CHAPTER VI. Objection based on the saying about the Day of Judgment in the Apocalypse of Peter.²⁶³

By way of giving plenty of such sayings, let me quote also what was said in the Apocalypse of Peter. He thus introduces the statement that the heaven will be judged together with the earth. "The earth shall present all men to God in the day of judgment, itself too being about to be judged, together with the heaven which contains it." No one is so uneducated or so stupid as not to know that the things which have to do with earth are subject to disturbance, and are not naturally such as to preserve their order, but are uneven; whereas the things in heaven have an order which remains perpetually alike, and always goes on in the same way, and never suffers alteration, nor indeed will it ever do so. For it stands as God's most exact piece of workmanship. Wherefore it is impossible that the things should be undone which are worthy of a better fate, as being fixed by a divine ordinance which cannot be touched.

And why will heaven be judged ? Will it some day be shown to have committed some sin, though it preserves the order which from the beginning was approved by God, and abides in sameness always ? Unless indeed some one will address the Creator, slanderously asserting |130 that heaven is deserving of judgment, as having allowed the judge to speak any portents against it which are so wondrous and so great.²⁶⁴