I. With respect to eternity and time, we say that each of these is different from the other, and that one of them indeed is conversant with a perpetual nature, but the other about that which is generated. We also think that we have a certain clear perception of these in our souls spontaneously, and, as it were, from the more collected projections of intellectual conception; always and every where calling these by the same appellations. When, however, we endeavour to accede to the inspection of these, and to approach as it were nearer to them, again we are involved in doubt, admitting some of the decisions of the ancients about these, and rejecting others, and perhaps receiving differently the same decisions. Resting also in these, and thinking it sufficient if when interrogated we are able to relate the opinion of the ancients concerning time and eternity, we are liberated from any farther investigation about them. It is necessary, therefore, to think that some of the ancient and blessed philosophers have discovered the truth; but it is fit to consider who those are that have obtained it, and after what manner we also may acquire the same knowledge on these subjects. In the first place, however, it is requisite to investigate what those conceive eternity to be, who admit that it is different from time.
For that which is established as the paradigm being known, that also which is the image of it, and which they say is time, will perhaps become manifest. But if some one, prior to the survey of eternity, should imagine what time is, it will happen to him, proceeding from hence thither by reminiscence, that he will behold the nature to which time is assimilated, if the latter has a similitude to the former.
What, therefore, is it requisite we should assert eternity to be ? Shall we say it is the intelligible essence itself, just as if some one should say that time is the whole heaven and the world ? For some are said to have had this opinion concerning time. For since we imagine and conceive eternity to be something more venerable, and an intelligible nature is also most venerable, we are unable to say which is the most venerable of the two; and since also, that which is beyond these is not to be predicated in the same way, some one may be induced to consider eternity and an intelligible essence as the same. For again, both the intelligible world and eternity comprehend in themselves the same things. When, however, we say that the one is in the other, we place intelligibles in eternity; and when we predicate the eternal of intelligibles, as when Plato in the ” Timseus ” says, ” if the nature of the paradigm is eternal,” we then assert that the eternal is different from the intelbgible. Nevertheless, we say that it either exists about, or in, or is present with an intelligible essence. That each of them, however, is venerable, does not manifest a sameness of nature; for perhaps the venerableness of the one is derived from the other. With respect to comprehension also, that of the intelligible is as of parts, but eternity comprehends the whole at once not as a part, but because all such things as are eternal subsist according to it. Shall we, therefore, say that eternity exists according to the permanency which is in intelligibles ; just as here, time is said to exist according to motion ? It may, however, be very properly investigated, whether eternity is the same with permanency, or whether it is not simply the same, but is the same with the permanency which is about essence. For if it is the same with permanency (simply considered) in the first place, we cannot say that permanency is eternal, as neither do we say that eternity is eternal. For the eternal is that which participates of eternity. And in the next place, how is motion eternal? For thus it will be stable. Farther still, how does the conception of permanency contain in itself the ever ? I do not mean the ever which is in time, but such as we intellectually perceive when we speak of the eternal. But if it contains the ever in the stability of essence, again, we shall separate the other genera of being from eternity. Besides, it is not only necessary to conceive eternity as subsisting in permanency, but also as subsisting in one. And in the next place, we must admit that eternity is without interval, in order that it may not be the same with time. Permanency, however, so far as it is permanency, neither contains in itself the conception of unity, nor of that which is without interval. But we predicate of eternity that it abides in one. Hence, it will participate of permanency, but will not be permanency itself.