Annotatio IV
”In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” — Genesis 1:1
Augustine, Bishop of Kissamos, is reprehended by Ambrose [Catharinus], Archbishop of Compsa, because in his Cosmopoeia (for so he entitled his work on the first three chapters of Genesis), in elucidating this passage, he judged that the empyrean heaven was not created, but coeternal with God1 — being, however, ready to recant if he thought wrongly; yet, as the same Ambrose says, it would have been better not to commit such dangerous things to writing than to offer oneself to a palinode. For who will recant in the name of that man who has already died and left his error alive in his writings?
Footnotes
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Left margin: Augustine of Kissamos wrongly taught that the empyrean heaven was not created. (Caelum empyreum non esse creatum docuit perperam Augustinus Chisamensis.) ↩