Of God and His Creatures

A formal logician might quarrel with this argument: 'All work of intelligence and wisdom is a setting of things in order; therefore all setting of things in order is a work of intelligence and wisdom:' an illogical conversion. St Thomas however does not argue in that way. He gives us to understand that to set things in order is a peculiar work of intelligence, which cannot be done by chance, least of all when the things ordered are complex and manifold, as are the endless details of nature. Chance events, as Aristotle observes, are rareties and exceptions: the course of nature, so uniform, or so seldom varied, cannot be the work of chance. Thus that very uniformity of nature now taken to militate against religion, is taken by St Thomas for an argument of divine contrivance.


Of God and His Creatures: 2.24