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Chapter uncertain; original source section: Chapter 2
Complete historical editorial footnotes. These notes retain the original edition’s wording; individual note authors are unspecified.
English translation and editorial credits: Archibald Robertson (historical edition translation and editorial credit).
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Or, “been made in one way only.” In the next clause I formerly translated the difficult words ὡς ἐπὶ σώματος ἕνος ‘as in the case of the universe;’ but although the rendering has commended itself to others I now reluctantly admit that it puts too much into the Greek (in spite of §41. 5).
Editorial footnote · Incarnation of the Word, Chapter uncertain; original source section: Chapter 2, editorial note cite_note-1 · Original source
Of the making of the universe and the creation of all things many have taken different views, and each man has laid down the law just as he pleased. For some say that all things have come into being of themselves, and in a chance fashion; as, for example, the Epicureans, who tell us in their self-contempt, that universal providence does not exist, speaking right in the face of obvious fact and experience. 2. For if, as they say, everything has had its beginning of itself, and independently of purpose, it would follow that everything had come into mere being, so as to be alike and not distinct. For it would follow in virtue of the unity of body that everything must be sun or moon, and in the case of men it would follow that the whole must be hand, or eye, or foot. But as it is this is not so. On the contrary, we see a distinction of sun, moon, and earth; and again, in the case of human bodies, of foot, hand, and head. Now, such separate arrangement as this tells us not of their having come into being of themselves, but shews that a cause preceded them; from which cause it is possible to apprehend God also as the Maker and Orderer of all.