Lévesque de Pouilly and his demonstration of the existence of God through the eternity of the world

In his final paper for the Académie des Inscriptions, in which he examines the relationship between history and tradition, Lévesque de Pouilly incidentally sets out to show the atheists of his time that the eternity of the world that they teach can paradoxically be proof of the existence of God. His argument, which is somewhat cryptic because of its extreme concision, does not conclude with the Christian God, as one might expect, but with a pantheistic God, the creator by emanation of an eternal world.