"
This view of the creation of the universe as instantaneous and also
as in six days, each made up of an evening and a morning, became
virtually universal. Peter Lombard and Hugo of St. Victor,
authorities of Vast weight, gave it their sanction in the twelfth
century, and impressed it for ages upon the mind of the Church.
Both these lines of speculation--as to the creation of everything
out of nothing, and the reconciling of the instantaneous creation
of the universe with its creation in six days--were still further
developed by other great thinkers of the Middle Ages.
St. Hilary of Poictiers reconciled the two conceptions as follows:
"For, although according to Moses there is an appearance of regular
order in the fixing of the firmament, the laying bare of the dry
land, the gathering together of the waters, the formation of the
heavenly bodies, and the arising of living things from land and
water, yet the creation of the heavens, earth, and other elements
is seen to be the work of a single moment.
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