NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

In the Beginning God made the Heaven and the Earth.words of man’s wisdom” 1368 by the dictation of the Holy Spirit; words destined to producenot the applause of those who hear them, but the salvation of those who are instructed bythem.2. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” 1369 I stop struck with admirationat this thought. What shall I first say? Where shall I begin my story? Shall I showforth the vanity of the Gentiles? Shall I exalt the truth of our faith? The philosophers ofGreece have made much ado to explain nature, and not one of their systems has remainedfirm and unshaken, each being overturned by its successor. It is vain to refute them; theyare sufficient in themselves to destroy one another. Those who were too ignorant to rise toa knowledge of a God, could not allow that an intelligent cause presided at the birth of theUniverse; a primary error that involved them in sad consequences. Some had recourse tomaterial principles and attributed the origin of the Universe 1370 to the elements of theworld. Others imagined that atoms, 1371 and indivisible bodies, molecules and ducts, form,by their union, the nature of the visible world. Atoms reuniting or separating, producebirths and deaths and the most durable bodies only owe their consistency to the strengthof their mutual adhesion: a true spider’s web woven by these writers who give to heaven,to earth, and to sea so weak an origin and so little consistency! It is because they knew nothow to say “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Deceived by their inherentatheism it appeared to them that nothing governed or ruled the universe, and thatwas all was given up to chance. 1372 To guard us against this error the writer on the creation,from the very first words, enlightens our understanding with the name of God; “In the beginningGod created.” What a glorious order! He first establishes a beginning, so that it531368 1 Cor. ii. 4.1369 Gen. i. 1.1370 cf. note on Letter viii. on the στοιχεῖα or elements which the Ionian philosophers made the ἀρχαι of theuniverse. Vide Plato, Legg. x. § 4 and Arist., Met. i. 3.1371 Posidonius the Stoic names Moschus, or Mochus of Sidon, as the originator of the atomic theory “beforethe Trojan period.” Vide Strabo, xvi. 757. But the most famous Atomists, Leucippus and Democritus of Abdera,in the 5th c. b.c., arose in opposition to the Eleatic school, and were followed in the 3d by Epicurus. Vide Diog.Laert. ix. § 30, sq. and Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 24–26. Ista enim flagitia Democriti, sive etiam ante Leucippi, essecorpuscula quædam lævia, alia aspera, rotunda alia, partim autem angulata, curvata quædam, et quasi adunca;ex his effectum esse cœlum atque terram, nulla cogente natura, sed concursu quodam fortuito. Atqui, si haecDemocritea non audisset, quid audierat? quid est in physicis Epicuri non a Democrito? Nam, etsi quædam commodavit,ut, quod paulo ante de inclinatione atomorum dixi: tamen pleraque dixit eadem; atomos, inane, imagines,infinitatem locorum, innumerabilitatemque mundorum eorum ortus, interitus, omnia fere, quibus naturæ ratiocontinetur.1372 cf. the Fortuna gubernans of Lucretius (v. 108).254