4. One day, doubtless, their terrible condemnation
will be the greater for all this worldly wisdom, since, seeing so
clearly into vain sciences, they have wilfully shut their eyes to the
knowledge of the truth. These men who measure the distances of
the stars and describe them, both those of the North, always shining
brilliantly in our view, and those of the southern pole visible to the
inhabitants of the South, but unknown to us; who divide the Northern
zone and the circle of the Zodiac into an infinity of parts, who
observe with exactitude the course of the stars, their fixed places,
their declensions, their return and the time that each takes to make
its revolution; these men, I say, have discovered all except one
thing: the fact that God is the Creator of the universe, and the
just Judge who rewards all the actions of life according to their
merit. They have not known how to raise themselves to the idea of
the consummation of all things, the consequence of the doctrine of
judgment, and to see that the world must change if souls pass from this
life to a new life. In reality, as the nature of the present life
presents an affinity to this world, so in the future life our souls
will enjoy a lot conformable to their new condition. But they are
so far from applying these truths, that they do but laugh when we
announce to them the end of all things and the regeneration of the
age. Since the beginning naturally precedes that which is derived
from it, the writer, of necessity, when speaking to us of things which
had their origin in time, puts at the head of his narrative these
words—“In the beginning God created.”