Nevertheless, this great Doctor, having long pondered over the subject, and considered it on many sides, does not hesitate to express his own opinion. And he departs very widely, indeed, from the literal and obvious interpretation. He maintains, at great length,[137] as we had before occasion to observe, that God created all things in a single instant of time, according to the words of Ecclesiasticus, “He who liveth forever created all things at once.”[138] Thus he is led to infer that the Six Days commemorated by Moses were, in reality, but one day; and this not such a day as those which are now measured by the revolution of the sun, for we find three successive days recorded by Moses before the sun appeared in the Heavens. It was, in fact, nothing else than that one single instant of time in which all things were created together.[139] Nor was this opinion peculiar to Saint Augustine. At the very dawn of the Christian Era it was set forth by Philo the Jew; and afterward it was maintained by Clement of Alexandria, and by Origen. The great Saint Athanasius seems to throw the weight of his authority in the same direction, when he says, speaking of the Creation, that “no one thing was made before another, but all things were produced at once together by the self-same command.” And after the time of Saint Augustine this figurative interpretation was defended by Saint Eucherius, Bishop of Lyons, in the course of the fifth century, and by Procopius of Gaza in the sixth. In the days of the schools we find it approved by Albertus Magnus, and treated respectfully by Saint Thomas; and later still, adopted by Cardinal Cajetan, in his commentary on the Book of Genesis.[140] It will be said, perhaps, that we are here arguing against ourselves: these eminent writers are in favor of reducing the days of Creation to one single point of time; whereas it is our purpose to stretch them out to periods of indefinite length. But no: our object just now is not precisely to establish our own hypothesis, but rather to prepare the way for its discussion. We want to show that we are quite free to abandon the popular view of the Mosaic Days if there be good reason for our doing so. And it seems to us that we have abundantly established this point by a long list of eminent ecclesiastical writers, who, without any note of censure, have diverged very widely from the common interpretation. No doubt they have shortened the time, and we want to lengthen it. But in this they agree with us, that the days of Creation are not of necessity days in the ordinary sense of the word. Nay, Saint Augustine goes farther, and maintains, from the evidence of the Sacred Text itself, that they cannot be understood in this sense.[141]