Patristic A.D. 407
“(Hom. i) As then when our ship is near shore, cities and port pass in survey before us, which on the open sea vanish, and leave nothing whereon to fix the eye; so the Evangelist here, taking us with him in his flight above the created world, leaves the eye to gaze in vacancy on an illimitable expanse. For the words, was in the beginning, are significative of eternal and infinite essence.”
Catena Aurea: Gospel of John, as excerpted in the Catena Aurea on John 1:1
PD · J. H. Newman (Oxford, 1845) ↗