Confessions

⁴⁸ Let Your works praise You, that we may love You; and let us love You, that Your works may praise You, the which have beginning and end from time,— rising and setting, growth and decay, form and privation. They have therefore their successions of morning and evening, partly hidden, partly apparent; for they were made from nothing by You, not of You, nor of any matter not Yours, or which was created before, but of concreted matter (that is, matter at the same time created by You), because without any interval of time You formed its formlessness. For since the matter of heaven and earth is one thing, and the form of heaven and earth another, You have made the matter indeed of almost nothing, but the form of the world You have formed of formless matter; both, however, at the same time, so that the form should follow the matter with no interval of delay.