II. (4) And let us in the next place consider how any one is said to be concealed from God; but unless any one receives this as an allegorical saying it would be impossible to comprehend what is here stated. For God has completed everything and has penetrated every thing, and has left no one of all his works empty or deserted. What kind of place then can any one occupy in which God is not? And Moses testifies to this in other passages, when he says, “God is in the heaven above, and in the earth beneath; and there is nothing anywhere but He.”{4}{#de 4:39.} And in another place he speaks in this manner, “I stood here before you Did.”{5}{#ex 17:6.} For God is of older date than any created being, and he will be everywhere, so that it cannot be possible for any one to be concealed from him: and what need we wonder at? (5) For even if any thing were to happen to us we should not be able to escape the notice of, and to conceal ourselves from the most elementary of created things; for instance, let any one try to flee from the earth, or the water, or the air, or the heaven, or the entire universe, and he will fail; for it is impossible but what he must be contained in these things, for no one will be able to flee out of the world. (6) Again how could any man who is unable to conceal himself from the parts of the world, and from the whole world itself, be able to escape the notice of God? He never could do so. What then is the meaning of the expression, “they hid themselves?” The bad man thinks that God is in a certain place, not surrounding it, but being surrounded by it. On which account also he thinks that he can conceal himself from him, as if God were without any prevailing reason at a distance form that part of the world in which he has determined to lurk.
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