Chapter XVII.—Nevertheless There
is Time Past and Future.
2. I ask, Father, I do not affirm. O my God, rule
and guide me. “Who is there who can say to me that there are not
three times (as we learned when boys, and as we have taught boys),
the past, present, and future, but only present, because these two
are not? Or are they also; but when from future it becometh
present, cometh it forth from some secret place, and when from the
present it becometh past, doth it retire into anything secret? For
where have they, who have foretold future things, seen these
things, if as yet they are not? For that which is not cannot be
seen. And they who relate things past could not relate them as
true, did they not perceive them in their mind. Which things, if
they were not, they could in no wise be discerned. There are
therefore things both future and past.