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Confessiones

Caput 33

Laudant te opera tua, ut amemus te, et amamus te, ut laudent te opera tua. habent initium et finem ex tempore, ortum et occasum, profectum et defectum, speciem et privationem. habent ergo consequentia mane et vesperam, partim latenter partim evidenter. de nihilo enim a te, non de te facta sunt, non de aliqua non tua vel quae antea fuerit, sed de concreata, id est simul a te creata materia, quia eius informitatem sine ulla temporis interpositione formasti. nam cum aliud sit caeli et terrae materies, aliud caeli et terrae species, materiem quidem de omnino nihilo, mundi autem speciem de informi materia, simul tamen utrumque fecisti, ut materiam forma nulla morae intercapedine sequeretur.

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The Confessions of St. Augustin In Thirteen Books

Chapter XXXIII.--The World Was Created by God Out of Nothing.

48. Let Thy works praise Thee, that we may love Thee; and let us love Thee, that Thy works may praise Thee, the which have beginning and end from time,--rising and setting, growth and decay, form and privation. They have therefore their successions of morning and evening, partly hidden, partly apparent; for they were made from nothing by Thee, not of Thee, nor of any matter not Thine, or which was created before, but of concreted matter (that is, matter at the same time created by Thee), because without any interval of time Thou didst form its formlessness. ¹ For since the matter of heaven and earth is one thing, and the form of heaven and earth another, Thou hast made the matter indeed of almost nothing, but the form of the world Thou hast formed of formless matter; both, however, at the same time, so that the form should follow the matter with no interval of delay.