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| It is This God, Therefore, that the Church Has Known and Adores; And to Him the Testimony of Things as Well Visible as Invisible is Given Both at All Times and in All Forms, by the Nature Which His Providence Rules and Governs.
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Chapter VIII.
Argument.—It is This God, Therefore, that the Church Has
Known and Adores; And to Him the Testimony of Things as Well Visible as
Invisible is Given Both at All Times and in All Forms, by the Nature
Which His Providence Rules and Governs.
This God, then, setting aside the fables and
figments of heretics, the Church knows and worships, to whom the
universal and entire nature of things as well visible as invisible
gives witness; whom angels adore, stars wonder at, seas bless, lands
revere, and all things under the earth look up to; whom the whole mind
of man is conscious of, even if it does not express itself; at
whose command all things are set in motion, springs gush forth, rivers
flow, waves arise, all creatures bring forth their young, winds are
compelled to blow, showers descend, seas are stirred up, all things
everywhere diffuse their fruitfulness. Who ordained, peculiar to
the protoplasts of eternal life, a certain beautiful paradise in the
east; He planted the tree of life, and similarly placed near it another
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, gave a command, and decreed a
judgment against sin; He preserved the most righteous Nöe from the
perils of the deluge, for the merit of His innocence and faith; He
translated Enoch: He elected Abraham into the society of his
friendship; He protected Isaac: He increased Jacob; He gave Moses
for a leader unto the people; He delivered the groaning children of
Israel from the yoke of slavery; He wrote the law; He brought the
offspring of our fathers into the land of promise; He instructed the
prophets by His Spirit, and by all of them He promised His Son Christ;
and at the time at which He had covenanted that He would give Him, He
sent Him, and through Him He desired to come into our knowledge, and
shed forth upon us the liberal stores of His mercy, by conferring His
abundant Spirit on the poor and abject. And, because He of His
own free-will is both liberal and kind, lest the whole of this globe,
being turned away from the streams of His grace, should wither, He
willed the apostles, as founders of our family, to be sent by His Son
into the whole world, that the condition of the human race might be
conscious of its Founder; and, if it should choose to follow Him, might
have One whom even in its supplications it might now call Father
instead of God.5053
| 5053
[Madame de Staël has beautifully remarked on the benefit conferred
upon humanity by Him who authorized us to say,“ Our
Father.” “Scientific” atheism gives nothing
instead.] | And
His providence has had or has its course among men, not only
individually, but also among cities themselves, and states whose
destructions have been announced by the words of prophets; yea, even
through the whole world itself; whose end, whose miseries, and
wastings, and sufferings on account of unbelief He has allotted.
And lest moreover any one should think that such an indefatigable
providence of God does not reach to even the very least things,
“One of two sparrows,” says the Lord, “shall not fall
without the will of the Father; but even the very hairs of your head
are all numbered.”5054
And His care and providence did
not permit even the clothes of the Israelites to be worn out, nor even
the vilest shoes on their feet to be wasted; nor, moreover, finally,
the very garments of the captive young men to be burnt. And this
is not without reason; for if He embraces all things, and contains all
things,—and all things, and the whole, consist of
individuals,—His care will consequently extend even to every
individual thing, since His providence reaches to the whole, whatever
it is. Hence it is that He also sitteth above the Cherubim; that
is, He presides over the variety of His works, the living creatures
which hold the control over the rest being subjected to His
throne:5055
| 5055
[Ezek. i. 10 and Rev. iv.
7.] | a crystal
covering being thrown over all things; that is, the heaven covering all
things, which at the command of God had been consolidated into a
firmament5056
from the fluent
material of the waters, that the strong hardness that divides the midst
of the waters that covered the earth before, might sustain as if on its back the
weight of the superincumbent water, its strength being established by
the frost. And, moreover, wheels lie below—that is to say,
the seasons—whereby all the members of the world are always being
rolled onwards; such feet being added by which those things do not
stand still for ever, but pass onward. And, moreover, throughout
all their limbs they are studded with eyes; for the works of God must
be contemplated with an ever watchful inspection: in the heart of
which things, a fire of embers is in the midst, either because this
world of ours is hastening to the fiery day of judgment; or because all
the works of God are fiery, and are not darksome, but
flourish.5057
| 5057
“Vigent,” or otherwise “lucent.” | Or,
moreover, lest, because those things had arisen from earthly
beginnings, they should naturally be inactive, from the rigidity of
their origin, the hot nature of an interior spirit was added to all
things; and that this nature concreted with the cold bodies might
minister5058
| 5058
“Ministraret” seems to be preferable to
“monstraret.” | for the
purpose of life equal measures for all.5059
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[Our author’s genius actually suggests a theory, in this chapter,
concerning the zoa, or “living creatures,” which
anticipates all that is truly demonstrated by the
“evolutionists,” and which harmonizes the variety of
animated natures. Rev.
v. 13, 14.] | This, therefore, according to
David, is God’s chariot. “For the chariot of
God,” says he, “is multiplied ten thousand
times;”5060
that is, it is
innumerable, infinite, immense. For, under the yoke of the
natural law given to all things, some things are restrained, as if
withheld by reins; others, as if stimulated, are urged on with relaxed
reins. For the world,5061
| 5061
[The universe is here intended, as in Milton, “this pendent
world.” Parad. Lost, book ii. 1052.] |
which is that chariot of God with all things, both the angels
themselves and the stars guide; and their movements, although various,
yet bound by certain laws, we watch them guiding by the bounds of a
time prescribed to themselves; so that rightly we also are now disposed
to exclaim with the apostle, as he admires both the Architect and His
works: “Oh the depth of the riches of the wisdom and
knowledge of God! how inscrutable are His judgments, and His ways past
finding out!” And the rest.5062
| 5062
Rom. xi. 33. “Note also the
rest of the text” is our author’s additional
comment. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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