27. For we can embrace all time in imagination or knowledge, since we know that what is now to-day, did not exist yesterday, because what was yesterday is not now; and on the other hand what is now, is only now and was not also yesterday. And by imagination we can so span the past that we have no doubt that before some city was founded, there existed a time in which that city had not been founded. Since, therefore, all time is the sphere of knowledge or imagination, we judge of it by the perceptions of human reason; hence we are considered to have reasonably asserted about anything, “It was not, before it was born,” since antecedent time is prior to the origin of every single thing. But on the other hand, since in things of God, that is to say, in regard to the birth of God, there is nothing that is not before time eternal: it is illogical to use of Him the phrase “before He was born,” or to suppose that He Who possesses before times eternal the eternal promise, is merely (in the language of the blessed Apostle823    2 Tim. i. 9, Tit. i. 2.) in hope of eternal life, which God Who cannot lie has promised before times eternal, or to say that once He was not. For reason rejects the notion that He began to exist after anything, Who, so we must confess, existed before times eternal.

27. De nato ante tempora dici nequit, ANTE QUAM NATUS EST, nec NON FUIT ALIQUANDO.---Tempora enim omnia vel opinione complectimur, vel scientia: cum quod nunc est, scimus non etiam pridie fuisse, quia quod pridie fuerit, nunc non sit: quod autem nunc est, nunc tantum sit, non et pridie fuerit. Opinione vero ita praeterita metimur, ut ante urbem aliquam institutam non ambigatur tempus fuisse, quo urbs instituta non fuerit. Cum ergo vel scientiae vel opinioni nostrae subjacent tempora, sensu humanae 0450B intelligentiae judicamus; ut de aliqua re ratione dixisse existimemur, non fuit ante quam nascitur, quia uniuscujusque originem tempora semper antelata praeveniant. At vero cum in Dei rebus, id est, in Dei nativitate, nihil non ante tempus aeternum sit; non cadit in id, ut ante quam natus est, cuique ante tempora aeterna promissum est aeternum, sit secundum beati Apostoli dictum in spe vitae aeternae, quam promisit non mendax Deus ante tempora aeterna (Tit. I, 2), aliquando non fuisse dicatur: quia intelligi non potest coepisse post aliquid, qui esse sit ante aeterna tempora confitendus.