am I therefore overwhelmed, because I have not found resemblances to the Creator of all
things, when desiring to find in the creature what is like the Creator?”
10. And in very truth, Brethren, I am not likely to discover any temporal resemblances
which I can compare to eternity. But as to those which thou hast discovered, what are they?
What hast thou discovered? That a father is greater in time than his son; and therefore thou
wouldest have the Son of God to be less in time than the Eternal Father, because thou hast
found that a son is less than a father born in time. Find me an eternal father here, and thou
hast found a resemblance. Thou findest a son less than a father in time, a temporal son less
than a temporal father. Hast thou found me a temporal son younger than eternal father?
Seeing then that in Eternity is stability, but in time variety; in Eternity all things stand still,
in time one thing comes, another succeeds; thou canst find a son of lesser age succeeding
his father in the variety of time, for that he himself succeeded to his father also, not a son
born in time to a father eternal. How then, Brethren, can we find in the creature aught co-
eternal, when in the creature we find nothing eternal? Do thou find an eternal father in the
creature, and I will find a coeternal son. But if thou find not an eternal father, and the one
surpasses the other in thee; it is sufficient, that for a resemblance I find something coeval.
For what is coeternal is one thing what is coeval another. Every day we call them coeval who
have the same measure of times; the one is not preceded by the other in time, yet they both
whom we call coeval once began to “be.” Now if I shall be able to discover something which
is born coeval with that of which it is born; if two coeval things can be discovered, that which
begets, and that which is begotten; we discover in this case things coeval, let us understand
in the other things coeternal. If here I shall find that a thing begotten hath begun to be ever
since that which begets began to be, we may understand at least that the Son of God did not
begin to be, ever since He that begat Him did not begin to be. Lo, brethren, perhaps we may
discover something in the creature, which is born of something else, and which yet began
to be at the same time as that of which it is born began to be. In the latter case, the one began
to be when the other began to be; in the former the one did not begin to be, ever since the
other began not to be. The first then is coeval, the second coeternal.
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11. I suppose that your holiness has understood already what I am saying, that temporal
things cannot be compared to eternal; but that by some slight and small resemblance, things
coeval may be with things coeternal. Let us find accordingly two coeval things; and let us
get our hints as to these resemblances from the Scriptures. We read in the Scriptures of
Wisdom, “For she is the Brightness of the Everlasting Light.” Again we read, “The unspotted
Mirror of the Majesty of God.”3583 Wisdom Herself is called, “The Brightness of the Ever-
lasting Light,” is called, “The Image of the Father;” from hence let us take a resemblance,
that we may find two coeval things, from which we may understand things coeternal. O
3583 Wisd. vii. 26.
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On the words of the Gospel, John i. 1, ‘In the beginning was the word, and…