Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

How God is goodness itself.

« By like reason God is goodness itself: in himself ontologically as perfection, morally as holiness, in some measure finally as beatitude; and therefore he is the supreme good of the creature as efficient and final cause, and, though in an improper sense, as formal cause in sanctification and beatification. »

First the notion of good must be supposed. St Thomas, 1. q. 6. a.1., defines the good as « the reason of the perfect, which is desirable. » In this definition the perfect which is spoken of is that which has all things belonging to it, which the Greeks perhaps more aptly call τελειον, the ultimate, or the end and summit of those things which pertain to it¹.

Appetite is taken both more properly for the tendency and repose of the will toward the perfect that befits it, such as is found only in intellectual beings and by a certain analogy in sentient ones; or improperly for the natural ordering and inclination toward its own perfection, such as is also found in inanimate things.

The reason of the perfect is the good considered in itself, and it can be called bonum quod. But every good in itself is fitting to someone; therefore the good in itself is also desirable, under which reason it can be called bonum cui. Whence the definition of Aristotle: the good is what all things desire. But this « is not so understood, says St Thomas (1. c. a. 2. ad 2.), as if every good were desired by all, but because whatever is desired has the reason of good. »

Further, the good in itself can be understood in creatures as what is perfect with respect to esse indeterminately, and in this way the good follows every being, and so is transcendental; or the good is understood as what is perfect in a determinate essence, and so likewise whatever is, is good (with metaphysical goodness); or the good is understood as the perfection which is added to the essence, whether in the physical order or in the moral order, insofar as it belongs to the nature itself or by itself, or insofar as it is capable, under the ordering of God, of the supernatural end; or finally the good is understood as what is properly τελειον, perfection in repose already in the state of the ultimate end.

The bonum cui, or good for someone, is the good itself in itself, insofar as it is the principle of good in someone, either as efficient cause by action, or as end by enjoyment, or as form by its communication of itself.

Having declared the notion of good as far as the aim required, we shall consider God, both as he is infinite good in himself, and as he is « the good of goods, » the principle, I say, and end of every good, which, apart from himself, can be only by participation and absolute dependence on the good which he is.

I. Esse and good are convertible, for esse includes the reason of good, as is clear from what has been said. Therefore the absolute Esse itself, from its essence, is absolute goodness, or the reason of the perfect in itself. This goodness of God in himself can be considered more distinctly according to a threefold order: ontological, moral, and, as it were, final.

1°. God is goodness itself ontologically. Since God is, by the intrinsic reason of his essence, the fullness of all perfection actually existing, no perfection has come to him by which he is good; but the necessary Esse itself is the whole essential perfection and absolutely necessary, because it is Esse itself. He is therefore not good by anything other; but he is good by his essence: he is not good within some order and degree, beyond which he would not be good; but he is good absolutely by the whole reason of goodness: finally he does not have goodness as something accidental; but he is the whole goodness itself. « The good itself, says Clement of Alexandria, Paedagog. l. I. c. 8, is not called good through the virtue which it has: just as justice is not called good through the virtue it has, for it is itself the virtue; but because it is good in itself and through itself » ².

More fittingly, this absolute goodness can be declared by comparison with participated good. The transcendent Bonum is indeed really identical with esse even in creatures: but the esse of a creature is contingent, and not necessary by its intrinsic reason; whence the essence of a creature is not actual in itself but only in mere possibility: bonum, however, is esse and essence in act; for essence in the state of possibility is only the possibility of good. Finally, this very possibility, if it is some good, wholly flows from the reason of the participability of the unparticipated good, which is the divine essence. A created essence in act, though it cannot be without being good with metaphysical goodness, yet this is goodness secundum quid, and it requires many other goods fitting to it, both in the physical order and, as regards intellectual creatures, in the moral order, so that it may be bonum simply in its own order. Those therefore which lack the fitting conditions of their nature, at least as much as is required for the end in whose attainment lies the completion of goodness, are called simply mala³. But in God, as the good of essence is necessarily in act, so this very good of essence is the whole reason of absolute goodness.

Accordingly, created things are good within some finite degree of being and goodness: a good soul, a good angel, and so on. God, however, is the good itself in the whole reason of good; he is the Good Good. Moreover, creatures in their own order and due degree are not simply good, except with accidental goodness; and therefore they are not the good itself: but God, having no accidental goodness, can be good, since he is essentially the absolute good itself. This teaching is most clear in St Augustine, both in other places and in l. VIII. c. 3. n. 4. 5. de Trin. After enumerating various goods, he says: « This good and that good, he says, take away this and that, and see the good itself, if you can. So you will see God good not by another good, but as the good of every good.... What is this except God? Not a good soul, or a good angel, or good heaven, but the Good Good. For when I hear, for example, that a good soul is spoken of, just as there are two words, so from those words I understand two things: one by which the soul is, another by which it is good.... not because that by which the soul is, is not something of goodness.... but for this reason it is not yet called a good soul, since there remains for it the act of the will by which it may be more excellent; which if it neglects, it is rightly blamed, and rightly said not to be a good soul... When therefore you hear this good and that good, which can also be called not good at other times.... if, these being removed, you can perceive the good through itself, you will have perceived God... This is the truth and the simple good, for it is nothing other than the good itself, and therefore also the supreme good. For the good cannot be diminished or increased, except what is good from another good. Therefore the soul turns itself to this, that it may be good, from which it has that it is a soul. »

2°. Goodness is to be considered in the moral order, which is called holiness, and according to which rational creatures are chiefly called good, because only by this are they duly disposed to the end, in whose attainment, as we have said, lies the ultimate completion of goodness. Now holiness in creatures is negatively immunity from sin, that is, from disorder with respect to the eternal law in habits and acts; and positively it is the conformity and commensuration of habits and acts to the very rule of morals, which conformity is ultimately perfected by love of God and union with God as ultimate end. For just as the law of love is the greatest commandment, on which the whole law depends and to which it is directed, so every conformity to the law of God is ordered per se to this love and to union with God. Now the divine essence itself is the foundation of all order, as of the moral order also; and the same essence, insofar as it is intellect and will, is the essentially right principle of the eternal law, and the measure of all moral rectitude. For God loves with necessary love the fundamental rectitude which is his own essence; and the same essentially right act by which he loves his essential rectitude is directed outwards toward creatures as a law and norm of rectitude, partly necessary and partly free. From this it follows that every divine disposition outwardly is essentially right; and it is as repugnant that either the law or the work of God outwardly should not fully correspond to essential rectitude, as it is repugnant that the act itself, essentially right and the norm of all rectitude, should cease to be right. » God, in holiness is your way; who is a God so great as our God? » Psal. LXXVI. 14. « The Lord is just in all his ways » Ps. CXLIV. 17. « His holy arm » Ps.XCVII. 1. » Holy is the law, and the commandment holy, and just, and good » Rom.VII. 12. « Holy is his name » Luc. I. 49.

The Lord God of hosts, in himself: « Holy, Holy, Holy » Is. VI. 3.

Likewise this essential love, by which God loves infinitely the rectitude in his essence, and by which consequently he wills rectitude in his creatures and loves it, is opposed to its contrary by necessary disapproval and hatred of sin, Ps. V.5. sqq.; Prov. XV.9. Whence it appears how the goodness or holiness of God is, not only identically but formally, even according to our own mode of understanding, the wrath of God, that is, justice in punishing sin, and the love of goodness is the hatred of sin: the distinction, namely, is not in the perfection, even as understood by us, but the difference lies in the object to which one perfection is referred. « God indeed is good through himself, but just consequently on account of those things which are ours, and this very thing because he is good » Clemens Alex. Paedagog. I. c. 8. p. 127.

The proper reason of the holiness of God is thus reduced to what has been said. God is a) positively holiness itself, because just as his essence is intrinsically rectitude itself, not as conformed to some norm, but as it is in itself right and the norm of all rectitude: so he is the very love of this essence, adequate to the lovableness of the object, that is, infinite love of infinite substantial goodness⁴; which same act of love, loving its substantial goodness in it, with it, and on account of it, loves holiness and rectitude participated in creatures. Just as God knows all things in his essence as in the supreme truth, so he loves all things in his essence as in the supreme goodness, according to the diverse degrees of participated goodness. For whatever lovableness there is in creatures is a derivation from that substantial and essential lovableness⁵. b) Therefore God is negatively holiness itself, through an essential and absolute opposition to any aversion from the norm of rectitude, which he himself is. c) He is holiness itself causally; for all participated holiness consists and is perfected by love and union with God, who for this very reason is understood to be holy not by anything other, but in himself, through himself, is holy; and holiness itself is not participated, but is to be participated. (See Lessius de perfect. div. l. VIII.)

3°. In what sense God can be said to be goodness in himself, as it were finally, is understood from the manner in which the final goodness of the creature is spoken of. We have said that the goodness of the creature is perfected in attaining its end. God cannot have an end to which he is ordered and by whose attainment he is perfected, since he is in himself the absolute good itself, and perfect in himself without other goodness. Therefore, just as whatever is besides God has its ultimate end necessarily in God the supreme good, from whom and to whom is all good: so God, as the absolute good itself, rests in himself and in his infinite fullness of the whole good. In this sense, therefore, God is his own end, negatively, namely, that he can have no end distinct from himself, but he is the end of all; positively, that in himself he has the fullness of good, or rather is the fullness itself, is αὐτοτελὴς(Dionysius divin. nom. c. 13. §. 1.). Moreover, just as in the perfection which the intellectual creature attains in resting in its ultimate end lies its beatitude: so God, in the fullness of the absolute good which he is, is himself to himself his infinite beatitude. « Enjoyment, says St Bonaventure, from its general notion means the union of love, namely of what is enjoyed with the one enjoying. Since therefore it happens that something is united to itself and to another, it is fitting to enjoy not only another but also oneself. But where there is union with another, there is dependence, inherence, and need; but where it is with oneself, if it is the supreme good, there is no inherence, nor dependence or need, but all-round sufficiency. If, however, the good is deficient, it needs; and hence it is that God alone fully enjoys himself through himself » S. Bonav. 1. dist. 1. dub. 12.

The sum, therefore, of all that we have hitherto discussed concerning the absolute good is this. 1° God is the absolute good itself in himself, by the very fact that he is the fullness of all absolute Esse: therefore God is goodness by essence. And so 2° goodness, to which as exemplar and cause corresponds the perfection of creatures, both physical and moral, is in God the essence itself, not a perfection superadded: it is therefore, as goodness itself in every order, so by name holiness itself. Finally, 3° goodness, to which corresponds the ultimate perfection of the creature in attaining its end, is in God essential beatitude, by which, in the fullness of the whole goodness, he is sufficient to himself, and necessarily the end of all, in whom all things, each according to its own order, have their ultimate perfection.

II. Although God is in himself absolute goodness, and fully sufficient to himself, which can be increased by no created goods nor diminished by the removal of all of them; yet we, while we are still pilgrims from the Lord, cannot fix the eye of the mind upon him alone; but in order to estimate his infinite greatness we need to contemplate him as bonum cui, insofar as he is our supreme good and that of the whole creation. « Thus God is good in his essence, so that, as substantial good, he extends goodness into all things.... For the goodness of divinity, which is above all things, pervades from the highest and most exalted substances to the lowest, and yet is above all; so that neither the higher reach its eminence, nor the lower pass beyond its compass; but it illuminates all things that can be illumined, and creates, and quickens, and contains, and perfects, and is the measure of those things which are, and eternity, and number, and order, and containing preservation, and cause, and end... All things desire goodness as principle, as containing preservation, as end; and the good itself is, as the sacred oracles witness, that from which all things have their stability and have been produced as from a most perfect cause, and in which all things consist as in a foundation containing and preserving and holding all, and toward which each thing turns as to its own end, and which all things desire: intellectual and rational beings knowingly, sensible beings sensibly, and those devoid of sense by the innate motion of vital appetition, and those lacking life that merely exist, by an aptitude for the sole participation of their essence » Dionys. div. nom. c. 4. §. 1. 4.⁶.

1°. God is therefore the supreme good to all as cause exemplary, efficient, conserving of every good which is or can be apart from the supreme good itself. For since in himself he is absolute good, and in himself possesses beforehand eminently every good which can exist by participation, therefore he is good diffusive of himself also outwardly, in the first act indeed from his own intrinsic nature, but in the second act by his free will, which again is goodness itself.⁷ « The perfect is said to contain and abound in all things in itself, according to one unceasing and the same, superabundant and never diminished largess, through which it perfects all perfect things, and fulfils them with a perfection fitting to each » Dionysius, div. nom. c. 13. §. 1. This largess is perpetual and unceasing, since the whole reason of the existence of participated good is from that very largess, and if it ceased, the whole of what is would continually cease to be, from the ultimate material elements up to the highest spirits and to the most holy humanity of Christ itself. Moreover, since all these things are good, insofar as they participate in and imitate absolute goodness as divine exemplar, and they are the better the nearer they approach to that supereminent goodness; therefore this very goodness is the measure of every good: for just as the created truth stands in relation to the divine ideas (supra th. XXVIII. n. II.), so the participated good is good insofar as it corresponds to the divine exemplar, namely to the divine perfection, imitable outwardly.

2°. As God is « the good of goods » as principle and cause of every good, so he is also, to all, the supreme good as ultimate end; and it is as repugnant that anything should not be toward him as it is repugnant that anything should not be from him and through him: « from him and through him and in him (εἰς αὐτὸν) are all things, to him be glory forever » Rom. XI. 36.

Apart from God, the absolute good, nothing at all can exist except formally as imitation and manifestation of the perfection of God. Hence the supreme eminence of the divine essence and the intrinsic nature of things require that whatever is from God as first principle be toward God as ultimate end. God, according to the necessary norm of all rectitude, which is his essence, would not act, and so would cease to be holy, if he established any participated good which was not directed to him as ultimate end. That which is called participated good, if it were not to this end, would involve a contradiction; for it is an intrinsic ordering of the very nature and essence of participated good to the absolute good as its ultimate end, no less than to it is essential total dependence in its whole esse upon that absolute good as its principle. Therefore the destination to God as ultimate end can be called moral essence immediately of the rational creature which is capable of morality, but mediately (through the rational creature as intermediary and interposed) of all the other creatures, and so in the complex of the whole universe. For just as metaphysical essence is the reason and principle of all properties (above th. XX. n. I.), so all other moral relations depend upon and proceed from the ordering to God as ultimate end. From all these things it is evident that the fulfilment and attainment of this destination, and rest in this ultimate end, is the supreme formal good of the creature; consequently God himself is for it the supreme objective good.

There is, however, where the good is treated as ultimate end, a very great difference between rational creatures and irrational and insensate ones. « The good, which all things desire; » whence the good for someone is properly only that which is desired by him. Now the appetite of anything is properly only with knowledge of what is fitting to it. Whence insensate things properly desire nothing, but only metaphorically, insofar as by their very entity they are ordered and tend toward their own perfection: hence properly nothing can be a good for them as beatitude, but only a good in them, as fitting to their nature. Sensitive beings can know, desire, and perceive only material things through the senses, so these alone can be called somewhat good for them; as regards intellectual things they stand in the same way as insensate things. Whence all irrational creatures are ordered to God as ultimate end, for whose sake they are, solely by their own entity (with all ontological perfections); not however by knowledge and will (rational appetite), as to an end that is to be desired by them and by whose attainment they might enjoy. Irrational creatures are therefore not capable of God being the supreme good for them as an end which they might enjoy; but God is the supreme good, to which they are ordered ultimately by their whole entity, and this ordering is good in them. Moreover, the ordering to God in an irrational creature is through the interposed rational creature; for it consists in this, that by their use « they help man in the pursuit of the end for which he was created, » and especially in that by their very entity they are, as it were, a mirror and objective manifestation of divine perfection to the rational creature.⁸.

But God as ultimate end is the supreme good of the rational creature in a far different way. Rational creatures, in all their perfections, both natural and especially supernatural, up to that supreme perfection in the beatific vision, are indeed themselves an objective manifestation of the divine perfections, and a much fuller one and nearer to God, in that the gifts in them are more excellent than in irrational things. But not only in this way is the ordering to God as ultimate end good in them; rather, they are ordered to God, that God, as ultimate end, may be that by which they enjoy, and that he may be supreme good for them. « That is called the supreme good of man, by whose possession man is blessed, or for whose sake other things are to be desired and pursued, while it itself is not for the sake of anything else, but for itself alone. Therefore what is the supreme good of man is necessarily his ultimate end; again, what is the supreme good of man, in it must necessarily consist his beatitude, which is nothing other than the possession of the supreme good. The supreme good and ultimate end is said to be the thing itself, by whose possession and enjoyment we are blessed, and the very possession and enjoyment of this thing; in like manner beatitude is taken both for the thing itself by whose union we are made blessed, and for the union itself; the former is called by the Doctors objective beatitude, the latter formal » Less. de summo Bon. I. 1. Now indeed God, being the supreme good in himself, would be, even in the order of merely natural providence, the supreme good of the rational creature, beatifying through knowledge and love corresponding to the natural faculties of the creature: but in the present supernatural order he presents himself to the rational creature as ultimate end and supreme good, fully beatifying, not according to the exigency of the created rational nature, but beyond the natural exigency, according to the infinity of the good itself; that is, in a mode not tempered to the limits and deficiency of the creature, but in a mode corresponding to the infinity of the God who elevates. For God joins himself as infinite good, to be seen in himself by the intellect raised through the light of glory, to be loved with love responding to this vision of the infinite good⁹, and to be enjoyed with everlasting beatitude, which follows connaturally and necessarily from the infinite good communicating itself to us through vision and love¹⁰. God is therefore possessed¹¹ through vision and love and interminable joy as¹² supreme good and ultimate end, and is for the rational creature the supreme good not only causally, as for the irrational creature also, but through himself as the beatifying good. « For the notion of perfect possession nothing else is required than that the thing be so present and in the power of the possessor that he can use it (if it is only a means) and enjoy it (if it is the end) according to his desire. Therefore, since through vision God is so present and held that the one seeing can enjoy him and draw from him all delight as he desires, the vision of God is his true possession. In like manner the hearing of a symphony is the possession of the symphony, because it is held through hearing in such a way that one can perceive all its delight and all its advantage. Whence it is false that God is not immediately our good in himself. For God is called our good in two ways: first causally or effectively, insofar as every good coming to us flows from him as from a fount; second, he is called our good as it were formally and through himself. Nor is it required for this that he should inhere in us as form; it suffices that he be joined to us through vision. For something to be counted as my good, it suffices that it be apprehended as something pertaining to me, by the mode of a thing possessed by me, whose use or enjoyment is in my power. And in this way God himself through himself is formally our good, namely as a thing possessed by us, so that we can always enjoy him and delight in him, especially since in blessedness he is joined to us most perfectly and perpetually by vital union » Lessius de summo Bono l. II. c. 6. n. 31. 32; c. 17. n. 146.

But does not this way make the ultimate end of the whole created order the beatitude of the rational creature? The answer: the ultimate end that is to be attained is the extrinsic glory of God; and therefore the ultimate end for whose sake all things are created, and to which all things are referred, is God himself. For God's necessary love of his own intrinsic excellence, because of this excellence worthy of infinite glorification (which he indeed enjoys in himself, in intrinsic glory, without need of any other glorification), freely extends to willing its representation and acknowledgment through creatures. And this is the extrinsic glory of God, both objective and formal. But this extrinsic glory itself, both objective and chiefly formal, is ultimately completed by the beatitude of the rational creatures, which we have indicated. For in the perfection of the blessed and in the whole heavenly city of God there is the supreme expression and likeness of the infinite perfection of God, which representation constitutes the extrinsic glory objective; but the most perfect and interminable acts of vision, love, joy, adoration, praise, etc., of all the blessed are the extrinsic glory of God formal in its ultimate term, toward which God himself directs ultimately all that he does outwardly, the whole order of creation and sanctification, of nature and grace, of natural and supernatural providence: all things for the sake of the elect (cf. Rom. VIII. 28; 1. Cor. III. 22.); and the elect, « that we may be to the praise of his glory » (Eph. I. 12.), and so at last « that God may be all in all » (1. Cor. XV. 28.). God therefore in his infinite excellence is the ultimate end, for whose sake and to whom all things are; the glorification of God is the ultimate end that is to be attained: this glorification, moreover, is completed by the very exaltation and beatitude of the saints; or rather the very exaltation and beatitude of the saints is the supreme objective and formal glory of God, because God is possessed by the creature as the supreme good through vision, love, and the beatitude consequent upon them, into everlasting eternities. Read what Leonardus Lessius wrote, more precious than all gold: de perfect. divin. l. XIV; de summo Bono l. II.

3ⁱᵒ. God is not, and cannot be, a formal good for anyone, in the sense that he communicates himself and unites himself to the creature as form properly so called. For every information properly so called implies an essential imperfection of the form: for just as it perfects, so it is itself perfected, and has the character of a part and in some way depends on the whole. Nevertheless God himself, in a supernatural and wonderful manner, communicates himself to the intellectual creature and joins himself to it, so that by this communication of himself, by way of formal cause, with imperfections removed, he raises it to the most sublime state and dignity, which the holy Fathers are wont to call θέωσιν. Chief among these is the supreme hypostatic union of all in the « firstborn of every creature, » where the created human nature has become the proper nature of the Word itself, so that this man is true God. Now this good of infinite dignity, although it belongs immediately and formally to the human nature of Christ alone, nevertheless belongs morally and juridically, so to speak, to every creature that has been exalted in its firstborn, to the creature, I say, especially angelic and human, of which he is the head. Most of all, however, it belongs to the whole human nature, so that this mystery is the source and origin of the whole « ministration from the head into the members »; « for of his fullness we have all received, and grace for grace ». Consequently, and by a kind of extension, it belongs finally also to the irrational creature, which is referred to the rational creature as means to the proximate end. Indeed, there must also be considered the wonderful exaltation of the corporeal nature itself in the body of Christ, which is the body of the divine person, and on account of him in the bodies of all the just, which are called temples of the Holy Spirit by the Apostle (1.Cor.VI.19.), at some time « to be reformed and configured to the body of the glory of Christ » Phil. III. 21; not to mention the elevation of corporeal nature to efficacious instruments of sanctification in the sacraments, and the consecration, which extends very widely, to the instruments and aids of Christian worship; and let us say nothing of the future liberation « from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God, » which, before it happens, « every creature groans and travails together until now » Rom. VIII. 21. 22. All these things, however, in the present order follow and flow from that mystery by which « the Word was made flesh, » by which « God appeared in the flesh, » by which the flesh of the Virgin has become the flesh of the Son of God.

Another, as it were formal, communication of the supreme good with the creature is seen in the beatific vision, as is sufficiently understood from what was said in the preceding Section, chapter II. « The rational nature, by its intellectual power, is capable of divinity; and, illumined and aided by the light of glory and made like God in the most eminent manner, it passes through and penetrates into God formally by the same power, and God in it exists in a new mode, and communicates himself to it with all its goods, so that it may enjoy the sweetness and beauty of all. To the intellectual power there comes, as its companion and equal, the will, by which the soul, with its whole impetus, is carried toward the good conceived by the intellect, that it may unite itself to it in a new way, namely by love, and be as it were transformed into it. Through these two powers our soul enters into divinity in a double way, and in the most eminent manner, and divinity enters into it; and there is made a mutual, as it were, penetration and intimate vital union between the soul and God. Whence there is born an ineffable joy, by which, as it were, it tastes the infinite good vitally joined to it. Through these acts, therefore, the soul so tends into God that it immediately attains him and is vitally united to him, and becomes a partaker of divinity » Lessius de perfect. div. XIV. c. 5. n. 78-80.

A third communication of the supreme good with the creature, in a certain manner formal, is to be considered in all the just. For although the just are not formally the very justice of God (Concil. Trid. sess. VI. cap. 7.), but justice, charity, and holiness inhering in them, which is poured into their hearts through the Holy Spirit; nevertheless this very inhering gift of sanctifying grace is as it were a spiritual bond by which the just souls are united in a singular manner with God the sanctifier; and therefore God, and by name, speaking according to appropriation, the Holy Spirit, « is given to them, » « dwells in them, » « remains in them » Io. XIV. 23; Rom. V. 3; 1. Io. IV. 16. etc. Of this indwelling of the Holy Spirit we treat in the Tract. de Trin., the whole Section IV. Theologians may be consulted on S.Th.1. q.43., and in 1. dist. 14., and among the rest S. Bonavent. 1. d.14. a.2. q. 1; Molina in 1. q. 43. a. 3. (who treats of this matter briefly but most clearly); Suarez de Trin. l. XII. c. 5; Lessius de perfect. div. l. XII. c. 10. n. 74. seqq., and de summo Bono l. II. c. 1. n. 4. 5; Petav. de Trin. l. VIII. c. 4. sqq.

Therefore, just as the supreme good in itself, already from the very reason of creation, is « every good » of the creature efficiently, and every good finally, as the objective end of all creatures, and as the formal end of the intellectual creature: so God willed, in the order of gratuitous sanctification, to raise up beyond all its exigencies the very good of nature, which is from him and to him, to communion in his own good, rendering himself the good of his creature through the hypostatic union into natural sonship, through the union of grace into adoptive sonship, and through the union of glory into beatification corresponding to the dignity of sons: « if indeed children, and heirs » Rom. VIII. 17¹³. Therefore « no one is good but one God: this supreme good is your good, O soul. What then is lacking to him for whom the supreme good is good?... Raise your hope to the good of all good things; he will be your good, by whom you were made good in your kind, and all things made in their kind are good » Aug. in Ps.102. n. 8.