[A] Justin (Apol. ii. 8) has the words [Greek: kata spermatikou logou meros], where he is speaking of the Stoics; but he uses this expression in a peculiar sense (note II). The early Christian writers were familiar with the Stoic terms, and their writings show that the contest was begun between the Christian expositors and the Greek philosophy. Even in the second Epistle of St. Peter (ii. I, v. 4) we find a Stoic expression, [Greek: Ina dia toutôn genêsthe theias koinônoi physeôs.] When we look at the motions of the planets, the action of what we call gravitation, the elemental combination of unorganized bodies and their resolution, the production of plants and of living bodies, their generation, growth, and their dissolution, which we call their death, we observe a regular sequence of phenomena, which within the limits of experience present and past, so far as we know the past, is fixed and invariable. But if this is not so, if the order and sequence of phenomena, as known to us, are subject to change in the course of an infinite progression,--and such change is conceivable,--we have not discovered, nor shall we ever discover, the whole of the order and sequence of phenomena, in which sequence there may be involved according to its very nature, that is, according to its fixed order, some variation of what we now call the Order or Nature of Things. It is also conceivable that such changes have taken place,--changes in the order of things, as we are compelled by the imperfection of language to call them, but which are no changes; and further it is certain that our knowledge of the true sequence of all actual phenomena, as for instance the phenomena of generation, growth, and dissolution, is and ever must be imperfect.