ied or totally changed. Cause and effect then mean nothing in the
sequence of natural phenomena beyond what I have said; and the real
cause, or the transcendent cause, as some would call it, of each
successive phenomenon is in that which is the cause of all things which
are, which have been, and which will be forever. Thus the word Creation
may have a real sense if we consider it as the first, if we can conceive
a first, in the present order of natural phenomena; but in the vulgar
sense a creation of all things at a certain time, followed by a
quiescence of the first cause and an abandonment of all sequences of
Phenomena to the laws of Nature, or to the other words that people may
Use, is absolutely absurd.[A]

[A] Time and space are the conditions of our thought; but time
infinite and space infinite cannot be objects of thought,
except in a very imperfect way. Time and space must not in any
way be thought of when we think of the Deity. Swedenborg says,
"The natural man may believe that he would have no thought, if
the ideas of time, of space, and of things material were taken
away; for upon those is founded all the thought that man has.
But let him know that the thoughts are limited and confined in
proportion as they partake of time, of space, and of what is
material; and that they are not limited and are extended, in
proportion as they do not partake of those things; since the
mind is so far elevated above the things corporeal and worldly"
(Concerning Heaven and Hell, 169).

[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF PALLAS]

Now, though there is great difficulty in understanding all the
passages of Antoninus, in which he speaks of Nature, of the changes of
things and of the economy of the universe, I am convinced that his sense
of Nature and Natural is the same as that which I have stated; and as he
was a man who knew how to use words in a clear way and with strict
consistency, we ought to assume, even if his meaning in some passages is
doubtful, that his view of Nature was in harmony with his fixed belief
in the all-pervading, ever present, and ever active energy of God. (ii.
4; iv. 40; x. 1; vi. 40; and other passages. Compare Seneca, De Benef.,
iv. 7. Swedenborg, Angelic Wisdom, 349-357.)

There is much in Antoninus that is hard to understand, and it might be
said that he did not fully comprehend all that he wrote; which would
however be in no way remarkable, for it happen