time; as when he says, the sun was made, as well
as other planets, for the distinction and conservation of the numbers of
time.

It is therefore most proper to understand the earth to be here an
instrument of time; not that the earth is moved, as the stars are; but
that, they being carried about it, it standing still makes sunset and
sunrising, by which the first measures of time, nights and days, are
circumscribed. Wherefore he called it the infallible guard and artificer
of night and day. For the gnomons of dials are instruments and measures
of time, not in being moved with the shadows, but in standing still;
they being like the earth in closing out the light of the sun when it
is down,--as Empedocles says that the earth makes night by intercepting
light. This therefore may be Plato's meaning.

And so much the rather might we consider whether the sun is not absurdly
and without probability said to be made for the distinction of time,
with the moon and the rest of the planets. For as in other respects
the dignity of the sun is great; so by Plato in his Republic (Plato,
"Republic." vi. pp. 508, 509.) the sun is called the king and lord of
the whole sensible nature, as the Chief Good is of the intelligible. For
it is said to be the offspring of Good, it supplying both generation
and appearance to things visible; as it is from Good that things
intelligible both are and are understood. But that this God, having such
a nature and so great power, should be only an instrument of time, and
a sure measure of the difference that happens among the eight orbs,
as they are slow or swift in motion, seems neither decent nor highly
rational. It must therefore be said to such as are startled at these
things, that it is their ignorance to think that time is the measure of
motion in respect of sooner or later, as Aristotle calls it; or quantity
in motion, as Speusippus; or an interval of motion and nothing else,
as some of the Stoics define it, by an accident, not comprehending
its essence and power, which Pindar has not ineptly expressed in these
words: Time, who surpasses all in the seats of the blest. Pythagoras
also, when he was asked what time was, answered, it was the soul of the
universe. For time is no affection or accident of motion, but the
cause, power, and principle of that symmetry and order that confines all
created beings, by which the animated nature of the universe is moved.
Or rather, this order and symmetry itself--so