"Could not all the forces of the universe be blind and mechanical?" said Afer.
"If so, they would none of them be free," said the Athenian.
"Well, be it so," said Afer.
"If not free," persisted the Greek, "they are compulsory; if compulsory, who compels them? I say, God. You would have to say, nothing; which is very like having nothing to say."
A clamor of merriment followed this, and Dionysius had to wait until it subsided.
"I am only showing," he resumed, "where and how the proof could be found. A seventh demonstration can be derived from the moral law. To deny God, or to misdescribe him, would necessitate the denial of any difference between good and evil, between virtue and vice. It would be a little long, but very easy to establish this; far easier than it was to make intelligible the two proofs which I have already submitted to you. I have said enough, however. This brilliant assemblage perceives that the belief in one sovereign and omnipotent mind is not a vain reverie for which nothing substantial can be advanced; but a truth demonstrable, which neither human wit nor human wisdom can shake from its everlasting foundations."
"I wonder," said Strabo, "whether this being, of whose knowledge and power there are no limits, is also mild and compassionate."
Dionysius was buried in thought for a short time, and then said,
"Pray favor me with your attention for a few moments. Love draws nigh to its object; hatred draws away from its object, which it never approaches except in order to destroy it. But the non-existent cannot be destroyed; therefore the non-existent never could draw hatred toward it. Hatred would say, those things are non-existent which I should hate, and which I would destroy if they existed; therefore let them continue non-existent. But this sovereign being is antecedent to all things; in his mind alone could they have had any existence before he created them. If, then, he drew near them, so to speak, approached them, called them out of nothing into his own palace, the palace of being, love alone could have led him. Therefore, by the most rigorous reasoning, it is evident that creation is inexplicable except as an act of love. It is more an act of love than even preservation and protection. This omnipotent being, then, must be love in perpetual action; love in universal action, boundless and everlasting love."
"Certainly yours is a grand philosophy," said Augustus.