Old Epicurus was a sorry philosopher, or rather,
no philosopher at all. Providence is as necessary as creation,
or rather, Providence is only continuous creation, the creative
act not suspended or discontinued, or not passing over from the
creature and returning to God.
Through the creative act man participates of God, and he can
continue to exist, act, or live only by participating through it
of his divine being. There is, therefore , something of divinity,
so to speak, in every creature, and therefore it is that God is
worshipped in his works without idolatry. But he creates
substantial existences capable of acting as second causes. Hence,
in all living things there is in their life a divine element and
a natural element; in what is called human life, there are the
divine and the human, the divine as first and the human as second
cause, precisely what the doctrine of the great Christian
theologians assert to be the fact with all legitimate or real
government. Government cannot exist without the efficacious
presence of God any more than man himself, and men might as well
attempt to build up a world as to attempt to found a state
without God. A government founded on atheistical principles were
less than a castle in the air. It would have nothing to rest on,
would not be even so much as "the baseless fabric of a vision,"
and they who imagine that they really do exclude God from their
politics deceive themselves; for they accept and use principles
which, though they know it not, are God.
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