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As to those who are always asking why man was not created during these
countless ages of the infinitely extended past, and came into being so
lately that, according to Scripture, less than 6000 years have
elapsed since He began to be, I would reply to them regarding the
creation of man, just as I replied regarding the origin of the world
to those who will not believe that it is not eternal, but had a
beginning, which even Plato himself most plainly declares, though
some think Iris statement was not consistent with his real opinion.
If it offends them that the time that has elapsed since the creation of
man is so short, and his years so few according to our authorities,
let them take this into consideration, that nothing that has a limit is
long, and that all the ages of time being finite, are very little, or
indeed nothing at all, when compared to the interminable eternity.
Consequently, if there had elapsed since the creation of man, I do
not say five or six, but even sixty or six hundred thousand years, or
sixty times as many, or six hundred or six hundred thousand times as
many, or this sum multiplied until it could no longer be expressed in
numbers, the same question could still be put, Why was he not made
before? For the past and boundless eternity during which God
abstained from creating man is so great, that, compare it with what
vast and untold number of ages you please, so long as there is a
definite conclusion of this term of time, it is not even as if you
compared the minutest. drop of water with the ocean that everywhere
flows around the globe. For of these two, one indeed is very small,
the other incomparably vast, yet both are finite; but that space of
time which starts from some beginning, and is limited by some
termination, be it of what extent it may, if you compare it with that
which has no beginning, I know not whether to say we should count it
the very minutest thing, or nothing at all. For, take this limited
time, and deduct from the end of it, one by one, the briefest moments
(as you might take day by day from a man's life, beginning at the day
in which he now lives, back to that of his birth), and though the
number of moments you must subtract in this backward movement be so
great that no word can express it, yet this subtraction will sometime
carry you to the beginning. But if you take away from a time which has
no beginning, I do not say brief moments one by one, nor yet hours,
or days, or months, or years even in quantities, but terms of years
so vast that they cannot be named by the most skillful arithmeticians,
take away terms of years as vast as that which we have supposed to be
gradually consumed by the deduction of moments, and take them away not
once and again repeatedly, but always, and what do you effect, what
do you make by your deduction, since you never reach the beginning,
which has no existence?
Wherefore, that which we now demand after five thousand odd years,
our descendants might with like curiosity demand after six hundred
thousand years, supposing these dying generations of men continue so
long to decay and be renewed, and supposing posterity continues as weak
and ignorant as ourselves.
The same question might have been asked by those who have lived before
us and while man was even newer upon earth. The first man himself in
short might the day after or the very day of his creation have asked why
he was created no sooner. And no matter at what earlier or later
period he had been created, this controversy about the commencement of
this world's history would have had precisely the same difficulties as
it has now.
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