The modesty therefore of Augustine pleases one, who elsewhere candidly says that in all such cases he draws in the sails of his thoughts. For if we speculate and dispute to infinity, these things still remain incomprehensible. Even those things which we see we can understand but little. How much less then shall we grasp in our knowledge such things as these. For what will you determine concerning things that were before and beyond time? Or what can be your thoughts of things God did before time was? Wherefore let us away with all such thoughts and believe that God before the creation of the world was incomprehensible in his essential rest, but that now since the creation he is within and without and above all creatures; that is, he is still incomprehensible. This is all that can be said, because that which was outside of time our intellect can not comprehend. Wherefore God does not manifest himself in anything but in his works and in his Word; because these can in some measure be comprehended, all other things which properly belong to his divinity, cannot be comprehended or understood, as they really are; such as those things which were beyond time and before the world's creation, etc. Perhaps God appeared to Adam unveiled; but after his sin he may have shown himself to him in "a noise," Gen. 3:8, under which he was covered as with a veil. So also later in the tabernacle God was veiled by the sanctuary; and in the desert by the pillar of a cloud and by the pillar of fire. Wherefore Moses also calls these things "appearances" or "shadowings" of God, by which he then manifested himself. And Cain calls that the "face" and the "presence" of God where he had before offered his sacrifices, Gen. 4:14. For our nature is so deformed by sin, yea corrupted and lost, that it cannot understand God naked and unveiled nor comprehend what he really is. Therefore it is that these covering veils are absolutely necessary. It is moreover insanity to dispute much concerning God as to what he was beyond and before time, for that is to desire to comprehend naked divinity or the naked divine essence. And it is for this very reason that God has wrapt himself in the veils of his works and under certain visible appearances, just as at this day he veils himself under baptism, absolution, etc. If you depart from these veiling signs, you at once run away beyond measure, beyond place and beyond time into the most absolute nothing; concerning which, as philosophers say, there can be no knowledge. Therefore it is that we with solemn propriety enter not into this question; but rest content with this simple meaning of the expression, "In the beginning."