Whether, then, there are cycles of time, and floods, or conflagrations
which occur periodically or not, and whether the Scripture is aware of
this, not only in many passages, but especially where Solomon says,
“What is the thing which hath been? Even that which shall be. And what
is the thing which hath been done? Even that which shall be done,”[511]
etc. etc., belongs not to the present occasion to discuss. For it is
sufficient only to observe, that Moses and certain of the prophets,
being men of very great antiquity, did not receive from others the
statements relating to the [future] conflagration of the world; but, on
the contrary (if we must attend to the matter of time[512]), others
rather misunderstanding them, and not inquiring accurately into their
statements, invented the fiction of the same events recurring at certain
intervals, and differing neither in their essential nor accidental
qualities.[513] But we do not refer either the deluge or the
conflagration to cycles and planetary periods; but the cause of them we
declare to be the extensive prevalence of wickedness,[514] and its
[consequent] removal by a deluge or a conflagration. And if the voices
of the prophets say that God “comes down,” who has said, “Do I not fill
heaven and earth? saith the Lord,”[515] the term is used in a figurative
sense. For God “comes down” from His own height and greatness when He
arranges the affairs of men, and especially those of the wicked. And as
custom leads men to say that teachers “condescend”[516] to children, and
wise men to those youths who have just betaken themselves to philosophy,
not by “descending” in a _bodily_ manner; so, if God is said anywhere in
the Holy Scriptures to “come down,” it is understood as spoken in
conformity with the usage which so employs the word, and in like manner
also with the expression “go up.”
Footnote 511:
Cf. Eccles. i. 9.
Footnote 512:
εἰ χρὴ ἐπιστήσαντα τοῖς χρόνοις εἰπεῖν.
Footnote 513:
ἀνέπλασαν κατὰ περιόδους ταυτότητας, καὶ ἀπαραλλάκτους τοῖς ἰδίοις
ποιοῖς καὶ τοῖς συμβεβηκόσιν αὐτοῖς.
Footnote 514:
κακίαν ἐπὶ πλεῖον χεομένην.
Footnote 515:
Cf. Jer. xiii. 24.
Footnote 516:
συγκαταβαίνειν.