what is meant by priority in time is not that there is (1) a time external to the priority, the prior, and their attributes. Rather, it means that the prior precedes the later (2) with an intelligible priority, just as today precedes tomorrow and yesterday precedes today. It is evident that the priority of sunrise—and of the events coinciding with it—over noon is all of one kind. Thus, there is no difference between the earlier time itself preceding the later time and what occurs in the earlier time preceding what occurs in the later time.
The second is as follows:
The parts (3) of time are continuous and successive, with no interval (4) outside (5) time between them. Whoever says that the Creator had always been inactive and did not speak by His will, but then became [active and] speaking (6) by His will and power, posits between the former and the latter an interval (7) without end. How, then, can this be equated with the parts of time preceding one another (8)?
In sum, knowledge concerning an agent who acts by his will and power—or, indeed, concerning an agent considered apart from the fact that he acts only by his will and power, although this is necessarily true of him in reality—knowledge (9) of the mere fact that he is the agent of a particular thing necessarily entails knowing that he—