unite the form to the matter, and change it, as the schoolmen say,
from materia informis to materia formata. Even the Christian
Platonists and Peripatetics never as philosophers assert creation;
they assert it, indeed, but as theologians, as a fact of
revelation, not as a fact of science; and hence it is that their
theology and their philosophy never thoroughly harmonize, or at
least are not shown to harmonize throughout.

Speaking generally, the ancient Gentile philosophers were
pantheists, and represented the universe either as God or as an
emanation from God. They had no proper conception of Providence,
or the action of God in nature through natural agencies, or as
modern physicists say, natural laws. If they recognized the
action of divinity at all, it was a supernatural or miraculous
intervention of some god. They saw no divine intervention in any
thing naturally explicable, or explicable by natural laws.
Having no conception of the creative act, they could have none of
its immanence, or the active and efficacious presence of the
Creator in all his works, even in the action of second causes
themselves. Hence they could not assert the divine origin of
government, or civil authority, without supposing it
supernaturally founded, and excluding all human and natural
agencies from its institution. Their writings may be studied
with advantage on the constitution of the state, on the practical
workings of different forms of government, as well as on the
practical administration of affairs, but never on the origin of
the state, and the real ground of its authority.

The doctrine is derived from Christian theology, which teaches
that there is no power except from God, and enjoins civil