God made all things from nothing
Augustine is beginning his exposition of the creed by defending the first article, that God the Father is almighty, against those who say he needed pre-existing matter to make the world.
Some people have tried to persuade others that God the Father is not almighty. They have not dared to say this outright, but their own traditions show that this is what they think and believe. When they say there is a nature that almighty God did not create, and that he used it to build this world—which they admit is beautifully ordered—they deny that God is almighty. They do not believe he could have made the world unless he used some other nature that already existed and that he himself had not made. They are following the habit of seeing carpenters, house builders, and other workmen, who cannot complete their work unless they are helped by material already prepared. In the same way, they think the maker of the world could not be almighty if he could not build the world unless some nature not made by him helped him as material.
But if they admit that almighty God is the maker of the world, they must confess that he made what he made from nothing. For nothing can exist whose creator he is not, since he is almighty. Even if he made something from something else—as he made the human being from mud—he did not make it from something he himself had not made, because he had made the earth, from which mud comes, from nothing. And if he made heaven and earth itself—that is, the world and everything in it—from some matter, as it is written, "You made the world from unseen matter" (Wisdom of Solomon 11:17), or even from formless matter, as some manuscripts have it, we must in no way believe that this matter from which the world was made—however formless, however unseen, in whatever way it existed—could have existed through itself as coeternal and coeval with God. Whatever mode it had, so that it could exist in some way and receive the forms of distinct things, it had only from almighty God. It is by his gift that a thing exists not only when it is formed, but also when it is formable.
The difference between formed and formable is this: what is formed has already received form, while what is formable can receive it. But the one who gives things form also gives them the very possibility of being formed, because from him and in him is the most beautiful unchangeable form of all things. Therefore he alone is the one who gives to any thing not only that it is beautiful, but also that it can be beautiful. For this reason it is most rightly believed that God made all things from nothing. Even if the world was made from some matter, that matter itself was made from nothing, so that by God's most ordered gift there first came to be the capacity of forms, and then whatever was formed was formed. We have said this so that no one thinks the statements of the divine Scriptures contradict each other, since it is written both that God made all things from nothing and that the world was made from formless matter.
Latin
Conati sunt enim quidam persuadere deum patrem non esse omnipotentem; non quia hoc dicere ausi sunt, sed in suis traditionibus hoc sentire et credere conuincuntur. cum enim dicunt esse naturam, quam deus omnipotens non creauerit, de qua tamen istum mundum fabricauerit, quem pulchre ordinatum esse concedunt, ita omnipotentem deum negant, ut non eum credant mundum potuisse facere, nisi ad eum fabricandum alia natura, quae iam fuerat et quam ipse non fecerat, uteretur; carnali scilicet consuetudine uidendi fabros et domorum structores et quoslibet opifices, qui, nisi adiuuentur parata materia, ad effectum suae artis peruenire non possunt, ita intellegunt fabricatorem mundi non esse omnipotentem, si mundum fabricare non posset, nisi eum aliqua non ab illo fabricata natura tamquam materies adiuuaret. ac si omnipotentem deum fabricatorem mundi esse concedunt, fateantur necesse est ex nihilo eum fecisse quae fecit. non enim aliquid esse potest, cuius creator non esset, cum esset omnipotens, quia etsi aliquid fecit ex aliquo, sicut hominem de limo, non utique fecit ex eo, quod ipse non fecerat, quia terram, unde limus est, ex nihilo fecerat. et si ipsum caelum et terram, id est )mundum et omnia, quae in eo sunt, ex aliqua materia fecerat, sicut scriptum est: qui fecisti mundum ex materia inuisa, uel etiam informi, sicut nonnulla exemplaria tenent, nullo modo credendum est illam ipsam materiam, de qua factus est mundus, quamuis informem, quamuis inuisam, quocumque modo esset, per se ipsam esse potuisse tamquam coaeternam et coaeuam deo; sed quemlibet modum suum, quem habebat, ut quoquo modo esset et distinctarum rerum formas posset accipere, non habebat nisi ab omnipotente deo, cuius beneficio est res non solum quaecumque formata, sed etiam quaecumque formabilis. inter formatum autem et formabile hoc interest, quod formatum iam accepit formam, formabile autem potest accipere. sed qui praestat rebus formam, ipse praestat etiam posse formari, quoniam de illo et in illo est omnium speciosissima species incommutabilis, et ideo ipse unus est, qui cuilibet rei non solum, ut pulchra sit, sed etiam ut pulchra esse possit adtribuit. quapropter rectissime creditur omnia deum fecisse de nihilo: quia etiam si de aliqua materia factus est mundus, eadem ipsa materia de nihilo facta est, ut ordinatissimo dei munere prima capacitas formarum fieret, ac deinde formarentur quaecumque formata sunt. hoc autem diximus, ne quis existimet contrarias sibi esse diuinarum scripturarum sententias, quoniam et omnia deum de nihilo fecisse scriptum est et mundum esse factum de informi materia.