{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/101/1010231.htm","path":"chr/ecf/101/1010231.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/101/1010231.htm","text":"Chapter XXX.\u2014Again He Refutes the Empty Question, \u201cWhat Did God Before the Creation of the World?\u201d\n40. And I will be immoveable, and fixed in Thee, in my mould, Thy truth; nor will I endure the questions of men, who by a penal disease thirst for more than they can hold, and say, \u201cWhat did God make before He made heaven and earth?\u201d Or, \u201cHow came it into His mind to make anything, when He never before made anything?\u201d Grant to them, O Lord, to think well what they say, and to see that where there is no time, they cannot say \u201cnever.\u201d What, therefore, He is said \u201cnever to have made,\u201d what else is it but to say, that in no time was it made? Let them therefore see that there could be no time without a created being, 1064 and let them cease to speak that vanity. Let them also be extended unto those things which are before, 1065 and understand that thou, the eternal Creator of all times, art before all times, and that no times are co-eternal with Thee, nor any creature, even if there be any creature beyond all times.\nHe argues similarly in his De Civ. Dei, xi. 6: \u201cThat the world and time had but one beginning.\u201d\n174:1065","title":"Nicene and Post Nicene-Fathers, Vol. I: The Confessions: ...","type":"page"}