Archelaus

“ We know that a light shines through the whole house, and not in some single part of it; as Jesus also intimates when He says, that “no man lighting a candle puts it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that it may give light unto all that are in the house.” [1] If, then, God is a light, it must needs be that light (if Jesus is to be credited) shall shine on the whole world, and not on any portions of it merely. And if, [2] then, that light holds possession of the whole world, where now can there be any ungenerated darkness? ”

“ Forasmuch, indeed, as the word of the Gospel is understood much better by you than by this person who puts himself forward as the Paraclete, although I could call him rather parasite than paraclete, I shall tell you how it has happened that there is darkness. When the light had been diffused everywhere, God began to constitute the universe, and commenced with the heaven and the earth ”

“ Thus, then, the cause of the shadow and the night is discovered in the solidity of the body of the earth,—a thing, indeed, which a man may understand from the fact of the shadow cast by his own body. [6] For before the heaven and the earth and all those corporeal creatures appeared, the light remained always constant, without waning or eclipse, as there existed no body which might produce shadow by its opposition or intervention; and consequently one must say that nowhere was there darkness then, and nowhere night. ”