Chapter I .-The Discovery of Truth is Difficult, But God Has Promised that He Who Seeks Shall Find.
Chapter II.-Of the Double Heaven,-The Visible, and the Heaven of Heavens.
Chapter III.-Of the Darkness Upon the Deep, and of the Invisible and Formless Earth.
Chapter IV.-From the Formlessness of Matter, the Beautiful World Has Arisen.
Chapter V.-What May Have Been the Form of Matter.
Chapter VI.-He Confesses that at One Time He Himself Thought Erroneously of Matter.
Chapter VII.-Out of Nothing God Made Heaven and Earth.
Chapter XI.-What May Be Discovered to Him by God.
Chapter XII.-From the Formless Earth God Created Another Heaven and a Visible and Formed Earth.
Chapter XIV.-Of the Depth of the Sacred Scripture, and Its Enemies.
Chapter XV.-He Argues Against Adversaries Concerning the Heaven of Heavens.
Chapter XVI.-He Wishes to Have No Intercourse with Those Who Deny Divine Truth.
Chapter XVII.-He Mentions Five Explanations of the Words of Genesis I. I.
Chapter XVIII.-What Error is Harmless in Sacred Scripture.
Chapter XIX.-He Enumerates the Things Concerning Which All Agree.
Chapter XX.-Of the Words, "In the Beginning," Variously Understood.
Chapter XXI.--Of the Explanation of the Words, "The Earth Was Invisible."
Chapter XXII.-He Discusses Whether Matter Was from Eternity, or Was Made by God.71
Chapter XXIII.-Two Kinds of Disagreements in the Books to Be Explained.
Chapter XXVI.-What He Might Have Asked of God Had He Been Enjoined to Write the Book of Genesis.
Chapter XXVII.-The Style of Speaking in the Book of Genesis is Simple and Clear.
Chapter XXIX.-Concerning the Opinion of Those Who Explain It "At First He Made."
Chapter XXX.-In the Great Diversity of Opinions, It Becomes All to Unite Charity and Divine Truth.
Chapter XXXI.-Moses is Supposed to Have Perceived Whatever of Truth Can Be Discovered in His Words.
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He continues his explanation of the first chapter of Genesis according to the septuagint, and by its assistance he argues, especially, concerning the double heaven, and the formless matter out of which the whole world may have been created; afterwards of the interpretations of others not disallowed, and sets forth at great length the sense of the Holy Scripture.
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1. My heart, O Lord, affected by the words of Thy Holy Scripture, is much busied in this poverty of my life; and therefore, for the most part, is the want of human intelligence copious in language, because inquiry speaks more than discovery, and because demanding is longer than obtaining, and the hand that knocks is more active than the hand that receives. We hold the promise; who shall break it? "If God be for us, who can be against us?"1 "Ask, and ye shall have; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened."2 These are Thine own promises; and who need fear to be deceived where the Truth promiseth?
2. The weakness of my tongue confesseth unto Thy Highness, seeing that Thou madest heaven and earth. This heaven which I see, and this earth upon which I tread (from which is this earth that I carry about me), Thou hast made. But where is Chat heaven of heavens,3 O Lord, of which we hear in the words of the Psalm, The heaven of heavens are the Lord's, I but the earth hath He given to the children of men?4 Where is the heaven, which we behold not, in comparison of which all this, which we behold, is earth? For this corporeal whole, not as a whole everywhere, hath thus received its beautiful figure in these lower parts, of which the bottom is our earth; but compared with that heaven of heavens, even the heaven of our earth is but earth; yea, each of these great bodies is not absurdly called earth, as compared with that, I know not what manner of heaven, which is the Lord's, not the sons' of men.