which are apprehended by opinion and sense are in a process of creation and created. Now that which is created must of neces- sity be created bya cause. But how can we find out the father and maker of all this universe? And when we have found him, to speak of his nature to all men is impossible. Yet one more question has to be asked about him, which of the patterns had the artificer in view when he made the world !—the pattern which is unchangeable, or that which is created? If the world be indeed fair and the artificer good, then, as is plain, he must have looked to that which is eternal. But if what cannot be said without blasphemy is true, then he looked to the created pattern. Every one will see that he must have looked to the eternal, for the world is the fairest of creations and he is the best of causes” (Plato, “ Timzeus,” 28, 29),
1. In (él). Lit. on. The book or roll Jay upon the open hand.
A Book (8i8d/ov). See on Matt. xix. 7; Mark x. 4; Luke iv. 17. Compare Ezek. ii. 9; Jer. xxxvi. 2; Zech. v. 1, 2.
Within and on the back side (gcwdev kal drricJev). Com- pare Ezek. ii. 10. Indicating the completeness of the divine counsels contained in the book. Rolls written on both sides were called opistographi. Pliny the younger says that his uncle, the elder Pliny, left him an hundred and sixty comment- aries, most minutely written, and written on the back, by which this number is multiplied. Juvenal, inveighing against the poetasters who are declaiming their rubbish on all sides, says: << Shall that one then have recited to me his comedies, and this his elegies with impunity? Shall huge ‘Telephus’ with im- punity have consumed a whole day; or—with the margin to the end of the book already filled—‘ Orestes,’ written on the very back, and yet not concluded?” (i., 3-6).