give the motes of the air for a cause; cast the work on necessity or chance; bestow the honor thereof on nature; make two powers, the one to be the author of the matter, the other of the form; and lastly, for want of a workman, have it eternal:  which latter opinion Aristotle, to make himself the author of a new doctrine, brought into the world:  and his Sectators[26] have maintained it; “parati ac conjurati, quos sequuntur, philosophorum animis invictis opiniones tueri."[27] For Hermes, who lived at once with, or soon after Moses, Zoroaster, Musaeus, Orpheus, Linus, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Melissus, Pherecydes, Thales, Cleanthes, Pythagoras, Plato, and many other (whose opinions are exquisitely gathered by Steuchius Eugubinus) found in the necessity of invincible reason, “One eternal and infinite Being,” to be the parent of the universal.  “Horum omnium sententia quamvis sit incerta, eodem tamen spectat, ut Providentiam unam esse consentiant:  sive enim natura, sive aether, sive ratio, sive mens, sive fatalis necessitas, sive divina lex; idem est quod a nobis dicitur Deus”:  “All these men’s opinions (saith Lactantius) though uncertain, come to this; That they agree upon one Providence; whether the same be nature, or light, or reason, or understanding, or destiny, or divine ordinance, that it is the same which we call God.”  Certainly, as all the rivers in the world, though they have divers risings, and divers runnings; though they sometimes hide themselves for a while under ground, and seem to be lost in sea-like lakes; do at last find, and fall into the great ocean:  so after all the searches that human capacity hath, and after all philosophical contemplation and curiosity; in the necessity of this infinite power, all the reason of man ends and dissolves itself.

As for the others; the first touching those which conceive the matter of the world to have been eternal, and that God did not create the world “Exnihilo,"[28] but “ex materia praeexistente":[29] the supposition is so weak, as is hardly worth the answering.  For (saith Eusebius) “Mihi videntur qui hoc dicunt, fortunam quoque Deo annectere,” “They seem unto me, which affirm this, to give part of the work to God, and part to Fortune”; insomuch as if God had not found this first matter by chance, He had neither been author nor father, nor creator, nor lord of the universal.  For were the matter or chaos eternal, it then follows, that either this supposed matter did fit itself to God, or God accommodate Himself to the matter.  For the first, it is impossible, that things without sense could proportion themselves to the workman’s will.  For the second:  it were horrible to conceive of God, that as an artificer He applied himself, according to the proportion of matter which He lighted upon.