St. Dionysius of Alexandria: Letters and TreatisesDionysius, of Alexandria, Saint
Religion
St. Dionysius of Alexandria: Letters and Treatises
Dionysius, of Alexandria, Saint
Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600 -- Sources
In the same way it would befit them to say that the atoms also which are
inoperative when they are at rest and not worked by hands, are also
useless when they move at random.[217] For let these opponents of ours
look to these viewless atoms of theirs and apply their minds to these
mindless ones, not like the Psalmist who confesses that this was revealed
to him by God alone: “Mine eyes beheld thy unfinished work.”[218] So,
too, when they say that those fine webs which they speak of as being
produced from atoms, are self-wrought by them without skill or sensation,
who can bear to hear of these weaver atoms whom even the spider excels in
skill when he spins his web out of himself.[219]
(2) Who, then, is it that discriminates between the atoms, gathering or
scattering them, and arranging some in this way to make the sun and
others in that way for the moon, and putting each of them together
according to the light-giving power of each star? For the particular
number and kind that made the sun by being united in a particular way
would never have condescended to produce the moon, nor would the
intertwinings of the moon atoms have ever become the sun. Moreover, even
Arcturus, bright as he is, would never plume himself on having the atoms
of Lucifer, nor the Pleiads those of Orion. For Paul has well
distinguished when he says: “There is one glory of the sun, and another
glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for star differeth
from star in glory.”[220] And if the combination of the atoms, as being
soulless, was unintelligent, they needed an intelligent artist to put
them together: and if their junction was without purpose and the result
of necessity, they being void of reason, some wise herdsman drove them
together and presided over them: and if they have been linked together
voluntarily to do willing service, some wonderful master-craftsman
assigned them their parts and took the lead; or, like an expert general,
he did not leave his army disordered and all in a muddle, but disposed
the cavalry in one part and the heavy armed troops apart, and the javelin
men by themselves and the slingers where they ought to be, in order that
those who carried the same weapon might help one another. And if they
think this illustration ridiculous because in it I make a comparison of
great bodies with small, we will come down to the very smallest.
[Eusebius’s extract breaks off here.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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