Introduction to the Philosophy of Saint Augustine
of what truth soever we have been able to find, yea and whatsoever we have not been able, nor yet are, but which may be found in phem ewe
Behold, O Lord my God, how much we have written upon a few words,? how much I beseech Thee! What strength of ours, yea what ages would suffice for all Thy books in this manner? Permit me then in these more briefly to confess unto Thee, and to choose some one true, certain, and good sense that Thou shalt inspire me, although many should occur, where many may occur; this being the law of my confession, that if I should say that which Thy minister intended, that is right and best; for this should I endeavor, which if I should not attain, yet I should say that, which Thy Truth willed by his words to tell me, which revealed also unto him what It willed.
LE LITERAL MEANING OF GENESIS *- BOOK V?° > 13. Therefore it was not in a temporal order but in a logical order that this unformed matter was first made, yet capable of becoming the nature of bodies and spirits, from which was made what was to be made. This unformed matter could not itself be ordered before it came into being, and it was not ordered except by the sovereign Lord from whom all things are. This first matter, made by God before the creation of the first day, can perhaps be called heaven and earth, because the heaven and the earth were composed of it; or it has been called '"'the earth invisible, without order, and the shadowy depths,' as we developed in the first book.
20. Moreover this follows: "But a spring rose out of the earth, watering all the surface of the earth." This suggests the moment when there was formed, according to the regular intervals of time, those beings issuing from the primitive state in which He had created all of them simultaneously. It was natural to begin with that element from which all the species of animals and plants took birth, in order that they might in time develop according to those properties which had been distributed to them. To be sure the seeds of which they were all formed, whether from flesh or from the products of vegetation, are formed in a kind of moisture. They include very active elements and draw an inex-