Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

" And the manifest side of the Fire has all things in itself which a man can perceive of things visible, or which he unconsciously fails to perceive. Whereas the hidden side is everything that we can conceive as intelligible, ... or which a man fails to conceive." l

2. " The Lord begrudge th not Himself to any thing."
Compare this with G. #"., iv. (v.) 3: "Not that He
grudgeth any, for grudging cometh not from Him " ;
and compare both with the saying of Plato in the
Timceus (29 E) :

" He was Good, and to the Good there can never at any time be any grudging of aught."

THE HIGHER PANTHEISM OR PANMONISM

10. With the soul-satisfying pantheism of § 10 we may with interest compare the address to the Logos in The Martyrdom of Peter, which still retains many Gnostic elements.

" Thou thai art to be understood by spirit alone !
Thou art my father, Thou my mother, Thou my brother,
Thou my friend, Thou my servant, Thou my master.
Thou art the all, and all is in Thee. Yea, all that is, is
Thou; and there is nothing else that is but Thee
alone!"2

HYMN TO ALL-GOD

The treatise ends with one of the most magnificent Hymns to God ever written in any language — a hymn which some foolish copyist has spoilt by tagging on to it the gloss of a reader noted on the margin of the MS. from which our scribe copied.

1 Hipp., Philos., vi. 9 ; see my Simon Magus (London, 1892), p. 13.

2 Lipsius (R. A.) and Bonnet (M.), Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha (Leipzig, 1891), i. 98.

With the sentence: "All are in Thee, all are from Thee," compare the Naassene Hymn (quoted in Hippoly tus' Introduction, in " The Myth of Man ") :

"'From Thee' is Father, and 'Through Thee,'
Mother, — the two Immortal Names, Parents of ^Eons,
0 Thou who hast the Heaven for Thy City, 0 Man of
Mighty Names ! "

COEPUS HERMETICUM VI. (VII.)

IN GOD ALONE IS GOOD AND
ELSEWHERE NOWHERE

(Text: P. 48-53; Pat. 14a-15a.)

1. GOOD, 0 Asclepius, is in none else save God alone ; nay, rather, Good is God Himself eternally.

If it be so, [Good] must be essence, from every kind of motion and becoming free (though naught is free from It), possessed of stable energy around Itself, never too little, nor too much, an ever-full supply. [Though] one, yet [is It] source of all ; for what supplieth all is Good. When I, moreover, say [supplieth] altogether [all], it is for ever Good. But this belongs to no one else save God alone.

For He stands not in need of any thing, so that desiring it He should be bad ; nor can a single thing of things that are be lost to Him, on losing which He should be pained ; for pain is part of bad.

no

Nor is there aught superior to Him, that He should be subdued by it ; nor any peer to Him to do Him wrong, or [so that] He should fall in love on its account ; nor aught that gives no ear to Him, whereat He should grow angry ; nor wiser aught, for Him to envy.

2. Now as all these are non-existent in His being, what is there left but Good alone \

For just as naught of bad is to be found in such transcendent Being, so too in no one of the rest will Good be found.

For in them all are all the other things1 — both in the little and the great, both in each severally and in this living one2 that's greater than them all and mightiest [of them].

For things subject to birth3 abound in passions, birth in itself being passible. But where there's passion, nowhere is there Good ; and where is Good, nowhere a single passion. For where is day, nowhere is night ; and where is night, day is nowhere.

Wherefore in genesis the Good can never be, but only be in the ingenerate.

But seeing that the sharing in all things hath been bestowed on matter, so doth it share in Good.

1 That is, things not Good.

2 Or animal ; that is, cosmos as a single life or living creature.

3 Or genesis.

In this way is the Cosmos good ; that, in so far as it doth make all things, as far as making goes it's Good, but in all other things it is not Good. For it's both passible and subject unto motion, and maker of things passible.

3. Whereas in man by greater or by less of bad is good determined. For what is not too bad down here, is good ; and good down here is the least part of bad.

It cannot, therefore, be that good down here should be quite clean of bad, for down here good is fouled with bad; and being fouled, it stays no longer good, and staying not it changes into bad.

In God alone, is, therefore, Good, or rather
Good is God Himself.