Alethia (Genesis in verse, with a prayer) 0.1–0.117

Highest and holy God, origin of all power, almighty, whom human minds are not permitted to grasp in understanding by subtle inquiry into things, and whom it is wrong not to know; for by deep reason we believe you to be God in three, yet the three so to be one that the undivided substance gives each its proper form of its kind, keeping the covenant in a holy bond: you, without beginning, likewise everlasting without end, alone always the same and subject to no age; you surpass the extent of things, wherever the recess of the mind stretches, and are bounded by no extent; there is no place, with the things it nurtures, that could contain you, nor are you yourself more a place; nor may the mind attain what your image is, since, restrained by no limit, your form escapes the senses, nor what motion quickens you with blessed power, since you are always wholly everywhere: you are mind, and the very substance of sacred mind, you are reason and the prudent origin of full reason, you are power, the summit of power, and assuredly you are life itself and begetter of life and of deep light, you are the true light, O God, you the cause and vigor of things. From you took its beginning whatever suddenly flashed forth from nothing and, filled by so great an author, either has the force of mind or has received its form in a mind.

Nature, preserved in its perishable parts, proves you Lord, and the order given confesses the sequence you commanded: you, distinguishing docile numbers, weighing weights, varying measures, governing measures and motion, bid things keep their alternating turns and stand in perpetual recurrence, and bid the world, full of the image of mind, moved by you in the ether, now roll on the ages. You were not content to endow what you created with one gift, whatever it is that comes into use through you: something more has been made, and all things are better in the part where they lie hidden, and an inner cause too makes them please, welcome in themselves; some sharpen their vigor from others; certain contraries, if they contend, have more of peace. So, rich Creator, you bind all things, making even opposing elements kin, and fill them with powers poured out from the whole. And yet, though these things are within the majesty of your creating, you need none of the things you beget; and the work of the world, completed and remaining through you in the stable frame of things, does not run for your sake, and it is plain in your gift to us

that you can do all things: nor does your glory lie only in this, that as a good author you make what is to be given, but that you make the things themselves able to give, and you wrap secondary causes within the first, so that whoever feels your gifts is himself also your gift. You have shown by clear reason that the only cause for you, O God, to bid all things be begotten was goodness, when to spirits first bidden to live and to enjoy the world which you bore in your mind, it was given to things suddenly made to exist and to spread far and wide into heaven and earth together, and to provide a glittering seat for the angelic flock. To them with kindly mind you granted free hearts and choice of their own, so that there might be a work of virtue, and so that you might confer this also on the merits of the pious: that by giving you would become a debtor. Nor, because one of the first beings you created to reign, while he envies the Lord of light and life and his own author and covets this title, preferred to be the author of evil and to bring death upon the earth, cast down from high Olympus with his partners in crime, is it right to dictate anything to sacred power, for which it is enough to have made what is good: nor was it right that anyone should lack the gift of God, and this contains the sum of his kindly praise; nor was it right to deny life and sense to the ungrateful, and the mind's own rule over all its affairs. For what fruit is there for creatures, unless the mind is free?

No one at all has a free mind unless he may perish. That this was granted no one would have proved except by sinning. To this I add that all things, diverse, in turn hold their balance when compared, and that hence the power to perish was given to all, so that to live might be sweeter, and the equal measure of alternating peril on both sides might go to merit, when, under a severe judge, the punishment of the wicked would double the worthy rewards of the saints; or else that (may it be permitted to one trembling to say it, having first asked your leave, Father) perhaps it counts for more with you that the good have not sinned through the slippery times of life than that the wicked have sinned to their misery. But let your majesty see to these things, and how the judgment of the future stands: this is enough for us, that through you, breathing into earth the noble work of reason from vile dust, so that such a creature might conquer the enemy ungrateful to his Lord, you raised up man; and him, snatched by the deceit of savage venom into the snares of death and to impious Tartarus, you soon, deigning to take a body, with your own blood sought out from the seats of Erebus with greater care than when he was made, and you restore him and give him back to everlasting life and carry him with you into heaven, the enemy subdued.

Now let no one rashly accuse father Adam because, by breaking the light command and violating the law, he opened the way to death. That punishment of our parent was the beginning of so great a gain, because it is more to conquer death than never to have known how to die. Now, glad, from his Father's hall he looks down on the ethereal poles and treads the stars underfoot, and calls the ministers appointed for the kingdoms to come, whom he formed again by water and taught to be reborn: he, the Wisdom of the Father's Word, which begot the whole. In him, kindly God, I pray you, who with favoring power give minds to perceive and compel hearts to speak the truth even when the poet does not know it: grant me, as I pray, to know, while I prepare to form tender minds and hearts for the true way of virtue in their boyish years, what the famous book-chests of lawgiving Moses unfold, what the origin of the sky is, or what the first beginnings of the world, and what plague, grown strong, shook the secret faith out of the whole world, and how error sank deep into morals, and by what way the truth returns again, drives out profane rites and unlocks the mystic rites of eternal life. Grant too a mind, grant fit times for the mind, grant zeal, so that care may not be lacking for so great a labor, and a good sense for the study, and that which by right runs over all that is known and encloses it in a strong mantle, so that you may not condemn me because, guilty as I am, I dare so great a task.

Kindly forgive all the crimes I have committed; you have given strength and sense to souls, and merit too. But if the order should offend at all against the law of meter, if an improper word should offend, or a wavering sense (let it be permitted here and there to run on in careless verse), let no danger to the faith arise from this measure, through Christ, who, your only Son, with you, flourishing in majesty equally with the kindly Spirit, lives, beyond the grasp of minds, for ages of ages, and reigns: which the solemn Amen consecrates to you.