and to heal
it when it has made them. Arts and sciences, curses and prayers,
sacrifices and initiations, laws and constitutions, judgements and
punishments, all came into existence for the sake of preventing souls
from sinning; and when they are gone forth from the body gods and
spirits of purification cleanse them of their sins.

XIII. _How things eternal are said to 'be made' (+gignesthai+)._

Concerning the Gods and the World and human things this account will
suffice for those who are not able to go through the whole course of
philosophy but yet have not souls beyond help.

It remains to explain how these objects were never made and are never
separated one from another, since we ourselves have said above that the
secondary substances were 'made' by the first.

Everything made is made either by art or by a physical process or
according to some power.[216:1] Now in art or nature the maker must
needs be prior to the made: but the maker, according to power,
constitutes the made absolutely together with itself, since its power is
inseparable from it; as the sun makes light, fire makes heat, snow makes
cold.

Now if the Gods make the world by art, they do not make it _be_, they
make it _be such as it is_. For all art makes the form of the object.
What therefore makes it to be?

If by a physical process, how in that case can the maker help giving
part of himself to the made? As the Gods are incorporeal, the World
ought to be incorporeal too. If it were argued that the Gods were
bodies, then where would the power of incorporeal things come from? And
if we were to admit it, it would follow that when the world decays, its
maker must be decaying too, if he is a maker by physical process.

If the Gods make the world neither by art nor by physical process, it
only remains that they make it by power. Everything so made subsists
together with that which possesses the power. Neither can things so made
be destroyed, except the power of the maker be taken away: so that those
who believe in the destruction of the world, either deny the existence
of the gods, or, while admitting it, deny God's power.

Therefore he who makes all things by his own power makes all things
subsist together with himself. And since his power is the greatest power
he must needs be the maker not only of men and animals, but of Gods,
men, and spirits.[217:1] And the further removed the First God is from
our nature, the more powers there must be betwe