Sacred Texts  Christianity  Early Church Fathers  Index  Previous  Next 

Chapter XVI.—The World Made of Nothing by a Creator.

“But from this fact also, that in the conjunction of the elements, if one be deficient or in excess, the others are loosened and fall, is shown that they took their beginning from nothing.  For if for example, moisture be wanting in any body, neither will the dry stand; for dry is fed by moisture, as also cold by heat; in which, as we have said, if one be defective, the whole are dissolved.  And in this they give indications of their origin, that they were made out of nothing.  Now if matter itself is proved to have been made, how shall its parts and its species, of which the world consists, be thought to be unmade?  But about matter and its qualities this is not the time to speak:  only let it suffice to have taught this, that God is the Creator of all things, because neither, if the body of which the world p. 170 consists was solid and united, could it be separated and distinguished without a Creator; nor, if it was collected into one from diverse and separate parts, could it be collected and mixed without a Maker.  Therefore, if God is so clearly shown to be the Creator of the world, what room is there for Epicurus to introduce atoms, and to assert that not only sensible bodies, but even intellectual and rational minds, are made of insensible corpuscles?