The principle of nature being necessary and eternal, and its very
essence being to act, it must have been always active. If it had not
been an ever-active God, it would have been an eternally indolent
God, the God of Epicurus, the God who is good for nothing. This truth
seems to me to be fully demonstrated.
Hence the world, his work, whatever form it assume, is, like him,
eternal; just as the light is as old as the sun, movement as old as
matter, and food as old as the animals; otherwise the sun, matter,
and the animals would be, not merely useless, but self-contradictory
things, chimæras.
What, indeed, could be more contradictory than an essentially active
being that has been inactive during an eternity; a formative being
that has fashioned nothing, or merely formed a few globes some years
ago, without there being the least apparent reason for making them
at one time rather than another? The intelligent principle can do
nothing without reason; nothing can exist without an antecedent and
necessary reason. This antecedent and necessary reason has existed
eternally; therefore the universe is eternal.
We speak here a strictly philosophical language; it is not our part
even to glance at those who use the language of revelation.