PART I.
OF GOD.
CHAPTER I.
That there is a God, and that the world is created, made, and temporal.
S. Paul the heavenly apostle, the treasury of the Holy Ghost, and the spiritual philosopher, has, through the Spirit, laid an admirable foundation for Theology, by his saying, that men "should seek God, and feel after Him, and find Him out from His creation." Inasmuch as the artificer is known by his work, and the maker through the thing made.
That the world is made, and created, and had a beginning in time we know from this:—This world is compounded, framed, and disposed, as a whole, and in all its parts; and every thing that is compounded, framed, and disposed, must have a compounder, framer, and disposer. That it is compound is proved from its whole being made up of many parts, and from all its bodies being made up of matter and kinds, and from the visible and invisible movers therein. But the most certain witness of its being framed is man, who is a small world in himself, and in whose formation all creation is brought together, as one of the sages has said: "Man is an epitome of the whole world, and of the whole frame of creation."
Now that the world is disposed is clear from the wonderful order of the heavens, the planets, the elements, with all their productive powers, generating plants, trees, mines, and the members of beasts and of men, the astonishing order of which surpasses the wisdom and knowledge of all created beings.
