155. Creation itself cannot be brought within man's comprehension unless
space and time are removed from thought; but if these are removed, it can
be comprehended. Removing these if you can, or as much as you can, and
keeping the mind in ideas abstracted from space and time, you will
perceive that there is no difference between the maximum of space and
the minimum of space; and then you cannot but have a similar idea of the
creation of the universe as of the creation of the particulars therein;
you will also perceive that diversity in created things springs from
this, that there are infinite things in God-Man, consequently things
without limit in the sun which is the first proceeding from Him; these
countless things take form, as in an image, in the created universe. From
this it is that no one thing can anywhere be precisely the same as
another. From this comes that variety of all things which is presented to
sight, in the natural world, together with space, but in the spiritual
world with appearance of space; and it is a variety both of generals and
of particulars. These are the things that have been pointed out in PartI.,
where it is shown that in God-Man infinite things are one distinctly
(n. 17-22); that all things in the universe were created by Divine Love
and Divine Wisdom, (n. 52, 53); that all things in the created universe
are recipients of the Divine Love and of the Divine Wisdom of God-Man
(n. 54-60); that the Divine is not in space (n. 7-10); that the Divine
apart from space fills all spaces (n. 66 - 72); that the Divine is the
same in things greatest and least (n. 77-82).

156. The creation of the universe, and of all things of it, cannot be
said to have been wrought from space to space, or from time to time,
thus progressively and successively, but from eternity and from infinity;
not from eternity of time, because there is no such thing, but from
eternity not of time, for this is the same with the Divine; nor from