WORLD. (Eternity of.)

All Christians are agreed that nothing besides God hath eternally existed, but several assert that he might have actually created the world as soon as he formed the decree in order to its production, whence they conclude that the world might have existed from all eternity, since the decree for its production is undoubtedly eternal. Several also affirm that it ii impossible for a creature to be eternal; each of these parties is stronger in objections than solutions. But this dispute which is rendered so tedious and difficult, would soon cease if the disputants of each side would but explain themselves clearly, and remove the ambiguities about eternity. The question ought to be put thus: Is it possible that God and his creatures may have always existed together? and then one would not so boldly take the negative side; for this term—the eternity of the world,—a term which startles so many people, would not here make such an impression on the mind. And the better to remove this stumbling block, it should be said that a creature which had always co-existed with God would not be eternal, for which this reason ought immediately to be alleged, that the duration of creatures is successive, and that eternity is a simple duration which essentially excludes the time past and the time to come. By this essential difference betwixt the duration of God and that of the creatures, we should put an end to almost all the dispute, and each party would find their account in it. We should grant to

those who deny that a creature can be eternal, that they are in the right, and should not deny that it is possible for God and the creature to have always existed together, since it is certain that a cause doth not comprehend in its idea a priority of time with respect to its effect, and that this is especially true with respect to an omnipotent cause, which needs only will in order to produce actually whatever it pleases. M. Poiret has very clearly apprehended the ambiguities which perplex this controversy, and render it in a manner a dispute about words. He judiciously observes that it is not true that the creatures would be eternal if their existence had no beginning, and tells us that those who affirm it have a wrong notion of eternity. “It was objected to those (Plato and Aristotle as it is said) who maintained that the world is without a beginning, that if it was so the world would be eternal. They who made this objection, must have imagined that eternity is an order of succession of infinite moments of time, without beginning or end; but this shows that they know not what  eternity is. It is false that the world would be accounted eternal, if we say either that it has always existed, or that there is not any moment of its time which is not preceded by another; for even if this was so, the world would only be temporary and dependent, neither would this derogate from the eternity or the power of God.” Petrus Poiret, Cogitat. Rationales de Deo, Anima, et Malo, lib. iii. cap. xvi. ¹⁰ Observe, by the by, that this author does three things; we have just now seen the first, which is the false consequence that the world would be eternal if it never began. In the second place he owns that the arguments commonly alleged against those who say that the world had no beginning, are weak. He excuses those who not having the light of revelation, did not believe the beginning of the universe. He tells us that when he was writing that chapter, he was persuaded it was not possible to find any good reasons against those of that opinion, though he had long searched after better proofs than all those which he had read, and which appeared weak to him. “Postquam aliorum quæ occurrerunt rationes infirmas deprehenderem, alias diu in mente mea quæsieram, putavi seposita revelatione non posse ex lumine naturae demonstrari mundum sic esse, ut prius non fuerit.” Id. Ibid. pag. 439. ¹¹ At last he brings a proof which offered itself to his mind whilst he was writing; he brings it, I say, against these people; but an objection was made to him, to which he gave an answer that does not take off the force of it.

Here are other quibbles which prevail in this dispute. Those who say that the creatures did not always co-exist with God, are obliged to own that God existed before them. There was, therefore, such a thing as before when God existed alone; it is not therefore true, that the duration of God is an indivisible point: time therefore preceded the existence of the creatures. These consequences make those gentlemen fall into a contradiction; for if the duration of God is indivisible, and without either time past or time to come, it follows that time and the creatures began together, and if so, how can we say that God existed before the existence of the creatures? That phrase is improper and contradictory, and the following are no less so: God might have created the world sooner or later than he did create it; he might have done it one hundred thousand years sooner, &c.

They do not attend to this, that by making eternity one indivisible instant, the hypothesis of the beginning of the creatures is weakened. How do you prove that the world did not always exist? Is it not from the argument that there was an

infinite nature which existed while the world did not exist? But can the duration of that nature set bounds to that of the world? Can it hinder the duration of the world from extending itself beyond all the particular beginnings which you would assign for it? You say that the creatures want only a point of indivisible duration, to be without a beginning; for according to you, they were only preceded by the duration of God, which is an indivisible instant. You will be answered that they did not therefore begin, for if a stick wanted only one point (I mean a mathematical point) to be four feet long, it would certainly have the whole extent of four feet. This is an instance that may be founded on the common definition of the duration of God, a definition much more incomprehensible than the doctrine of transubstantiation; for if it is impossible to conceive that all the members of a man should be contained distinct from each other within the compass of a mathematical point, how shall we conceive that a duration without beginning or end, and which co-exists with the successive duration of all creatures, is comprised in an indivisible instant?

This hypothesis raises another difficulty in favour of those who assert that the creatures had no beginning. If the decree of the creation doth not comprehend a particular moment, it never existed without the creatures; for it ought to be understood under this phrase, I will that the world exist. It is visible that by virtue of such a decree, the world must have existed at the same time with this act of the will of God; but since this act had no beginning, neither had the world any. Let us suppose then that the decree was conceived thus: I will that the world exist in such a moment. But how can we suppose that, if the duration of God is an indivisible point? Can this or that moment be chosen, rather than any other

in such a duration? It seems therefore, that if the duration of God is not successive, the world could not have a beginning. This objection was proposed to M. Poiret in the year 1679; he returned an answer which no way removes the difficulty, and even takes away all means of doing it; for he supposes that it is not possible there should be any moments before the existence of the creatures; nay, he seems to suppose that the decree of the creation was only made at the very moment that the creatures existed. Let us cite his words: “Neither could the world or any moment of time exist, without another decree, namely that when God said, ‘ I will that the world exist,’ and then (as it is in the scripture) ‘ he spoke and the things were made;’ then the world immediately came into being. This was the first moment of its existence, and before this there was no possible moment; and it is contradictory to conceive that before the first existence of the world, there were several moments of time, and that one of them was singled out for the first moment of its existence, while the rest passed away without any world; for time is a mode of a creature considered as existing.” Poiret, pag. 680. ¹² For my part I make a quite different supposition, and believe it solves the difficulty. I suppose that among the possible beings which God knew before he made the decrees of the creation, we ought to reckon a successive duration without beginning or end; and whose parts are as distinct from one another, as those of a possible extension, which God likewise knew before his decrees as a Being infinite, according to the three dimensions. He left in the state of the things possible, part of this infinite duration, and made decrees for the existence of the other. He chose such a moment as he thought fit in this ideal duration for the first which should exist, and fixed to it the act by which he decreed the creation of the world. This is the reason why the eternity of that act doth not prove the eternity of the world. Thus we see again, that the indivisibility of the real duration of God, doth not prove that the world did not begin. We have also in this ideal or possible duration, the true measure of time; others look for it in vain in the motion of the heavens; others yet more chimerically assert, that time is an ens rationis, a manner of conceiving things, and that without motion or the thought of man, there would be no such thing as time. A gross absurdity: for though all created spirits should perish, though all bodies should cease to move, there would be still a successive, fixed, and regular duration in the world, which would correspond to the moments of the possible duration known to God, and according to which he would preserve every thing more or less, for so many years. An extension which is at rest, requires no less to be created every moment of its duration, than an extension which moves. The conservation of creatures is always a continual creation, whether they move or rest in the same situation. The true measure of the absolute quantity of things, either with respect to extension or time, is only to be found in the ideas of God. Man knows nothing of it; he is only acquainted with relative magnitude or littleness. The same space of time appears to him short or long, according as he passes it with pleasure or pain. The very hour which seems short to one, appears long to another.—Art. Zabarella.

(Plato's doctrine of the creation of.)

This explication of Plato’s doctrine concerning the creation of the world and the original of evil, is one of the most beautiful passages in Plutarch; and though this doctrine is not true, it deserves to be

read with attention, and contains several excellent ideas and sublime conceptions of a surprising fertility, with regard to those who know how to make good use of consequences. This is the reason which engages me not to curtail this passage. How many people who shall read this, would, not take the pains to recur to Plutarch, if I only mentioned the pages of the author?

“The world,” saith Heraclitus, “was neither created by a god nor by a man,” as if he had been afraid that in case we denied that God is the creator of the universe, we should be obliged to own that man was the architect of it. But according to Plato’s opinion, it is far better to own that the universe was created by God, and in our songs of praise to ascribe the glory of this structure to him, the frame itself being the noblest masterpiece, and God the most excellent architect and the best of all causes; yet that the substance and matter of the universe were not created, but always subject to the ordering and disposal of the builder, so as to be made as like himself as possible; for the creation was not out of nothing, but out of matter wanting beauty and perfection, like the rude materials of a house, a garment, or a statue lying first in shapeless confusion. For before the creation of the world, the universe was a chaos, that is, a confusion or disorder of things; yet this chaos was neither without a body, without motion, nor without a soul; but the corporeal part was without form or consistence, and the moving soul was rash and inconsiderate, without reason or conduct. God did not make a body of that which was incorporeal, nor a soul of that which was inanimate; as the musician doth not make the voice, but only renders it sweet, tuneful, and melodious; or as the dancer doth not make motion, but only renders it graceful and well-timed; thus God did not make the tangible solidity of bodies, nor the imaginative or moving faculties of the soul;

but having found these two principles, the one obscure and dark, the other turbulent and extravagant; both imperfect, disordered, and confused; he so ordered and disposed of them both, that of these two principles he made the noblest and most excellent of all animals: therefore the substance of body is no other than what Plato calls the nature susceptible of all things, and the seat and nurse of all created beings. As to the substance of the soul, in the book intituled Philebus he calls it infinity, or the privation of all number, measure, and proportion; admitting neither of more nor less, greater nor smaller, like nor unlike. As to that substance, which he says in his Timaeus is mixed with the indivisible nature, and becomes divisible in bodies, we must not understand it to be a multitude in unity; or length and breadth in points, for these are qualities more proper to bodies than to the, soul; but it is that unlimited principle moving both itself and other substances, that which in several places of his writings he calls necessity, and in his treatise of laws he openly styles the disorderly, evil, and mischievous soul; for such was the soul of itself, but at length it was endowed with understanding, ratiocination, and harmony, that it might become the soul of the world. Thus that all-receiving and material principle had both magnitude, space, and distance, but was void of beauty, form, and proportion; however, all these it attained when it came to be formed into seas and land, the heavens, the star, and that infinite variety of plants and living creatures. Now as for those who attribute to matter and not to the soul, that which Plato in his Timaeus calls necessity, in his Philebus infinity and the privation of measure and proportion, they cannot maintain it to be the cause of evil, because Plato always supposes that this matter is void of form or figure, or any other quality or virtue, and compares it with oils that have no scent, such as the perfumers use in composing their perfumes. For Plato could not possibly suppose that to be the cause and principle of evil, which of itself, is sluggish without any active quality, motion, or inclination; and at the same time give this infinity the epithet of wicked and mischievous, and call it necessity, which in several cases is repugnant to, and rebellious against God. For this necessity which defeats heaven (as he says in his Politics) and overturns it, together with that concupiscence which is born with us, and that confusion of ancient nature which was void of order before it was formed into its present beautiful shape;—whence came they to be conveyed into the various forms and beings if the subject, which is the first matter, was void of all quality whatever, and deprived of all efficient cause? The architect being in his own nature good, intended a frame the nearest approaching to his own perfections. For besides these two there is no third principle, and if we admit there is evil without any precedent cause or principle that produced it, we must fall into the difficulties and perplexities of the Stoics: for of those principles that have a being, it is not possible that either the good one, or the other which is void of all quality, should produce evil. But Plato did not act like those who came after him, who not having perceived and understood the third principle and third cause which is between God and matter, fell into the most strange and absurd proposition imaginable, affirming that the nature of evils came forth casually, and by I know not what accident, or came forth of itself: yet they will not allow a single atom of Epicurus to shift ever so little in its place; for this, say they, would infer that there is motion without any prior cause.

“Nevertheless they affirm, that vice and wickedness, with a thousand other deformities and imperfections of bodies arise by consequence, and without any other efficient cause. But Plato does not say so, for

denying that the first matter hath any quality, and removing from God, as far as is possible, the causes of evil, he has written thus concerning the world in his political discourses. ‘The world,’ says he, ‘received from its maker all things beautiful and good; but as to things evil, wicked, and unjust in heaven, they proceeded from its exterior habit, and former disposition, and it conveys them to the several animals on the earth.’ A little lower in the same Treatise he adds: ‘ In process of time, when oblivion encroaches upon the world, the distemper of its ancient confusions prevails more and more, and the hazard is, lest being dissolved, it should again be sunk, and plunged into the immense abyss of its former confusion.’... Plato does indeed give to matter the titles of mother and nurse; but the cause of evil he makes to be the moving force residing within it, and which in body is divisible, a motion not governed by order and reason, though not without a soul, which, in his treatise of laws, he expressly calls the soul repugnant, and contrary to that other, which is the cause of all good. For though the soul be the cause and principle of motion, yet it is the understanding which is the cause and principle of the order and harmony of motion. God, therefore, hath not rendered matter sluggish, but prevented it from being any longer troubled and disordered by an extravagant and inconsiderate cause: neither hath he infused into nature the principles of mutation and passion; but when it was under the pressure of all sorts of passions, and disorderly mutations, he removed all the disorders and Regularities, making use of symmetry, proportion, and number, as the most proper instruments for that purpose.” Art. Zoroaster.