Chapter XXI. Philo on the Same

[PHILO IUDAEUS] [1] ‘BUT concerning the quantity of the material substance, if it has indeed been created, there is this to be said. With a view to the creation of the world God estimated an exactly sufficient quantity of matter, so that there might be neither deficiency nor excess. For it would have been absurd that, whereas particular artists whenever they are making anything, and especially any costly thing, measure the quantity of materials that will suffice, yet He who devised numbers and measures and their equivalent relations to each other, should not have taken thought for a sufficiency.

‘I shall therefore confidently assert that the world needed neither less nor more material substance for its furnishing, since otherwise it would not have been perfect, nor complete in all its parts; whereas now it has been well wrought and completed out of a perfect supply of material substance. For it is the proper mark of a workman thoroughly skilled in his art to see that he has sufficient material before beginning any fabric.

‘Although therefore a man, even if he were superior in knowledge to all others, being unable entirely to escape from error which is natural to mortals, might perhaps be deceived in regard to the quantity of the matter, when practising his art, adding to it at one time as too little, and at another time taking from it as too much; yet He who is a kind of fountain of all knowledge was not likely to supply Himself with too little or too much of anything, inasmuch as He employs measures elaborated to a marvellous exactness, all satisfactory.

‘But he who chooses to prate at random, might as well at once bring forward against us the works of all artists as having gained an advantage in their construction by the addition or diminution of something in the materials. However that may be, it is the part of sophistry to invent quibbles, but of wisdom to examine thoroughly everything in nature.’

Let this suffice to show the character of Philo’s opinions. Maximus too, a man not undistinguished in the Christian life, has composed a special treatise Concerning Matter;from which I think it will be useful to quote some sentences of moderate length, for the accurate decision of the question before us.