Excerpted from Dux Dubitantiam

The opinions of men about the antiquity or newness of the world, among those who believer that there is a god, are three. The first is the opinion of all those who keep the law of Moses. And it is that he made the whole world (that is, all beings besides the creator) to be after true and absolute deprivation, and that the creator himself was an eternal being alone, and that besides him there was no angel, nor heaven itself, nor anything which is below heaven. After this, in turn, he made all beings according to what they are with his own will, and not that of another, and that time in itself comes from the universality of the creator. Since time is something attaching to motion, which is an accident of a mobile thing, the mobile thing itself, to whose motion time attaches, is new and created, and is after it was not. Because he says before that this proposition which says that the creator was before the creation of the world, this signifies that there was time, and similarly whatever follows understanding of the quality of its own essence before the creation of the world, namely an infinite quality.

original latin

Nunc autem ostendamus aliam rationem, licet non fit de iis in quibus nunc intendimus. Sed est utilis ad ea, et ipsa est quia illud quod fecit naturam temporis latere plures homines sapientum adeo quod terruit eos ratio ipsius, et nescierunt utrum vere sit an non, sicut Galenus et alii sapientes, est quia est accidens in accidente.

Accidentia vero quorum fundamenta sunt alia accidentia, sicut claritas in tinctura, et curvitas in linea: modus existentiae ipsorum est nimis occultus: quanto magis cum fuerit additum istis quam accidens quod est fundamentum, fit non stabile, sed fit in successione: tunc enim res magis latebit.

Dua vero res coniungunt in tempore simul, quod est accidens cohaerens motui: et motus est accidens rei mobilis: neque motus est sicut albedo et nigredo quod est genus quietum: sed veritas motus per se exigit ut non quiescat ullo modo, etiam in ictu oculi.

Ideoque pone cor tuum, et intellige bene, ne obliges te ad dandum rationes in quibus non poteris evadere ab eo qui ignorat illa. Si enim posueris esse temporis ante mundum, obligaberis ad credendum antiquitatem: quia tempus est accidens: nec effugiet ullo modo quin habeat deferens: et erit necessario essentia alterius rei ante essentiam huius mundi qui nunc est: hoc autem est quod nos fugimus.