For those alone are not called unborn which are not yet born, but those which lack the fertility of generating, so that nothing can be born from them. Some things, indeed, are those in which there is a nature of generating; they are generable, from which something can be born even if they are born from themselves. That, indeed, is in doubt: whether from those which are born from themselves, it can easily be born from which all things are born. † God, therefore, is everlasting, God is eternal, nor can he be born, nor could he. He is, he always was, he will be. This, therefore, is the nature of God, which is entirely from itself.