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Of all visible things, the world is the greatest; of all invisible,
the greatest is God. But, that the world is, we see; that God
is, we believe. That God made the world, we can believe from no one
more safely than from God Himself. But where have we heard Him?
Nowhere more distinctly than in the Holy Scriptures, where His
prophet said, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth." s Was the prophet present when God made the heavens and the
earth? No; but the wisdom of God, by whom all things were made,
was there, and wisdom insinuates itself into holy souls, and makes
them the friends of God and His prophets, and noiselessly informs
them of His works. They are taught also by the angels of God, who
always behold the face of the Father, and announce His will to whom
it befits. Of these prophets was he who said and wrote, "In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth." And so fit a
witness was he of God, that the same Spirit of God, who revealed
these things to him, enabled him also so long before to predict that
our faith also would be forthcoming.
But why did God choose then to create the heavens and earth which up
to that time He had not made? If they who put this question wish to
make out that the world is eternal and without beginning, and that
consequently it has not been made by God, they are strangely
deceived, and rave in the incurable madness of impiety. For, though
the voices of the prophets were silent, the world itself, by its
well-ordered changes and movements, and by the fair appearance of all
visible things, bears a testimony of its own, both that it has been
created, and also that it could not have been created save by God,
whose greatness and beauty are unutterable and invisible. As for those
who own, indeed, that it was made by God, and yet ascribe to it not
a temporal but only a creational beginning, so that in some scarcely
intelligible way the world should always have existed a created world
they make an assertion which seems to them to defend God from the
charge of arbitrary hastiness, or of suddenly conceiving the idea of
creating the world as a quite new idea, or of casually changing His
will, though He be unchangeable. But I do not see how this
supposition of theirs can stand in other respects, and chiefly in
respect of the soul; for if they contend that it is co-eternal with
God, they will be quite at a loss to explain whence there has accrued
to it new misery, which through a previous eternity had not existed.
For if they said that its happiness and misery ceaselessly alternate,
they must say, further, that this alternation will continue for ever;
whence will result this absurdity, that, though the soul is called
blessed, it is not so in this, that it foresees its own misery and
disgrace. And yet, if it does not foresee it, and supposes that it
will be neither disgraced nor wretched, but always blessed, then it is
blessed because it is deceived; and a more foolish statement one cannot
make.
But if their idea is that the soul's misery has alternated with its
bliss during the ages of the past eternity, but that now, when once
the soul, has been set free, it will return henceforth no more to
misery, they are nevertheless of opinion that it has never been truly
blessed before, but begins at last to enjoy a new and uncertain
happiness; that is to say, they must acknowledge that some new thing,
and that an important and signal thing, happens to the soul which never
in a whole past eternity happened it before.
And if they deny that God's eternal purpose included this new
experience of the soul, they deny that He is the Author of its
blessedness, which is unspeakable impiety. If, on the other hand,
they say that the future blessedness of the soul is the result of a new
decree of God, how will they show that God is not chargeable with
that mutability which displeases them?
Further, if they acknowledge that it was created in time, but will
never perish in time, that it has, like number, a beginning but no
end,, and that, therefore, having once made trial of misery, and
been delivered from it, it will never again return thereto, they will
certainly admit that this takes place without any violation of the
immutable counsel of God. Let them, then, in like manner believe
regarding the world that it too could be made in time, and yet that
God, in making it, did not alter His eternal design.
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