Reflections on God and Religion

REFLECTIONS.

But let the Arabian prove by whose blessing
The indwelling principle received the power of movement
Of the spheres The "spheres" refer to the concentric crystalline shells in the Ptolemaic system that carried the planets and stars around the Earth. apart from God, the highest power;
Since the Divinity Himself went to create that driving soul,
And God granted being to that which would move the sphere,
And transfer those movements into others.
Thus it appears that God's power, infinite in its duration,
Brings forth everything from the womb of Mother Nature,
Who must increase in fruit through God’s inward-flow original: "innevloet". This refers to the concept of influxus divinus, the continuous divine influence required to sustain creation.;
Noting that those workings begin at first from nothing,
And end in something: the objective, and the mark original: "wit". Literally the white center of a target; the goal or telos toward which all creation moves.
Of the All-mover, who rests in His own possession.
One sees movements that cry out, though we were silent:
A single unmoved one is the origin of movement.

God is the first cause of all things.

A single and most ancient cause is the worker of
All that one can grasp with understanding or the senses,
And who arises out of Himself—that is God, and the divine being,
Appointed by everyone: for all works arose
From one worker, not from themselves, since no appearance
Contends that anything could be its own beginning
And cause. Every work, whether the highest or the very lowest,
Takes its beginning from another power, and from a very first
Ground-cause, which itself knows no cause,
Unless one wishes to mount and climb without end,
From tier to tier. Thus, through this irrefutable reason,
The cause of things, God, is confessed as the supreme.

God is a necessary, not a contingent being.

No being can be shown to us, but that time
Encloses it in its circle, or it spreads itself out far
As wide as eternity, and before and after infinite;
The one is contingent, the other is necessary. Contingent being original: "gebeurlijck wezen". In philosophy, this refers to something that exists but could potentially not exist; it depends on something else for its existence. could be in existence, or not.
The Necessary original: "nootwendige". An ens necessarium is a being that must exist by its very nature and cannot not exist; a core concept in the arguments of Thomas Aquinas. by its nature, however sharply one views this,
Has no contingency of being, or it would have to conflict
With its own nature: neither right nor reason can suffer this.