Isaias 40:12

Moreover, I will also tell you concerning the temple, how the wretched [Jews], wandering in error, trusted not in God Himself, but in the temple, as being the house of God. For almost after the manner of the Gentiles they worshipped Him in the temple. But learn how the Lord speaks, when abolishing it: “Who hath meted out heaven with a span, and the earth with his palm? Have not I?” “Thus saith the Lord, Heaven is My throne, and the earth My footstool: what kind of house will ye build to Me, or what is the place of My rest?” Ye perceive that their hope is vain. Moreover, He again says, “Behold, they who have cast down this temple, even they shall build it up again.” It has so happened. For through their going to war, it was destroyed by their enemies; and now they, as the servants of their enemies, shall rebuild it. …

Then I said, “Isaiah thus foretold John’s forerunning: ‘And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, Good is the word of the Lord which He spake: Let there be peace and righteousness in my days.’ And, ‘Encourage the people; ye priests, speak to the heart of Jerusalem, and encourage her, because her humiliation is accomplished. Her sin is annulled; for she has received of the Lord’s hand double for her sins. A voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the ways of the Lord; make straight the paths of our God. Every valley shall be filled up, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough way shall be plain ways; and the glory of the Lord shall be seen, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God: for the Lord hath spoken it. …

1. Such being the state of the case, these infatuated men declare that they rise above the Creator (Demiurge); and, inasmuch as they proclaim themselves superior to that God who made and adorned the heavens, and the earth, and all things that are in them, and maintain that they themselves are spiritual, while they are in fact shamefully carnal on account of their so great impiety, affirming that He, who has made His angels spirits, and is clothed with light as with a garment, and holds the circle of the earth, as it were, in His hand, in whose sight its inhabitants are counted as grasshoppers, and who is the Creator and Lord of all spiritual substance, is of an animal nature, they do beyond doubt and verily betray their own madness; and, as if truly struck with thunder, even more than those giants who are spoken of in [heathen] fables, they lift up their opinions against God, inflated by …

2. To these persons one may with justice say (as Scripture itself suggests), To what distance above God do ye lift up your imaginations, O ye rashly elated men? Ye have heard “that the heavens are meted out in the palm of [His] hand:” tell me the measure, and recount the endless multitude of cubits, explain to me the fulness, the breadth, the length, the height, the beginning and end of the measurement, things which the heart of man understands not, neither does it comprehend them. For the heavenly treasuries are indeed great: God cannot be measured in the heart, and incomprehensible is He in the mind; He who holds the earth in the hollow of His hand. …

And again by Isaiah, “Who shall measure heaven with a span, and the whole earth with his hand?” Behold God’s greatness, and be filled with amazement. Let us worship Him of whom the prophet says, “Before Thy face the hills shall melt, as wax melteth before the fire!” This, says he, is the God “whose throne is heaven, and His footstool the earth; and if He open heaven, quaking will seize thee.” Will you hear, too, what this prophet says of idols? “And they shall be made a spectacle of in the face of the sun, and their carcases shall be meat for the fowls of heaven and the wild beasts of the earth; and they shall putrefy before the sun and the moon, which they have loved and served; and their city shall be burned down.” He says, too, that the elements and the world shall be destroyed. …

But it is not thus that the prophets and the apostles have told us that the world was made by God merely appearing and approaching Matter. They did not even mention any Matter, but (said) that Wisdom was first set up, the beginning of His ways, for His works. Then that the Word was produced, “through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made.” Indeed, “by the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all their hosts by the breath of His mouth.” He is the Lord’s right hand, indeed His two hands, by which He worked and constructed the universe . “For,” says He, “the heavens are the works of Thine hands,” wherewith “He hath meted out the heaven, and the earth with a span.” Do not be willing so to cover God with flattery, as to contend that He produced by His mere appearance and simple approach so many vast substances, instead of rather forming them by His own energies. …

Him, then, we acknowledge and know to be God, the Creator of all things, Lord on account of His power, Parent on account of His discipline, Him, I say, who “spake, and all things were made;” He commanded, and all things went forth: of whom it is written, “Thou hast made all things in wisdom;” of whom Moses said, “God in heaven above, and in the earth beneath;” who, according to Isaiah, “hath meted out the heaven with a span, the earth with the hollow of His hand;” “who looketh on the earth, and maketh it tremble; who boundeth the circle of the earth, and those that dwell in it like locusts; who hath weighed the mountains in a balance, and the groves in scales,” that is, by the sure test of divine arrangement; and lest its greatness, lying unequally, should easily fall into ruins if it were not balanced with equal weights, He has poised this burden of the earthly mass with equity. …

And now, indeed, concerning the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, let it be sufficient to have briefly said thus much, and to have laid down these points concisely, without carrying them out in a lengthened argument. For they could be presented more diffusely and continued in a more expanded disputation, since the whole of the Old and New Testaments might be adduced in testimony that thus the true faith stands. But because heretics, ever struggling against the truth, are accustomed to prolong the controversy of pure tradition and Catholic faith, being offended against Christ; because He is, moreover, asserted to be God by the Scriptures also, and this is believed to be so by us; we must rightly, that every heretical calumny may be removed from our faith, contend, concerning the fact that Christ is God also, in such a way as that it may not militate against the truth of Scripture; …

13. But “I have read,” you will say. What hast thou read, who hast understood nothing? Yet tell me, what hast thou read? Let us not thrust back the babe in understanding with his play. Tell me, what hast thou read? “Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool.” I hear thee; I have read it also: but it may be that thou thinkest thyself to have the advantage, in that thou hast both read and believed. But I also believe what thou hast just said. Let us then believe it together. What do I say? Let us search it out together. …

5. This Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is not circumscribed in any place, nor is He less than the heaven; but the heavens are the works of His fingers , and the whole earth is held in His grasp : He is in all things and around all. Think not that the sun is brighter than He, or equal to Him: for He who at first formed the sun must needs be incomparably greater and brighter. He foreknoweth the things that shall be, and is mightier than all, knowing all things and doing as He will; not being subject to any necessary sequence of events, nor to nativity, nor chance, nor fate; in all things perfect, and equally possessing every absolute form of virtue, neither diminishing nor increasing, but in mode and conditions ever the same; who hath prepared punishment for sinners, and a crown for the righteous.

12. Having reached this point of my discourse, and being reminded of the passages just before mentioned, in which God was addressed as the Father of men, I am greatly amazed at men’s insensibility. For God with unspeakable loving-kindness deigned to be called the Father of men, He in heaven, they on earth, and He the Maker of Eternity, they made in time, He who holdeth the earth in the hollow of His hand , they upon the earth as grasshoppers. Yet man forsook his heavenly Father, and said to the stock, Thou art my father, and to the stone, Thou hast begotten me . And for this reason, methinks, the Psalmist says to mankind, Forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house , whom thou hast chosen for a father, whom thou hast drawn upon thyself to thy destruction.

3. To thee, poor little feeble man, India is far from the land of the Goths, and Spain from Persia; but to God, who holds the whole earth in the hollow of His hand , all things are near at hand. Impute not then weakness to God, from a comparison of thy feebleness, but rather dwell on His power. Does then the sun, a small work of God, by one glance of his beams give warmth to the whole world; does the atmosphere, which God has made, encompass all things in the world; and is God, who is the Creator both of the sun, and of the atmosphere, far off from the world? Imagine a mixture of seeds of different plants (for as thou art weak concerning the faith, the examples which I allege are weak also), and that these different seeds are contained in thy single hand; is it then to thee, who art a man, a difficult or an easy matter to separate what is in thine hand, and to collect each seed according …