679. Anyone who traces effects back to their causes may know that what holds everything together depends on order; and there are many kinds of order, both general and particular. There is one order which is the most universal of all on which the general and particular depend in a continuous chain, and this most universal order enters into all others, like essence into forms, and they could not otherwise make up a single whole. It is this unity which holds the whole together, which would otherwise fall apart and slip back not merely into primeval chaos, but into annihilation. What would happen to a person, if every single part of his body were not arranged in the most detailed order, and their whole partnership did not depend upon a single heart and pair of lungs? Without this what would man be but a muddle? Would the stomach then perform its functions, the liver and pancreas theirs, the mesentery and mesocolon theirs, the kidneys and intestines theirs? It is the order which exists in them and between them which makes all the parts of the body appear to a person as a single whole.
[2] Without a clearly defined order what would go on in a person's mind or spirit but confusion and muddle, unless his partnership depended upon the will and the understanding? Without that order would a person have any more ability to think and will than his likeness in a picture, or a sculpture of himself that he has at home? What would become of man without the most highly organised inflow from heaven and the ability to receive it? What would this inflow be without the most universal upon which the control of the whole and all its parts depends? Unless, that is, everything was from God, unless it was in Him and from Him that it had its being, lived and moved? These ideas can be illustrated for the natural man to see by countless things, such as these. What would an empire or a kingdom be without order but a band of robbers, and if a large number of them got together they would kill thousands, and eventually a few of them would kill the majority. What is a city without order, what indeed is a household? And what is a kingdom, a city or a household, unless in each someone has supreme authority?
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