heir incalculable courses, may run foul of
suns and planets, and require renovation under other laws; certain races
of animals are become extinct; and were there no restoring power, all
existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should
be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of
an intelligent and powerful agent, that, of the infinite numbers of men
who have existed through all time, they have believed, in the proportion
of a million at least to unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal
pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent
universe. Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable,
than that of the few in the other hypothesis. Some early Christians,
indeed, have believed in the co-eternal pre-existence of both the
creator and the world, without changing their relation of cause and
effect. That this was the opinion of St. Thomas, we are informed by
Cardinal Toleta, in these words; '_Deus ab terno fuit jam omnipotens,
si cut cum produxit mundum. Ah aternopotuit producers mundum. Si sol ah
czterno esset, lumen ah aeterno esset; et si pes, similiter vestigium.
At lumen et vestigium effectus sunt efficients solis et pedis; potuit
ergo cum causa aeterna effectus coaternus esse. Cujus sententia, est S.
Thomas, theologorum primus_.'--Cardinal Toleta.

[Illustration: page364]

[Illustration: page365]

Of the nature of this being we know nothing. Jesus tells us, that 'God
is a spirit'(John iv. 24.), but without defining what a spirit is:
[Greek phrase] Down to the third century, we know that it was still
deemed material but of a lighter, subtler matter than our gross bodies.
So says Origen; _Deus igitur, cui anima similis est, juxta Originem,
reapte corporalis est; sed graviorum tantum ratione corporum
incorporeus_.' These are the words of Huet in his commentary on Origen.
Origen himself says, [Greek and Latin phrase]

These two fathers were of the third century. Calvin's character of
this Supreme Being seems chiefly copied from that of the Jews. But the
reformation of these blasphemous attributes, and substitution of those
more worthy, pure, and sublime, seems to have been the chief object of
Jesus in his discourses to the Jews: and his doctrine of the cosmogony
of the world is very clearly laid down in the three first verses of
the first chapter of John, in these words: [Greek phrase] Which, truly
translated, means, 'In the beginning God ex