Novatian, On the Trinity 3
III. 1. This one, then, we acknowledge and know as God, founder of all things, Lord because of power, parent because of establishment — this one, I say, who spoke, and all things were made, commanded, and the universe proceeded; about whom it is written: You made all things in wisdom; about whom Moses: God in heaven above and on earth below; who according to Isaiah measured the heaven with a palm, the earth with a fist; who looks upon the earth and makes it tremble; who holds the circle of the earth and those who dwell in it as locusts; who weighs out mountains in a balance and groves in a scale, that is, by a sure examination of divine arrangement, and lest magnitude lying unequally should easily fall into ruin if it had not been balanced by equal weights, he moderately equalized this burden of earthly mass. 2. Who says through the prophet: I am God and there is none besides me; who through the same prophet reports that I will not give my majesty to another, so that he may shut out all the nations with their fictions and the heretics, proving that he is not God who has been made by a craftsman’s hand nor he who has been fashioned by a heretic’s ingenuity. For he is not God for whom, that he may be, a craftsman must be sought. 3. And who still added through the prophet: Heaven is a throne for me, but the earth a footstool of my feet: what house will you build for me, or what is the place of my rest?, to show that much more a temple does not hold him whom the world does not hold. And he reports these things not for his own boasting but for our knowledge. For he himself does not desire from us the glory of greatness, but wishes to confer on us religious wisdom by which he is Father.
4. And who besides, wishing to draw our savage minds, swollen and abrupt from rustic fierceness, toward mildness, says: And upon whom will my spirit rest, except upon the humble and quiet and one trembling at my words?, so that one may be able to acknowledge to some extent how great God is, while he learns to fear him through the spirit conferred. 5. Who likewise still wishing to come more into our acquaintance, stirring our minds to his cultivation, was saying: I am the Lord who made light and created darknesses, so that we should not think some nature or other the craftsman of those alternations by which nights and days are governed, but should rather acknowledge God, which was truer, as founder. 6. Whom, since we cannot see with the gaze of the eyes, we learn from the greatness and power and majesty of works. For his invisible things, says the apostle Paul, from the creation of the world are looked upon, understood through those things which have been made, and his everlasting power and divinity also, so that the human mind, learning hidden things from manifest ones, from the greatness of works which it saw, might think with the mind’s eyes the greatness of the craftsman. 7. About whom the same apostle: But to the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, to the only God be honor and glory. For he has escaped the contemplation of eyes who has conquered the greatness of thought. Since, he says, from him and through him and in him are all things. For both by his command all things are, that they may be from him, and arranged by his word, that they may be through him, and all things fall back into his judgment, so that while in him they await freedom with corruption put off, they may seem to have been called back into him.
Latin
III. 1. Hunc igitur agnoscimus et scimus Deum, conditorem rerum omnium, Dominum propter potestatem, parentem propter institutionem, hunc, inquam, qui dixit, et facta sunt omnia, praecepit, et processerunt uniuersa, de quo scriptum est: Omnia in sapientia fecisti, de quo Moyses: Deus in caelo sursum et in terra deorsum, qui secundum Esaiam mensus est caelum palmo, terram pugillo, qui aspicit terram et facit eam tremere, qui continet gyrum terrae et eos qui habitant in ipso quasi locustae, qui expendit montes in pondere et nemora in statera, id est certo diuinae dispositionis examine, ac ne facile in ruinam procumberet magnitudo inaequaliter iacens, si non paribus fuisset librata ponderibus, onus hoc moderanter terrenae molis aequauit. 2. Qui dicit per prophetam: Ego Deus et non est praeter me, qui per eundem prophetam refert quoniam maiestatem meam non dabo alteri, ut omnes cum suis figmentis ethnicos excludat et haereticos, probans Deum non esse qui manu artificis factus sit nec eum qui ingenio haeretici fictus sit. Non est enim Deus cui ut sit quaerendus est artifex. 3. Quique adhuc adiecit per prophetam: Caelum mihi thronus est, terra autem scabellum pedum meorum: qualem mihi aedificabitis domum aut quis locus requiei meae?, ut ostendat quoniam multo magis illum templum non capit, quem mundus non capit. Et haec non ad sui iactantiam, sed ad nostri scientiam refert. Neque enim ipse a nobis desiderat magnitudinis gloriam, sed nobis uult religiosam, qua Pater, conferre sapientiam.
4. Quique praeterea ferinos nostros animos et de agresti immanitate tumidos et abruptos ad lenitatem trahere uolens dicit: Et super quem requiescet spiritus meus, nisi super humilem et quietum et trementem uerba mea?, ut Deum aliquatenus quantus sit possit agnoscere, dum illum per spiritum collatum discit timere. 5. Qui similiter adhuc magis in notitiam nostri uolens peruenire, ad culturam sui nostros excitans animos aiebat: Ego sum Dominus qui feci lucem et creaui tenebras, ut uicissitudinum istarum quibus noctes diesque moderantur non naturam nescio quam putaremus artificem, sed Deum agnosceremus potius, quod erat uerius, conditorem. 6. Quem quoniam obtutu oculorum uidere non possumus, de operum magnitudine et uirtute et maiestate condiscimus. Inuisibilia enim ipsius, inquit apostolus Paulus, a creatura mundi per ea quae facta sunt intellecta conspiciuntur, sempiterna quoque eius uirtus et diuinitas, ut animus humanus ex manifestis occulta condiscens de operum magnitudine quae uideret mentis oculis artificis magnitudinem cogitaret. 7. De quo idem apostolus: Regi autem saeculorum immortali, inuisibili, soli Deo honor et gloria. Euasit enim oculorum contemplationem qui cogitationis uicit magnitudinem. Quoniam, inquit, ex ipso et per ipsum et in ipso sunt omnia. Nam et imperio eius omnia, ut ex ipso sint, et uerbo eius digesta, ut per ipsum sint, et in iudicium eius recidunt uniuersa, ut dum in ipso expectant libertatem corruptione deposita, in ipsum uideantur esse reuocata.