MEDITATIONS ON CHRISTIAN DOGMA.TREATISE III. 1. CREATION IN GENERAL.
St. Ursula & Comp., VvMm
MEDITATIONS ON CHRISTIAN DOGMA.
TREATISE III.
1. CREATION IN GENERAL.
I. God was under no obligation to create anything. It
is only His intrinsic activity in producing the Persons of the
Trinity that is necessary ; all other action might or might
not be, according to His will. God did not require the
world or any creatures. He was rich in all good, perfectly
happy, powerful, enjoying immovable repose and perfect
activity in His own being. That which was, before creation,
was not a dead solitude ; but the three Divine Persons formed
a kind of society in Their unity. There was a manifestation
of infinite perfections by each to each, a mutual understanding
and appreciation of the attributes of each, and action, proportioned to the greatness of the divine nature, rendering
glory to each. No further witnesses were required of the
divine glory, no audience for the celestial communications
between the Persons. Indeed no created being could give
and take, by the action of its intelligence and will, in any
thing like the same measure as do the Divine Persons. God
has no need of you. You can do nothing that is of any use
to Him. " I have said to the Lord, Thou art my God, for
Thou hast no need of my goods" (Ps. xv. 2). When you
have exerted all your talents and done all that you can, you
may say with most perfect truth, " I am an unprofitable
servant."
II. We, on the other hand, cannot do without God. So
many million centuries ago, man, and the earth, and the
whole universe were not. They were in an abyss of nothingness whence only the command of God was able to bring
them forth. No creature could have drawn out a developed
being from non-being, even if any creature had been pre-
existent. The mode in which something is created from
nothing is absolutely inconceivable to us. Only a being of
infinite intelligence and omnipotent power could do such a
thing. A creature could not have acted before it existed so
as to produce itself, or develop itself by its own energies.
And the whole universe of things was as powerless to evolve
itself as a single atom or a degree of force. What a vast
difference between God and creatures ! They were once in
nothingness, He was always existent ; they began a definite
time ago, He had no beginning ; they are dependent and
imperfect, He is absolute uncontrolled Master, all powerful
and all perfect. What an enormity it is, and how ridiculous,
when any of God s creatures dare to deny His authority,
and disobey His commands, and raise their heads in pride,
and say " I will not serve ! " This you do when you commit
sin.
III. The number of the possible worlds and beings is
absolutely without limit, which God might have made after
the model of His ideas, and as reflections of His perfections,
God determined on certain series of forces and substances,
both in spirit and matter; and, by some incomprehensible pro
jection of His infinite activity beyond Himself, He produced
the commencements of force and motion and matter, endowed with enormous energies and latent powers of trans
formation and development. God thus inaugurated a new
order. Outside of, or anterior to creation, God was the
ocean of the supernatural only ; at creation things were
produced which had a thitherto unexampled relation to God.
He became then the source and author of the natural order
as well as of the supernatural, acting freely on two different
planes, carrying out two different series of laws. Those two
orders were separate and independent, till God united them
in man as raised to the life of grace and participation with
God. Admire God's wonderful dispositions. He unites the
natural and supernatural orders as being the source of both ;
here below the two are united again in you.
MEDITATIONS ON CHRISTIAN DOGMA BY THE RIGHT REV. JAMES BELLORD, D.D
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