, and in their ethical terminology, would naturally,
one would think, pre-dispose them to regard with favor this argument, so
in vogue among the philosophers of the Porch. It is, therefore, all the
more remarkable that, among the important works of the Ante-Nicene
Fathers, not more than a dozen instances, at most, of this argument can
be found; and of these more than half are merely passing references to
the patent fact of order in the world. Thus Tertullian asserts (quite
incidentally, in the course of an argument on an ethical question), that
"Nature herself is the teacher" of the fact "that God is the Maker of
the universe,"[61] but even here it is doubtful whether he means to
appeal to order or design in the world. In another place he makes the
mere statement that the fact of God's existence is tested by His works;
His character by the beneficence of them;[62] in another that the
"Creator ought to be known even by nature;"[63] and in still another
that nature teaches all men the existence and character of God.[64]
Origen in a passage sometimes quoted, appeals to the order and harmony
of the world,[65] but it is to prove the unity of God rather than His
existence. Perhaps the best and most elaborate example of the use of the
Cosmological argument by the Ante-Nicene authors, is that made of it by
"Athenagoras the Athenian; Philosopher and Christian," as he styled
himself.[66] He is concerned with making a distinction between God and
matter, in opposition to the popular idolatry, and declares that
Christians see the "Framer" behind the orderly world--whose relation one
to the other he likens to that between the artist and the materials of
his art. "But as clay cannot become vessels of itself without art, so
neither did matter, which is capable of taking all forms, receive apart
from God the Framer, distinction and shape and order."

And these few incidental and scattered instances represent practically
the explicit use of the Cosmological argument in the writings with which
we are occupied. When we consider how constantly they must have met with
the statements of it which are prevalent in the writings of the Stoics,
by whom they were, we know, profoundly influenced in both the form and
the terminology of their thought, we must surely consider this omission
a significant fact, for which it is worth while trying to account.

Nor does the "Socratic proof," the argument to design, meet with any
more cordial reception at th