Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
This same force, this same disposition of the divine mind, is displayed in the scriptures under the name of Wisdom as well. For what is wiser than God's Reason, or his Word? So hear Wisdom too, then, as a second Person already set forth: first, "The Lord fashioned me at the outset of his undertakings, the first of his deeds, prior to his shaping the earth, prior to the mountains being set firm; and before any hill he brought me into being" — begetting and founding her, that is, within his own mind. Next, recognize her standing at his side, marked off by her own distinctness: "When he prepared the heaven," she says, "I was present with him; and how he made the winds above strong, and the clouds on high, and how he set safe the fountains that are under heaven, I was with him, fitting all together; I was the one in whom he delighted; and day by day I took my delight in his presence." For as soon as God willed to bring forth into their own substances and proper forms the things he had arranged within himself in company with Wisdom and Reason and the Word, he first of all put forth that very Word, possessing in himself his own undivided reason and wisdom, so that through him — through whom all things had been conceived and arranged, indeed already made, so far as lay within God's own mind — the universe might come into being; for this alone they still lacked: to be known and grasped openly, each in its own proper form and substance.