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| That God is the Founder of All Things, Their Lord and Parent, is Proved from the Holy Scriptures.
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Chapter
III. Argument.—That God is the Founder of All
Things, Their Lord and Parent, is Proved from the Holy
Scriptures.
Him, then, we acknowledge and know to be God, the
Creator of all things—Lord on account of His power, Parent on
account of His discipline—Him, I say, who “spake, and all
things were made;”5022
He commanded, and all things went
forth: of whom it is written, “Thou hast made all things in
wisdom;”5023
of whom
Moses said, “God in heaven above, and in the earth
beneath;”5024
who,
according to Isaiah, “hath meted out the heaven with a span, the
earth with the hollow of His hand;”5025
“who looketh on the earth, and
maketh it tremble; who boundeth the circle of the earth, and those that
dwell in it like locusts; who hath weighed the mountains in a balance,
and the groves in scales,”5026
that is, by the sure test of divine
arrangement; and lest its greatness, lying unequally, should easily
fall into ruins if it were not balanced with equal weights, He has
poised this burden of the earthly mass with equity. Who says by
the prophet, “I am God, and there is none beside
me.”5027
Who says
by the same prophet, “Because I will not give my majesty to
another,”5028
that He
may exclude all heathens and heretics with their figments; proving that
that is not God who is made by the hand of the workman, nor that which
is feigned by the intellect of a heretic. For he is not God for
whose existence the workman must be asked. And He has added
hereto by the prophet, “The heaven is my throne, and the earth is
my footstool: what house will ye build me, and where is the place
of my rest?”5029
that He may show that He whom the
world does not contain is much less contained in a temple; and He says
these things not for boastfulness of Himself, but for our
knowledge. For He does not desire from us the glory of His
magnitude; but He wishes to confer upon us, even as a father, a
religious wisdom. And He, wishing moreover to attract to
gentleness our minds, brutish, and swelling, and stubborn with cloddish
ferocity, says, “And upon whom shall my Spirit rest, save upon
him that is lowly, and quiet, and that trembleth at my
words?”5030
—so that
in some degree one may recognise how great God is, in learning to fear
Him by the Spirit given to him: Who, similarly wishing still more
to come into our knowledge, and, by way of stirring up our minds to His
worship, said, “I am the Lord, who made the light and created the
darkness;”5031
that we
might deem not that some Nature,—what I know not,—was the
artificer of those vicissitudes whereby nights and days are controlled,
but might rather, as is more true, recognise God as their
Creator. And since by the gaze of our eyes we cannot see Him, we
rightly learn of Him from the greatness, and the power, and the majesty
of His works. “For the invisible things of Him,” says
the Apostle Paul,” from the creation of the world, are clearly
seen, being understood by those things which are made, even His eternal
power and godhead;”5032
| 5032
Rom. i. 20. [“So that they are without
excuse.”] | so that the human mind, learning hidden
things from those that are manifest, from the greatness of the works
which it should behold, might with the eyes of the mind consider the
greatness of the Architect. Of whom the same apostle, “Now
unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and
glory.”5033
For He
has gone beyond the contemplation of the eyes who has surpassed the
greatness of thought. “For,” it is said, “of
Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things.”5034
For
all things are by His command, because they are of Him; and are
ordered by His word as being through Him; and all things return
to His judgment; as in Him expecting liberty when corruption
shall be done away, they appear to be recalled to
Him.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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