the Maurists and earlier editors—rightly in my opinion. 1t is unlikely that Augustine would
Book VI 311 this sort, whether shrubs or animals, which belong to that work of God at which he is working until now. But these things too carry within them a repetition, so to say, of their very selves, invisible in some hidden power of reproduction, derived from those primordial causes of theirs, in which they were inserted into the world that was created "when the day was made," before they ever burgeoned into the visible manifestations of their specific natures.
1 1, 18. lf those first works of God, you see, when he created all things simulta neously, had not been complete in their own fashion, there can be no doubt that what was needed for their completion would have been added later on, to put together a kind of completeness of the universe from all the particular elements of its two halves, so to say, as ifthey were parts of a whole which would be completed by joining them together. Again, if those works had been completed in the way they are now completed when they burgeon into manifest forms and activities each in its own time, then clearly either nothing would be made from them after those times, or else that would be made which God is not ceasing to work at producing from these things that are continuing to spring up, each in its own time.12
Now, however, the truth is that those things which were due to be "un wrapped from their wrappings" in the course of subsequent ages, and which God created simultaneously with all things when he made the world, were both completely finished then in a certain way and also started off in a certain way; completely finished indeed, because they have nothing in their natural manner of running their course in time which was not made causally in that primordial creation; started off, however, since they were seeds in a sense offuture realities, destined to germinate in suitable places from hidden obscurity into the manifest light of day through the course of the ages.
To give us sufficient proof of this the words of scripture itself are quite remarkably apt, ifyou keep wide enough awake in reading them. It says, you see, both that the works were finished and that they were started; if they had not been finished, after all, it would not say, And heaven and earth and all their arrange ment werefinished. And Godfinished on the sixth day his works which he made; and God rested on the seventh dayfrom all his works which he had made. nAnd
1 2. A formidably impenetrable statement! But 1 fear that all he is doing is obscuring, by scrupulous qualifications, his desire to say that if the original simultaneous creation of the universe in its causes had not been complete in its own way, then God would have completed it by doing those things that he went on to do when the "march oftime began," like making the man from the dust of the earth. 13. This sentence, from "and God rested," is not found in any of the manuscripts, but is added by the Maurists and earlier editors—rightly in my opinion. 1t is unlikely that Augustine would have gone straight from the finishing of the works on the sixth day to the blessing of the seventh without first even mentioning what God did on the seventh. But it would have been the easiest thing in the world for either stenographers taking his dictation, or the first copyists making fair copy from the stenographers' tablets, tojump from one sentence beginning "And God" to the next one beginning in the same way.