True Christian Religion (Chadwick) n. 52

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52. (ii) THE OMNIPOTENCE, OMNISCIENCE AND OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD CANNOT BE RECOGNISED EXCEPT THROUGH A KNOWLEDGE OF ORDER, AND THESE FACTS ABOUT ORDER: THAT GOD IS ORDER, AND THAT HE INTRODUCED ORDER INTO THE UNIVERSE AND ALL ITS PARTS SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH ITS CREATION.

To grasp the number and nature of the absurdities which have crept into human minds and thus into the church through the heads of its founders as the result of their failure to understand the order with which God on its creation endowed the universe and everyone of its parts, it will not be necessary to do more than to list them in the following pages. But first of all I shall here set forth a general definition of what I mean by order, namely: order is the quality of arrangement, direction and activation of the parts, substances and entities composing a form; this is the origin of its state, and perfection of state is the product of wisdom from its love, and its imperfection is hammered out by insanity of reason from lust. This definition uses the terms substance, form and state; and by substance I understand at the same time form, because all substance is a form, and the quality of a form is its state; the perfection or imperfection of its state is the result of order. These, being metaphysical terms, must inevitably be very obscure; but in the following pages this obscurity will be dispelled by the application of illustrative examples.


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