De visione Dei

The perfection of the appearance to be verified of the most perfect God. In the first place I judge it must be supposed that nothing can appear concerning the gaze of the icon of God but is more truly in the true gaze of God. For God, who is the very height of all perfection and greater than can be thought, is called theos for this reason, because he beholds all things. Wherefore, if a painted gaze can appear in an image beholding all and each at once, since this belongs to the perfection of gaze, what appears of the icon or appearance cannot less truly befit the truth. For if among us one gaze is keener than another, and one scarcely discerns near things while another discerns distant things, and one reaches its object slowly, another swiftly, there is no hesitation that the absolute gaze, from which is every gaze of those who see, excels in act every keenness, every swiftness, and every power of all who actually see and who can come to see. For if I look to the abstract gaze which in mind I have absolved from all eyes and organs, and consider how that abstract gaze in its contracted being, according as those who see see through that gaze, is toward time and the quarters of the world, toward singular objects and other such conditions of contraction, and that the abstract gaze is likewise abstracted and absolved from these conditions, I grasp full well that it is not of the essence of gaze to regard one object more than another, although it accompanies gaze in contracted being that, while it regards one thing, it cannot regard another, or all things absolutely. But God, as he is the true uncontracted gaze, is not less than what can be conceived of the abstract gaze by intellect, but improportionably more perfect. Wherefore the appearance of the gaze of the icon can less attain to the height of the excellence of the absolute gaze than the concept. That therefore which appears in that image is excellently in the absolute gaze is not to be doubted.