hundred means "to exist," on the hundredth occasion, exclusive apparently to Augustine, it
Book V 293 way, and not only never changes but is absolutely incapable of changing. So without bringing into existence22 yet any of the things which he made, he has all things primordially in himself in the same manner as he is. After all, he would not make them unless he knew them before he made them; nor would he know them unless he saw them; nor would he see them unless he had them with him; and he would not have with him things that had not yet been made except in the manner in which he himself is not made.
So what I am saying is that although that substance is inexpressible and can only be presented by one human being to another in words taken overfrom space and time, though it is before all times and all places, still for all that the one who made is nearer to us than the many things which he made. For in him we live and move and are (Acts 17:28), while most of these things are remote from the human mind on account of their dissimilarity in kind, being corporeal. Nor is our human mind capable of seeing them where they are with God, in the formulae according to which they were made, so that in this way we might know how many, how great and ofwhat sort they are, even though we do not see them with the senses of the body. The fact is they are remote from our bodily senses, being so far away, or cut off from our observation and activity by the interposition of other bodies.
The result is that it is much harder work to find out about them than about the one by whom they were made, and furthermore it is incomparably more satis fying and worthwhile for the devout mind to come into the slightest contact with him, than for it to comprehend the whole universe. So how right the book of Wisdom is to find fault with the investigators of this world and age! For ifthey were capable, it says, of so much that they could appraise and weigh up the world, how is it that they did not all the more easilyfind its Lord? (Wis 13:9). The foundations of the earth, after all, are inaccessible to our eyes, and the one who laid the earth's foundations draws near to our minds.
A brief recapitulation
17, 35. Now for the time being let us consider those things that God made "all simultaneously," from which he rested on the seventh day after finishing and
22. Translating nihil horum . . . existens. While this verb, existere, ninety-nine times out of a hundred means "to exist," on the hundredth occasion, exclusive apparently to Augustine, it does have the transitive sense of bringing into existence. He is quoted for this usage both by Lewis & Short and by Albert Blaise, Dictionnaire Latin-Fran^ais desAuteurs Chretiens, each referring to the same text in The City ofGodXIV, 1 3. Perhaps future lexicographers would care to add this reference to V, 16,34 of this other, earlier work of his. One could alternatively make the following emendation: the text runs— . . . existens et omnia primitus habens . . . ; by emending existens et to existente, one would be making an ablative absolute of the first clause, and relieving God of being the subject of existens as well as ofhabens. So the sense would be: "with none of the things he had made yet existing, he has all things primordially in himself."