To run the world back to its first original and
infancy, and, as it were, to view nature in its cradle, and trace the
outgoings of the Ancient of Days in the first instance and specimen of
His creative power, is a research too great for any mortal inquiry;
and we might continue our scrutiny to the end of the world, before
natural reason would be able to find out when it began.
Epicurus's discourse concerning the original of the world is so
fabulous and ridiculously merry that we may well judge the design of
his philosophy to have been pleasure, and not instruction. Aristotle
held that it streamed by connatural result and emanation from God, the
infinite and eternal Mind, as the light issues from the sun; so that
there was no instant of duration assignable of God's eternal existence
in which the world did not also coexist. Others held a fortuitous
concourse of atoms--but all seem jointly to explode a creation, still
beating upon this ground, that the producing something out of nothing
is impossible and incomprehensible; incomprehensible, indeed, I grant,
but not therefore impossible.
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