On Beginning/Principiating
XCIX. On Beginning/Principiating
1. Since God is the eternal beginning
the beginnable must
be equal to the beginning.[1]
2. There cannot exist anything equal to <the beginning>
unless, by means of <the beginning> and the beginner, there obtains an essential
act of eternalising, lacking anything accidental.
3. There could not have been a great beginning,
if the middle and the end
had not possessed a single nature.
4. Had God not become incarnate in man,
He would have begotten the world in <a state of> minority,
for the greatest power would not have been made manifest.
5. Everything that God has created,
He did so in order that He might be loved
remembered, understood, served and honoured.
6. God begets as much by means of His magnificability
as He does by means of <His> understanding and amability,
in order that He may bear no contrariety towards greatness.
7. God can only have begotten the world
in a <state of> the greatest greatness of creatability,
for which reason He Himself must have become incarnate.
8. Alas! Since God has begotten man
in order that He may be deeply loved thereby,
who is he that is free from fault or sin?
9. Jesus Christ and the martyrs constituted the beginning of our faith
by virtue of <their> preaching, <their> truthfulness, <their> humility, <the> hardships <they underwent> and <their> deaths,
rather than by that of <their> horses, <their> money, <the> pleasures <they enjoyed> or <their> armour.
10. Whoever wishes to begin well
should consider, before starting,
whether the end is evil.
[1] Here Llull introduces the term comensable, one of the three correlatives which unfold from God’s active role as principle and beginning of all things, namely, comensatiu, comensable, comensar. The sense of the word used here, “beginning” (in its various forms), should also be read through the filter, therefore, of that attaching to “principle” (also in its various forms). We have substituted the term “to beget” and “begotten”, in certain cases, to indicate the act or originating or beginning something, see n. 1, Ch. V, § 6.