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| Of the Nature of the First Days, Which are Said to Have Had Morning and Evening, Before There Was a Sun.
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Chapter 7.—Of the Nature of the
First Days, Which are Said to Have Had Morning and Evening, Before
There Was a Sun.
We see, indeed, that our ordinary
days have no evening but by the setting, and no morning but by the
rising, of the sun; but the first three days of all were passed
without sun, since it is reported to have been made on the fourth
day. And first of all, indeed, light was made by the word of God,
and God, we read, separated it from the darkness, and called the
light Day, and the darkness Night; but what kind of light that was,
and by what periodic movement it made evening and morning, is
beyond the reach of our senses; neither can we understand how it
was, and yet must unhesitatingly believe it. For either it was
some material light, whether proceeding from the upper parts of the
world, far removed from our sight, or from the spot where the sun
was afterwards kindled; or under the name of light the holy city
was signified, composed of holy angels and blessed spirits, the
city of which the apostle says, “Jerusalem which is above is our
eternal
mother in heaven;”459
and in another place, “For ye are
all the children of the light, and the children of the day; we are
not of the night, nor of darkness.”460
Yet in some respects we may
appropriately speak of a morning and evening of this day also.
For the knowledge of the creature is, in comparison of the
knowledge of the Creator, but a twilight; and so it dawns and
breaks into morning when the creature is drawn to the praise and
love of the Creator; and night never falls when the Creator is not
forsaken through love of the creature. In fine, Scripture, when
it would recount those days in order, never mentions the word
night. It never says, “Night was,” but “The evening and the
morning were the first day.” So of the second and the rest.
And, indeed, the knowledge of created things contemplated by
themselves is, so to speak, more colorless than when they are seen
in the wisdom of God, as in the art by which they were made.
Therefore evening is a more suitable figure than night; and yet, as
I said, morning returns when the creature returns to the praise and
love of the Creator. When it does so in the knowledge of itself,
that is the first day; when in the knowledge of the firmament,
which is the name given to the sky between the waters above and
those beneath, that is the second day; when in the knowledge of the
earth, and the sea, and all things that grow out of the earth, that
is the third day; when in the knowledge of the greater and less
luminaries, and all the stars, that is the fourth day; when in the
knowledge of all animals that swim in the waters and that fly in
the air, that is the fifth day; when in the knowledge of all
animals that live on the earth, and of man himself, that is the
sixth day.461
| 461 Comp. de Gen. ad Lit. i.
and iv. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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