Corpus Hermeticum 9: The Decalogue · 2 of 3 · tr. G.R.S. Mead
Section 1b
But I return once more to the Discourse (Logos) on Sense.
That sense doth share with thought in man, doth constitute him man.
But 'tis not [every] man, as I have said, who benefits by thought; for this man is material, that other one substantial.
For the material man, as I have said, [consorting] with the bad, doth have his seed of thought from daimons; while the substantial men [consorting] with the Good, are saved by God.
Now God is Maker of all things, and in His making, He maketh all [at last] like to Himself; but they, while they're becoming good by exercise of their activity, are unproductive things.
It is the working of the Cosmic Course that maketh their becomings what they are, befouling some of them with bad and others of them making clean with good.
For Cosmos, too, Asclepius, possesseth sense-and-thought peculiar to itself, not like that of man; 'tis not so manifold, but as it were a better and a simpler one.
6.
The single sense-and-thought of Cosmos is to make all things, and make them back into itself again, as Organ of the Will of God, so organized that it, receiving all the seeds into itself from God, and keeping them within itself, may make all manifest, and [then] dissolving them, make them all new again; and thus, like a Good Gardener of Life, things that have been dissolved, it taketh to itself, and giveth them renewal once again.
There is no thing to which it gives not life; but taking all unto itself it makes them live, and is at the same time the Place of Life and its Creator.
7.
Now bodies matter [-made] are in diversity.
Some are of earth, of water some, some are of air, and some of fire.
But they are all composed; some are more [composite], and some are simpler.
The heavier ones are more [composed], the lighter less so.
It is the speed of Cosmos' Course that works the manifoldness of the kinds of births.
For being a most swift Breath, it doth bestow their qualities on bodies together with the One Pleroma - that of Life.
8.
God, then, is Sire of Cosmos; Cosmos, of all in Cosmos.
And Cosmos is God's Son; but things in Cosmos are by Cosmos.
And properly hath it been called Cosmos [Order]; for that it orders all with their diversity of birth, with its not leaving aught without its life, with the unweariedness of its activity, the speed of its necessity, the composition of its elements, and order of its creatures.
The same, then, of necessity and propriety should have the name of Order.
The sense-and-thought, then, of all lives doth come into them from without, inbreathed by what contains [them all]; whereas Cosmos receives them once for all together with its coming into being, and keeps them as a gift from God.
9.
But God is not, as some suppose, beyond the reach of sense-and-thought.
It is through superstition men thus impiously speak.
For all the things that are, Asclepius, all are in God, are brought by God to be, and do depend on Him - both things that act through bodies, and things that through soul-substance make [other things] to move, and things that make things live by means of spirit, and things that take unto themselves the things that are worn out.
And rightly so; nay, I would rather say, He doth not have these things; but I speak forth the truth, He is them all Himself.
He doth not get them from without, but gives them out [from Him].
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The 'Cosmic Course' and 'Will of God' actively order the becomings of all things.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The text outlines a chain from God (Sire) to Cosmos (Son) to things within Cosmos.
The Egyptian principle of truth, balance, and right order underlying both the cosmos and human conduct; the parallel to Zoroastrian asha and Greek dike.
Cosmos is explicitly defined as 'Order' that orders all diversity and life with propriety.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
The text compares human sense-and-thought with the simpler sense-and-thought of the Cosmos.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
God makes all things 'like to Himself' through their activity and exercise.