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In plain words
Those that are established as fixed in their measure, such as those of the moon, the sun and the rest, of the mango, the jasmine, the and the rest, of heat, cold and the like, and of the cuckoo’s love-drunk play and the like: those very are time. For going, reciting and the like, which are not fixed, are fixed in their measure by them, as gold is by its counterweights. And that very particular nature of the sun and the rest is, “in truth”, sequence; there is no other thing called sequence. And sequence itself is time; time is nothing else. So the word “eva” is to be construed both where it stands and away from its place. Even the simultaneity of two is sequence after all, relative to another . The thought of slow and quick and the like, too, is sequence after all, in a difference of , owing to an otherness drawn out. The thought of remoteness and nearness rests right there as well, through distinctness and the like. So the varied difference in the of , which stands in the place of the gold, measured along with this or that movement of the sun and the like, which is like the counterweight, is spoken of in this way: “he walks for a day”.
But surely, in that case, let what is called time be just the own nature of things; what is this of time? With this doubt in view, he says:
Sequence rests on difference; and difference, too, comes from the being and non-being of ; but the being and non-being of come from the Sovereign, who makes varied .
Here, if time, whose nature is sequence, were a mere difference of own nature, then the four fingers, which differ in nature, would be of different times. Therefore the sequence made by a difference of this kind, “the of dawn’s red is present, and that of the full mass of bright light is absent”, a difference brought to life by the being and non-being of , is what has the nature of time. And it has been shown at length that this being and non-being of are not made by any outer cause. So these two come about from that very whose nature is , and who, as each one knows by self-awareness, is “Sovereign”, that is, has the power, to fashion a variety of in his own imaginings and the like. For he, making blue and the other shine within himself, makes them shine in a variety beyond measure. Consider: the “red”, the “pot”, the “raised” and the “firm” he makes shine as sharing one ground; the “pot” and the “cloth” he makes shine as separate, each absent as in the other, and yet in his own self with an of a single savour. In all this much, sequence does not arise. But when he makes the of autumn shine as wholly empty of the of winter, and the of winter as empty of that of autumn, then sequence, whose nature is time, rises up. So this of the Blessed One, of such a kind, which spreads out the variety of things, is called the of time.
Just this, His making varied , he makes plain:
From the variety of forms He makes the sequence of space shine; and from the shining of a variety of action, the Lord makes the sequence of time shine too.