[This is Eternity…. In Moses they received a beginning of existence.] Compare below in Chapter VIII, § 13, 24; Chapter IX, § 4, compared with this Chapter, § 30.
[In accordance with Successive Duration and the Measure of that, which are said to be Concreated.] That Time is Concreated with things, our AUTHOR thus indicates. Of course, the Socinians sometimes attempt artfully to prove that Time is Eternal, and that such eternal Time is suited to God, because Time was not able to be created. For thus they infer: The Present (which is the entrance of Time) was not made; therefore, Time was not made. They attempt to prove the Antecedent in this way: The Present was not made, because it was necessary to do that in the present; whence it is evident that Time was, before it was. But we respond, that Time, even the Present, was not created, but Concreated, just as quantity or magnitude is concreated with a body; that is, the action of Divine Creation is not terminated upon Time, because Time is not a substance, but an accident; now, accidents are concreated with their substances. Therefore, the Present is not made in the present, which of itself is not made, but with the first Creation; or, with the first created thing, the present of Time was made and concreated at the same time: see HOORNBEECK, Socinianismo confutato, book II, chapter I, tome I, section III, pages 284, 285.
[Neither was God able to create anything from eternity; because to be created and to be eternal implies a contradiction.] For nothing is from eternity, which is not at the same time eternal. But what is eternal is not able to be created; since to be created asserts the completed transition of the creature from non-being to being: but it is not able to be said of that which is eternal, that there was a time when it was not. What is eternal is also necessary and independent; every creature, on the other hand, is contigent and dependent: compare also below, Chapter VIII, § 19.
There is another account, α. both of the Generation of the Son; since through it no new Essence is produced, but the same is only communicated: whence the Son by this Generation receives Essence, Independent and numerically the same with the Father; but by this Generation nothing is posited outside of God; see Chapter V, § 8, 9: β. and of the Decrees, etc.; see Chapter VI, § 4-6.
Comments