With the truth or falsehood of these views we are not concerned just now. We have dwelt upon them rather from an honest desire of showing that Saint Augustine is not so clearly on our side in this question, as might be supposed from some isolated passages of his writings. He says indeed that the world was created before light, and before the beginning of the First Day; but then again he tells us that this is only a way of speaking, and that, in reality, all things were created together.
But although these high authorities--A Lapide, Tostatus, Saint Augustine--and some others less illustrious than these, are unfavorable to our interpretation, we think it is supported by a preponderance of the best interpreters, both in ancient and modern times. At all events, with such an array of venerable names as we have been able to bring forward in its behalf,--and they are but a few chosen out of many,--no one can deny that we are fairly entitled to hold it without any note of censure, without any suspicion of Theological error. Setting out, then, from this point, that there was a state of created existence prior to the Six Days of the Mosaic history, the question naturally arises, how long did that state of existence endure? Was it for an hour? a day? a week? a month? a century? a million of years? We cannot tell. To these questions the Sacred Text gives no reply. It simply records that in the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth, and that, at some subsequent epoch of time, His decree again went forth, Let there be light, and light there was. One thing, however, is plain, that, if this period existed at all, it might just as well have lasted a hundred millions of years as a hundred seconds. It would be folly to attempt to measure the succession of God’s acts, when he does please to produce effects in succession, according to our petty standards of time. “One day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”[131]
And it is not a little remarkable that, long before the discoveries of Geology had suggested any necessity for allowing the lapse of many ages between the first creation of the world and the creation of man, the sagacity of our commentators led them to observe that the duration of this interval is left undefined in the Sacred Record. “How long that interval may have lasted,” says Petavius, “it is absolutely impossible to conjecture.” And Perrerius, as we have seen, declared that it could not be known except by a special revelation. And five centuries earlier, at the very dawn of Scholastic Theology, Hugh of Saint Victor raised the same question, and expressed his opinion that it could not be solved from Scripture. Citing the passage, In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth, he says, “From these words it is plain that in the beginning of time, or rather with time itself, the original matter of all things came into existence. But how long it remained in this confused and unshapely condition the Scripture clearly does not tell us.”[132]