“Now is the time of help; your eye in Scotland Would _create_ soldiers, make our women fight To doff their dire distresses.”--_Macbeth_, Act iv., Sc. iii.
Nevertheless, when we compare two such passages as these:--“In the beginning God _created_ the Heavens and the Earth,” and “In Six Days the Lord _made_ the Heavens and the Earth and the sea, and all that in them is,” we think the studied contrast of expression is a fair ground for supposing that, while the one refers to the Divine decree by which matter was first brought into existence out of nothing, the other may be understood of those subsequent operations by which it received its present form and shape.
We see no difficulty, then, as far as the Sacred Text is concerned, in supposing a condition of created existence prior to the period of the Six Days. But since this opinion is the foundation on which our whole argument rests, we should wish to show, moreover, even at the risk of being tedious, that it has been put forward and defended by the most eminent writers in every age of the Church. Amongst the early Fathers, Saint Basil reasons after this manner when commenting upon the passage, “There was evening and there was morning the first day:”--“The evening is the common term of day and night; and, in like manner, the morning is the point of union between night and day. Wherefore, in order to signify that to the day belonged the prerogative of being the first begotten, the sacred writer first commemorates the close of day, and afterward the close of night; implying thereby that _the day was followed by the night_. As to the condition of the world _before the formation of light_, that is not called Night, but simply Darkness; whereas that period which is distinguished from day and opposed to it, is called night.”[119] This great Doctor, therefore, teaches that the First Day began with a period of light which is called day, and ended with a period of darkness which is called night; and he recognizes a previous state of existence which was no part of the First Day. So, too, Saint Chrysostom, in his third Homily upon Genesis, lays down that the Earth was first created a rude and shapeless mass, without form or ornament; that _afterward_ light was made, and that, _with the creation of light, the First Day began_.[120]