ted as
orthodox: he declared that, if there had been any pre-existing matter
out of which the world was formed, Scripture would have mentioned it;
that by not mentioning it God has given us a clear proof that there
was no such thing; and, after a manner not unknown in other theological
controversies, he threatens Hermogenes, who takes the opposite view,
with the woe which impends on all who add to or take away from the
written word.

St. Augustine, who showed signs of a belief in a pre-existence of
matter, made his peace with the prevailing belief by the simple
reasoning that, "although the world has been made of some material, that
very same material must have been made out of nothing."

In the wake of these great men the universal Church steadily followed.
The Fourth Lateran Council declared that God created everything out
of nothing; and at the present hour the vast majority of the
faithful--whether Catholic or Protestant--are taught the same doctrine;
on this point the syllabus of Pius IX and the Westminster Catechism
fully agree.(3)

(3) For Tertullian, see Tertullian against Hermogenes, chaps. xx and
xxii; for St. Augustine regarding "creation from nothing," see the De
Genesi contra Manichaeos, lib, i, cap. vi; for St. Ambrose, see the
Hexameron, lib, i, cap iv; for the decree of the Fourth Lateran Council,
and the view received in the Church to-day, see the article Creation in
Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary.

Having thus disposed of the manner and matter of creation, the next
subject taken up by theologians was the TIME required for the great
work.

Here came a difficulty. The first of the two accounts given in Genesis
extended the creative operation through six days, each of an evening
and a morning, with much explicit detail regarding the progress made in
each. But the second account spoke of "THE DAY" in which "the Lord God
made the earth and the heavens." The explicitness of the first account
and its naturalness to the minds of the great mass of early theologians
gave it at first a decided advantage; but Jewish thinkers, like Philo,
and Christian thinkers, like Origen, forming higher conceptions of
the Creator and his work, were not content with this, and by them was
launched upon the troubled sea of Christian theology the idea that the
creation was instantaneous, this idea being strengthened not only by the
second of the Genesis legends, but by the great text, "He spake, and
it was