By the expression “Sire of our Mother” (μητροπάτωρ) he not only intimates creation out of nothing, but gives occasion to those who introduce emissions of imagining a consort of the Deity. And he paraphrases those prophetic Scriptures--that in Isaiah, “I am He that fixes the thunder, and creates the wind; whose hands have founded the host of heaven;”[883] and that in Moses, “Behold, behold that I am He, and there is no god beside me: I will kill, and I will make to live; I will smite, and I will heal: and there is none that shall deliver out of my hands.”[884] “And He, from good, to mortals planteth ill, And cruel war, and tearful woes,” according to Orpheus. Such also are the words of the Parian Archilochus: “O Zeus, thine is the power of heaven, and thou Inflict’st on men things violent and wrong.”[885] Again let the Thracian Orpheus sing to us: “His right hand all around to ocean’s bound He stretches; and beneath His feet is earth.” These are plainly derived from the following: “The Lord will save the inhabited cities, and grasp the whole land in His hand like a nest;”[886] “It is the Lord that made the earth by His power,” as saith Jeremiah, “and set up the earth by His wisdom.”[887] Further, in addition to these, Phocylides, who calls the angels demons, explains in the following words that some of them are good, and others bad (for we also have learned that some are apostate): “Demons there are--some here, some there--set over men; Some, on man’s entrance [into life], to ward off ill.” Rightly, then, also Philemon, the comic poet, demolishes idolatry in these words: “Fortune is no divinity to us: There’s no such god. But what befalls by chance And of itself to each, is Fortune called.” And Sophocles the tragedian says: “Not even the gods have all things as they choose, Excepting Zeus; for he beginning is and end.” And Orpheus: “One Might, the great, the flaming heaven, was One Deity. All things one Being were; in whom All these revolve fire, water, and the earth.” And so forth. Pindar, the lyric poet, as if in Bacchic frenzy, plainly says: “What is God? The All.” And again: “God, who makes all mortals.” And when he says, “How little, being a man, dost thou expect Wisdom for man? ’Tis hard for mortal mind The counsels of the gods to scan; and thou Wast of a mortal mother born,” he drew the thought from the following: “Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who was His counsellor?”[888] Hesiod, too, agrees with what is said above, in what he writes: “No prophet, sprung of men that dwell on earth, Can know the mind of Ægis-bearing Zeus.” Similarly, then, Solon the Athenian, in the _Elegies_, following Hesiod, writes: “The Immortal’s mind to men is quite unknown.” Again Moses, having prophesied that the woman would bring forth in trouble and pain, on account of transgression, a poet not undistinguished writes: