Passing on to the middle ages, we find our view supported by the authority of Venerable Bede, in several parts of his writings. His notion is that, during the Six Days, God formed and fashioned the world out of shapeless matter; but, before the Six Days began, He had made this shapeless matter itself out of nothing. “Two things,” he says, “did God make before all days, the angelical nature, and shapeless matter.” And again, he dresses up this opinion in the form of a dialogue:--“_Disciple._ Tell me the order in which things were made throughout the Six Days? _Master._ First, in the very beginning of created existence, were made heaven and earth, the angels, air, and water. _Disciple._ Continue the order of creation? _Master. In the beginning of the First Day_ light was made; on the second was made the firmament,” etc.[122] Nothing can be more plain than the distinction here set up between the beginning of all time, when the Heavens and the Earth were made, and the beginning of the First Day, when light was made. And when we come to still more recent times, we find this interpretation was taken up and defended by the great masters in the schools of Theology. Peter Lombard, the famous Magister Sententiarum, referring to the first verse of Genesis, says that “in the beginning God created Heaven, which means the Angels, and the Earth, which means confused and unshapely matter, the same that is called Chaos by the Greeks; _and this was before any day_.” Not less clearly speaks out Hugh of Saint Victor, who for his profound and varied erudition, was called the second Augustine. In explaining the history of the Six Days, he says: “The first of the Divine operations was the creation of light. But the light was not then created from nothing, it was formed from pre-existing matter. This was the work that was accomplished on the First Day: but the material of this work had been created _before the First Day_. Directly with the light the day began; for before the light it was neither night or day, though time already existed.”[123]