on the other, something becoming nothing. When God is said to create out of nothing, we construe this to thought by supposing that He evolves existence out of Himself; we view the Creator as the cause of the Universe. ' Ux nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti,^ expresses, in its purest form, the whole intellectual phenomenon of causality." ^ To this he elsewhere adds, " In like manner, we conceive annihilation, only by conceiving the Creator to withdraw his creation from actuality into power. . . . The mind is thus compelled to recognize an absolute identity of existence in the effect and. in the complement of its causes — be- tween the causatum and the causa,^^ ^ and therefore, " an absolute identity of existence " between God and the world. This doctrine the fathers, and the Church generally, strenuously resisted as in- consistent with the nature of God. It supposes that the substance of God admits of partition or division ; that the attributes of God can be separated from his substance ; and that the divine substance can become degraded and polluted.
The third point included in the Scriptural doctrine of creation is, that it was an act of God's free will. He was free to create or not to create. This is opposed to the doctrine of necessary creation, which has been set forth in different forms. Some regax'd the phe- nomenal universe as a mere evolution of absolute being by a neces- sary process, as a plant is developed from a seed. Others, regarding God as a Spirit, make life and thought essential and coeternal with Him, and this life and power are of necessity creative. God's "essence," says Cousin, "consists precisely in his creative power." ^ Again, he says,* " He cannot but produce ; so that the creation ceases to be unintelligible ; and God is no more without a world than a world without God." As, however, thought is spontaneous, Cousin, when called to account for such utterances, maintained that he did not deny that creation was free.
Some who do not admit that God is under any natural or meta- physical necessity to give existence to the universe, still assert a moral necessity for the creation of sensitive and rational creatures. God, it is said, is love ; but. it is the nature of love to long to com- municate itself, and to' hordT" fellowship with others than itself. Tiierefore God's nature impels Him to call into existence creatures in whom and over whom He can rejoice. Others say, that God is
1 Lectures on MeUiphysics. Boston, edit. 1859, lecture xxxix. p. 533.
2 Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, etc. By Sir William Hamilton. New York, edit. 1853, p. 575.
« Cousin's Psychology, New York, edit. 1856, p. 443. * Ibid. p. 447.
556 PART L — THEOLOGY. [Ch. X. — Creation.
benevolence, and therefore is under a moral necessity of creating beings whom He can render happy. Thus Leibnitz says : " Dieu n'est point n^cessite, m^taphysiquement parlant, a la creation de ce monde Cependant Dieu est oblige, par une necessite mo- rale, a faire les choses en sorte qu'il ne se puisse rien de mieux." ^
According to the Sci'iptures God is self-sufficient. He needs nothing out of Himself for his own well-being or happiness. He is in every respect independent of his creatures ; and the creation of the universe was the act of the free will of that God of whom the Apostle says in Rom. xi. 36, " Of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things."
The common faith of the Church on this subject is clearly and beautifully expressed by Melancthon : ^ " Quod autem res ex nihilo conditae sint, docet hsec sententia : ipse dixit et facta sunt ; ipse mandavit, et creata sunt, id est dicente seu jubente Deo, res exortas sunt : non igitur ex materia priore exstructse sunt, sed Deo dicente, cum res non essent, esse coeperunt ; et cum Joannes in- quit : Omnia per ipsura facta esse, refutat Stoicam imaginationem, quae fingit materiam non esse factam."
§ 2. Mediate and Immediate Creation. But while it has ever been the doctrine of the Church that God created the universe out of nothing by the word of his power, which creation was instantaneous and immediate, i. e., without the intervention of any second causes ; yet it has generally been ad- mitted that this is to be understood only of the original call of matter into existence. Theologians have, therefore, distinguished between a first and second, or immediate and mediate creation. The one was instantaneous, the other gradual ; the one precludes the idea of any preexisting substance, and of cooperation, the other admits and implies both. There is evident ground for this distinction in the Mosaic account of the creation. God, we are told, " created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Here it is :loarly intimated that the universe, when first created, was in a state ot chaos, and that by the life-giving, organizing power of the Spirit of God, it was gradually moulded into the wonderful cosmos which we now behold. The whole of the first chapter of Genesis, after the first verse, is an account of the progress of creation ; the
1 Theodicee, u. 201; IForis, Berlin, 1840, p. 566.
2 Loci Communes, de Creaiione, edit Erlangen, 1828 p. 48.