But the second account spoke of "THE DAY" in which "the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." The explicitness of the first account and its naturalness to the minds of the great mass of early theologians gave it at first a decided advantage; but Jewish thinkers, like Philo, and Christian thinkers, like Origen, forming higher conceptions of the Creator and his work, were not content with this, and by them was launched upon the troubled sea of Christian theology the idea that the creation was instantaneous, this idea being strengthened not only by the second of the Genesis legends, but by the great text, "He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast"-- or, as it appears in the Vulgate and in most translations, "He spake, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created." As a result, it began to be held that the safe and proper course was to believe literally BOTH statements; that in some mysterious manner God created the universe in six days, and yet brought it all into existence in a moment.

In spite of the outcries of sundry great theologians, like Ephrem Syrus, that the universe was created in exactly six days of twenty-four hours each, this compromise was promoted by St.Athanasius and St.Basil in the East, and by St.Augustine and St.Hilary in the West.
Serious difficulties were found in reconciling these two views, which to the natural mind seem absolutely contradictory; but by ingenious manipulation of texts, by dexterous play upon phrases, and by the abundant use of metaphysics to dissolve away facts, a reconciliation was effected, and men came at least to believe that they believed in a creation of the universe instantaneous and at the same time extended through six days.( 4) (4) For Origen, see his Contra Celsum, cap xxxvi, xxxvii; also his De Principibus, cap.

v; for St.Augustine, see his De Genesi conta Manichaeos and De Genesi ad Litteram, passim; for Athanasius, see his Discourses against the Arians, ii, 48,49.
Some of the efforts to reconcile these two accounts were so fruitful as to deserve especial record.

The fathers, Eastern and Western, developed out of the double account in Genesis, and the indications in the Psalms, the Proverbs, and the book of Job, a vast mass of sacred science bearing upon this point.

As regards the whole work of creation, stress was laid upon certain occult powers in numerals.