Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 2.djvu/411

Rh In the same way the ancient philosophers concluded that every motion must have a mover, until they arrived at Him Who is not moved. Who is the Cause of all, and of Whom they predicated that He must be good, wise, and almighty. Good, inasmuch as He created the world without a cause [i.e. of His own motion]; wise, because of the admirable order and frame displayed in the universe; almighty, because He overcame the things which are naturally destructive of each other, and brought them together in one agreement.

Further, this world is made up of quality and quantity, as respects its bodies and spirits, and of different dimensions and extensions, of which the mind can inquire, why they were not less or more, higher or lower than they are. And when it would know a cause for the appropriated designs, resemblances, and dimensions, of all and of each, and for their existence and continuance as they are, it can find no other than the will and intelligence of the Creator, who created and disposed them after His own will, and as He knew would be best and most fit. The artificer must of necessity exist before the work, in order that it may be proved of him that he is really the maker of that which did not exist before, and that he made it. This truth, then, being confirmed, it results that the world is made, and had a beginning in time, and is not eternal. It also results that it has a Maker, Who is good, wise, eternal, strong, and possessed of a will.

That the Maker of this world is one and not many may be proved thus:—It is impossible that many can possess one, perfect, unchangeable, self-consentaneous will; because they must either be co-equal in substance, and in every thing appertaining thereto, which would destroy plurality by the non-existence of distinction, or anything distinguishing, just as it is inconsistent to conceive of the existence of two blacknesses, alike in every respect, and not distinguishable, and having but one and the same substance:—or they must be distinct from