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(145) Thus you may understand what the Creation of Heaven and Earth signifies, and is, also what God made on the first Day. Though indeed the first three Days were not distinguished or severed asunder by Evening and Morning, but a Time is to be reckoned and accounted as of twenty-four Hours, as there is on high above the Moon such a Time and Day.

(33) Again, in diseases the seventh day is that of the crisis; and the fourteenth, in which nature struggles against the causes of the diseases. And a myriad such instances are adduced by Hermippus of Berytus, in his book On the Number Seven, regarding it as holy. And the blessed David delivers clearly to those who know the mystic account of seven and eight, praising thus: "Our years were exercised like a spider. The days of our years in them are seventy years; but if in strength, eighty years. And that will be to reign." That, then, we may be taught that the world was originated, and not suppose that God made it in time, prophecy adds: "This is the book of the generation: also of the things in them, when they were created in the day that God made heaven and earth." For the expression "when they were created" intimates an indefinite and dateless production. But the expression "in the day that God made," that is, in and by which God made "all things," and "without which not even one thing was made," points out the activity exerted by the Son. As David says, "This is the day which the Lord hath made; let us be glad and rejoice in it; " that is, in consequence of the knowledge imparted by Him, let us celebrate the divine festival; for the Word that throws light on things hidden, and by whom each created thing came into life and being, is called day.

(18) And the fourth word is that which intimates that the world was created by God, and that He gave us the seventh day as a rest, on account of the trouble that there is in life. For God is incapable of weariness, and suffering, and want. But we who bear flesh need rest. The seventh day, therefore, is proclaimed a rest - abstraction from ills - preparing for the Primal Day, our true rest; which, in truth, is the first creation of light, in which all things are viewed and possessed. From this day the first wisdom and knowledge illuminate us. For the light of truth - a light true, casting no shadow, is the Spirit of God indivisibly divided to all, who are sanctified by faith, holding the place of a luminary, in order to the knowledge of real existences. By following Him, therefore, through our whole life, we become impossible; and this is to rest.

(68) But when in these two Days the Creation of Heaven and of Earth was completed, and that the Heaven was made in the Heart of the Water, for a Difference or Distinction between the Light of God, and the Wrath of God, then on the third Day, through the Terror or Crack of the Fire-flash, which rose up in the Heart of the Water, and presses through Death, incomprehensibly as to Death, there sprung up all Manner of Ideas, Forms, and Figures, as was done before the Time of the kindled Wrath.

(27) The sensible types of these, then, are the sounds we pronounce. Thus the Lord Himself is called "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end," " by whom all things were made, and without whom not even one thing was made." God's resting is not, then, as some conceive, that God ceased from doing. For, being good, if He should ever cease from doing good, then would He cease from being God, which it is sacrilege even to say. The resting is, therefore, the ordering that the order of created things should be preserved inviolate, and that each of the creatures should cease from the ancient disorder. For the creations on the different days followed in a most important succession; so that all things brought into existence might have honour from priority, created together in thought, but not being of equal worth. Nor was the creation of each signified by the voice, inasmuch as the creative work is said to have made them at once. For something must needs have been named first. Wherefore those things were announced first, from which came those that were second, all things being originated together from one essence by one power. For the will of God was one, in one identity. And how could creation take place in time, seeing time was born along with things which exist.

(9) The third Day God, by the Fiat, divided the Waters upon the Earth, and created them for several Places, that there might be a Dwelling upon the Earth, and so the Earth became dry. Now when this was done, then God did seek the Creature, and the Eternal Father said, (that is, he wrought through the Son, who is his Heart and Glance,) [or Luster,] in the Fiat, in the Earth; and there budded the Life through Death, and Grass, Herbs, and all Manner of Trees and Plants sprung up, every one according to the eternal Source, as it had been before. Thus every Essence became visible, and God manifested his manifold Virtue with the manifold Herbs, Plants, and Trees, so that every one that does but look upon them, may see the eternal Power, Virtue, and Wisdom of God therein; if he be born of God, he may know in every Spire of Grass, his Creator in whom he lives. Thus in this Time sprung up all that grew [or was] in the Earth. the Man Christ's remaining in Death till the third Day, and his bringing of Life out of the Earth. the Author's or no.

(57) Since he created the realm (of heaven) and fashioned the firm earth

(75) 9. With the seven double letters He also designed seven earths, seven heavens, seven continents, seven seas, seven rivers, seven deserts, seven days, seven weeks (from Passover to Pentecost), and in the midst of them His Holy Palace. There is a cycle of seven years and the seventh is the release year, and after seven release years is the Jubilee. For this reason God loves the number seven more than any other thing under the heavens.

(26) Wherefore also man is said to have been made on the sixth day, who became faithful to Him who is the sign (tp epishmw), so as straightway to receive the rest of the Lord's inheritance. Some such thing also is indicated by the sixth hour in the scheme of salvation, in which man was perfected. Further, of the eight, the intermediates are seven; and of the seven, the intervals are shown to be six. For that is another ground, in which seven glorifies eight, and "the heavens declare to the heavens the glory of God."

(19) Wherefore Solomon also says, that before heaven, and earth, and all existences, Wisdom had arisen in the Almighty; the participation of which -that which is by power, I mean, not that by essence - teaches a man to know by apprehension things divine and human. Having reached this point, we must mention these things by the way; since the discourse has turned on the seventh and the eighth. For the eighth may possibly turn out to be properly the seventh, and the seventh manifestly the sixth, and the latter properly the Sabbath, and the seventh a day of work. For the creation of the world was concluded in six days.

(6) It was only, then, when a father and mother, a son and daughter died, that the priest was allowed to enter, because these were related only by flesh and seed, to whom the priest was indebted for the immediate cause of his entrance into life. And they purify themselves seven days, the period in which Creation was consummated. For on the seventh day the rest is celebrated; and on the eighth he brings a propitiation, as is written in Ezekiel, according to which propitiation the promise is to be received. And the perfect propitiation, I take it, is that propitious faith in the Gospel which is by the law and the prophets, and the purity which shows itself in universal obedience, with the abandonment of the things of the world; in order to that grateful surrender of the tabernacle, which results from the enjoyment of the soul. Whether, then, the time be that which through the seven periods enumerated returns to the chiefest rest, or the seven heavens, which some reckon one above the other; or whether also the fixed sphere which borders on the intellectual world be called the eighth, the expression denotes that the Gnostic ought to rise out of the sphere of creation and of sin. After these seven days, sacrifices are offered for sins.