Manifestior Via
The world of sense is always moving on
in shifting, changing, metamorphosis;
the early bud turns bloom, the dark to dawn,
and joy is turned to grief and then to bliss.
But what can change can only change in act,
an act that must begin in prior source;
what can be made will thus become a fact
as what is moving turns by outside force,
but infinite the series cannot go,
nor yet can every changer be thus moved,
and so it all begins in some first cause.
Through things that change we surely come to know
an unchanged source of change, and thus is proved
that God exists, who gives to change its laws.
Causing to Cause
The net of causes forms with different laws;
the nexus may be made of time or source
or other things; but causes caused to cause
exist and are the clearest form of force.
What has its causing through the cause before
is causing through an interlocking chain
of causes, none of which we can ignore,
until upon a first we can remain.
As ball is moved by stick, and stick by hand,
which acts from choice do get their shape and kind,
each chain its nature from the firstmost draws.
So then the causes-caused a first demand,
a first in causing causing we will find;
thus God exists, the first efficient cause.
Generation and Corruption
Throughout the world we find enduring things
that come to be and cease to be; and each
from something more enduring clings
until an all-enduring thing we reach.
An all-enduring thing, which does not end
and never has begun, may still be made,
but then it from enduring cause descends
until a first enduring is displayed.
What is, is so as it has strength to be;
if strength is caused, it from a stronger flows;
if not, it necessarily exists.
Thus necessary being do we see;
an all-enduring cause we thereby know,
a God, from which enduring things subsist.
Purity
We find both more and less pure forms of true,
of good, sublime, of noble and of one,;
they each completion bring to mental view
as they completeness more or less have won.
But what is more or less takes less or more
from purity, completeness found as such,
from what itself holds fullness in its store,
from which the lesser is by measured touch.
So true is more and less, as it partakes
of truth itself, the measure of its kind,
and that in which its fullness must consist.
Thus all of these gradations, pureness makes--
the True, the Good, the Noble, we will find,
thus God, the measure of all things, exists.
