did not anticipate the other._
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!