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For if eternity and time are rightly distinguished by this, that time
does not exist without some movement and transition, while in eternity
there is no change, who does not see that there could have been no time
had not some creature been made, which by some motion could give birth
to change, the various parts of which motion and change, as they
cannot be simultaneous, succeed one another, and thus, in these
shorter or longer intervals of duration, time would begin? Since
then, God, in whose eternity is no change at all, is the Creator
and Ordainer of time, I do not see how He can be said to have
created the world after spaces of time had elapsed, unless it be said
that prior to the world there was some creature by whose movement time
could pass. And if the sacred and infallible Scriptures say that in
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, in order that it
may be understood that He had made nothing previously, for if He had
made anything before the rest, this thing would rather be said to have
been made "in the beginning,", then assuredly the world was made,
not in time, but simultaneously with time. For that which is made in
time is made both after and before some time, after that which is
past, before that which is future. But none could then be past, for
there was no creature by whose movements its duration could be
measured. But simultaneously with time the world was made, if in the
world's creation change and motion were created, as seems evident from
the order of the first six or seven days. For in these days the
morning and evening are counted, until, on the sixth day, all things
which God then made were finished, and on the seventh the rest of God
was mysteriously and sublimely signalized. What kind of days these
were it is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible for us to
conceive, and how much more to say!
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