Opening the library…
The Divine Institutes
Lactantius
A large Latin presentation of Christian teaching that criticizes pagan religion and philosophy while treating justice, God, creation, Christ, worship, ethics, and the final destiny of humanity.
God, therefore, the contriver and founder of
“The nourisher and creator of all things, who placed the sweet breath in all, and made God the leader of all.”
And again, at the end of the same poem:—
“But whom God gave for faithful men to honour.”
And another Sibyl enjoins that He ought to be known:—
“Know Him as your God, who is the Son of God.”
Assuredly He is the very Son of God, who by that most wise King Solomon, full of divine inspiration, spake these things which we have added:, “God founded me in the beginning of His ways, in His work before the ages. He set me up in the beginning, before He made the earth, and before He established the depths, before the fountains of waters came forth: the Lord begat me before all the hills; He made the regions, and the uninhabitable boundaries under the heaven. When He prepared the heaven, I was by Him: and when He separated His own seat, when He made the strong clouds above the winds, and when He strengthened the mountains, and placed them under heaven; when He laid the strong foundations of the earth, I was with Him arranging all things. I was He in whom He delighted: I was daily delighted, when He rejoiced, the world being completed.” But on this account Trismegistus spoke of Him as “the artificer of God,” and the Sibyl calls Him “Counsellor,” because He is endowed by God the Father with such wisdom and strength, that God employed both His wisdom and hands in the creation of the world.
Literally, “sends.” The passage appears to be corrupt: ὑποπίπτει has been suggested instead of ὑποπέμπει, “falls under perception,” “is an object of perception.”
Prov. viii. 22–31. Lactantius quotes from the Septuagint.
According to the Hebrew, “possessed me in the beginning,” and so the authorized version.
Fines inhabitabiles. Other editions read terras inhabitabiles, “uninhabitable lands.”