PART II.
ON THE CREATION.
CHAPTER I.
On the Creation of the Universe.
He to Whom time was before He wrought, and subsequently began to work, must have wrought either by compulsion, or through necessity, or from a motive of goodness. But God did not create the world of compulsion, because there was no other God beside Him, nor any other Essence to compel Him to act. Neither of necessity, because His Essence is perfect, and in nothing wanting, and He is the Giver of all perfection, and is Himself imperfect in nothing, either in His Essence, or in what appertains thereto. It justly results, then, that He created the world of His goodness and love. He being essentially the origin of all good and bounteous things.
First He created the Angels, the heavens, and the four elements, the light, and the planets. After that trees and plants; then the different classes of animals, with their various species. And when He had adorned the universe with every good thing, and made it like the chamber of a bridegroom, and a wonderful paradise, on the sixth day, after the heavens and the earth with all their hosts were finished. He created the first Adam, the father of the human race, "in the Image of God created He him," according to the testimony of the blessed Moses, the first-born of the Prophets, and the first of the scribes. And he was called an image [of God] for three reasons: First, on account of the reasonable soul with which he was endowed, and which
