8 1There is another highly logical line of proof which thousands, I know, hail with pride as very exact and absolutely irrefutable. They ask what motive will God have for destroying the world. It must be either to cease from world-making or to construct another. 2Now the first of these is inconsistent with God’s nature, which demands that He should change disorder to order, not order to disorder. Secondly He will be allowing Himself to change His mind, and such change is an affection and distemper of the soul. For rightly He should either have made no world at all or judge His work to be befitting to Himself and rejoice in what has been made. 3The second motive suggested demands no little examination. If he should construct another world to take the place of that which now exists, the work thus made must be either a worse, or a like or a superior construction and each of these suppositions is unsatisfactory. For if it is worse its framer also is worse, but the works of God framed with the most consummate skill and knowledge are not liable to censure or condemnation or correction. As they say, 4Not even a woman so far lacks good sense As when the better’s there to choose the worse. 5And it befits God to give form to the formless and invest the ugliest things with marvellous beauties. 6If it is a similar world, the craftsman has wasted his toil and differs not a whit from quite senseless children who often when playing on the beach erect great mounds of sand and then undermine them with their hands and send them tumbling back to the ground. Far better than constructing a similar world would it be neither to take away nor to add, neither to change for the better or for the worse but to leave where it is what was once originally created. 7If the work is to be better, the workman also will then be better, consequently less perfect in skill and intelligence when he constructed the first world. And even to harbour such a thought is profane, for God is equal to Himself and like Himself; His power admits neither relaxation to make it worse, nor tension to make it better. Such irregularities occur in the lives of men. It is their nature to change in both directions for good and for worse. To grow, to advance, to improve and their opposites are to them common events. 8Add to this that the works of us mortals will rightly be destructible, while those of Him the immortal may surely be expected to be indestructible. For it is reasonable to suppose that what the craftsmen have wrought should be assimilated to the nature of those who wrought them.