Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/146

nature to physical things, which were placed in subjection to his will and in obedience to his word. And all creatures were born with the inclination and the power to change their condition, and to ascend in that immense scale of being which, commencing in the lowest existences, terminates in that holy Being, who is above all, and whose incommunicable name the heavens and the earth, men and angels adore. Physical nature aspired in a certain way to a spiritual condition, to a resemblance with man; and man sought a higher spirituality and a nearer resemblance to the angel; and the angel a closer assimilation to that perfect Being, who is the source of all life, the creator of all creatures, whose vastness none may measure, and whose immensity none may comprehend. All things had come forth from God, and were to reascend to God, as to their first principle and origin; and because all things were created by him and were to return to him, so was there nothing that did not reflect, with more or less brightness, his beauty.

In this way infinite diversity was reduced, of itself, to that vast unity which created all things, and which established among them such a wonderful harmony and connection, separating those which were confused and uniting those which were disconnected. By this we see that the act of creation was complex, and composed of two different acts—that is, the act by which God created what before had no existence, and the act by which he disposed all that he had created, according to his wisdom. By the first of these acts, he revealed his power to create all substances, and by the second he revealed the power to create every form that embellishes these substances: and, as there can be no other substance than that created by God, so there can be no beauty