(64) And this being, together, comprehendeth the eternity, which is not called God, but the unalmighty body of nature, wherein, indeed, the Deity is immortal or not dead, but standing hidden in the kernel of the seven spirits; and yet not comprehended or understood.

(3) But we must, as I think, see from the Oracles the nature of Time and Eternity, for they do not always (merely) call all the things absolutely unoriginated and really everlasting, eternal, but also things imperishable and immortal and unchangeable, and things which are in like fashion, as when they say, "be ye opened, eternal doors," and the like. And often they characterize the things the most ancient by the name of Eternity; and again they call the whole duration of our time Eternity, in so far as the ancient and unchangeable, and the measurement of existence throughout, is a characteristic of Eternity. But they call time that concerned in generation and decay and change, and sometimes the one, and sometimes the other. Wherefore also, the Word of God says that even we, who are bounded here by time, shall partake of Eternity, when we have reached the Eternity which is imperishable and ever the same. But sometimes eternity is celebrated in the Oracles, even as temporal, and time as eternal. But if we know them better and more accurately, things spiritual are spoken of and denoted by Eternity, and things subject to generation by time. It is necessary then to suppose that things called eternal are not absolutely co-eternal with God, Who is before Eternity, but that following unswervingly the most august Oracles, we should understand things eternal and temporal according to the hopes recognized by them, hut whatever participates partly in eternity and partly in time, as things midway between things spiritual and things being born. But Almighty God we ought to celebrate, both as eternity and time, as Author of every time and eternity, and "Ancient of days," as before time, and above time; and as changing appointed seasons and times; and again as being before ages, in so far as He is both before eternity and above eternity and His kingdom, a kingdom of all the Ages. Amen.

(114) The outward Jupiter is only the meekness and understanding in the outward comprehensibility or palpable things; but the holy fountain or wellspring is incomprehensible and unsearchable or unfathomable to outward reason. For the astral birth or geniture stands only as to its root in the holy heavens, and as to its corporeity [it stands] in the wrath.

(1) God, then, hath [ever] been unchanging, and ever, in like fashion, with Himself hath the Eternity consisted,—having within itself Cosmos ingenerate, which we correctly call [God] Sensible. Of that [transcendent] Deity this Image hath been made,—Cosmos the imitator of Eternity. Time, further, hath the strength and nature of its own stability, in spite of its being in perpetual motion,—from its necessity of [ever] from itself reverting to itself.

(3) What, then, can this be, this something in virtue of which we declare the entire divine Realm to be Eternal, everlasting? We must come to some understanding of this perpetuity with which Eternity is either identical or in conformity.

It must at once, be at once something in the nature of unity and yet a notion compact of diversity, or a Kind, a Nature, that waits upon the Existents of that Other World, either associated with them or known in and upon them, they collectively being this Nature which, with all its unity, is yet diverse in power and essence. Considering this multifarious power, we declare it to be Essence in its relation to this sphere which is substratum or underlie to it; where we see life we think of it as Movement; where all is unvaried self-identity we call it Repose; and we know it as, at once, Difference and Identity when we recognize that all is unity with variety.

Then we reconstruct; we sum all into a collected unity once more, a sole Life in the Supreme; we concentrate Diversity and all the endless production of act: thus we know Identity, a concept or, rather, a Life never varying, not becoming what previously it was not, the thing immutably itself, broken by no interval; and knowing this, we know Eternity.

We know it as a Life changelessly motionless and ever holding the Universal content in actual presence; not this now and now that other, but always all; not existing now in one mode and now in another, but a consummation without part or interval. All its content is in immediate concentration as at one point; nothing in it ever knows development: all remains identical within itself, knowing nothing of change, for ever in a Now since nothing of it has passed away or will come into being, but what it is now, that it is ever.

Eternity, therefore- while not the Substratum - may be considered as the radiation of this Substratum: it exists as the announcement of the Identity in the Divine, of that state- of being thus and not otherwise- which characterizes what has no futurity but eternally is.

What future, in fact, could bring to that Being anything which it now does not possess; and could it come to be anything which it is not once for all?

There exists no source or ground from which anything could make its way into that standing present; any imagined entrant will prove to be not alien but already integral. And as it can never come to be anything at present outside it, so, necessarily, it cannot include any past; what can there be that once was in it and now is gone? Futurity, similarly, is banned; nothing could be yet to come to it. Thus no ground is left for its existence but that it be what it is.

That which neither has been nor will be, but simply possesses being; that which enjoys stable existence as neither in process of change nor having ever changed- that is Eternity. Thus we come to the definition: the Life- instantaneously entire, complete, at no point broken into period or part- which belongs to the Authentic Existent by its very existence, this is the thing we were probing for- this is Eternity.

(1) Eternity and Time; two entirely separate things, we explain "the one having its being in the everlasting Kind, the other in the realm of Process, in our own Universe"; and, by continually using the words and assigning every phenomenon to the one or the other category, we come to think that, both by instinct and by the more detailed attack of thought, we hold an adequate experience of them in our minds without more ado.

When, perhaps, we make the effort to clarify our ideas and close into the heart of the matter we are at once unsettled: our doubts throw us back upon ancient explanations; we choose among the various theories, or among the various interpretations of some one theory, and so we come to rest, satisfied, if only we can counter a question with an approved answer, and glad to be absolved from further enquiry.

Now, we must believe that some of the venerable philosophers of old discovered the truth; but it is important to examine which of them really hit the mark and by what guiding principle we can ourselves attain to certitude.

What, then, does Eternity really mean to those who describe it as something different from Time? We begin with Eternity, since when the standing Exemplar is known, its representation in image- which Time is understood to be- will be clearly apprehended- though it is of course equally true, admitting this relationship to Time as image to Eternity the original, that if we chose to begin by identifying Time we could thence proceed upwards by Recognition and become aware of the Kind which it images.

(1) We hold that the ordered universe, in its material mass, has existed for ever and will for ever endure: but simply to refer this perdurance to the Will of God, however true an explanation, is utterly inadequate.

The elements of this sphere change; the living beings of earth pass away; only the Ideal-form persists: possibly a similar process obtains in the All.

The Will of God is able to cope with the ceaseless flux and escape of body stuff by ceaselessly reintroducing the known forms in new substances, thus ensuring perpetuity not to the particular item but to the unity of idea: now, seeing that objects of this realm possess no more than duration of form, why should celestial objects, and the celestial system itself, be distinguished by duration of the particular entity?

Let us suppose this persistence to be the result of the all-inclusiveness of the celestial and universal- with its consequence, the absence of any outlying matter into which change could take place or which could break in and destroy.

This explanation would, no doubt, safeguard the integrity of the Whole, of the All; but our sun and the individual being of the other heavenly bodies would not on these terms be secured in perpetuity: they are parts; no one of them is in itself the whole, the all; it would still be probable that theirs is no more than that duration in form which belongs to fire and such entities.

This would apply even to the entire ordered universe itself. For it is very possible that this too, though not in process of destruction from outside, might have only formal duration; its parts may be so wearing each other down as to keep it in a continuous decay while, amid the ceaseless flux of the Kind constituting its base, an outside power ceaselessly restores the form: in this way the living All may lie under the same conditions as man and horse and the rest man and horse persisting but not the individual of the type.

With this, we would have no longer the distinction of one order, the heavenly system, stable for ever, and another, the earthly, in process of decay: all would be alike except in the point of time; the celestial would merely be longer lasting. If, then, we accepted this duration of type alone as a true account of the All equally with its partial members, our difficulties would be eased- or indeed we should have no further problem- once the Will of God were shown to be capable, under these conditions and by such communication, of sustaining the Universe.

But if we are obliged to allow individual persistence to any definite entity within the Kosmos then, firstly, we must show that the Divine Will is adequate to make it so; secondly, we have to face the question, What accounts for some things having individual persistence and others only the persistence of type? and, thirdly, we ask how the partial entities of the celestial system hold a real duration which would thus appear possible to all partial things.

(7) Thus, then, the "Nameless "befits the cause of all, which is also above all, as do all the names of things existing, in order that there may be strictly a kingly rule over the whole; and that all things may be around It and dependent upon It, as cause, as beginning, as end. And Itself, according to the Divine saying, may be the "all in all," and truly sung as of all, producing, directing and perfecting and sustaining guard, and shrine, and turning towards Itself, and that uniformly, irresistibly and pre-eminently. For It is not only cause of sustenance, or life, or perfection,--so that from this or that forethought alone the Goodness above Name should be named, but It previously embraced in Itself all things existing, absolutely and without limit, by the complete benefactions of His one and all-creating forethought, and by all created things in joint accord It is celebrated and named.

(3) The God of the Universe, eternal, limitless, both young and old, having a spiral force. Cory includes this Oracle in his collection, but he gives no authority for it. Lobeck doubted its authenticity.

(2) What definition are we to give to Eternity?

Can it be identified with the Intellectual Substance itself?

This would be like identifying Time with the Universe of Heavens and Earth- an opinion, it is true, which appears to have had its adherents. No doubt we conceive, we know, Eternity as something most august; most august, too, is the Intellectual Kind; and there is no possibility of saying that the one is more majestic than the other, since no such degrees can be asserted in the Above-World; there is therefore a certain excuse for the identification- all the more since the Intellectual Substance and Eternity have the one scope and content.

Still; by the fact of representing the one as contained within the other, by making Eternity a predicate to the Intellectual Existents- "the Nature of the Exemplar," we read, "is eternal"- we cancel the identification; Eternity becomes a separate thing, something surrounding that Nature or lying within it or present to it. And the majestic quality of both does not prove them identical: it might be transmitted from the one to the other. So, too, Eternity and the Divine Nature envelop the same entities, yes; but not in the same way: the Divine may be thought of as enveloping parts, Eternity as embracing its content in an unbroken whole, with no implication of part, but merely from the fact that all eternal things are so by conforming to it.

May we, perhaps, identify Eternity with Repose-There as Time has been identified with Movement-Here?

This would bring on the counter-question whether Eternity is presented to us as Repose in the general sense or as the Repose that envelops the Intellectual Essence.

On the first supposition we can no more talk of Repose being eternal than of Eternity being eternal: to be eternal is to participate in an outside thing, Eternity.

Further, if Eternity is Repose, what becomes of Eternal Movement, which, by this identification, would become a thing of Repose?

Again, the conception of Repose scarcely seems to include that of perpetuity- I am speaking of course not of perpetuity in the time-order (which might follow on absence of movement) but of that which we have in mind when we speak of Eternity.

If, on the other hand, Eternity is identified with the Repose of the divine Essence, all species outside of the divine are put outside of Eternity.

Besides, the conception of Eternity requires not merely Repose but also unity- and, in order to keep it distinct from Time, a unity including interval- but neither that unity nor that absence of interval enters into the conception of Repose as such.

Lastly, this unchangeable Repose in unity is a predicate asserted of Eternity, which, therefore, is not itself Repose, the absolute, but a participant in Repose.

(27) To such beings, separated from the Infinite Unmanifest— the Eternal Parent—but by the most tenuous and subtle substance serving as the veil, the whole process of the Universe must appear merely as a great moving picture show of shadow forms, magnificent phantasmagoria having apparent substance and form but having no actual reality when viewed from the aspect of the Eternal. Such beings are, indeed, Gods as compared with the rest of living creatures. Close up to the very heart of the Eternal, these exalted beings are conscious of the very heartthrobs of the Eternal Parent.

(18) I am Yesterday, “Witness of Eternity” is my Name: the persistent traveller upon the heavenly highways which I survey. I am the Everlasting one

(30) Man only has Understanding, and his Senses reach into the Essences and Qualities of the Stars and Elements, and search out the Ground of all Things in the Region of the Stars and Elements: And this now has its Original in Man, in the eternal Element, he being created out of the [eternal] Element, and not out of the Out-Births of the four Elements. And therefore the Eternity sees into the beginning Out-Birth in the Corruptibility; and the Beginning in the Out-Birth cannot see into the Eternity, for the Beginning takes its Original out of the Eternity, out of the eternal Mind.

(6) Now the Principle this stated, all good and beauty, and everlasting, is centred in The One, sprung from It, and pointed towards It, never straying from It, but ever holding about It and in It and living by Its law; and it is in this reference, as I judge, that Plato- finely, and by no means inadvertently but with profound intention- wrote those words of his, "Eternity stable in Unity"; he wishes to convey that Eternity is not merely something circling on its traces into a final unity but has Being about The One as the unchanging Life of the Authentic Existent. This is certainly what we have been seeking: this Principle, at rest within rest with the One, is Eternity; possessing this stable quality, being itself at once the absolute self-identical and none the less the active manifestation of an unchanging Life set towards the Divine and dwelling within It, untrue, therefore, neither on the side of Being nor on the side of Life- this will be Eternity .

Truly to be comports never lacking existence and never knowing variety in the mode of existence: Being is, therefore, self-identical throughout, and, therefore, again is one undistinguishable thing. Being can have no this and that; it cannot be treated in terms of intervals, unfoldings, progression, extension; there is no grasping any first or last in it.

If, then, there is no first or last in this Principle, if existence is its most authentic possession and its very self, and this in the sense that its existence is Essence or Life- then, once again, we meet here what we have been discussing, Eternity.

Observe that such words as "always," "never," "sometimes" must be taken as mere conveniences of exposition: thus "always- used in the sense not of time but of incorruptibility and endlessly complete scope- might set up the false notion of stage and interval. We might perhaps prefer to speak of "Being," without any attribute; but since this term is applicable to Essence and some writers have used the word "Essence" for things of process, we cannot convey our meaning to them without introducing some word carrying the notion of perdurance.

There is, of course, no difference between Being and Everlasting Being; just as there is none between a philosopher and a true philosopher: the attribute "true" came into use because there arose what masqueraded as philosophy; and for similar reasons "everlasting" was adjoined to "Being," and "Being" to "everlasting," and we have "Everlasting Being." We must take this "Everlasting" as expressing no more than Authentic Being: it is merely a partial expression of a potency which ignores all interval or term and can look forward to nothing by way of addition to the All which it possesses. The Principle of which this is the statement will be the All-Existent, and, as being all, can have no failing or deficiency, cannot be at some one point complete and at some other lacking.

Things and Beings in the Time order- even when to all appearance complete, as a body is when fit to harbour a soul- are still bound to sequence; they are deficient to the extent of that thing, Time, which they need: let them have it, present to them and running side by side with them, and they are by that very fact incomplete; completeness is attributed to them only by an accident of language.

But the conception of Eternity demands something which is in its nature complete without sequence; it is not satisfied by something measured out to any remoter time or even by something limitless, but, in its limitless reach, still having the progression of futurity: it requires something immediately possessed of the due fullness of Being, something whose Being does not depend upon any quantity but subsists before all quantity.

Itself having no quantity, it can have no contact with anything quantitative since its Life cannot be made a thing of fragments, in contradiction to the partlessness which is its character; it must be without parts in the Life as in the essence.

The phrase "He was good" refers to the Idea of the All; and its very indefiniteness signifies the utter absense of relation to Time: so that even this Universe has had no temporal beginning; and if we speak of something "before" it, that is only in the sense of the Cause from which it takes its Eternal Existence. Plato used the word merely for the convenience of exposition, and immediately corrects it as inappropriate to the order vested with the Eternity he conceives and affirms.

(32) On this Plane are Personal Gods—many of them—but none of them, alone, may be regarded as GOD, in the sense of the Eternal Parent or Infinite Reality. For even the highest of them have their limitations and restrictions, and all are but Manifestations of the Infinite Unmanifest. Each of these exalted Beings has had its beginning or birth in Manifestation, and each will finally have its ending and disappearance into the Infinite Unmanifest, where all sense of separateness and personality will disappear.

(1) But the inquiries which follow in the next place, require a more abundant doctrine, in order to their elucidation. At the same time, however, it is necessary to discuss the truth concerning them with brevity. For you inquire “ what efficacy there is in names that are not significant .” They are not, however, as you think, without signification; but let them be indeed unknown to us (though some of them are known to us, the explications of which we receive from the Gods), yet to the Gods all of them are significant, though not according to an effable mode; nor in such a way as that which is significant and indicative with men through imaginations; but either intellectually, conformably to the divine intellect which is in us; or ineffably, and in a way more excellent and simple, and conformably to the intellect which is united to the Gods. It is requisite, therefore, to take away all conceptions derived by an abstraction from sensibles, and all logical evolutions from divine names; and likewise the connascent physical similitudes of language to things which exist in nature. But the intellectual and divine symbolical character of divine similitude must be admitted to have a subsistence in names.

(10) Man's Image born of a Woman, here in this Life, is in a threefold Form, and stands in three Principles [or Beginnings;] viz. the Soul, that has its Original out of the first Principle, out of the strong and sour Might of the Eternity; and it swims [or moves] between two Principles, begirt with the third [Principle;] it reaches with its original Root into the Depth of the Eternity, in the Source [or Quality] where God the Father from Eternity enters (through the Gates of the Breaking through, and Opening) in himself, into the Light of Joy; and it is in the Band, where God calls himself a jealous, angry and austere God, and is a Sparkle out of the Omnipotence, appearing in the great Wonders of the Wisdom of God, through the dear Virgin of Chastity; and with the Form of the first Principle [it stands] in the Gate of the Sourness of Eternity [mingled, united, or] qualified with the Region of the Sun and Stars, and begirt with the four Elements; and the holy Element (viz. the Root of the four Elements) that is the Body of the Soul, in the second Principle, in the Gate [before or] towards God; and according to the Spirit of this World, the Region of the Stars is the Body of the Soul; and the Production of the four Elements is the Source-house, [or House of Operation,] or the Spirit of this World, which kindles the Region, so that it [springs forth or] operates. 1 1. And thus the Soul lives in such a threefold Source [or working Quality,] being bound with three Cords, and is drawn of all three. The first Cord is the Band of Eternity, generated in the Rising up of the Anxiety, and reaches the Abyss of Hell. The second Cord is the Kingdom of Heaven, generated through the Gates of the Deep in the Father, and regenerated out of the Birth of Sins, through the Humanity of Christ, and there the Soul also (in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ the Son of God) is tied up, and is drawn by the dear Virgin, in the Word of God. The third Cord is the Kingdom of the Stars, qualifying [or mingling] with the Soul, and it is hard drawn and held by the four Elements, and carried and led by them.

(1) Prior to truly existing beings and total principles [or principles that rank as wholes], there is one God, prior to [that deity who is generally believed to be] the first God and king, immoveable, and abiding in the solitude of his own unity. For neither is the intelligible connected with him, nor any thing else; but he is established as the paradigm of the God who is the father of himself, is self begotten, is father alone, and is truly good. For he is something even greater and prior to this, is the fountain of all things, and the root of the first intelligible forms. But from this one deity, the God who is sufficient to himself unfolds himself, into light. For this divinity, also, is the principle and God of Gods, a monad from the one , prior to essence, and the principle of essence. For from him entity and essence are derived; and hence, also, he is denominated the principle of intelligibles. These, therefore, are the most ancient principles of all things, which Hermes arranges prior to the etherial, empyrean, and celestial Gods. He likewise delivered to us the history of the empyrean Gods in one hundred books; of the etherial in an equal number; and of the celestial in a thousand books.

(15) But there is a difficulty affecting this entire settlement: Eternity is characteristic of the Intellectual-Principle, time of the soul- for we hold that time has its substantial being in the activity of the soul, and springs from soul- and, since time is a thing of division and comports a past, it would seem that the activity producing it must also be a thing of division, and that its attention to that past must imply that even the All-Soul has memory? We repeat, identity belongs to the eternal, time must be the medium of diversity; otherwise there is nothing to distinguish them, especially since we deny that the activities of the soul can themselves experience change.

Can we escape by the theory that, while human souls- receptive of change, even to the change of imperfection and lack- are in time, yet the Soul of the All, as the author of time, is itself timeless? But if it is not in time, what causes it to engender time rather than eternity?

The answer must be that the realm it engenders is not that of eternal things but a realm of things enveloped in time: it is just as the souls are not in time, but some of their experiences and productions are. For a soul is eternal, and is before time; and what is in time is of a lower order than time itself: time is folded around what is in time exactly as- we read- it is folded about what is in place and in number.

(16) Again it is this pattern that exists among the immortals: the monad and the thought are those things that belong to Immortal Man. The thinkings are for decads, and the hundreds are the teachings, and the thousands are the counsels, and the ten thousands are the powers. Now those who come from the [...] exist with their [...] in every aeon [...].