Jeniffer electronic book

St. Jerome held that the reason why God did not pronounce the work
of the second day "good" is to be found in the fact that there is
something essentially evil in the number two, and this was echoed
centuries afterward, afar off in Britain, by Bede.
St. Augustine brought this view to bear upon the Church in the
following statement: "There are three classes of numbers--the more
than perfect, the perfect, and the less than perfect, according as
the sum of them is greater than, equal to, or less than the
original number. Six is the first perfect number: wherefore we must
not say that six is a perfect number because God finished all his
works in six days, but that God finished all his works in six days
because six is a perfect number."
Reasoning of this sort echoed along through the mediaeval Church
until a year after the discovery of America, when the _Nuremberg
Chronicle_ re-echoed it as follows: "The creation of things is
explained by the number six, the parts of which, one, two, and
three, assume the form of a triangle.


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