Order Made Out of Opposites

Who sees things of opposite natures combined and in harmonious agreement, fire mingled with cold, for example, and dry with wet, not in conflict with one another but making up a single body, as though all of one kind, and can resist the conclusion that there is One outside these things who has united them? Who sees winter giving way to spring, spring to summer, and summer to autumn, and sees that these, though contrary by nature (for one chills and another burns, one nourishes and another destroys), all make up a balanced result that benefits humankind, and can fail to perceive that there is One higher than they, who balances and guides them all, even if he does not see him?

Who sees the clouds held up in the air, and the weight of the waters bound up in the clouds, and can help perceiving him who binds them up and has ordered these things so? Or who sees the earth, by nature the heaviest of all things, fixed upon the waters and staying unmoved on what by nature moves, and will fail to understand that there is One who has made it and ordered it, namely God? Who sees the earth bringing forth fruit in its season, and the rains from heaven, the flowing of rivers and the springing up of wells, and animals born from unlike parents, and sees that these things happen not at all times but at fixed seasons; who sees, in general, the balanced and uniform order that things unlike and contrary to one another all keep; and can resist the conclusion that there is one Power that orders and governs them, arranging things well as it thinks fit?

For left to themselves they could not hold together or ever even appear, because their natures are contrary to one another. Water is heavy by nature and tends to flow downward, while the clouds are light and belong to the class of things that tend to soar and rise upward. And yet we see water, heavy as it is, carried aloft in the clouds. Again, earth is very heavy, while water by comparison is light; and yet the heavier rests on the lighter, and the earth does not sink but stays unmoved. Male and female are not the same, and yet they unite in one, and from the two is born a living creature like them. In short, cold is the opposite of heat, and wet fights with dry; and yet they come together and are not at odds. They agree, and together they produce a single body and the birth of everything.