For a long time, non-Christians maintained that nature was chaotic and without order. Christians, on the other hand, argued that since God was orderly and gave humanity an orderly moral law, so too His creation, nature, would be orderly and would have natural law.
While there are elements that reach back much earlier, theologian Thomas Aquinas became a significant voice for natural theology in the 1200s AD. He argued that the reason and observation of nature would lead to evidence for the orderliness of the Creator seen in an orderly creation. Aquinas had laid important groundwork for discovering natural laws through the scientific method.
In the 1600s and 1700s, through the work of philosophers Rene Descartes, Francis Bacon, and physicist Isaac Newton, the scientific method was formed. Though all three of these men had doctrinal disputes with orthodox Christianity, they believed in God and that the Creator could be seen through His Creation. Thus, they consider themselves Christians.
Through a long line of thought, the scientific method came to form. A scientific inquiry begins by defining the question. This question is the basis for designing your study. Through scientific observation, a hypothesis is developed. The hypothesis is tested through controlled experimentation and analysis. From these results, a theory with explanatory power and predictable results is developed.
Later, this theory will be tested through further experimentation. Through controlled experiments, analysis and theory revision two results emerge through this cycle of: 1) a stronger and stronger theory with explanatory and predictive power and 2) a scientific law that summarizes accepted facts and perhaps provides equations.
From this brief history, we see that the scientific method itself was developed to honor the Creator and to see God through His creation. The steps show a structured formula to get closer to the truth. Just as an orderly God created an orderly moral law, so too they predicted, the Creator would create an orderly natural law.