The Summa Contra Gentiles of Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Third Book, Part I

FOREWORD

The Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods. For the Lord will not veject His people. For in His hands ave all the ends of the earth and the heights of the mountains ave His. For the sea is His and He made tt, and His hands formed the dry land (Ps. xciv. 3 seqq.)

WE have shown in the preceding books that there is one First Being, possessing the full perfection of all being, whom we call God, and who of the abundance of His perfection, bestows being on all that exists, so that He is proved to be not only the first of beings, but also the beginning of all. Moreover He bestows being on others, not through natural necessity, but according to the decree of His will, as we have shown above. Hence it follows that He is the Lord of the things made by Him: since we dominate over those things that are subject to our will. And this is a perfect dominion that He exercises over things made by Him, forasmuch as in their making He needs neither the help of an extrinsic agent, nor matter as the foundation of His work: since He is the universal efficient cause of all being.