It must have been a creature, because the words passed away and came to an end but we know that "the word of the Lord endureth forever." Moreover, it is plain that the words thus spoken could not have been spoken successively, but simultaneously, else there would have been time and change--succession in its nature implying time; whereas there was then nothing but eternity and immortality.

God knows and says eternally what takes place in time.
CRITICISM OF ST.AUGUSTINE.

St.Augustine then defines, not without much mysticism, what is meant by the opening words of Genesis: "In the beginning." He is guided to his conclusion by another scriptural passage: "How wonderful are thy works, O Lord! in wisdom hast thou made them all." This "wisdom" is "the beginning," and in that beginning the Lord created the heaven and the earth.
"But," he adds, "some one may ask, 'What was God doing before he made the heaven and the earth?
for, if at any particular moment he began to employ himself, that means time, not eternity.

In eternity nothing transpires--the whole is present.'" In answering this question, he cannot forbear one of those touches of rhetoric for which he was so celebrated: "I will not answer this question by saying that he was preparing hell for priers into his mysteries.

I say that, before God made heaven and earth, he did not make any thing, for no creature could be made before any creature was made.