What people called eternity was like a man loving a woman, giving her a ring, and saying his love was beyond time, eternal and unchanging like the ring.
But as time passed, the tiny diamond he had bought with all his savings in his youth could no longer compare to the large diamonds he could now afford. The ring had also become discolored and yellowed by human oils, and was no longer attractive.
People wanted to believe in eternity and in truth. They did not want to be deceived.
Theologians believed that God was the creator and maker of time, that He created time after creating the universe, or at the same time as the universe. Thus, even if the future was infinite, the past was finite.
Others believed that time had existed before creation, and was therefore infinite.
In the second dialogue of Giordano Bruno's On the Infinite, the Universe and the Worlds, it was said that since a body's force extended according to the volume of an infinite body, that force would not act upon a finite body with infinite power. It would only act upon finite bodies with the power emitted from each finite part and according to a certain distance.
Or, to put it another way, in Ptolemy's cosmological system, Earth was the immobile center. To explain the apparent motion of the planets, Ptolemy believed that every planet moved at a uniform speed along a small circle. The sole reason cited in support of their supposedly equal distance from Earth rested upon a false assumption: that Earth remained motionless. Yet all of nature opposed this, and all reason rose in fury. Every correct thought and every sound, mature mind condemned it.
Nothing remained unchanged forever. Time would not be like a ring, eventually returning to the