Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

^*The Winds and the Rain have their seasons and seem to be administered by laws for the profit of man: No satisfactory cause of those things can be ascribed to the Earth, the Sea, to the Air or Stars. Can any understand the spreading of his clouds or the noise of his Tabernacle? Job 38.29. The natural reason of those things cannot be demonstrated without recourse to an infinite and intelligent being: Nothing can be rendered capable of the direction of those things but a God.

^*The Winds and the Rain have their seasons and seem to be administred by laws for the profit of man: No satisfactory cause of those things can be ascribed to the Earth, the Sea, to the Air or Stars. Can any understand the spreading of his clouds or the noise of his Tabernacle? Job 38.29. The natural reason of those things cannot be demonstrated without recourse to an infinite and intelligent being: Nothing can be rendred capable of the direction of those things but a God.

1. *Coccei. sum. Theol. cap. 8. § 77.

This regularity in Plants and Animals is in all Nations. The Heavens have the ⟨p. 25⟩same motion in all parts of the world; all men have the same Law of nature in their mind; all Creatures are stamped with the same law of Creation: In all parts the same Creatures serve for the same use; and though there be different Creatures in India and Europe, yet they have the same subordination, the same subserviency to one another, and ultimately to man; which shows that there is a God, and but one God, who tunes all those different strings to the same notes in all places. Is it nature merely conducts these natural causes in due measures to their proper effects, without interfering with one another? Can mere nature be the cause of those musical proportions of time? You may as well conceive a Lute to sound its own strings without the hand of an Artist; a City well Governed without a Governor; an Army keep its Stations without a General, as imagine so exact an order, without an Orderer: Would any Man, when he hears a Clock strike, by sit intervals, the hour of the day, imagine this regularity in it, without the direction of one that had understanding to manage it? He would not only regard the motion of the Clock, but commend the diligence of the Clock-Keeper.