Wood existed before carpentering took possession of it, and transformed
it each day to supply new wants and made us see all the advantages
derived from it, giving the oar to the sailor, the winnowing-fan to the
laborer, the lance to the soldier.

But God, before all those things which now attract our notice existed,
after casting about in His mind and determining to bring into being that
which had no being, imagined the world such as it ought to be, and
created matter in harmony with the form which He wished to give it. He
assigned to the heavens the nature adapted for the heavens, and gave to
the earth an essence in accordance with its form. He formed, as he
wished, fire, air, and water, and gave to each the essence which the
object of its existence required.

Finally he welded all the diverse parts of the universe by links of
indissoluble attachment and established between them so perfect a
fellowship and harmony that the most distant, in spite of their
distance, appeared united in one universal sympathy. Let those men,
therefore, renounce their fabulous imaginations, who in spite of the
weakness of their argument, pretend to measure a power as
incomprehensible to man's reason as it is unutterable by man's voice.

God created the heavens and the earth, but not only one-half of each; He
created all the heavens and all the earth, creating the essence with the
form. For He is not an inventor of figures, but the Creator even of the
essence of beings. Further, let them tell us how the efficient power of
God could deal with the passive nature of matter, the latter furnishing
the matter without form, the former possessing the science of the form
without matter, both being in need of each other; the Creator in order
to display his art, matter in order to cease to be without form and to