d never to come to an end. For
it is one thing for existence to be endlessly prolonged, which was what
Plato ascribed to the world, another for the whole of an endless life to
be embraced in the present, which is manifestly a property peculiar to
the Divine mind. Nor need God appear earlier in mere duration of time to
created things, but only prior in the unique simplicity of His nature.
For the infinite progression of things in time copies this immediate
existence in the present of the changeless life, and when it cannot
succeed in equalling it, declines from movelessness into motion, and
falls away from the simplicity of a perpetual present to the infinite
duration of the future and the past; and since it cannot possess the
whole fulness of its life together, for the very reason that in a manner
it never ceases to be, it seems, up to a certain point, to rival that
which it cannot complete and express by attaching itself indifferently
to any present moment of time, however swift and brief; and since this
bears some resemblance to that ever-abiding present, it bestows on
everything to which it is assigned the semblance of existence. But since
it cannot abide, it hurries along the infinite path of time, and the
result has been that it continues by ceaseless movement the life the
completeness of which it could not embrace while it stood still. So, if
we are minded to give things their right names, we shall follow Plato in
saying that God indeed is eternal, but the world everlasting.

'Since, then, every mode of judgment comprehends its objects conformably
to its own nature, and since God abides for ever in an eternal present,
His knowledge, also transcending all movement of time, dwells in the
simplicity of its own changeless present, and, embracing the whole
infinite sweep of the past and of the future, contemplates all that
falls within its simple cognition as if it were now taking place. And
therefore, if thou wilt carefully consider that immediate presentment
whereby it discriminates all things, thou wilt more rightly deem it not
foreknowledge as of something future, but knowledge of a moment that
never passes. For this cause the name chosen to describe it is not
prevision, but providence, because, since utterly removed in nature from
things mean and trivial, its outlook embraces all things as from some
lofty height. Why, then, dost thou insist that the things which are
surveyed by the Divine eye are involved in necess