Scotus Academicus, Tomus primus: De Deo in se subsistente

Since we have thus far contemplated the inaccessible Sun of the Divine Essence, as far as it has been granted us from heaven, with the weak keenness of our mind, we may now turn our gaze to behold those divine perfections of His that are more akin to us, as so many rays beaming forth from it. But since the Holy Spirit, Eccli. 3., warns beforehand: Seek not the things that are too high for thee, and search not into things above thy strength; for, says Solomon, Prov. 25.: As it is not good for a man to eat much honey, so he that is a searcher of majesty shall be overwhelmed by glory; therefore above all the Apostle crying out is to be heard, Roman. 12.: For I say, by the grace that is given me, to all that are among you; not to be more wise than it behoveth to be wise, but to be wise unto sobriety. Hence St. Hilary appositely cautions, lib. 10. De Trinit.:

As, then, he says, the Sun is so to be looked upon as it can be looked upon, and is to be received by the light in as great a measure as it admits; lest, if we should wish to seek more, we should obtain even less than we are able: so too the heavenly reason is to be understood only in so far as it allows itself to be understood, and is to be sought only in so far as it has given itself to be apprehended; lest, if we are not content with the moderation of the indulgence, we should lose what has been granted.

To this also points that saying of Seneca the Philosopher, lib. 7. Natural. quaest., cap. 30.:

Aristotle says excellently, he says, that we ought never to be more reverent than when the matter concerns the gods. If we enter temples composed, if, about to approach the sacrifice, we lower our countenance and draw our toga forward, if we fashion ourselves into every show of modesty; how much more ought we to do this when we dispute about the nature of the gods, lest we affirm anything rashly or imprudently, either affirming in ignorance or lying knowingly?

By these excellent sayings we are admonished not to strive, beyond the grasp of our mind and its powers, in more curiously investigating and unfolding the divine excellencies, and to remember that celebrated lesson which Gregory the Great, lib. 14. Moral., cap. 12., expressed in these words:

Heretics have this as their own trait: that they are puffed up with the empty arrogance of their knowledge, and often deride the simplicity of those who believe rightly... But on the contrary, holy Church humbly lowers her understanding in everything that she truly knows; lest she swell up in the quest for hidden things, and presume to scrutinize anything that is beyond her strength; for she deems it more useful to be ignorant of what she cannot scrutinize than boldly to define what she does not know.

Instructed, then, by these most wholesome admonitions, this alone will be our desire: to unfold in this Disputation not so much our own as what has been handed down by the Ancients concerning the divine perfections. That this may be done more plainly and by a more convenient method, we shall propose each of the divine perfections to be explained under its own special articles.

Among all the divine excellences which are expressed by negative words, the first that presents itself to us is the Simplicity of God; by which appellation it indeed seems to be one of the affirmative properties: yet in reality it is not without reason numbered among the negative ones. For to be simple is nothing other than to lack composition, and to have no parts which, joined together with one another, produce something one. Hence a dispute arises among some theologians, whether divine simplicity is formally a negation, as some affirm with our Aureolus in 3. d. 8. q. 3. a. 2., or whether it is formally a positive perfection, carrying with itself the negation of all composition, as the Subtle Doctor seems to have judged more correctly in 2. d. 8. q. 1. ad 1. Therefore it must first be resolved whether God is truly altogether simple; secondly, what His divine Simplicity is formally; thirdly, whether that supreme Simplicity keeps every composition whatsoever, as much real as of reason, as much actual as possible, away from God.

AND IN WHAT ITS DIVINE SIMPLICITY FORMALLY CONSISTS.

Note 1. The difference between simplicity, unity, and identity is this: that Identity is opposed to distinction, Unity to multitude, and Simplicity to composition. For those things are said to be altogether the same which are not diverse either in reality or in reason; e.g., Man and rational Animal: for these diverse words express altogether the same thing; but those things are said to be One which, although they are diverse in themselves and distinct really or formally, are nevertheless so united to one another that they coalesce into one; thus the rational soul and the flesh are one man. But that is said to be Simple which rejects every composition entirely, and admits in itself nothing after the manner of act and potency, which are required for forming a true composition. And so Simplicity seems to be, as it were, midway between unity and identity; since it is stricter than Unity, which admits component parts, and broader than identity, which rejects every distinction. Therefore that is called simple which, although it includes distinct things, nevertheless excludes every composition from act and potency, as is manifest in the Mystery of the adorable Trinity, in which the real mutual distinction of the divine Persons does not dissolve divine simplicity; much less does the formal distinction of the Personal relations from the Divine Essence impede it.

Note 2. As many kinds of simplicity can be distinguished as there are kinds of composition inimical to it: whence, since universally there is a twofold genus of composition — for one is real composition, which is made in four ways, namely, either from matter and form; or from integral or quidditative parts; or from nature and subsistence, on the hypothesis that the latter adds something positive to the substantial nature; or from subject and accident. The other is formal composition ex natura rei, which others call virtual composition and of reason; and this is likewise made in four ways, namely, either from essence and existence, or from genus and difference, or from essence and properties, or finally from essence and its intrinsic modes. Hence it happens that likewise in general a twofold Simplicity is spoken of: one indeed real, which excludes every composition, whether from matter and form, or from integral or quidditative parts, or from nature and subsistence, or from subject and accident; the other is formal simplicity, or of reason, which excludes every mode of formal composition.

Note 3. Formal simplicity is again distinguished as twofold: one is called Simplicity secundum quid, or simple; whose objective concept is so one that it is nevertheless resolvable into various distinct concepts, thinkable separately; such is, e.g., the concept of man, which although metaphysically it is unique, can nevertheless be resolved into the concepts of animal and rational, by which man is constituted. The other is called absolute Simplicity, or simpliciter simplex, whose entity cannot be resolved into various concepts; such is the concept of Being, e.g., which since it presupposes nothing prior, but is the more general and prior of all concepts, is likewise resolved into none. Which, however, of these simplicities belongs to God is to be resolved here.

First conclusion. — God is entirely simple. Thus the Lateran Council defined, cap. Firmiter, in which it is decreed that the divine Substance is invisible, as being entirely simple. All the holy Fathers and theological Doctors prove the same, and that by various reasons, of which the First is deduced from the supreme perfection of God, and can be formed thus: God is the most perfect being: therefore He is simple. The antecedent is evident; since by the name of God is understood a being than which nothing better and more perfect can be thought or imagined. The consequence is proved: To the most perfect being must be attributed every perfection altogether that savors of no imperfection: whence St. Ambrose, lib. 1. De Fide, cap. 7.: Whatever can be felt more religiously, whatever is more excellent for adornment, whatever is more sublime for power, understand that this befits God: but a simple nature, says St. Bernard, lib. 5. De Consideratione, cap. 7., is preferred to a manifold one: therefore, as he concludes there: God is not composed, He is pure simplicity. And that you may clearly know what I call simple, the same as one. God is as simple as He is one: He is one, and as it were nothing else: if it can be said, He is most one. The second proof is deduced from the notion of the first cause: The first cause can have no cause of itself: but every composite thing requires a cause which unites and joins its distinct parts; for things which are diverse among themselves cannot coalesce into one, except through some uniting cause: therefore since God is the first cause, He cannot have a unitive cause of parts; nor consequently can He be composed, and hence He is entirely simple. The major is certain. For, says the Author of the book De cognitione verae vitae, cap. 7., in Augustine, tom. 9., everything which is joined from parts, or resolved into parts, certainly undergoes conjunction or resolution from something. St. Cyril of Alexandria proves the minor in the book Thesaurus, cap. 13.: Since therefore, he says, nothing can be thought before the principle, it will in no way befall it to be composed; since composite things are made by a certain concourse of simples. The same is confirmed by Justin Martyr, or whoever is the Author of the Quaestionum, et Responsionum ad Orthodoxos, q. 129, where he says that every composite is made by another: For, he says, he who has no one who made and composed him, has neither been made nor composed. On that account in God we say especially that the essence is eternal, not however composition. Prudentius illustrated the same reason poetically, lib. 2. Contra Symmachum, where he brings in God speaking thus:

I am a simple substance, Nor can I be a part; division belongs only to things Composed, and made: no one created me, So that I could be cut apart, the one Creator of all things.

The third reason is inferred from the supreme Identity of God: In every composite there are parts which are not the composite itself: but in God there is nothing which is not God: therefore God is not composed. The major is evident: for none of the parts of a man is a man. St. Augustine proves the minor, lib. 11. De Civit. Dei, cap. 10, where he says that God is for that reason called simple, because what He has, that He is, except that each Person is said relatively to the other; for indeed the Father has the Son, and yet He is not Himself the Son: and the Son has the Father, and yet He is not Himself the Father. Therefore in that in which He is said with reference to Himself, not to another, He is what He has: as He is said to be Living with reference to Himself, having life, and that same life He Himself is; on this account that nature is called simple for which it is not the case that it has something which it could either lose, or that the one having and the thing had are different. — St. Bernard proves the same, sermon 80. in the Cantica:

Only the supreme and uncreated nature, he says, claims for itself this pure and singular Simplicity of its essence, so that it is not one thing and another, not elsewhere and elsewhere; but neither indeed now and then; namely, remaining in itself, it is what it has, and what it is is always and in one mode in it, and many things are reduced to one, and diverse things to one, so that it neither takes plurality from the number of things, nor feels alteration from variety.

— Therefore we must rightly conclude with our Cornelius Mussius, lib. De divina historia, that God is entirely simple, in whom all things are one; where there is no multitude of parts, no distinction of powers, no diversity of actions. What unity is in numbers, what the point is in lines, what the now is in time, what light is in the Sun, what seed is in substances, principle in elements, soul in body, mind in soul; imagine to yourself all the unities, imagine all the simplicities, still divine simplicity is far simpler, divine unity far more indivisible. Or, as St. Dionysius speaks, lib. De Divinis Nominibus, cap. 13: More ancient than every one and multitude, every part and whole, every limit and privation of determination, every end and infinity, and hence since God surpasses every one and whole, He is simpler than all unities.

The fourth reason can be deduced from eternity: What is eternal is not composed: but God is eternal: therefore He cannot be composed, and hence is entirely simple. The minor is evident. The major is proved: Every composite presupposes the parts out of which it is constituted, at least with a priority of nature; for parts concur to the constitution of the whole, and are, as it were, its causes, and every cause precedes its effect at least by an instant of nature; and consequently the parts constituting a composite must be prior to the composite; and hence what is composed cannot be eternal; because in eternity there is nothing prior or posterior. — St. Ambrose brings forward this very cause of divine Simplicity, lib. De Symbolo, cap. 1.: God, he says, cannot be composed, since it is impious to think that anything anterior to Him pre-existed. Richard Victorinus infers the same, lib. 2. De Trinitate, cap. 17. in these words:

What is composed of several things is naturally divisible; and what is naturally divisible is naturally changeable; and where there is changeability, there cannot be eternity; and so neither true happiness: but in the good which is universally perfect, none of these things can be lacking.

And hence since God is eternal and immutable, it follows that He is likewise incomposite and entirely simple.

The fifth reason the Doctor deduces in 1. d. 8. q. 1. n. 5. from the supreme actuality of God and the necessity of being: If God were composed, He would be composed either of parts which were necessary beings, or which were not; but neither can be said; not indeed the second, because what is composed of non-necessary beings cannot be a necessary being. Not the first either, both because, by the very fact that those component parts would be necessary beings, they would have to be in their ultimate actuality; for a necessary being excludes all potentiality, and is in act all that it can be, and consequently one necessary part could not be actuated by another; nor consequently could those parts be mutually united so as to compose some third thing; for a part which is determined and actuated by another, so as with it to make a composite, is not of itself in its ultimate actuality, but is in potency to the other, and is ordered to it as its companion part; then because if those parts out of which God would be composed were necessary beings, it would follow that God is twice a necessarily existing being, namely by reason of each part composing Him; which is absurd; then finally because it would follow that God would be a necessary being by reason of one part, which nevertheless being removed, He would no less be a necessary being on account of the other part, which altogether implies a contradiction; and consequently since God is a necessarily existing being, He cannot be composed.

The sixth and final reason the Doctor infers from divine infinity: If God were composed, He would be composed especially either of parts of finite perfection, or of infinite; not of finite parts, because several things of finite perfection cannot make something infinitely perfect: not of several of infinite perfection either, for it is repugnant that several infinite things be mutually united to compose and constitute some whole: both because if those infinite parts made a composition, it would follow that the whole composed of them would be intensively more perfect; for a composite is more perfect than any of its parts taken separately, otherwise the composition would be made in vain, since one part without the fellowship of the other would be as perfect intensively as the whole itself; but it is absurd that one intensively infinite thing be more perfect than another also intensively infinite; otherwise the one would not be intensively infinite, since it would be exceeded by the other, nor would it involve every perfection altogether. Therefore it implies a contradiction that some whole be made of intensively infinite parts; and hence the Doctor subtly infers from the infinity of God that He is not composed; but entirely simple.

It must therefore be concluded with Boethius, book De Trinitate:

Simple being, simple power, Simple will, simple knowing, All things are simple.

You will say 1. That is to be attributed to God which is more excellent: but composition is more excellent than simplicity: therefore composition, not simplicity, is to be attributed to God. The major is evident; since God is the being than which nothing better and more perfect can be thought or imagined, it follows that we attribute to Him every perfection altogether which savors of no imperfection. The minor also is certain: for composite things excel simple ones, and mixed things excel elements, and the whole surpasses its parts; for good added to good makes better, and perfection joined to perfection makes a thing more perfect: therefore since in composition one perfect part is united to another perfect one, hence it happens that the more a whole is composed, the more perfect it should be judged, because it embraces more goods in itself and more perfections.

I distinguish the minor. Composition is more perfect than simplicity in created beings and those of limited perfection, I concede; it is more perfect than the simplicity which is really found in the divine essence altogether infinite, I deny. For since God on account of His infinity embraces all perfections altogether formally or virtually, and identifies them with Himself, hence it happens that the stricter His divine simplicity is, the more excellent His divine perfection is; for it is far better to embrace all perfections in a single simple, but infinite entity, than to involve some of them through composition mutually cohering. It is otherwise with creatures, whose entity and perfection, since it is finite and limited, shines forth the more excellent the more united perfections it embraces. Hence it happens that physical composites, since they involve more parts, and therefore more perfections, are also judged more perfect than prime matter, which is indeed simpler than all corporeal beings, yet more imperfect.

Add. That even in creatures greater perfection is not always found in more composed beings, indeed some are more perfect because they are simpler. For who would say that man, e.g., is nobler than an Angel because he is more composed, and consists of matter and form, body and soul, and integral corporeal parts, which the Angel lacks on account of his spirituality and his simple and indivisible entity? Which simple and indivisible Angelic entity nevertheless virtually embraces and contains unitedly all the perfections which in corporeal things may be observed separately: since therefore God contains in Himself the perfections of all beings whatsoever, but in a more eminent mode and grade, hence it happens that He is the more perfect the simpler He is.

You will say 2. If God could not be composed, this would be especially because Deity cannot have the notion of form: but this is not repugnant: therefore neither is it repugnant that God be composed.

The minor is proved. It would be repugnant for Deity to be a form, chiefly because a form carries with itself dependence on the subject which it informs, but Deity must be altogether independent: but it could happen that Deity be a form without any dependence: since there is no contradiction that the notion of dependence be separated from the notion of form: for a form would no less affect and actuate the subject, even if it in no way depended on it: therefore it is not repugnant that Deity be a form, nor consequently that God be composed. — The Doctor denies the minor in the cited place n. 8.; for the notion of limitation and dependence can in no way be separated from form, for although a form does not sometimes depend on the subject which it informs, it always depends on the efficient cause, which produces it, and unites it with the subject, as is clear by the example of the rational soul, which although it does not depend on the human body of which it is the form, nevertheless depends on God, by whom it is created, and through whom it is united to the body. Since therefore the notion of dependence can in no way be separated from form, it plainly follows that Deity cannot have the notion of form, and consequently that God is in no way composed. Add that every form has the notion of a part, and consequently of a limited being; but in God there is no part, and no limitation, as was proved above.

You will say 3. No perfection is to be asserted in God, except that which befits Him according to its most excellent grade: but simplicity cannot befit God according to its most excellent grade: therefore neither should it be asserted in God. The major is evident: since God is the most perfect being, He can admit in Himself nothing except what is most excellent. The minor is proved: The most excellent simplicity is that which is the strictest; and the strictest is that which suffers no plurality with itself, and excludes all multitude: but this cannot be attributed to God; for in God there is plurality of relations and attributes, and the Trinity of Persons: therefore the most excellent simplicity cannot be in Him. — Our Alexander of Hales denies the minor in 1. p. q. 5. memb. 2. ad 1:

For that simplicity is more perfect, he says, which remains undivided among many, and not multiplied; for the more something is one, the simpler it is; but greater and stricter unity is the unity of essence with plurality of Persons, because it is more perfect to be in many, and not to be multiplied in them, than to be only one in one, or multiple in many.

Since therefore supreme unity must be attributed to God, the unity and simplicity which stands with plurality is to be attributed to Him most of all; otherwise God would not be simple in the highest grade of simplicity.

You will insist. There is greater simplicity where there is identity without diversity, than where it is found with diversity: but in God there is identity with diversity of supposits and relations: therefore in Him there is not supreme simplicity. — The Seraphic Bonaventure responds in 1. d. 8. q. 5. ad 2. by distinguishing the Major: There is greater simplicity where there is identity without diversity, which comes from origin, he denies; which comes from the addition of form, he concedes. For diversity (he says) arises either from the addition of form and of absolute perfections, which are diverse in diverse things, as whiteness in Peter and Paul, and this dissolves simplicity, because it posits composition. The other is diversity coming from origin alone, by which it happens that a person emanating from another person differs and is distinguished from it. This diversity however is not repugnant to simplicity, because it posits no composition; but only an order and respect of one to another, and is more fittingly called distinction than diversity: this is attributed to God, not the former, and consequently divine simplicity is not dissolved by it.

You will insist. Simplicity is stricter where there is supreme unity without any plurality, because number says some composition in respect of which unity is simple: therefore since in God there is unity with plurality of Persons, there is not the strictest simplicity. — The same Seraphic Doctor responds that there is a twofold plurality, one indeed in which there is more in two than in one, as e.g. in two equally perfect men there is more wisdom and goodness than in either of them; and this plurality is repugnant to simplicity, because unity adds over unity: the other is plurality in which there is as much perfection in many as in one; and this is found in the divine, because there is as much perfection and virtue in one Person as in many; and so since this plurality does not dissolve unity, nor posit any composition, therefore it does not destroy simplicity either.

Second conclusion. — Simplicity thus divided is not a simple negation of composition, but formally is something positive connoting such a negation. This is the Doctor's teaching in 1. d. 8. q. 5. ad 5.

Proof. Simplicity is a perfection simpliciter simplex. Therefore it is not a pure negation. The consequence is evident, for no negation can be called simpliciter a perfection, since it precisely only denies imperfection, but does not establish any perfection. The antecedent is proved: First indeed by the authority of the holy Fathers, who affirm that divine Simplicity is a perfection far more excellent than multiplicity or composition is. Thus St. Augustine, lib. De quantitate animae, cap. 5.: Altogether to be preferred is that which altogether cannot be divided, and lacks all composition. St. Anselm, De Incarnatione Verbi, cap. 6.: Every simple thing, he says, inasmuch as it is simple, is more perfect than a composite. And St. Bernard, lib. 5. De Consideratione, cap. 7.: A simple nature is preferred to a manifold one. Therefore in the mind of the holy Fathers divine simplicity is a formal perfection of God, and hence is something positive, for a negation formally considered, since it does not signify some being, also imports no perfection. — Then, the same judgment is to be rendered of divine simplicity, inasmuch as it denies composition, just as of infinity, immensity, and the other perfections modifying the divine Essence, which deny limitation and determination: but these are not pure negations, as will appear below: therefore neither is this one. — Finally, every negation which imports repugnance is founded on something positive, which is the principle of this repugnance: but divine simplicity carries with itself the formal repugnance of composition and division: therefore it connotes some formal positive perfection in God, which is the principle of this repugnance.

You will say 1. Simplicity does not add some new entity to a simple thing: therefore it is not some positive perfection. The consequence is evident, for every positive perfection is an entity. The antecedent is proved: If simplicity added a new entity to a simple thing, it would make a composition with it: but this is repugnant, otherwise the thing would be simple and not simple: therefore it is not some perfection.

I deny the antecedent. And to its proof I say that an intrinsic mode does not make a composition with the entity of which it is the mode; both because it is not adequately distinguished from it, as a part must be distinguished from a part, and a form from the subject which it composes; and because it does not affect it as act affects potency, which however are required for perfect composition, but only as a perfecting mode, or one connoting the perfection of such an entity: therefore although divine simplicity is some positive perfection, it does not thence follow that it makes a composition in God.

You will say 2. Composition does not add some entity or positive mode to a composite: therefore neither does simplicity to a simple thing.

I deny the antecedent. For composition is a mode of the entity which is said to be composed, for it connotes a thing which claims for itself act and potency, or parts mutually united: whence in a composite these are distinguished: the constituted entity, the constituting parts, and the order of the composed entity to the parts, and of the parts to the whole, which order indeed is an intrinsic mode, both in the whole and in the parts, following the nature or quiddity of such an entity and of its parts. And so composition formally taken says something besides the parts and the whole. The same judgment therefore is to be rendered of simplicity with respect to a simple thing.

In the preceding Question it was noted beforehand that real composition occurs in four ways: namely, either from matter and form, or from parts — either integrating, or quidditative and quantitative — or from nature and subsistence, or finally from subject and accident. In this, however,

Question, it must be resolved whether God rejects this fourfold mode of composition, so that His divine simplicity may be established and made known more firmly and more evidently; but first

Note 1. The fictions of the ancient pagans about the Divinity were various; for some thought that the gods were present corporeally in the statues and in the consecrated images themselves, as Tertullian relates and reproaches, lib. De Idololatria, cap. 14.: We know, he says, that although the names are empty and feigned, yet when they are led down into superstition, they snatch to themselves demons and every unclean spirit, through the obligation of consecration. Although that error was not that of all, but only of the rude and unlearned. For the wiser ones easily saw that no Divinity is in corporeal statues, but used them as an instrument, as it were, to represent to themselves the presence of the gods, and to establish the worship of their deity by a certain rite and law. Nevertheless, the wiser ones themselves struck upon a graver error; for, as St. Augustine asserts, lib. 7. De Civitate Dei, cap. 6, Varro, the most learned of the philosophers, says that he judges God to be the soul of the world, and this same world to be God. So that, just as a man, although consisting of body and soul, is nevertheless called wise from the soul, so the world is said to be God from its soul, since it is from soul and body.

Note 2. That many heretics judged so perversely about God, that some, with the Manichaeans, asserted God to be an accident. For they wished, says St. Augustine, Haeresi, 16., God to be that corporeal light lying adjacent to the eyes of mortal animals. Some, with Hermogenes, affirmed first matter to be equal to God, and accordingly judged it to be God, since nothing is equal to God except God, as Tertullian shrewdly concludes, lib. Contra eumdem Hermogenem, cap. 1. et 5. To him a certain David of Dinant assented, who, as St. Thomas relates, 1. part. q. 3. art. 8, contended that first matter is God. Others, however, affirmed God to be corporeal, who for that reason were called Anthropomorphites, from a Greek word compounded of ἄνθρωπος, which is man, and μορφή, which signifies form, and, figuring God after the likeness of man, thought that He consists of body and soul, and of corporeal members and parts. The master of this error is asserted by Theodoret, De Haeresibus, cap. 13., and likewise by St. Augustine, in 10. 7. Har., c. 20., to be a certain Audius, or Audeus, born in Mesopotamia, a man indeed religious and pious, who with ecclesiastical freedom reproved not only presbyters, but also bishops who went astray, for which cause he was assailed with calumnies by them and defamed as a heretic; although, as St. Epiphanius asserts, Haeresi, 70., he departed in nothing from the right faith, but he with his own held sincere religion in all things, or, as he speaks in the index of the third book, the Audians' is properly a schism and defection, not a heresy. Their manner of living is well instituted, but neither, as far as pertains to faith, do they dissent from the Catholic Church. And accordingly, those who on the authority of Epiphanius affirm that Audius was truly a heretic rely on a false testimony; since neither he nor his followers dissented from the Catholic Church and faith, except in one and that a most light matter, that he interpreted those words of Sacred Scripture which signify that man was made to the image of God more harshly and stubbornly, when he asserted that that divine image is to be placed in the human body, so that the image of an incorporeal and spiritual substance might be visible and corporeal. From which perhaps the heresy of the Anthropomorphites, which arose in Egypt about the times of Theodosius the First, as Socrates, lib. 6. cap. 6., and Sozomenus, lib. 8. cap. 55, are witnesses, seized the occasion of affirming God to be corporeal. For indeed they assumed this argument of a corporeal image in defense of their error. Whence I judge it happened that Audius seemed to be the author of this sect. Hence the Anthropomorphites were promiscuously called by the Holy Fathers Audians, or Odians, whom St. Augustine, with a corrupted word, calls Vadians. These things having been premised, let there be

First conclusion. — God utterly rejects every composition from matter and form. This is of faith, and is evident from all the texts of Sacred Scripture by which God is called Spirit, which we cited above when treating of the nature and spirituality of God.

It is proved first, from the excellence of the Divinity: God is the most excellent being that can fall into our thought: but of that sort is a certain mind loosed and free, separated from all mortal concretion, perceiving and moving all things, as Cicero defined God, in St. Augustine, lib. 22., De Civitate, cap. 20. For body and everything corporeal is worse than spirit, and more ignoble than mind; it remains, therefore, says Maximus of Tyre, dissert. 5, that, as if set on high in a citadel, we may place God in the principal mind by our discourse.

Second, from His immortality and incorruption: for, as St. Gregory Nazianzen speaks in the 4th and 13th Oration,

if God were corporeal, what cause shall we say why He does not consist of those elements, and is wholly dissolved into them? for composition is the principle of strife, strife of dissension, dissension of dissolution, dissolution, however, is wholly alien to God and the first nature. Wherefore there is no dissension in Him, lest there be some dissolution; nor strife, lest dissension arise; nor composition, lest strife exist; and hence He is not even a body, lest there be composition.

To him Arnobius agrees, lib. 3. adversus gentes.

Our judgment on this matter is such, he says, that every divine nature, which has neither begun to be nor will sometime come to be, lacks corporeal lineaments, nor possesses any shapes of forms by which the outermost circumscription of members is wont to bound the joinings. For whatever is of that sort, we judge to be mortal and frail, nor do we believe that it can obtain perpetual eternity, because a necessary extremity encloses it, hemmed in by outermost limits.

Third, from His immensity; for it was known to all, even to the pagans, that God is everywhere. Whence Virgil, 4. Georg.:

For God indeed goes through all Lands, and the reaches of the Sea, and the deep Heaven.

But if He were corporeal, He could not be present to all parts of the world, which in a wonderful manner the aforementioned St. Gregory Nazianzen urges. How, he says, shall we be able to maintain that which Scripture says, that God pervades and fills all things, according to that: do I not fill Heaven and Earth? and the Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole world, if God partly circumscribes, and partly is circumscribed? For either He will roam through this empty universe, and all things will perish for us, so that God is thus afflicted with contumely — namely, both that He is a body, and that He lacks the things He has created; or a body will be in bodies, which cannot come to pass; or He will be entangled, or opposed, or, just as liquids are mixed with one another, so He will cut through some things, and be cut by others, which is more absurd and silly even than the very atoms of Epicurus. — These two proofs are confirmed: If God were corporeal, He would have a body, either inanimate or animate: but neither can be said. Not indeed the first, otherwise the body of God would be worse than the body of a brute, which is known to be animated, to vegetate, and to sense; but to assert this of God, the most excellent of beings, would be stupid and insane. Nor the second, because an animate body is organic, but an organic body can naturally be harmed, labor, grow weary, and even perish; which certainly are wholly unbecoming to God. — Then: If God has an organic body, it also follows, says the aforementioned Arnobius,

that He should have ears pierced with curved windings, the moving orbs of eyes overshadowed by the borders of the eyebrows, a suspended ridge of nostrils furnished with mucous defenses, and passable for the passage of breath; teeth of a threefold kind for the grinding of foods, and arranged into three offices. Hands as ministers of works, tractable through joints, fingers, and the mobility of elbows; feet for bearing the weight, for extending strides, and for supplying the anticipations of goings, all of which are unbecoming to God.

The Doctor supplies a fourth argument, 1. dist. 8. q. 1. n. 2., from the Independence and Primacy of God: If God were corporeal, He would consist of matter and form: but He cannot consist of these: therefore He is not corporeal. He proves the Minor: Every composite of matter and form requires an efficient cause which unites the form with the matter: but God, since He is the first cause of all, cannot have any efficient cause: therefore, etc. He proves the major: Matter is in passive potency to form, because of itself it does not seek one form rather than another: therefore, in order that it be under this form, some cause must be assigned which both produces the form and unites it with the matter. — Then that matter of which God would consist could either be without His form, or could not: if it could not, then it is not really distinguished from that form, and so God would consist of matter really distinct from the form, and would not consist of it, which would imply a contradiction. Or it could be, and so God would not be a necessary being, because He could not be; for a composite which can lack a form can be dissolved and perish. — Moreover it manifestly follows that, in order to be placed under a form, He would have to presuppose an efficient cause by which the matter would be constituted under the form, and which could separate it from the form: therefore if God is corporeal, He must necessarily acknowledge some efficient cause, and so He would not be God, since He would not be the first cause.

They object 1. The Anthropomorphites: Man was made to the image of God: therefore since he is corporeal, it is a sign that God is likewise corporeal.

I deny the consequence. For, as the uncertain Author of the book De Essentia, in Augustine, volume 4, says, God made man to His own image indeed not in the body, but in the soul; not in the outer man, but in reason. For man's soul was made to the image of God. Or, as St. Ambrose says, in the book De dignitate hominis, cap. 2., The image is to be considered more diligently from the nobility of the inner man. First indeed, that just as there is one God, always everywhere wholly present, and vivifying, moving, and governing all things, as the Apostle confirms, that in Him we live, and move, and are: so the soul in its body flourishes everywhere wholly present, vivifying it, moving and governing it. For it is not greater in the greater members of its body, and smaller in the smaller, but in the smallest it is whole, and in the greatest it is whole. And this image of the omnipotent God, which the soul has in itself, bears as it were a certain likeness of the Trinity: First, because just as God is, and lives, and knows, so also the soul, according to its mode, is, and lives, and knows .... There is also another likeness of the Trinity in it, by which it was created to the image of its Creator — indeed of the perfect and most high Trinity, which is in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit — and although it is of one nature, it nevertheless has three dignities in itself, namely the intellect, the will, and the memory, which indeed is designated in the Gospel in other words, when it is said: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind, that is, with your whole intellect, and with your whole will, and with your whole memory; for just as the Son is generated from the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, so through the intellect the will is generated, and from both proceeds the memory.

They object 2. Tertullian, the most keen-sighted investigator of the mysteries of the faith, and the fiercest champion of Catholic truth and of Christian dogmas, judged that God is truly corporeal: therefore it can be affirmed to be so. The antecedent is proved from several of his texts; for in the book De carne Christi, cap. 11 he says: Everything that is, is a body of its own kind; nothing is incorporeal, except that which is not. And in lib. 2. contra Marcionem, cap. 10:

Distinguish, he says, the substances, and distribute to them their own senses, as diverse as the substances require, although they may seem to communicate in words. For we read of the right hand, and the eyes, and the feet of God, nor yet for that reason will they be compared with human ones, because they are associated in appellation. As great as will be the diversity of the divine body and the human, under the same names of members, so great also will be the difference of the divine mind and the human, under the same words, albeit, of the senses, which the corruptibility of the human substance makes as corruptible in man, as the incorruptibility of the divine substance makes them incorruptible in God.

And in the book contra Prax., cap. 7.:

This, he says, is certainly He who, being constituted in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal to God. In what form of God? Certainly in another, yet not in none. For who will deny that God is a body, although God is Spirit? For Spirit is a body of its own kind in its own form; but even those invisible things, whatever they are, have with God both their own body and their own form, through which they are visible to God alone — how much more will that which was sent from His own substance not be without substance?

I answer. That he can be excused, as in fact St. Augustine excused him, lib. 10. in Genes. cap. 25., with these words:

Finally, he says, Tertullian, because he believed the soul to be a body, did so for no other reason than because he could not think it incorporeal, and therefore feared that it would be nothing, if it were not a body. Nor was he able to think otherwise about God, he who, although certainly acute, is sometimes overcome against his own opinion when the truth is seen. For what truer thing could he say, than that which he says in a certain place, everything corporeal is passible? He ought, therefore, to have changed the opinion by which a little above he had said that even God is a body; for I do not think that he was so foolish as to believe even the nature of God passible, so that Christ might now be believed passible and changeable not only in the flesh, nor in flesh and soul, but in the very Word, by which all things were made — which far be it from a Christian heart.

He has similar things in the book De Haer. to Quodvultdeus, Haeresi, 86. He says, he says, that even God Himself is corporeal, although not figured; nor yet is he believed to have become a heretic from this, for he could in some way be thought to call the divine nature and substance itself a body — not such a body, whose parts, some greater, some smaller, can or should be conceived, such as are all the things which we properly call bodies, although he feels something of that sort about the soul — but rather, as I said, to be thought to call God a body for this reason, because He is not nothing. — Certainly the same Tertullian sufficiently indicates this to be his opinion in the book Adversus Hermogenem, when he says: Let them concede in the meantime that there is something incorporeal, at least among the substances, since substance itself is the body of each thing. And in lib. De Anima, cap. 7. n. 96: For nothing, if not body. Likewise in the book De carne Christi: But since it is, it must needs have something by which it is. If it has something by which it is, this will be its body. Everything that is, is a body of its own kind; nothing is incorporeal, except that which is not. Finally, lib. 2. Adversus Marc.: For we read, he says, of the right hand, and the eyes, and the ears of God, nor yet for that reason will they be compared with human ones, because they are associated in appellation. That is, as his interpreters comment, the nobler things are, the more body — that is, a more solid and nobler substance — they possess. Since, therefore, He is the first and highest being, He is most of all a body — that is, He obtains a most solid being, neither empty nor void, but infinitely distant from nothing. For Tertullian takes body for solid, in the way in which mathematicians call body solid. And so he does not want God to be corporeal in that sense in which body is opposed to spirit, but only insofar as body sounds the same as a solid being, opposed to the empty, the void, and nothing. — I confess, however, that his words are harsher, especially in the aforementioned text of the Second book against Marcion, and they can be an argument that, in establishing this proposition, he deviated from Catholic truth no less than in some other erroneous propositions which he established in his writings, published even against the decrees and sanctions of the Catholic Church.

They object 3. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, whom Polycrates, writing to Victor, the Roman Pontiff, celebrates with these words: Why, moreover, should I recount the Blessed Papyrius, and Melito the Eunuch, who, wholly inspired by the instinct of the Holy Spirit, passed the time of his life piously and holily, who is buried at Sardis? Whom also Eusebius, lib. 4. cap. 25., and Jerome, De Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis, wonderfully commend. This Melito, I say, asserted that the image of God is to be placed in the body, and published a book on God as corporeal, as Theodoret affirms, quaest. 20. in Genesim. Therefore, since this opinion is supported by the patronage of so great a man, it does not seem to be rejected.

I answer first. That Melito truly never struck upon that error, as is gathered not only from the aforementioned encomia with which he is celebrated, and of which he would be judged wholly unworthy, if he had so raved as to affirm God corporeal: then because Theodoret himself, making mention of the error of the Audians and the Anthropomorphites, made no mention of Melito: then finally, because, as Sixtus of Siena observes, lib. 5. Bibliothecae annotatione 18., the words of Theodoret have not been rightly and correctly translated by Picus; for the aforementioned Theodoret has these words literally: But it is (as I said before) first to be discussed, where that (ad imaginem) stands, in the body, or in the soul. And in the first place let us see what they use, who first assert, of whom are those who left the writings of Melito, on the fact that God is embodied. Theodoret, therefore, does not say that Melito taught this, but others, whose opinion he himself left written, and impugned.

I answer second. that even if Melito truly judged God to be a body, he would not for that reason be blameworthy, since he could have used body in that way in which Tertullian used it, namely, for a most solid being. To this also refers that saying of Sabadius of Agen, who, in order to assert that the Son of God is a substance, and not that He lacks substance, as Sabellius affirmed, has these words:

The true image, he says, and the express figure of His substance — that is, the Word of God: not a sound of the voice, but a substantive thing, and corpulent through substance. For that which He made from so great a substance did not stand without substance. Nothing, therefore, empty from the full, nothing void from the solid. Because the Word of God is furnished with the Spirit of God, and, that I may speak more evidently, the body of the Word is Christ. For it is the body of spirit, but a body of its own kind. For the Spirit is invisible and incomprehensible. Is God, however, an empty and void thing? For God is Spirit.

They object 4. God consists of body and soul: therefore also of matter and form. The antecedent is proved: Hebraeorum 10. My just one lives by faith; but if he draws back, my soul will not be pleased in him: but the soul is the form and companion of the body: therefore God has a body.

I answer. That "soul" is there taken for "will", so that the just man, turning himself away from justice, as from the right rule of the divine will, is supremely displeasing to Him.

Second conclusion. — God has no integrating nor quantitative parts.

It is proved by the Doctor with the argument of Aristotle: God has infinite power: but infinite power cannot subsist with integrating and quantitative parts: therefore, etc. The major is evident: since by the name of God is signified the first cause, which is infinitely powerful. The Minor is proved: The infinite power of God, than which nothing greater can be conceived, if it were in extended parts, would be in them either extensively, or non-extensively. Not extensively, because thus either the magnitude in which it would be would have to be infinite, or finite. If finite: therefore a greater power than it could be given, because a greater magnitude than any finite one could be given, and so that would not be divine. If infinite, apart from the fact that an actual infinite in quantity is not commonly admitted, still any part of it would be finite, and so God would consist of some finite part, which implies a contradiction. And moreover, although some part of it were lacking, it would follow that God would still be of infinite power, and so any part of it would not be necessary for His constitution. If, however, God were in extended parts non-extensively: therefore His power would be really distinct from that magnitude in which it would be, whether it be called finite or infinite: but if it were really distinct, then it would have to inform it, as a substantial form informs its subject, and so God would consist of first matter; for that extended subject which would be informed by it would either be composite, and so would consist of matter; or it would be first matter, and so God would consist of first matter, which has been refuted.

It is proved second, more clearly: Because if God consisted of integrating parts, each of them would be either finite or infinite. If finite, therefore imperfect, and moreover God would have no infinity except that of extension. If infinite, therefore several gods really distinct would be given, as I deduced above in the proof of the first Conclusion.

It is proved finally: Because those parts of which He would consist would either be really separable, or they would not be. If they were: therefore any of them could not be, and so God Himself could not be, than which nothing is more absurd. If they could not: therefore they would not be really distinct. To these add all the arguments by which above we proved God to be altogether simple and incorporeal.

You will object 1. In the sacred Scriptures corporeal members, such as hands, eyes, feet, ears, are attributed to God: therefore He has corporeal and integral parts.

I deny the consequence. For these things are attributed to God only metaphorically, and by a certain likeness to corporeal things, so that divine matters may be more easily opened up and explained to rough and unlettered men by this adumbration of corporeal parts. Or, as Novatian says, lib. De Trinitate, cap. 7.:

That the divine efficacies are shown through the members, he says, not the habits of God, nor are corporeal lineaments posited. For when eyes are described, it is expressed that He sees all things. And when an ear, it is set forth that He hears all things: and when a finger, a certain signification of the will is expressed. And when nostrils, through this a perception of odors, as it were, is shown; and when a hand, it is proved that He is the author of every creature. And when an arm, it is declared that no nature can resist His strength. And when feet, it is explained that He fills all things, nor is there anything where God is not. For neither members nor the offices of members are necessary to Him, at whose will alone, even silent, all things serve and are present.

Wherefore this is a mere abuse of names (says Philo) accommodating itself to our weakness. — Or, as St. Augustine says, Epistol. 555.: I say that God is wholly eye, wholly hand, and wholly foot. He is wholly eye, because He sees all things; wholly hand, because He works all things; wholly foot, because He is everywhere.

They object 2. Quantity and position are accidents of corporeal parts: but they are attributed to God in the Scriptures; quantity indeed, as in Iob. 11.¹: He is higher than heaven, and what will you do? deeper than hell, and how will you know? His measure is longer than the earth, and wider than the sea. Position also is attributed to Him, as in Isaiae, 3.: The Lord stands to judge; to sit, Isaiae, 6.: I saw the Lord sitting, etc. Therefore God is corporeal.

I answer. with St. Thomas, that these are not attributed to God properly, but only according to some likeness. Thus by corporeal quantity His virtual quantity is designated; by depth, the power of knowing hidden and secret things; by height, the excellence of His strength over all things; by length, the duration of His being; by breadth, the affection of love and dilection toward all things. — Or I say with St. Dionysius, lib. De Divinis nominibus, cap. 9.: The divine breadth, indeed, is to be called the immense procession of God to all things; the length, moreover, reaching unto all things; the depth, in truth, the obscurity and ignorance which cannot be comprehended by any of all things. The same must be said of position; for God is said to stand on account of His immutability and strength; to sit, on account of His authority, etc.

Third conclusion. — God receives no accidents. This is of faith, and it is clear from the texts of Sacred Scripture, by which God is celebrated as immutable, and the holy Fathers prove it in various ways.

First indeed, because every accident differs from the thing of which it is an accident: but in God there is nothing that is not God Himself. Whence St. Cyril

of Jerusalem, in Catechesis, 6.: he says that God is an essence of many names and omnipotent, for not because He is called Good and Just, and Omnipotent, and Sabaoth, is He various and diverse, but since He is one and the same, He pours forth innumerable efficacies of the divinity. To this St. Augustine agrees, l. 5. De Trinit., c. 11.: Wherefore this Trinity, he says, one God, just as it is called Great, Good, Eternal, Omnipotent, the same itself, so can its Deity be said: He Himself His Greatness, He Himself His Goodness, He Himself His Eternity, He Himself His Omnipotence, … He Himself is to Himself Unity, Deity, Greatness, Goodness, Omnipotence. From which St. Fulgentius, in responsione 2. ad Ferrandum, asserts this to be of Catholic truth, that when in God we name divinity, greatness, goodness, virtue, and whatever else among those things which are said of Him properly, we most certainly know not some diverse things by these diverse names, as in man who is subject to quality, but that one thing which is essence or nature. For thence it is that blessed Augustine himself says in l. 5. De Trinit.: God is to be understood as Good without quality, Great without quantity, because the immutability of the simple and omnipotent essence can be subject to no accidents, where the Divinity is the same as Eternity and Majesty, the same Greatness, Virtue, and Goodness.

They prove secondly: Because an accident is participated being, or diminished being, and consequently imperfect: but nothing imperfect can be found in God: therefore neither an accident. Origen presses this argument, lib. 6. contra Celsum: God, he says, is not a partaker of substance, for He is participated rather than participates: and He is participated by those who have the spirit of God: and our Savior is not indeed a partaker of justice, but since He is justice, He is participated by the just.

And St. Athanasius, lib. contra Graecos:

He is the Power, he says, of the Father, and the Wisdom, and the Word: not so that this is by participation, or that these accrue to Him from elsewhere: as happens to those who are partakers of Him, and are imbued through Him with wisdom, and become powerful and rational in Him: but He is wisdom itself per se, reason itself, power itself, the very light proper to the Father, etc.

St. Cyril aims at the same point, l. 5. in Ioan.: The Word of God, he says, is light substantively, not by participation through grace, neither having the dignity as an accident in itself, nor yet as something acquired, like grace, etc.

They prove thirdly from immutability: by which argument St. Ambrose, lib. De Fide, cap. 5., concludes that the Son of God is not a creature, because He is not mutable, nor capable of an accident:

Every creature, he says, is mutable; but the Son of God is not mutable; therefore the Son of God is not a creature. Every creature receives the accidents both of good and of evil by the capacity of its nature, and experiences the same by their departure: but to the Son of God nothing can either pass away or accrue from His divinity: therefore the Son of God is not a creature.

St. Athanasius uses the same argument in Epist. ad Africanos:

Since in your opinion, he says, the Son is similar to the Father, but these are the proper marks of quality, you say, no doubt, that God is composed of quality and substance. And who will bear you boasting thus? For God is not composed, He who composed all things to this end, that they might be: nor is He of such a kind as are the things which were made by the Word itself; far be it, for His substance is simple, in which there is no quality, nor, as James said, any change or shadow of vicissitude.

Fourthly: the Doctor proves the same truth in 1. d. 8. q. 1. n. 4.: If

God were capable of accidents, it would be especially either of material accidents or of spiritual ones. Neither can be said. Not the first; for since God is spiritual, so that He has no entitative and quantitative parts, He cannot receive even material accidents. Nor the second either; because if He were capable of some spiritual accident, it would be especially of volition and intellection; but these cannot be accidents in God, both because whatever is in God is supremely identical, and because God is altogether immutable: He would, moreover, be changed if He produced and received a new act of willing and understanding distinct from Himself: therefore etc.

You will say 1. Athenagoras, a Christian philosopher, and most skilled in divine matters, in the oration for the Christians to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, affirms that the goodness of God is an accident, and as it were a quality affecting Him:

Now, he says, we know that there are other virtues as well, which are occupied about matter and through it, one of which is contrary to God. Not that anything can oppose God; like strife to friendship, according to Empedocles, and night to day, as appears to our senses: for if anything withstood God, it would soon cease to be, dissipated by the power of God: but because that spirit which is occupied about matter is contrary to the goodness of God, which inheres in Him as an accident and exists at the same time like color in a body, without which it is not (not as a part of Him, but as a thing consequent, necessarily existing in Him, and joined to Him, and as it were incorporated; as the tawny heat to fire, the blue to the aether).

Lactantius seems to go in the same opinion, affirming that the affection of anger is in God, which He would have in His power, and consequently which He could take up and shake off at will.

I answer. that this indeed seems to have been their opinion: but what wonder if men emerging from the schools of the pagan philosophers, namely of Aristotle and Plato, even after becoming Christians, still retained something of their error, since God Himself, as holy Job says, found wickedness in His angels? For no one denies that the first Doctors and Patrons of the nascent Church still labored under various defects; especially in those dogmas which concerned the nature and affections of the Deity. For it seemed difficult to some to cast off the opinion about the Divinity conceived in the philosophical Academies, which they did not yet see proscribed either by evident texts of Scripture, or by the oracles of the Councils, or by the doctrine of the holy Fathers. And so no force is to be given to their opinions which are opposed to Catholic dogmas.

You will say 2. The same judgment is to be borne of the divine operations as of human ones: but these are really distinguished from the substance and essence of man: therefore in like manner those differ from the essence and nature of the Deity. The minor is established, not only from Philosophy, but from experience itself, by which it is clear that we take up and cast off intellection and volition at will. The major is proved by the authority of the Council celebrated in the temple of holy Sophia, around the year 1341, while Benedict XII held the Supreme Pontificate, as may be seen in Raynaldus, book Annalium Ecclesiasticorum, tomo 16. ad annum 1341, num. 119, and in Petavius, book 2. De Deo, cap. 7. This Council the Greeks call one of the Oecumenical Synods, in which Synod Barlaam was condemned with his supporters, because he would not separate ἐνέργειαν, that is, the force and efficacy, or operation, from οὐσίᾳ, that is, from its nature and substance.

For although Nicephorus Gregoras, who himself together with Barlaam and very many other Bishops was condemned in that Synod, affirms in lib. 11. of his history that nothing was done in that Synod which concerned theology and the dogmas of faith: nevertheless in the Synopsis of this Council, which together with the other Councils celebrated in this cause was committed to print at Paris in the Greek idiom, these things are found:

This holy and oecumenical ninth Synod was held, under the rule of the Emperor of blessed memory and renowned, Lord Andronicus Palaeologus, and John his son, against Barlaam and Acindynus. For these asserted — some indeed that in the divine nature there is no distinction between substance and operation; but that it is the same, and differs in nothing: others in truth said that there is a difference; but conceding that the substance indeed is uncreated, while its substantial and natural operations are diverse, yet not uncreated, but created. Likewise that that light which shone on Mount Thabor was simply a vision and a creature arising and ceasing: not the natural splendor and divinity of the Divine nature; and that the light is and is said to be inaccessible. Against those therefore who said such things, this holy Synod was gathered, which convicted them of speaking foolishly and of lying in every form of speech, and of surpassing the rest of the heretics in impiety.

It is added: There were present at this Synod Isidore of Constantinople, Lazarus of Jerusalem, Patriarch; the Alexandrian and the Antiochene indeed through Vicars and Legates; likewise Gregory Palamas, and Philotheus Coccinus, and many other Monks distinguished and chosen for virtue, who also pronounced anathema upon them.

If these things are true, what Nicephorus Gregoras writes appears false — that Barlaam was forbidden in that Synod to touch those things which pertained to the dogmas, lest the sacred mysteries of Theology be impressed upon the profane ears of the vulgar; or that, with Barlaam rendering an account of his inept tongue and mind, Palamas too would seem to do blasphemous and absurd things. By which words Nicephorus himself seems to have favored neither Palamas nor Barlaam, although he rejected the dogmas of Palamas and sided with Barlaam. For he feared, no doubt, to offend John Cantacuzenus, who shortly after the Synod administered the Empire together with John Palaeologus, the still young son of Andronicus, and who warmly favored Palamas, as is clear from his history, which Iac. Pontanus published translated into Latin.

I answer 1. that this Synod is of no moment, nor does it make any faith for Catholics; since it was a pseudo-Synod, over which not some Patriarch, but the Emperor Andronicus presided to give a sentence on the controversies of faith. In which matter you may lament the unhappy servitude of the Greek Church under Schismatic Emperors, who, despising the Roman Pontificate and impiously usurping the Pontifical dignity together with the Imperial, being cast down and despoiled of both, mourn under the dire captivity of the Mahometans.

I answer 2. that the sentence was passed not against heretics (as the words bear) but against various Catholics. For Barlaam was a Catholic and religious man, who was sent by the Supreme Pontiff as Legate to the Greeks, that he might unite them with the Roman Church, and recall them into mutual confederation, the Schism being removed. When therefore he had come to Mount Athos, he found there very many flocks of Monks exposed to the mockeries and illusions of the enemy of the human race: for while they poured forth prayers with head pressed to the navel and breath suppressed, they boasted that they beheld a wonderful light and were affected with ineffable delight, and they asserted that that light was an irradiation and participation of the divinity. But when Barlaam recognized that they were deceived by the prestiges of demons, he reported them to John, Patriarch of Constantinople, who (as Cantacuzenus relates) summoned the Monks by letters to judgment. But when they had appeared in person to plead their cause, they set against Barlaam Palamas, who then indeed was a Monk, but afterwards was created Bishop of Thessalonica, namely that he might play the part of the aforesaid Monks and defend that light, which they perceived while praying, to be that with which God is clothed, the Prophet saying: He is clothed with light as with a garment; and so God Himself, or at least the splendor of the Deity. But when the hatreds and contentions of Palamas and of the Greek Monks against Barlaam grew hot, and the skirmish had now been drawn out to the third year, the matter is brought to a Synod, celebrated at Constantinople in the temple of holy Sophia, at which presided and were present those whom you have set forth in the aforesaid Synopsis of the same Council.

— Nor is Cantacuzenus to be heard, who, playing the part of the Greeks, says in lib. 2. cap. 39., that Barlaam was deceived; nay, that out of malice he imposed this manner of praying and the foul error about the aforesaid divine light upon the aforementioned Monks: for besides that this very thing is clear from the aforesaid Synopsis, it may also be gathered from Leo Allatius, a Greek indeed, and most skilled in Greek affairs, who in book 2. De Ecclesiae Orientalis, et Occidentalis consensu, cap. 17. relates that this manner of praying was invented, at the suggestion of the Devil, by a certain Simon, Abbot of the Monastery of Xeroceleus, who in the work which he wrote De sobrietate, et attentione prescribes this manner of praying in these words:

Attend, that you may do for yourself what I say: with the doors closed, sit in some corner apart, and draw your mind away from all vanity, a fragile and fleeting thing. Then let your chin rest fixed upon your breast, and move your sensible eye with your whole mind into the middle of your belly, namely into the navel: nay also compress the drawing of breath through the nostrils, that you may not breathe easily: and search within your bowels, that you may find the place of the heart, where the faculties of the soul are wont to dwell. And first indeed you will find darkness, and a thickness that yields not at all. But when you have persevered, and have consumed days and nights in this work — O wonderful thing! — you will perceive a joy which can be interrupted by no point of time: for as soon as the mind has found the place of the heart, it immediately sees what it never knew; since, when the air which stands in the space of the heart has been seen, it presents itself wholly lucid and discernible.

Thus the Demon mocked the wretched Abbot and his followers; wherefore it is no wonder if the aforesaid Synod, celebrated by the counsels of men raving so insanely, dashed into this most grave error, so as to believe the light visible to corporeal eyes to be God, and to affirm the divine operations to be distinct from the Deity.

— And so rightly did Barlaam rise up against this erroneous opinion, a man indeed Catholic, and raised to the Episcopate of Cyzicus, who published several excellent and most learned treatises, both on the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, and on the universal primacy of the Supreme Pontiff; which you have at the end of the third tome of the Paris edition of the Bibliotheca Patrum; in which he resolves all the arguments of the Greeks, and proposes pressing reasons by which he might recall them to the union and confederation of the Latin Church. By which it is also clear that a calumny was imposed upon him by Cantacuzenus, when he hands down in l. 2. cap. 40. that he assented to the pseudo-Synod.

Since in the preceding pages we have already noted that metaphysical composition takes place in four ways; and since it is already abundantly clear from what has been said about the formal distinction of the attributes that the divine perfections, whether attributive or modifying, produce no real composition in God, the only thing that remains to be resolved here is whether any composition can be detected in God from genus and difference, and from the Divine Essence and the divine supposits: and that these may appear more evidently

Note 1. The grades of genus and of difference can be conceived in two ways. First, insofar as they are really and formally distinguished from one another from the nature of the thing, as all the Scotists prove together with the Doctor, in 2. dist. 3. quest. 1. and elsewhere. In this sense the generic grade is so called, which, since it is common to different species and indifferent to them, is regarded as being, as it were, in potency determinable to them through some other grade, which is called difference, because through it the thing is constituted and distinguished from any other. Thus, for example, the principle and power of sensing is called the generic concept common to man and brute, and to be determined to each of the two through other concepts expressed by the names rational and irrational. Second, insofar as each of these two grades can be conceived as diverse only by reason, so that on the side of the thing there is in reality no distinction of such concepts, but only an occasion and foundation of distinction, on account of which our intellect from its native fecundity produces this distinction and perceives those grades as distinct, although in reality they are not distinguished on the side of the thing.

Note 2. Each of these two grades can be taken either categorically or transcendentally. In the former way, the generic grade is that which, in the predicamental line of substance or of accidents, prescinds from the species subject to it and is determined to them through true and perfect differences that divide and contract the genus and constitute and distinguish the species: in the latter way, however, that grade must be called generic which, prescinding from every predicamental being, is perceived after the manner of some common concept univocally belonging to God and creatures, and is determined to each of the two, whether through true essential differences or through intrinsic modes serving the place of differences. In the former way each of these two grades must be derived from some reality distinctly known through the operations or properties of the thing, e.g. the generic grade in man is derived from the power of sensing, which through sensations appears common to man and brute: the differential grade, however, is derived from the discursive power, which is proper to man alone among living beings: and each of these two grades must therefore be known distinctly, because it serves to form the distinction of the thing, which must explain the essence distinctly through genus and categorical difference. It is otherwise, however, with transcendental genus and difference, which disclose the nature of the thing not distinctly and through known realities, but confusedly and through transcendental concepts. Whether, however, the differential and generic grades belong to God in either of these ways, is what must be resolved here.

First conclusion. — God is truly not composed of the grades of genus and of categorical difference: it is not, however, improbable that He consists of transcendental genus and difference. This conclusion has two parts, the first of which the Doctor openly defends in 1. dist. 8. q. 3. n. 16. etc.

Proof 1. By the authorities of the Holy Fathers, who judge that God is in no way included in the predicaments. Thus, above all, Saint Anselm in the Monologion, cap. 26., where he says: The divine Substance is included in no common treatment of substances, from whose essential communion every nature is excluded. — The same is affirmed by Saint Bernard, or whoever is the author of the book De vita solitaria, where near the end, discoursing about God, he says: It is the supreme substance, not subject to the predicaments, but the subsisting causal principle of all things. Similarly Saint Augustine, in the book De Cognitione verae vitae, cap. 3. says: that every human condition is included in the predicaments, and that from all of these the property of the supreme Essence is utterly excluded by evident reason; whence Evagrius justly concludes, in Socrates, lib. 3. cap. 7.: That every proposition, or genus, contains what is predicated, either the species, or the difference, or the property, or the accident, or what is composed of these; but nothing of this kind can be received in the holy Trinity.

This same truth is proved by the reason of the Doctor in the cited place. The categorical generic grade is sought from a reality determinable and contractible, the differential grade, however, from a determinative and contractive reality: but these distinct realities cannot be found in God: therefore neither is the categorical generic and differential grade to be found in Him.

The major is evident from an inspection of the predicamental line itself, both of substance and of accidents, in which line it is certain that the generic grade is that reality which appears common to the different species, to which it is determined through grades proper and special to them; thus substance is determined and contracted to body through materiality, and to spirit through immateriality.

The minor is proved: every reality and formality in God that is to be distinguished is formally, or at least really, infinite; but an infinite formality or reality is not determinable and contractible through a formality or reality. Proof: whatever is contracted and determined through another is also actuated and perfected through it: but an infinite formality or reality cannot be actuated or perfected by anything: therefore it can neither be determined and contracted, nor consequently have the notion of genus. The major is evident: for matter, which is determined through form, is also actuated and perfected through it. The same must be said of genus, which is contracted through difference, and is perfected and ennobled. The minor is also established: for that is called infinite which has in itself and from itself all perfections compossible with itself: for if any perfection were wanting to it, it would no longer retain the notion of the infinite: but the generic concept of itself and in itself does not bring in the concept of the difference through which it is contracted, otherwise the difference, e.g. rational, would be superfluous for the constitution of man, since man would be rational also through the grade of animal; or it would follow that he is rational twice; once indeed through animal, which would also contain rational of itself, and again through the grade of the rational itself, which would be added to him after the manner of a difference: and consequently, since every reality or formality which is in God is infinite, no distinct generic concept that is truly categorical can be derived from it. And so God cannot be constituted from a generic and categorical differential grade, nor consequently be composed of predicamental genus and difference.

It is confirmed. It is impossible that an essence simply infinite in the genus of being should consist of categorical genus and difference: but the Divine Essence is simply infinite in the genus of being: therefore it cannot consist of categorical genus and difference. The minor is established. The major is proved: what is infinite in some order cannot consist of finite parts in the same order: but categorical genus and difference are something finite and limited in the notion of being: therefore the infinite Essence cannot consist of genus and difference. The major is evident, because from finite notions nothing but what is finite can be made. The minor is proved: genus and difference are metaphysical parts distinct from one another, and mutually excluding one another from their concept: for genus does not include difference in its concept, but excludes it: but it is repugnant that two parts, one of which does not include the other, should be infinite; for the infinite identifies whatever is compossible with itself; for infinite being identifies with itself every perfection of being; and an infinite line, if there were one, would identify with itself any length whatsoever: therefore in like manner infinite reality must identify every reality compossible with itself: therefore, since genus cannot identify with itself the difference compossible with it in the same species, nay rather excludes it from its concept, it follows that neither of the two can be infinite.

The other arguments proving this same truth I pass over, since we have weighed them in our Logica, in the Disputation on predicamental Substance, quaest. 1. concl. 2.

You will say. The Holy Fathers indicate that certain predicaments are found in God and truly affirmed of Him. Thus St. Augustine, 5. De Trinit., cap. 7. 8. 10. et 11., teaches that the predicament of Substance, of Relation, and of Action properly belongs to God; that of Quality, however, of Quantity, of Position, and of Habit only improperly. Similarly St. Damascene, in the Elementario, cap. 7. says: that the species of the highest and first genus of substance are, first, that which is free of body, and inanimate body: that is, the predicamental genus of substance is distributed into spiritual and corporeal substance: he adds, however: The Essence free of body comprises God, the Angel, the Soul, the Demon. Finally Boethius, lib. 1. De Trinit. says that only two predicaments, namely Substance and Relation, remain in divine things. Therefore these Fathers judge that categorical genus is truly found in God, both of Substance and of Relation.

I deny the consequence. For the Holy Fathers only intend that the confused concept of substance and relation can be accommodated and attributed to God more than the other predicamental concepts, which are altogether unbecoming to God; so that from the notion of uncreated and created substance and relation some concept, at least a confused one, can be prescinded, which is attributed to God generically not properly, but by metaphor. Thus the Subtle Doctor explains St. Damascene and Boethius, and he gathers this from the words of Damascene saying, c. 8. Elementarii: Substance, which contains supersubstantially the uncreated Deity, but knowably and contentively every creature, is the most general genus. That is, says the Doctor, predicamental substance contains under itself formally the Deity, just as it contains the creature, nor is it predicated generically of both in a similar way; but supersubstantially, that is, insofar as the concept of substance accommodated to God excludes every imperfection and limitation which is found in the predicamental generic concept.

The same is gathered from Boethius himself, l. 1. De Trinit., cap. 6., where, after he had enumerated the ten predicaments into which being is distributed in general, he adds:

But when anyone turns these into a divine predication, all things that can be predicated are changed: something, however, cannot be predicated at all. For substance in Him is not true substance, but beyond substance. Likewise quality, and the rest, in whatever way they can come to pass: and that the understanding of these may become fuller, examples must be subjoined. For when we say, God, we seem to signify substance indeed, but that which is beyond substance. When, however, we say just, quality indeed, but not an accident, but that which is of substance; but beyond substance.

Whence the Doctor concludes that all predicates common to God and creatures are transcendental predicates, prescinding from all categorical predicates, which are finite and limited.

The second part remains proved from our Metaphysica, q. 3. sect. 2., where we have shown that it is not improbable that the notion of Being, which the Subtle Doctor maintains to be univocal to God and creatures, likewise has the notion of transcendental genus; since indeed God agrees with the creature in being, but differs from it essentially through infinity.

You will say. The Holy Fathers judge that every notion of genus and of difference must be kept away from God: therefore He cannot admit even the notion of transcendental genus and difference. The antecedent is evident: for St. Clement of Alexandria, l. 8. Stromat. says that God is neither genus, nor difference, nor species, nor number, etc. And St. Cyril of Alexandria, lib. 55. Thesauri, cap. 5. says that God has a substantial difference, because He is most simple, and difference is found only in composites: therefore, etc.

I answer. The aforementioned Fathers, and any others suggesting the same, must be understood of predicamental genus and difference, which, since they import limitation and composition from realities, must be removed far from God: not, however, of transcendental genus and difference, which import no reality, but only a diversity of concepts, which Rusticus the Deacon lucidly observed in the Dialogue against the Acephali, where, to the heretic objecting that the Divinity and the Humanity have one highest genus; for substance is the most general genus of the divinity and of the humanity, which is subsisting through itself: he answers thus:

the Subsistent per se, when said of God, signifies that it needs nothing else in order to be; but when said of creatures, by no means; for they have taken their being from the Creator. … Therefore although substance is one name, it is not, however, one thing: substance is therefore not a common genus of the Deity and of flesh: but only a common name; this, however, is not genus.

You will insist. The notion of categorical genus cannot be found in God: therefore neither can the transcendental. The antecedent is evident from what has been said. The consequence is proved: The reason why categorical genus cannot be found in God is that, since whatever is in God is infinite, nothing in Him can have the notion of part: for every whole is greater than its part: but nothing is greater than the infinite: but any genus whatsoever, whether categorical or transcendental, necessarily has the notion of part; since it concurs with difference to constitute the essence. Therefore by the same reason by which categorical genus must be kept away from God, the transcendental must also be removed.

I deny the consequence. And to the major of that proof I say that it is not repugnant that the infinite should have the notion of part, not after the manner of reality, but after the manner of formality, which does not adequately state the whole essence of the thing formally; for it is certain that in God Himself the notion of infinite substance is formally distinguished from the notion of infinite spiritual substance. Add that although the divine attributes are infinite, they nevertheless seem to have the notion of part with respect to the Divine Essence itself: since from them and the divine essence the whole God is constituted and, as it were, integrated.

— To what is said, however, that nothing is greater than the infinite; I answer: nothing is greater than the infinite, really, let it pass; formally, I deny it. For it can happen that something is formally greater than one infinite, if indeed, since it is of itself already an infinitely perfect formality, it has another formality joined to itself and really identified with it, also infinitely perfect: thus the divine Essence, e.g. which of itself is infinitely perfect, prescinding from the attributes, can be said to be more perfect when it is conceived together with the attributes themselves, also infinitely perfect: therefore although nothing in God can have the notion of part after the manner of reality, from which the notion of categorical genus is derived, it is nevertheless not repugnant that something in Him have the notion of part after the manner of formality, from which the notion of transcendental genus is derived.

Second conclusion. — The divine personalities, although formally distinct from the Essence, nevertheless produce no true composition with it. This conclusion remains sufficiently and more than sufficiently proved from what we have said about the divine attributes, which, although they formally differ from the divine Essence, we have nevertheless shown to produce no composition with it. Nonetheless I prove it further:

First indeed from the supreme identity of God: Every true composition must be made from two realities: but the Personality and the divine Essence are not two realities: therefore they produce no composition. The major is evident from Note 2. The minor is proved from St. Bernard, lib. 5. De Consideratione ad Eugenium, cap. 8.: The properties of the Persons, he says, are nothing other than the Persons, and they themselves are nothing other than one God, one divine Substance, one divine Nature, one divine and supreme majesty, which the Catholic Faith confesses. Eulogius of Alexandria speaks the same, in Photius, pag. 457. Some assert, he says, that the Hypostasis is a combination of substance and of properties, which manifestly seems to introduce composition. And where is that simple Divinity in the Trinity, free of composition? namely, if the Personality were distinguished from the Essence, as reality from reality. St. Cyril of Alexandria, lib. 10. Thes. indicates this very supreme identity of the divine Essence with the Persons in explicit words:

Since the nature of the Deity is not composed but simple, he says, it would never be distinguished in thought into two Persons, the Father and the Son, unless some difference were found; not according to Essence, but according to Relation and, as it were, from without, that is, understood outside the Essence: through which the Person of each of the two is constituted in its own hypostasis, and is bound into the unity of the Deity because of natural identity, so that no confusion occurs, and, as it were, no mixture of the Father and of the Son

by which he openly indicates that no composition intervenes between the Divine Persons, nor of the same with the Divine Essence, namely because of their supreme essential identity.

The 2nd Conclusion is proved from the supreme Actuality of God: Every true composition must be made from two realities, or formalities, one of which has the notion of act, the other, however, the notion of determinable potency: God can have the notion of no potency: therefore He can admit no composition either. These things are sufficiently and more than sufficiently evident from what we have said, both in demonstrating the Existence of God, by a reason taken from necessary and actual being: and in proving the formal distinction of the attributes from the Divine Essence.

You will say. Where there is union, there is composition: but between the divine personalities and the essence there is union: therefore there is also composition. The Holy Fathers prove the minor, who affirm that both the divine nature is united with the Persons, and the Persons are mutually united with one another. Thus St. Athanasius, lib. Contra Sabellianos: The Trinity, he says, truly existing, is joined with nothing interrupting. And St. Gregory of Nazianzus, in Oration 23.: He says that the Unity is adored in the Trinity, and the Trinity in the unity, whose division and union are both admirable. Likewise St. Augustine in Sermon 189. de tempore asserts that the three Persons are divided by properties, but associated by nature.

I answer 1. The major can be denied, for union does not always entail composition; since complete beings, e.g. stones, are mutually united in a house by the unity of aggregation, yet are not on that account composed; for composition is the union of those things of which one has the notion of act and the other the notion of potency.

I answer 2. by denying the minor; and to the Holy Fathers I say that by these or similar ways of speaking they do not intend that some perfect union intervenes, whether among the Persons themselves or with the Divine Essence, but only a perfect essential unity; and that they suggest that the Divinity is communicated to the three Persons without any division and diversity of itself, lest they should seem to introduce a plurality of Gods; whence they frequently reproached the Arians that by the division of the Deity itself they introduced a plurality of Gods: If the nature in the holy Trinity varied, says St. Gregory of Nyssa, it would be a different thing, as those deceived by error suspect, and the consequence would be that the number would be spread out into a multitude of Gods; since the subjects themselves would be divided along with the diversity of substance. Which Cardinal Bessarion excellently pursues, lib. De Process. Spiritus sancti:

Substance and hypostasis, he says, are one thing in each divine Person: and so one, that they are mutually discerned only by reason. For if Person or hypostasis and substance really differed from one another, just as the Persons are three in reality, so there would also be three substances: that is, essences; but this is contrary to the faith.

You will insist. Where there is a determinable and a determinative, there is potency and act, and consequently composition: but the Essence is determinable, and the personality is determinative of it, so that with it it constitutes the Person; therefore between the Person and the Essence there is composition.

I distinguish the major. Where there is a determinable and a determinative after the manner either of matter and form, or of genus and difference, there is composition, I concede: where the determinable is not after the manner of a potency indifferent to this or that act, just as matter is indifferent to this or that form, and genus to this or that difference; but after the manner of a constituting act, concurring with another act to constitute a thing which is pure act, I deny. The divine Essence, however, is not determinable through the personality in the former way, but in the latter; for since this is pure act, it concurs to constitute the divine Person.

You will press. From the union of act with act, a being per se is not made, but per accidens: therefore either the divine Person, which is constituted through the Essence and the Personality, is not made from act and act, and so is truly composed; or it is not a being per se, but per accidens, which it would be impious to assert. — I distinguish the antecedent: From the union of act with act a being per se is not made, in created things, I concede; because unless created things united with one another coalesce after the manner of act and potency to constitute a third, they have nothing in themselves by which they can be mutually identified: it is otherwise, however, in divine things, because since the divine infinity really identifies all those things which are in God, except the Personal Relations, which on that account are not called infinite, hence it happens that through the union of act with act in God there is not made a being per accidens, but per se, because of the supreme identification of each of the two.

Since this principal distinction is established between the attributes and the modes of the divine Essence, that the former are attributed to God and creatures alike, while the latter belong to the divine Essence alone, in order that an exact knowledge of the divine Simplicity may be had, and that it may clearly appear whether it is to be numbered among the modes, it is worthwhile to resolve here whether it belongs to God alone. That this may be done more clearly.

Note 1. In general, a twofold simplicity can be distinguished, one of being, the other of virtue. The former denies all composition; the latter excludes dissimulation. The former denotes imperfection in creatures; for when a created thing is simple and does not have the perfections of other things joined to it, it comes about that it is the less perfect the more simple it is: this latter, however, imports the highest perfection: whence Christ especially commends it in these words, Matthew 10. Be prudent as serpents, and simple as doves. For by this simplicity the spiritual man is perfected and made whole, who, in order to be perfect, ought to be simple indeed in mind, simple in heart, simple in speech, simple in work. In mind, through the knowledge and assertion of truth; in heart, through the fervor of charity; in speech, through the sincerity and candor of discourse; in work, through justice and holiness, so that the splendor of the Christian man may shine forth, Christ saying, Matt. 6. If your eye is simple, your whole body will be full of light, and like a lamp it will enlighten you.

Note 2. Composite things can be distinguished into three kinds: for some are composed out of these, some with these, others after these. Those are said to be composed out of these which consist of parts mutually united; thus a species is composed out of genus and difference, a physical body out of matter and form, and the human body out of head, arms, chest, etc. Those, however, are said to be composed with these which, although in themselves they do not appear composite, nor consist of parts, are nevertheless ordered of themselves to the composition of another: thus genus and difference are ordered to constituting a species, matter and form to composing a body, etc. Finally, those are said to be composed after these which are constituted out of a form supervening after the union of matter with form; thus after the union of soul with body, the universal form of man, namely humanity, arrives so as to constitute man as a whole. The first composition is called passive, because through it the thing is constituted. The second active, because it constitutes the thing. The third denominative, because it does not inform the thing, but denominates it.

Note 3. Besides the twofold general difference of composition, namely physical and metaphysical, each of which is done in four ways, as we noted above, a twofold genus of composition is again assigned by the Subtle Doctor in 1. dist. 8. quaest. 2. n. 2. One indeed from actuality and possibility, by which it comes about that since no creature exists necessarily, there is also none which is not able not to exist, and consequently which does not imply potency to act: for whatever has been formed out of nothing can again pass away into nothing, so as to be produced anew, if God so wills. For since an existing creature is a mean between God, the highest being, and possible things, which are close to nothing, it also participates at once in the actuality of God and in the possibility of things capable of existence, that is, of possibles. The other genus of composition, however, is from positive entity and from the privation of some grade and perfection of being: for since a creature does not contain in itself all perfections of being whatsoever, the consequence is that it appears to be composed both of the perfections which it has and of the negation of the perfections which it does not embrace. These things having been premised, let there be

Only conclusion. — God alone is altogether simple.

This is the conclusion of all Theologians, and the Doctor proves it thus: Every creature is either a substance or an accident: if an accident, it necessarily requires to be received in a substance as in a subject, and so it can compose with the subject one composite per accidens. If it is a substance, it is either a substance constituted out of really distinct parts, e.g., matter and form, or it is not so constituted. If the first, it will be most properly composite; and consequently it will not be simple: if the second, it will be either substantially complete or incomplete. If incomplete, it can with its other co-part make one substance per se; thus prime matter with substantial form makes an organic body. If complete, it can receive in itself an accident, and so compose with the accident a composite per accidens formed out of that substance and the accident. That any created substance can receive some accident is evident, because if some one could not, it would be above all the most perfectly spiritual substance, namely the Angels: but the Angels can receive intellections and volitions, by which they understand and will: for those acts are not really identified with them; first, because otherwise they would be formally and necessarily blessed from their own nature; for their beatitude consists in intellection, or volition, or both: then, because they would necessarily understand every intelligible by one single intellection, and so their intellection, and consequently their Essence, would be infinite: finally, because they would not depend in understanding on any object, except on that on which they depend in being, namely on God, and consequently they would understand nothing in their proper genus except God; for whatever is understood in its proper genus is understood with dependence on that object which is thus understood. — Every creature likewise has two other modes of composition: since it has certain grades of being, but lacks very many others. For although man is a Microcosm and an epitome of the whole mundane composition, because he has being with stones, life with plants, sensation with animals, understanding with Angels, and on that account is called by Christ every creature, St. Gregory thus explaining these words, Preach the Gospel to every creature, that is, to man; nevertheless it is certain that man himself labors under innumerable defects, and lacks many perfections which we see shining in the other creatures. Whence the Royal Psalmist, not undeservedly disclosing his emptiness and vanity, says in Psalm 143.: Man is become like to vanity, and in Psalm 38.: Every living man is altogether vanity. — It equally stands that every creature involves act and potency at once; for there is none which holds its existence so tenaciously and immutably that it cannot pass into nothing at any moment of time. Whence it is rightly to be concluded with St. Job: Behold, they who serve him are not stable, and in his Angels he found wickedness: how much more they who dwell in houses of clay, who have an earthly foundation, are consumed as it were by a moth?

You will say. Things which are neither composed, nor divisible, nor able to be resolved into various parts, are simple: but many beings are such; for a point is indivisible, as also is one; matter and form are not composed: the supreme genera cannot be resolved into others: therefore besides God, many things are simple. — I distinguish the major: They are simple with some simplicity, I concede; with a simplicity of every kind, I deny. To the minor I say that the things adduced are indeed not composed out of these, but are composed or composable with these; for out of unities the number, out of points the line, out of genera and differences the species; and out of matter and form physical bodies are constituted. And consequently these cannot be called simple with a simplicity of every kind, since they are ordered of themselves to composition; but God rejects both these modes of composition.

You will insist. God too can be composed with these; therefore he is not simple in every way. The antecedent is proved: God can be united, and in fact the Word is united to the humanity so as to make with it the man-God: but this union is a true composition. Proof: the union of the Word with human nature is such as the union of the soul with the body; but this is a perfect composition: therefore so is that. The major is established from that saying of St. Athanasius in the Creed: As the rational soul and the flesh are one man: so God and man are one Christ. — I deny the major, and to the minor of its proof I say; the union of the Word with the humanity is rather the termination of dependence and of hypostatic communication than a composition: for every perfect composition is made either from parts which mutually perfect one another, or from those which are mutually united by way of act and potency. But the divine Word cannot have the notion of act and of part; for these savor of imperfection, which is far to be removed from God; and consequently his union with human nature cannot be a true composition. — To the authority of St. Athanasius I say that the parity assumed consists only in this, that just as the rational soul is neither polluted nor changed through its union with the flesh, so neither does the Word suffer any detriment through its union with the humanity; whence St. Athanasius had premised: One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of Person.

It has already been said in the third note of the fourth Question on the divine Essence that, according to the Subtle Doctor, in 4. d. 3. q. 1. n. 32., a twofold infinity can be distinguished in God, namely fundamental and formal. We likewise said that the former is the formal constitutive and distinctive notion of the divine Essence, whereas the latter is a mode of the Essence itself, which is not limited either in itself or in all its perfections, nor confined to certain grades of perfection, but is in every way infinite and unbounded. Concerning the former, enough and more than enough has been said in treating of the divine Essence; concerning the latter, however, several points are to be discussed in this article.

Note 1. With our Bassoli in 1. d. 2. q. 2. a. 1., the infinite is said to be that which lacks a term: which happens in two ways, namely privatively and negatively. In the former way, that is called infinite which from itself does not have a term, but can have one. Thus prime matter is said by the Platonists to be infinite, because from itself it has no form by which it is terminated and actualized; but it is in potency to receiving absolutely any forms whatsoever by which it is informed and determined. In the latter way, that is called infinite which is neither finite from itself, nor finitizable through another; but which contains in itself formally, or eminently, every perfection that can at all be thought of. The former infinite is said to be most imperfect, because it is near to nothing, and is pure physical potency; the latter, however, is most perfect, because it is purest act, excluding all imperfection and potency. The former is called by Philolaus the Pythagorean malignity, darkness, etc.; the latter, however, is called by him benignity and the splendor of God. Orpheus, moreover, calls the former infinite confusion and chaos; the latter, however, distinction and ornament.

Note 2. The infinite taken negatively is again twofold: one, namely, in a certain respect, the other, however, simply and absolutely. The former is that which can be called infinite in a certain genus of beings. Thus, e.g., a continuum can be called infinite in quantity, because not so many parts of it can be assigned but that more remain to be numbered and assigned: so likewise, if the sun had infinite light, and fire infinite heat, the former would be called infinite in light, the latter, however, in heat: the latter, however, is that which is infinite in every genus of perfection, because it contains in itself the whole amplitude of being formally or eminently; so that no species, no perfection can be conceived in the universe of beings which does not shine forth in it.

Note 3. A twofold definition of the infinite is found in Aristotle, lib. 3. of the Physics cap. 6.: the first indeed handed down by the Ancients, who held that the infinite is that outside of which there is nothing, that is, which so comprehends all things in itself that there is no perfection, nor entity of things, which it does not contain in itself in a noble manner: the latter, however, is handed down by Aristotle himself, as it were opposed to the former, saying that the infinite is that of which something is always outside; which namely can never be exhausted by dividing. Both of these definitions fit the infinity of God. For He is so infinite that He cannot be comprehended, and consequently there always remains something of Him which is not yet grasped and known: so likewise He contains all things in Himself, so that He leaves nothing outside Himself; for, as Justin Martyr speaks, in the Question to the Orthodox, That is supremely perfect which can in nothing receive addition or increase. But whether this infinity can be shown to belong to God by efficacious reason and be urged by authority, is what must be resolved here.

First conclusion. — By natural reason it can be demonstrated that God is infinite.

The Doctor proves this conclusion together with his followers in 1. d. 2. q. 2. n. 2, by four reasons taken 1. from His effective power, 2. from His intellective power, 3. from His appetibility, 4. from His eminent dignity.

I form the first thus: That being which from itself could produce infinite distinct species if they were possible, has necessarily infinite power, and consequently an infinite essence: but God can produce infinite species, if they were possible: therefore He has infinite power, and thereby an infinite essence. The major is evident, first indeed as regards the inference of an infinite essence from the infinity of power; for since operative power is founded in the essence, and emanates from it, whence the common axiom: Operating follows being, it is evident that the greater the power is, the more perfect the essence is, and consequently that infinite power argues infinite perfection and essence. The same major is evident also as regards the inference of infinite power from infinite effects distinct in species, which it could produce, if such effects were possible; for since each producible species has a perfection distinct from another species, it is evident that if the producible species were infinite, the producible perfections would likewise be infinite; and consequently, since a cause is the more perfect the more perfections it can produce, it rightly follows that the cause which can produce infinite perfections is infinitely perfect. The minor is also evident, because since God is the first cause, and consequently having in Himself the causality of all inferior causes, and able to produce whatever is producible, it follows that if infinite species of things were possible, He could also produce them; for His power would not be more determined to one number than to another, and consequently could extend itself to infinity. For if it were limited, that would be either from itself or from another; not from another, otherwise it would not be first and supreme: not from itself either, because just as it would be entirely independent in being, so likewise its power would be entirely unlimited, and consequently infinite.

You will reply 1. The multiplication of species to infinity seems impossible, since in any genus there is given something so perfect that a more perfect than it cannot be assigned: therefore from those infinite impossible species infinite power in God is not rightly inferred. — I answer 1. that the antecedent can be denied, although the Doctor seems to affirm it probably; for no reason appears for limiting the species of creatures to some determined number and certain perfection, beyond which a greater and greater one could not be produced. For who will deny that many other and always more perfect species of flowers, plants, or other creatures could be newly produced? Who will deny that another heaven can be added above the Empyrean, just as the Empyrean was added above the Firmament, and so on in turn to infinity? I answer 2. by denying the consequence, because the object of divine Power is not only an effect possible absolutely, but also one possible under any condition whatsoever. Hence it becomes true to say that if a chimera were a true being, God could produce it; and so of other conditioned things, which cannot be produced, not indeed from defect of power in the productive cause, but from the repugnance and defect of possibility in the effect to be produced. And so whether species diverse to infinity are possible absolutely, or only hypothetically, it is always rightly inferred from their presupposed hypothetical or absolute possibility that the power which could produce them would truly be infinite.

You will reply 2. From infinite effects distinct only in number it is not lawful to infer the infinity of the cause: therefore neither from infinite species. The consequence is evident by parity of reason. The Doctor proves the antecedent ibidem n. 26: No greater power is required to produce two effects successively than to produce one in a single instant: but to produce one fire, e.g., in a single instant, infinite power is not required: therefore neither would such power be required to produce two fires successively. The consequence is evident, for the infernal fire, which will be conserved in eternity, would produce infinite heats successively in infinite bodies, if infinite successions were applied to it, and yet that fire will not be of infinite power; similarly the Sun and the heaven, if they endure in eternity, will cause infinite effects of illumination and influence, and yet it will not follow from this that they have infinite power. — I deny the consequence, and the reason for the disparity is that to produce effects diverse only in number, no other power and perfection is required in the agent, but only the application of the same power in those successive productions: it is otherwise, however, with the production of infinite species, because since each species has a perfection diverse from another, it also presupposes a diverse perfection in the cause from which it is produced; since the whole perfection of the effect depends on the perfection of the cause, because no one gives what he does not have, and consequently the cause could not give some power to the effect unless it first had it: therefore it rightly follows that if the producible effects have infinite perfections, the productive cause must also contain diverse and infinite perfections.

2. The Doctor's reason is taken from the infinite knowledge of God, which can be formed thus: He who necessarily understands infinite intelligibles at once, has infinite perfection and intellective power: but God understands them at once: therefore, etc. The major is certain, for the power of understanding and knowing is the more excellent the more things it can perceive and know at once, and consequently a power which can know infinite things at once must necessarily be infinite. The minor is proved: for those things are reckoned infinite where not so many can be known by creatures but that many more still remain to be known, nor can the created intellect ever arrive at the end of all by knowing one after another: but such are all possible creatures, which God Himself distinctly knows at once from eternity; nor can anyone deny that the thoughts and volitions of the Angels and of rational souls, e.g., will be more and more to infinity through eternity a parte post, and that no term and number can be assigned which they do not exceed: therefore God's intellect, which from eternity knows all of them at once, must be infinite. The same must be said of God's will and love, by which He distinctly wills and loves at once all and each of the good acts to be exercised without end, more and more through eternity, by the Angels and blessed men.

3. The Doctor's reason is taken from the notion of final cause and appetibility: Our appetite, or our will, has a natural inclination to love the infinite good, and aspires to it as to the ultimate end: therefore such a good exists; for if its existence were repugnant, the will would not incline by natural desire to attain it; for a natural appetite ought not to be in vain: therefore since such infinite good is not repugnant, it must necessarily exist; otherwise it would not be the infinite good, because it would not be more excellent than every good; for an existing good is more excellent than a non-existing good: but that notion of the highest good can be found in none but the first cause: therefore the first cause, or God, must be of infinite goodness and perfection. It is confirmed: the end is more excellent than those things which are for the end: but all things which are in the universe, both existing and possible, are ordered to God as to the ultimate end: therefore since all these ordainable things are infinite in number, the ultimate end itself must also be infinite.

4. The Doctor's reason is taken from the dignity and highest perfection of God: God is the being than which a more excellent cannot be thought or imagined: therefore He is infinite. The consequence is proved: Of anything finite a more perfect can be thought: therefore no finite thing can be that than which a better cannot be thought. Next, God is a being of highest and most excellent perfection: therefore He is infinite. The antecedent is proved: That being alone is of highest perfection which has every perfection not repugnant to being: but infinite perfection is not repugnant to being: therefore, etc. The minor is proved: both because if infinity were repugnant to being, that repugnance would appear from the terms; which is manifestly false, since no weighty reason can be brought which would persuade that repugnance: and because if infinity were repugnant to being; most of all either because finiteness intrinsically belonged to being as such, or because it would be its property convertible with it: for it does not appear by what other reason infinity would be repugnant to it: but neither of these can be said. Not the first, because we can conceive being as such without finiteness, which could not happen if finiteness were of its formal notion. Not the second either, because it cannot be concluded from the notion of being, nor from any other head, that finiteness is a property convertible with being. — It is confirmed: God is a being from itself, because He is the first of all beings and the most excellent: therefore He is unlimited and infinite. The consequence is proved: A being from itself is most perfect as much as it can be and be conceived: but the most perfect being, than which a more perfect cannot be or be conceived, must be simply infinite in perfection; for it is more perfect to be simply infinite in perfection than to be finite: therefore since God is the most excellent of all beings, and contains formally or eminently all the perfections of finite things, it follows that He is infinite. — Add that if He were limited and finitized, it would be most of all either from Himself or from another: not from another, since He has no cause; not from Himself either, because whatever is finitized from itself is finitized either by reason of the matter or of the form of which it consists: but since God has neither matter nor form, He cannot be limited and finitized even by Himself.

You will say. That is infinite which surpasses and transcends the maximum finite; for if it does not exceed it, it will remain within the multitude of those things which are finite: but it is impossible that a maximum finite be given: therefore it is also impossible that the infinite be given. The minor is proved: If a maximum finite were given, it would follow that it would become infinite by the addition of one grade or finite part, and consequently that the infinite would arise from two finites; thus, e.g., an infinite quantity would arise from a maximum finite quantity by the addition of only one palm or finger: but it is contradictory that the infinite can be made from two finites: therefore a maximum finite cannot be given. — I deny the major, and to its proof I say that for something to be infinite, nothing else is required than that it exceed in perfection absolutely every finite thing, however perfect it may be; nor is it required that a maximum finite be given which is exceeded and surpassed by the infinite. Thus, e.g., the Mathematicians with Euclid lib. 5. of the Elements say that the circle is more perfect than all rectilinear figures, although among them none is most perfect, for they can be multiplied to infinity: and man is said to be the most perfect of all animals, although in fact no brute is given so perfect that a more perfect cannot be given. The other objections customarily made against this conclusion we have already solved in proving the existence of God.

You will say 2. If God's infinity could be proved naturally, His omnipotence could also be proved: but according to the Doctor in 1. dist. 2. q. 2. n. 27. and dist. 12. and Quodlib. 7., divine omnipotence cannot be demonstrated: therefore neither can His infinity. The major is certain: since omnipotence is nothing other than infinite power: the Doctor proves the minor at the assigned places, where he shows that God's omnipotence is believed by faith alone, and cannot be proved by any natural reason. — I answer 1. that the major can be denied. For although omnipotence signifies the same thing in reality as infinite power; they nevertheless differ as regards their precise and formal concept: since omnipotence is conceived by order to everything factible simply; but infinite power is conceived by order to that which is factible without imperfection: for since it could be doubted whether doing all things imports perfection, for some Philosophers with Aristotle judged that the efficiency of certain effects argues imperfection; hence it was rightly doubted by them that God is omnipotent and the maker of all things, lest He be infected with some imperfection: but since the concept of infinite power argues no imperfection, but rather imports the highest perfection, hence no one doubts that it must be attributed to God, the most perfect of beings. — I answer 2. by distinguishing the minor: Divine omnipotence cannot be demonstrated insofar as it is productive of all naturally producible effects, I deny; nor did any Philosopher ever doubt this: insofar as it is productive of things from nothing, and conferring of supernatural gifts, namely grace, charity, beatitude, etc. I concede. For nature supplies no means for proving these effects.

Second conclusion. — God's infinity is also confirmed by sacred authority.

For from the Scriptures God is called, Job 30. Higher than the heavens, deeper than the abysses, etc. Jeremiah 32. Incomprehensible in thought. Psalm 146. Great is the Lord, and great is His power, and of His greatness there is no end: And Ps. 95. Declare His glory among the Gentiles, His wonders among all peoples, for great is the Lord, and exceedingly praiseworthy; which words St. Augustine thus weighs:

And if it said all day long Great, Great, what Great would it say? for great is the Lord, and exceedingly praiseworthy: For what is a small tongue going to say in praising the Great? By saying exceedingly, it sent out a voice, and gave the thought something to savor, as if saying, what I cannot sound out, do you think; and when you have thought, it will be little. What no one's thought explains, someone's tongue explains. For great is the Lord, and exceedingly praiseworthy.

— Some add that passage of Baruch 3. He is great, and has no end, high, and immense. But that is not said of God, but of the place of God's possession, that is, of the world, whose greatness the Prophet exaggerates, so as to open to the Jews how much they owe to God, because above the other nations, among which they are fewer (as he notes ibidem), they were chosen to be His people and the sheep of His pasture. Nor only there, but also elsewhere the name of the Infinite is very often used metaphorically. Thus Numbers 32: a great abundance of riches and a multitude of cattle is said to be infinite. And 3. Kings cap. 3. An infinite people: And cap. 10. Exceedingly infinite gold.

You will reply. If these latter words are used metaphorically and amplificatorily, so that infinite is the same as very great, why not also the former? I answer that there is no parity, because Sacred Scripture everywhere most constantly preaches the infinity of God, nor does it subject anything from which the metaphor may be detected; nor does any reason appear persuading that one must depart from the genuine sense of Scripture. Add that the Lateran Council under Innocent 3. cap. Firmiter, established that it must be believed with certain faith that God is immense and incomprehensible; and consequently that He is infinite. The Holy Fathers confirm the same: Great is God, says St. Dionysius lib. De Divin. Nominib. cap. 9., and above all greatness, and leaping over all infinity. And St. Augustine, Serm. 1. de verbis Apostoli: Inestimable, ineffable, incomprehensible, beyond all things, outside all things, besides all things: And lib. De speculo, cap. 33.: Above whom nothing, outside whom nothing, without whom nothing, beyond whom nothing, beneath whom nothing. God under whom all, with whom all, in whom all. God from whom all things, through whom all things, in whom all things. And St. Gregory Nazian. Orat. 38. calls God an immense and unlimited sea of essence. The rest of the Holy Fathers affirm the same everywhere, who preach that God is infinite and is confined by no limits.

Note 1. The perfections which shine forth in creatures are of two kinds: for some are called simply simple; others, secundum quid. A simply simple perfection is said to be one which involves no imperfection, nor excludes another equal to it; of which sort are the pure or absolute perfections, as some speak: for instance, existence, spirituality, etc., which by St. Anselm, cap. 14. Monologii, is called a perfection which is better itself than not itself, in the whole breadth of being, as we have already noted in the first Question of the preceding Disputation. A perfection secundum quid is said to be one which in its concept has an imperfection so attached that it cannot be separated from it; whence absolutely it is not better for every being to have it than not to have it. Thus to be a body, although with respect to a stone, v. g., it is better than to lack a body, is nevertheless not better and more perfect with respect to all beings. Since it is better and more perfect to be incorporeal and a spiritual substance, as is clear in an Angel and the Soul, than to consist of a body like the rest of creatures.

Note 2. That some perfection can be contained in another in three ways: First indeed formally, as rationality in man; second eminently, as all corporeal creatures in man himself, who is called a little world, or an epitome of the world; third virtually, as heat in the Sun, and the plant in the seed. Moreover, something can be in another eminently in two ways: either formally, as the vegetative and the sentient are in the rational soul, which not only eminently contains the perfections of the vegetative and sentient soul, but also performs their functions. 2. eminently virtually, as the light of the stars is in the Sun, which is not only brighter than the rest, but is also the parent and origin of light. Finally, something is contained in another eminently formally in two ways: namely, perfectly, when it is contained inwardly in a superior from the first grade up to the last difference, as corporeal substance is contained in any individual of human nature, which involves all the grades and differences of corporeal substance formally, and in a nobler way than the rest of corporeal beings: or imperfectly, when it is contained in it only as to general notions, not however as to individual notions and atoms: thus any man comprises in himself the perfections of absolutely all creatures, both spiritual and corporeal.

Note 3. that something can be called infinitely perfect in two ways, namely either in every way, or only in a certain genus of being. In the former way it is called infinite simply, and absolutely, because it comprises in itself the whole amplitude and universality of being and perfection without any limit or any imperfection. In the latter way it is called infinite secundum quid, and in a determinate genus and special order of perfection: thus, v. g., if an infinite line were given, it would be infinite only according to the notion of quantity and length; so that it would comprise in itself and exceed absolutely all length.

First conclusion. — God contains absolutely all perfections.

This is the teaching of all the Holy Fathers. It is proved, first indeed by texts of Sacred Scripture: To the Romans 11.: From Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things: and John 1.: All things were made through Him: therefore, since there is no perfection in an effect which was not first in the efficient cause, it follows that God contains in Himself all the perfections which He bestows on His creatures, as He Himself indicates in Isaias 66.: Shall I who make others bring forth, be Myself barren? And Psalm 93.: He who planted the ear, shall He not hear? or He who formed the eye, does He not see? Whence

Proverbs 8, He claims for Himself every perfection which shines forth more in men: Mine, He says, is prudence, mine is counsel, mine is strength, mine are riches, and glory, and substance, and justice: the Holy Fathers affirm the same: God, says St. Dionysius in De Divinis Nominibus, cap. 5., is all things, as the Author of all; and below: All beings are to be attributed to Him according to one eminent conjunction of all: and in the same place: He contains all things according to His more-than-simplicity: and in cap. 13. he supplies three grounds of the same infinite perfection: the first indeed, that He is perfect of Himself, and is defined from Himself alone in one uniform way, and is wholly most perfect through all things; that is, He is of Himself absolute and perfect, nor does He borrow His perfection from another; and accordingly He comprises absolutely every perfection, since there is nothing from which His divine perfection could be limited. The second, that He exceeds every perfection, and is grasped or comprehended by none: or as he speaks, That He surpasses perfection, as one who excels all things, and indeed determines every infinity, and is unfolded beyond every limit: nor is He grasped or comprehended by anyone, but pertains to all things, and beyond all things, by perpetual progressions and unending actions. The third finally, from the fact that He is the principle and cause of all things, and is always complete in His numbers; and that He cannot be diminished, as one who has all things anticipated in Himself, and overflows with one and the same perpetual and accumulated bestowal, which cannot be diminished, by which He perfects all perfect things and fills them with His perfection.

— This same truth was not hidden even from the pagan Philosophers: since Trismegistus called the true God the universality of all things, and likewise the Greeks named Him τὸ πᾶν, that is, the Universe, as Eugubinus testifies, lib. 3. Perennis Philosoph. cap. 8., to signify that all things are contained in Him in that most eminent and most perfect way. Whence in that Oracle, Great Pan is dead, which Plutarch mentions in the book De Oraculorum defectu, Christ is called Great Pan: who is the Lord of all things, and contains the universe in Himself. Indeed even Lucretius, who although an Epicurean in life, acknowledged this universality of goods and perfections in God, saying: Self-sufficient in His own resources, needing nothing of ours. Which he had perhaps borrowed from the Royal Bard: I have said to the Lord: Thou art my God, for Thou hast no need of my goods.

The same truth is proved by reason: What is infinite in some genus contains absolutely all the perfections of that genus; v. g., if infinite light were given, it would comprise in itself absolutely all light, otherwise it would not be infinite light, since by the addition of another light it could be increased: but God is infinite in the genus of being, as has been proved: therefore He comprises in Himself absolutely all the perfections of being. — Then, what are divided in lower things are united in higher things in a more eminent way. Thus the vegetative and sentient soul are in man in a more excellent way than in brutes and plants; light shines more clearly in the Sun, the parent and origin of light, than in the Stars and the rest of the lucid bodies, which borrow their light from it: therefore, since God is the supreme of all beings, the perfections of the rest ought to be united in Him. — Finally, creatures are called beings by participation, because they are perfect only insofar as they receive perfection from God: but they could not receive perfection from God unless He Himself precontained it; for no one gives what he does not have: therefore God contains in Himself absolutely all the perfections of whatever beings.

Second conclusion. — God contains in Himself formally and eminently all simply simple perfections.

It is proved: Since God is that than which nothing greater or better can be thought, whatever is more perfect and better is to be attributed to Him: but a simply simple perfection is better with itself than without itself; therefore it is to be attributed to God formally. — Then, an infinitely perfect Being ought to contain in Himself in a nobler way all perfections which in their concept reek of no imperfection: but such are the simply simple perfections: therefore they are to be attributed to God formally. — Finally, those things belong to God formally which are formally predicated of Him: but simply simple perfections are formally predicated of God: therefore they belong to Him formally. — That He also contains them eminently is evident from this, that He comprises them in a nobler and more excellent way than they are found in creatures; since in the latter they are accidents, in God, however, they are substances; for God, as has been proved, admits of no accident; and since He really identifies with Himself whatever He contains in Himself, He cannot have those diverse and opposed notions of substance and accident. — Then those perfections are finite and limited in creatures; in God, however, they are infinite and free from limitation; for whatever is in God is formally infinite. — Whence, as Nicolaus Chusa notes, lib. 1. de docta ignorantia, God was rightly called by the Ancients a Sphere, whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference nowhere, to declare the infinity of the divine magnitude. For if an infinite Sphere were given, it would be infinite not only according to itself as a whole, but also according to each of its parts; for all lines drawn from the circumference to the center would be extended infinitely, all surfaces would tend infinitely, and finally the height and depth themselves would have no limit; and so according to all the dimensions of its magnitude it would be infinite on every side. Thus by parity of reasoning God is truly to be called infinite, because whatever is conceived in Him has infinite perfection; for infinite is His wisdom, unlimited goodness, uncircumscribed truth, eternal duration, immense presence, interminable power, incomprehensible Essence; all of which Saint Bernard, lib. 5. De Consid., cap. 13., lucidly explains: This eternity, he says, is so long that it has no end; Charity, which infinitely excels every affection; Knowledge, which includes, indeed surpasses, all wisdom; Essence, which anticipates every being. By which he denotes that there is no conceivable perfection in God which is not infinite; and accordingly which is found in God in a far more excellent way than in creatures.

Third conclusion. — Perfections secundum quid are not in God formally, but only eminently or virtually.

The first part is proved: God, since He is the most perfect being, removes every imperfection from Himself: but perfections secundum quid involve imperfection in their concept, as is clear from their definition: therefore God does not contain them formally. — Then: What are in God formally are also formally predicated of Him: but perfections secundum quid cannot be formally predicated of God, otherwise it would be true to say that God is as properly called a lion, or a stone, or a body, as He is called wise, just, etc.; and so He would be a wondrous monster composed of all creatures, and the center and receptacle of all imperfections. — Finally: An infinite being excludes every limitation from itself: but God is a being infinite on every side; and perfections secundum quid are limited and finite: therefore God removes them from Himself, nor does He comprise them formally.

The second part is proved: God is the cause of absolutely all beings, and consequently of all the perfections which are found in creatures: but every cause virtually precontains its effect; for the effect is a participation of the entity and perfection of the cause itself: therefore, etc.

That He also contains them eminently is evident from this, that eminent containment is said to be that by which either something of a more eminent nature can produce another, in the way every equivocal cause that is more principal, or total, contains its effect; or that by which something, by reason of its more perfect entity, accomplishes entirely without any imperfection what another performs only with imperfection. Thus the rational soul contains the soul of a brute, and the soul of a plant: and the intellect the phantasm; and this the internal senses: but in both these ways God contains all the perfections of creatures. For He is not only their author and origin, but also by reason of His infinite entity involves absolutely all being; not indeed formally, but eminently, and virtually, and that in a far more perfect and eminent way than animals and plants are contained in the power of the Sun and the rest of the stars. For the Sun and the rest of the stars do not concur, except by means of light and influx, to forming the dispositions of the body to be animated, but do not precisely bestow life itself of themselves; God, however, not only fashions the body, but also creates the soul, and bestows life. Hence St. Dionysius rightly warns, lib. De divinis nominibus, cap. 13., that all things are in a certain way affirmed of God, and denied, and that He is rightly called the position of all things, and the ablation of all things, because He eminently posits all things as containing them, and formally removes all things, because He excludes from Himself every created and imperfect formal notion.

You will ask. — Whether God is something greater or more perfect with creatures, than if He were alone.

The Subtle Doctor answers, in quaest. 5. Quodlibetica, n. 8., that God with creatures is not something greater and more perfect intensively, than He is alone. The truth of this answer is clear from all those texts of Sacred Scripture by which, when treating of the divine being, we proved that creatures compared with God are as it were nothing; For all nations, says Isaias, are before Him as if they had no being at all, and are counted to Him as nothing, and vanity. Which David had earlier taught, saying, Psalm 38: My substance is as nothing before Thee: but from the accession of nothing being does not grow, but rather decreases: therefore from the addition of creatures the divine perfection is not increased, nor does it grow. — Then, the infinite cannot be made greater by the addition of something finite: but God is simply infinite, while creatures are finite and limited: therefore they together with God do not make something greater and more perfect, than God Himself is. The minor is evident. The major is proved: that is infinite which contains in itself whatever perfection it can have from its formal notion; and accordingly it cannot receive a further perfection of the same notion. Thus, v. g., time added to eternity does not increase nor extend its duration, because all those inferior durations are contained in eternity in a most eminent way. — Finally, God is every good, as Moses himself says, Exod. 33: Come, I will show thee all good; therefore of Himself He so involves absolutely all goodness and perfection, that nothing can be added to Him which He does not precontain: whence just as if an Angel were posited twice, the union made of the same posited twice would not be something better, than it was alone: therefore St. Augustine rightly concludes, tract. 11. in Ioan.: If thou art without God, thou wilt be lesser; if thou art with God, God will not be greater: not from thee is He greater, but thou art lesser without Him,

I answer 2. God with creatures makes something more perfect extensively, than God alone is. It is proved: Where there are perfections really distinct, and not identified with one another, there one added to another makes something greater extensively, because good added to good not really identified with itself makes several goods: but the perfections of created things, as they are in God really, are distinguished from the same as they are in the creatures themselves: therefore God and creatures taken together are something more perfect extensively, than God Himself alone is. — It is confirmed: For this reason the three adorable Persons of the Trinity do not make some greater and more excellent good, than the Father alone is, as St. Augustine affirms, lib. 6. De Trinit., cap. 10., saying: In that supreme Trinity one is as much as the three together: nor are two anything more than one: because to be sure they are identified with one another in the divine Essence: therefore on the contrary, because the perfections of creatures, which are in God, whether formally or eminently, are not identified in every way with those which are in creatures, indeed are really distinguished from them, it follows that creatures together with God make something extensively more perfect, than God Himself alone is.

You will ask 2. — Whether Infinity is some special perfection of the Divinity.

I affirm: since that is a special perfection of God which removes from Him a special imperfection of creatures; but infinity removes from Him the notion of limitation and finiteness, by which they reek of imperfection; therefore it is some special perfection. — Then, the concept of infinity is one thing, the concept of the other modes of the divine Essence is another; for while God is conceived as infinitely perfect, His eternity or invisibility, etc., is not precisely attended to. Therefore since it has a distinct concept, it also imports a distinct perfection. — Finally, that is judged a special perfection which seems to be the source and origin of the rest; and which is the reason why the other perfections are shown to belong to God: but such is infinity, for God is judged eternal, v. g., immense, etc., precisely because He is infinite in duration and presence: therefore, etc.

Here it is customary for authors to discuss whether God alone is so infinite, that no creature can be infinite, either intensively or extensively; but since this has already been abundantly demonstrated in our Physica, that nothing besides God can have the notion of the infinite, I have judged that I should refrain from these resolutions here.

So great is the affinity and connection of the divine infinity with immensity, that the Holy Fathers have sometimes used the name of the one for the other to signify the incomprehensible perfection of God; for the word immense, from its primary usage, designates the same as that which has no measure; and so it coincides with the infinite. Nevertheless, the usage has already prevailed among the theologians, that the word Immensity is used to designate, as it were, a diffusion of the infinite substance of God, through which God exceeds on every side the limits of this universe, and has from himself the power of presenting himself present to whatsoever creatures, even to those to be produced to infinity, without any local change of himself; and by which it comes about that in fact he is, as it were, diffused, and intimately and penetratively present everywhere to all and each of the parts of the world.

Now, in regard to this divine Immensity, different men have erred in different ways; for not only was there the blind error of certain impious men who said, Iob. cap. 22. God walks around the hinges of the heavens, and does not consider our affairs: but the opinion of the ancient Philosophers also was that God is in the first Heaven, and in the Eastern part, so that the first Mover of all things might reside in that part, whence the celestial motion was to begin. Nor was that the only false opinion of the common crowd of Philosophers; nay, the Princes of Philosophy also stumbled into the same; for, as Justin Martyr observes in the Paraenetico, Aristotle, as one who had seen the things that are in heaven more accurately than Plato, did not, like that one, say that God is in a fiery substance, but asserted that he dwells in a certain fifth ethereal element.

Hence it is no wonder if the Poets, who impiously distributed the supreme Deity among many parts, assigned to each of the gods his own proper seat, so that Jupiter presided over the stars alone, Juno over the air, Vulcan over fire, Neptune over the waters, Ceres over the earth, and Pluto over the underworld, and held sway. — But I can scarcely wonder enough that the Jews, enlightened by the oracles of the Prophets, nevertheless so lost their senses, as to have judged God to be so present in the temple of Jerusalem, that, as St. Jerome reports on that passage of Isaiae 66. Heaven is my seat, etc., they would believe him to be substantially absent from the other parts of the world. — But of all, Augustine Steuchus Eugubinus seems to have erred the more shamefully; for although a Catholic man, and by no means unskilled in Theology, and moreover nourished in the bosom of the Roman Church, that is, in the citadel of Faith and Religion, nevertheless, in explaining this verse of Ps. 138.: Thou hast understood my thoughts from afar, that is, he says, from Heaven, than which no place is more remote from the earth, he judged this also most wonderful, and the greatest testimony of divine knowledge; for this also is wholly incredible and supremely to be wondered at, that God, whose station is farther distant from the earth than the east is from the west, standing there nonetheless, as is the consensus of all nations and of the most ancient men, as Aristotle says, should see whatever is done in heaven and on earth. The same author, explaining this verse: If I ascend into heaven, thou art there, says: As therefore the Sun is in heaven by body, and by its own position and station, but lights up the lands with its rays, seeing all things: such must we needs think God to be, who indeed is in heaven by essence and presence: but his Spirit, and his knowledge, and his science reaches everywhere. — But against this most grave error Christian Truth distinctly pronounces (says Cornelius Mutius in the book De Divina Historia:) God is everywhere, or he is not at all. If you deny him Immensity, you take away the Divinity. But in order that this truth may appear more evidently, it must be weighed in the following Questions.

Note 1. This is the distinction among the presence, ubiquity, and immensity of God: immensity is the infinite power and capacity of the divine entity by which God from his own nature has the power to place himself intimately present to all creatures, even if they existed infinite in number and species: ubiquity, however, is the very actual influx of God into all existing creatures, and, as it were, his substantial diffusion into each part of the world: but presence is not only that intimate substantial influx of God, but also his special assistance and operation somewhere. Thus 2. Machabaeorum, cap. 15. Judas, and his soldiers prostrated no fewer than thirty-five thousand, delighting magnificently in the presence of God.

Note 2. Since four grades and orders of beings can be distinguished, namely, nature, grace, glory, and divinity, so too a fourfold residence and existence in another, or presence, of God can be distinguished: The first is entitative, and is effected through the exuberant outpouring of his divine entity into each part of the world, as he himself says, Ieremia 23.: I fill heaven and earth. The second is sanctifying, which is effected through the diffusion of charity and grace, by which God inexists in just souls in a special way, as Christ says, Ioannis 14. If any one loves me.... My Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him. The third is beatifying, which is effected through the efflux of divine happiness and delight into all the Blessed; concerning which David, Ps. 5.: They shall rejoice forever, and thou shalt dwell in them. The fourth, finally, is divine, and is effected through the special inexistence of the divine Persons. This again can be distinguished as twofold: namely, personal, by which the divine Word is specially present to the humanity which he assumed through the hypostatic union; for in Christ, says St. Paul, ad Colossenses 2., dwelleth all the fulness of the Divinity corporally; but the other is essential, by which the divine Persons exist mutually in one another, as Christ says, Ioannis 14: I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.

Note 3. Natural presence and residence can again be distinguished as threefold, according to the three ways in which God is customarily said to be in all existing things, namely, by Essence, Power, and Presence. These ways of existing St. Thomas so interprets, Prima parte, q. 8. art. 3., that God is said to be in things by Essence because he immediately gives being to all: by Power, however, because all things are subject to his power and command: finally, by Presence, because all things are naked and open in his sight, and nothing escapes him. He explains this with the example of a King, who is present by power in his whole kingdom, for all the inhabitants of the kingdom are subject to his command: he is present, however, by presence in the royal chamber, because all things that are done there lie open to his eyes: but he is present by essence and substance on his throne, for in it his whole substance resides. But Durandus and Aureolus not undeservedly reject this explanation; for if God's being in things by Presence were the same as having things in his sight, it would follow that God is in things not only when they exist, but also before they exist, since the divine intellect apprehends and calls the things that are not as though they were. Add that the thing known is in the knower, not, however, the knower in the thing known. The same must be said of Power, for it extends not only to present things, but even to future ones. This explanation is likewise rejected as regards the mode of existing by Essence, because for a thing to be substantially present to another is not only to communicate being to it, otherwise the Sun would be in all sublunary things to whose production it concurs, but beyond that the non-distance of substance is required. — Therefore, for God to be present to things by Essence is nothing other than to inexist substantially with all things: by Power, however, the same as to produce all things and to conserve them by a continuous influx: finally, by Presence, the same is to have all existing things in his sight and to penetrate them intimately through his knowledge. But whether God truly inexists in all things in this threefold way is to be resolved in this Question.

First conclusion. — God is truly immense, and present everywhere by Essence, Power, and Knowledge.

Part 1 is proved from Sacred Scripture: Ps. 138. Whither shall I go from thy spirit, and whither shall I flee from thy face? If I ascend into heaven, thou art there; if I descend into hell, thou art present, etc.; which words Anastasius Constantin. lib. 2. De incircumscriptione Dei rightly affirms are to be understood of the substance of God: For that Deity, he says, permeates and extends through all things, filling all things with the greatness of its nature. This God himself confirms, Ieremiae 23: Do I not fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord. Thus Isaiae 66.¹: Thus saith the Lord. Heaven is my seat, and the earth the footstool of my feet: what is this house that you will build to me? and what is this place of my rest? With this also agrees that saying of Solomon, lib. 3. Regum, cap. 8.: If the heavens of heavens cannot contain thee, how much more this house which I have built? The same Sophar Naamathites intimates, apud Iobum, cap. 11. He is higher than heaven, and what wilt thou do? deeper than hell, and how wilt thou know? the measure of him is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.

The holy Fathers inculcate the same, especially Augustine: God is everywhere wholly, he says, libro 7. De Civit., cap. 30., included in no places, bound by no bonds, divisible into no parts, changeable in no part; filling heaven and earth with a present power, not an absent, not a needy nature. And 5. De Trinit., cap. 1.: He is everywhere present without any position, containing all things without habit, everywhere wholly without place, everlasting without time. And lib. De Praesentia Dei ad Dardanum: Since God is by nature incorporeal and unchangeably living, he remains in himself with eternal stability, he is present wholly to all things and to each single one. Whence he rightly concludes in the same place: It must therefore be acknowledged that God is everywhere by the presence of the Divinity; but not everywhere by the grace of indwelling. The rest of the holy Fathers confirm the same opinion with various arguments, of whom — Some prove the Divinity from the immensity of the divine Persons. Thus St. Basil, in

the beginning of the Gospel of John gathers that the Father and the Son are truly God: Neither the Father, he says, nor the Son is contained in any enclosed or defined region: but the Father is immense, and the Son likewise immense: whatever whole you have grasped in your mind, and wherever you have penetrated in spirit, that very thing you will find full of God, everywhere at once you will find the hypostasis of the Son extended. With the same argument St. Athanasius, Epistola ad Serapionem, proves that the Holy Spirit is God: But if the Son, he says, for this reason that he is not in distinct places, but while he is in the Father is everywhere, and is outside all things, is not a creature; consequently, neither will the Holy Spirit be a creature, since he is not in distinct places, but fills all things, remaining outside all things; for so it is written: The Spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole world. — Some gather from immensity that God is a Spirit: Thus St. Hilary, lib. 2. De Trinit., Because God, he says, is invisible, incomprehensible, immense; the Lord said that the time had come that God is to be adored not on a mountain, or in the Temple; because God is a spirit; and a spirit is neither circumscribed, nor held: because by the power of his nature he is everywhere, and is nowhere absent, overflowing all things in all things. — Some, from the substantial presence of God everywhere, demonstrate that the existence and union of the divine Word in the flesh of man has in it nothing shameful nor unbelievable: Thus St. Gregory Nyssenus, in the book Catechetico, cap. 25., when he had said: Who is of so childish a mind that, looking at the universe, he would not believe God to be in the universe: entering into it, and containing it, and sitting in it? For from that which is all things hang, nor can it happen that anything should exist which does not have being in that which is: he concludes: wherefore if all things are in him, and he is in all things, why are they ashamed of that mystery which is placed in the Incarnation, and which teaches that God dwelt among men, who is not believed even now to be outside man? For although the mode of presence by which God is in us is not the same as that one, nevertheless all confess this very being in us equally, both now and then. — Others, finally, gather that God is in all creatures, because he is the Maker of all: Thus St. Fulgentius, lib. contra sermonem Fastidiosi, cap. 4. From our God, he says, that is, from the holy Trinity itself, nothing can be locally separated, because the same supreme, true, and good God, just as he made all things, so he contains all things, and fills them being immense. And cap. 6.: But the Trinity, one God, just as it is eternal, and no times are co-eternal with it, so it is immense, whom no creature can enclose: and because it is immense, it is everywhere wholly, because it is neither contained by a place, nor stretched out, or contracted by space. To the same effect St. Ambrose, lib. 1. De Fide, cap. 4. et 7. God, he says, filling all things, is himself nowhere confused: penetrating all things, nowhere himself to be penetrated: everywhere wholly, and at the same time; present whether in heaven, or on earth, or in the lowest sea. With these agrees Cyrillus Hierosolymitanus, Catechesi, 6.: In no place, he says, is he defined, but the maker of places, existing in all things, and circumscribed by none: heaven is a throne to him, but he who sits exceeds and transcends it; and the earth is the footstool of his feet, but his power reaches even to the subterranean places. Whence he is everywhere present.

The second and third parts suffer no difficulty in their proof, for as St. Paul speaks, ad Hebreos 4., Neither is there any creature invisible in his sight, but all things are naked and open to his eyes; whence the Wise Man, Ecclesiasticus, cap. 23., mocking and reproving the impious man who says: Who seeth me? darkness compasseth me about, and the walls cover me, and no man seeth round about me; Whom do I fear? the most High will not be mindful of my sins; he subjoins: And he understandeth not that his eye seeth all things.... and he knew not that the eyes of the Lord are much brighter than the sun, beholding round about all the ways of men, and the bottom of the deep, and looking into the hearts of men, in the hidden parts. The same is evident also of the presence of power; since creatures can bring about nothing except with God co-acting, for God works all things in all, or, as Isaias speaks, Thou hast wrought all our works for us, O Lord; whence St. Paul rightly concludes, Actorum 7., that God is not far from every one of us, for in him, he says, we live, and move, and are. That is, as St. John Chrysostom explains, he is so near that without him one cannot live.... Just as the air diffused everywhere cannot be unknown, which is not far from every one of us, or rather is within us; so neither can the maker of all things. This comparison Anastasius Sinaita also employs, in the second of the contemplationum in Hexameron, As the air, he says, fills all things, and no place is empty of it, etc.; so also the God of all things fills all things, and no place is empty of him.

Second conclusion. — The immensity of God can also be proved by natural reason. This is against our Smisingus, who in Tractatu 2. Disput. 5. num. 56. affirms that the immensity of God is rather believed by faith than demonstrated by reason.

The conclusion is proved: The divine essence must be no less infinite and unlimited in its power and capacity of existing substantially everywhere than in itself and in its other perfections; for a property is commensurate with the nature: but in the others it is so infinite that it has absolutely no limits: therefore neither should it have limits in the capacity of existing everywhere. The minor is evident. The major is proved; both because no reason appears why one property of the divine essence should be infinite rather than another: and because if the divine essence were limited in its presence, it would not be infinite: for by this, says Anastasius Patriarcha Antiochenus, lib. De incircumscripta Dei essentia, that it is terminated by another declares the substance of him who is encompassed to be circumscribed; but it is certain that the divine substance is infinite and uncircumscribed; and that by natural reason, as we demonstrated above in treating of the divine Infinity: therefore in like manner it is established by natural reason that it is immense. — Then, it is clear to all that every perfection redolent of no imperfection is to be attributed to God, and that in the greatest and supreme degree: but for a thing to be present to another is a perfection, and God is deemed the more perfect the wider a place he occupies, whether by the extension of quantity, or by the diffusion and application of his power and operation: therefore the greatest presence is to be attributed to God. But ubiquity is the greatest of all presences: therefore it is to be attributed to God. — Finally, if God were not immense, but only in a determined place, he could be moved from place to place, and so would be mutable: but by natural reason it is established that God is not mutable: therefore it is established that he is immense.

He replies 1. That immensity cannot be concluded from infinity, except because a property must be commensurate with the essence, and the more perfect the essence is, the more excellent in like manner the property must be: but this principle, he says, is false; for although man excels brutes in essence, brutes nevertheless surpass men in properties; since the properties, or sensitive faculties, are far more excellent in some brutes than in men, for The boar excels us in hearing, the lynx in sight, the ape in taste, The vulture in smell, the spider in touch.

On the contrary: Infinity is related to the essence and divine properties in the same way as finiteness is related to the essence and created properties: but the latter so limits the properties of creatures that none is nor can be infinite: therefore in like manner infinity brings it about that no perfection of God can be finite: but his presence would be finite if it were not immense, as is evident: therefore etc. — Then, if the divine presence were not immense, the divine essence would not be infinite simply, but only secundum quid; for that is infinite only secundum quid which is not infinite according to every mode of it, and every perfection really identified with it: but the essence would not be infinite according to the perfection of presence, and of the capacity of existing in others: therefore it would be infinite only secundum quid. Nor do his arguments avail anything; since the sensitive faculties are not identified with the human essence, but are really distinguished from it; and since they depend on the disposition of the organs, it is no wonder if they are not commensurate with the perfection of the human essence. — Add that, although perhaps in created things the inference of a more perfect property from a more perfect essence would not hold, because since created things admit of more and less, one of them can have a greater perfection, another a lesser, even if they are really identified; for to a different diversity of perfection the formal distinction suffices: for the intellect, in the opinion of the Doctor, is more imperfect than the will, although it is really identified with it in the soul; but it is otherwise in divine things, where all things are infinite, and the infinite does not admit of greater or less; and accordingly from the infinite perfection of the one the infinite perfection of the other is rightly inferred.

He replies to the second argument, that a greater presence does not argue a more excellent perfection in a thing; for the rational soul and the Angels occupy a smaller place, and accordingly have a smaller presence than corporeal things, nor are they on that account more imperfect than corporeal things.

On the contrary: Greater presence argues greater quantity, whether of bulk or of power; although greater quantity of bulk does not always imply greater perfection — for man is more excellent than a mountain, even though he is smaller than it — nevertheless quantity of power points to a more perfect essence: therefore, since the Angels and the rational soul have a greater quantity and presence of power, it is rightly inferred as well that they are more excellent, and from their more excellent nature and power a greater presence is also rightly inferred.

They subsume: Indeed, a greater presence, and a diffusion of power and of activity, is rightly inferred from the greater quantity of power; but not of nature and of substance: and hence from this it would indeed be inferred that God, as being infinite, has power, but not substance, everywhere diffused.

On the contrary: From this it follows that a more excellent nature ought to have a more excellent and nobler mode of presence not repugnant to itself: but the mode of being present everywhere through the diffusion of substance and of power is more excellent than the presence of power alone; nor is either of these modes repugnant to God, but rather they most greatly ennoble Him: therefore both of these modes of being everywhere through essence and power are to be attributed to God. — The aforesaid reasons are confirmed: Either God is nowhere, or only somewhere, or everywhere: but it cannot be said that He is nowhere, nor only somewhere: therefore He is necessarily everywhere. The major is evident. The minor is proved as to its first part, both from that common saying of the philosophers, that what is nowhere, is not; and because being present to another is a perfection, and consequently is not to be denied to God. — The same minor is also proved as to its second part: What is only somewhere is there either by nature and necessarily, or by will and freely: but in neither way can God be said to be in some determinate place. Not indeed freely: otherwise He could move Himself from place to place; and thus He would be mutable. Nor necessarily and naturally; for some substance can be necessarily and naturally in a determinate place for only a threefold reason, namely, either that it may be conserved there and rest, or that it may be perfected in it, or that it may operate, and produce certain effects which it could not produce elsewhere; but in none of these ways can God be in some determinate place. Not indeed to be conserved, because since He is the first cause, He is altogether independent. Nor to be perfected, since He Himself is the fount and origin of all perfections. Finally, not to operate, because, as will be proved in the following Question, on the hypothesis that He were not in some place, He could nonetheless operate in it. Therefore, since God is neither nowhere, nor only somewhere, it is necessary that He be everywhere.

You will say 1. From St. Augustine, lib. 83. Quaestionum, q. 20.: in God all things are rather than He is anywhere: therefore if God is in all things, all things are in all things; and thus the same thing will be in itself; but this is absurd: therefore God is not immense.

I answer, that all things are in God in one way, but in another way God is in all existing things: for all things are in God, as effects in a cause, as the known in the knower, and as participated being in the most excellent and first being: but God is in things not as in a place, but through the real presence and indistance of His substance; and thus it does not follow that the same thing is in itself, because things are not in God in the same way as God Himself is in things. Whence Augustine adds in the same place: Yet they are not so in Him that He Himself is a place. For a place is in space, which is occupied by the length, breadth and height of a body; and God is not anything of the kind. And so all things are in Him, and He is not a place.

You will say 2. If God were in all things, He would be changed: but the consequent is against that saying of Malachi: I am God, and I change not: therefore He is not in all things. The sequel of the major is proved: Many things are newly produced and perish: therefore if God in-exists in them, He acquires and loses a new presence.

I distinguish the antecedent: That He would be changed wholly extrinsically, and only terminatively, I concede: intrinsically, and formally, I deny: for since He has no real respect to a place, nor to the things to which He is present, as creatures have, both corporeal and spiritual, therefore at the change of place, or of things, He is not really changed, but only the things are changed, which either begin or cease to be

present to God, no change nonetheless being made in God, in the manner in which He is called Creator without any real change in Himself.

You will say 3. If God were everywhere, it would follow that God is not only in foul places, but also in the demons and the damned: but the consequent seems absurd: therefore so is the antecedent. — I distinguish the consequence of the major: That He would be in foul places, so as to be defiled in them, and that He would be in the demons through the conferral of His grace, or of beatitude, I deny: that He would be through the indistance of His substance, I concede; For just as the rational soul, says St. Augustine, lib. De agone Christiano, cap. 18., is not defiled even in a leprous body, because it is a spiritual substance; much less can God, since He is set apart far from all matter, contract any filth from His presence in corporeal things. Or as St. Macarius answered, homil. 7., to those asking whether God was in Satan: Since the Sun, he says, although it be a creature, pours its light over muddy places, and is in no way harmed, much more can the divine numen so dwell with Satan that it is neither defiled, nor contracts any stain from him.

You will say 4. He who is said to approach or to withdraw, or to descend and to walk, to stand afar off and to know, is not to be deemed to be everywhere: but Sacred Scripture predicates all these things of God. Psalmo 9.: Why, O Lord, hast Thou withdrawn afar? Proverbiorum 13.: God is far from the impious. Genes. 3. the first Parents are said to have heard the voice of God walking in Paradise, etc. — I answer: All these things are to be understood metaphorically, and that Sacred Scripture, for the sake of easier instruction, exhibits God to us through these adumbrations, so as to teach us either how greatly God detests sin, or that He brings forth His sentence not with precipitate, but with temperate judgment, and with the cause known and examined: whence Augustine, Sermone 70. De tempore, See, he says, that you do not perceive ascent and descent as local. It is unworthy to think this of the incorporeal Substance, whole everywhere: but God is said to descend when He deigns to have care for human frailty. — Philo the Jew went in the same opinion, lib. De confusione linguarum, where, explaining those words by which God is said to have descended, to see the tower which the sons of Adam were building, he affirms that these things are written in human fashion, not from the truth of the matter; For who, he says, does not know that he who descends must leave one place, and occupy another? But God fills all things, encompassing, not encompassed; to whom it happens that He is everywhere, and nowhere; whence he concludes: Therefore none of the names which signify progression and motion befits God, such as above, below, to the right, to the left, before, behind; for in none of the things that have been said is He thought of, as one who, never changed, has turned his place.

You will say 5. God is said to be in heaven specially, by exclusion of His presence elsewhere. Thus Psalmo 113.: The heaven of heaven is the Lord's, but the earth He has given to the sons of men: therefore He is not everywhere. — I answer, that these things are to be understood not absolutely, but comparatively, or, says St. Athanasius, book contra Sabellianos, so that His infinite dignity might be more easily explained to rougher men from the majesty of His dwelling. Or that it might be suggested to the idolaters that heaven is not God, For heaven is called the house and throne of God, says Justin Martyr, in his response to q. 5. Graecorum, not because God has need of it for dwelling, or for sitting, as one who is in no way circumscribed, and needs nothing, but lest, looking to His amplitude of substance, and incorrupt essence, we suspect that God Himself, or one equal in honor, is God. Or, as Theodoret says in Psalmum 122.: God is said to dwell in the Heavens, not as circumscribed by place, but as conversing with the heavenly powers which inhabit the Heavens; or because, says Alcuin, lib. 2. De Trinit., cap. 5., there is in the Heavens a greater knowledge of that supreme majesty and essence, among the Angels, or in the holy souls of the Saints, than among the Saints dwelling on earth. Or finally, says St. Damascene, lib. 5. e. 16., God is said to dwell in the Heavens, because that place is more a partaker of His operation and grace. For in it are those who do His will.

You will say 6. Several of the holy Fathers judge that God is present in heaven alone in substance, but elsewhere only in knowledge and power; thus St. Clement of Alexandria, lib. 2. Stromatum: God, he says, "I am a God at hand," says the Lord: far indeed in substance: for how would that which is begotten approach the unbegotten? But He is near in power, by which He embraces all things in His bosom. And lib. 5., refuting the Stoics, who affirmed that God is a body and a spirit; they, he says, assert that God permeates every substance: but we say that He alone is the maker. Likewise Justin Martyr, in his response to the eleventh question of the Orthodox, says: Other things, which are said to contain something, are contained by this essence: but God alone contains this whole universe by His will. Lactantius agrees with them, lib. De Opificio Dei, cap. 16., where he seems to circumscribe God to Heaven: For the mind, he says, which holds the dominion of the body, seems to be established in the top of the head; as God in Heaven; therefore they judge that God is not everywhere. — I answer, that this was not precisely the opinion of the aforesaid Fathers: not indeed of Clement of Alexandria, since in lib. 7. Stromatum, speaking of the good and holy man, Such, he says, is he who is persuaded that God is present everywhere, and is not concluded within certain and definite places. Nor likewise was this the mind of St. Justin, both because he is not himself the author of the aforesaid book of questions and responses to the Orthodox, but some anonymous writer; and because it appeared above that he most constantly professes God present everywhere. Lactantius likewise can also be conveniently explained, as wishing only to overturn the stupid fiction of the Stoics, who asserted that the world is the body of God, and that He is diffused through the elements, and the other parts of the universe, as into so many members which He would move and animate: which that he might refute, he says that God is in Heaven, as the soul of man is in the brain. Not that he thinks the soul resides substantially in the brain alone, but only that it fulfills there its nobler operations: by which reason we also said above that God specially resides in Heaven.

You will say lastly. If divine immensity could be proved by some natural reason, it would not have escaped the more skilled Philosophers: but it wholly escaped them, as was said above: therefore it is not naturally known. — I answer by distinguishing the minor; that divine immensity escaped the more skilled Philosophers who misused the natural light, I concede: that it escaped those who used natural reason rightly, so as to uncover the divine perfections to the extent of their powers, I deny. For Pythagoras the Philosopher, says Salvianus, at the beginning of the first book De providentia, whom Philosophy herself received as her own teacher, discoursing on the nature and benefits of God, spoke thus: God is a mind passing through and diffused through all the parts of the world, from which even all the animals that are born receive their life. To the same effect is what Trismegistus says, when he says that God is an intelligible sphere, whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere. Indeed Aristotle himself, book 1. De Anima, cap. 5., indicates that God is present everywhere, for he praises the saying of Heraclitus, who, when he had shut himself in a baker's oven in the wintertime, and saw that his arriving friends took it ill, and for that reason did not wish to come nearer to him, urged them to enter boldly, Since, he says, here too God is present. Those sayings of the Poet Virgil, Georgicorum 4, are also well worn: For God goes through all the lands, the tracts of the sea, and the deep heaven. And also that of Aratus: Jupiter is whatever you see: all things are full of Jupiter: or as St. Prosper sang more fittingly to piety and Catholic truth, in the book De providentia: But that God is nowhere is not; for whole He is everywhere. And free He penetrates and encompasses all the members of the world.

There is a celebrated and famous controversy between the Subtle Doctor and the Angelic Doctor, and their followers, concerning the resolution of the present question. For St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 8. art. 1., affirms that from the operation of God in all things His substantial presence in them is rightly and necessarily inferred: but the Subtle Doctor, in 1. dist. 37. q. unica, denies that this is a legitimate inference; and contends that if per impossibile God, for example, were present in Heaven only through essence, He could nevertheless operate in the other parts of the universe; and thus from His operation somewhere it does not follow by a formal consequence that He is there substantially and essentially present: and, that this dispute may be settled more evidently,

Note 1. Agents, considered according to their varying mode of operating, can be distinguished into two kinds. For some act upon both a proximate and a remote subject with the same potency and an undivided action; but more perfectly upon the proximate than upon the remote. Thus, for example, the Sun illuminates the celestial and sublunary bodies with the same diffusion of light and through the same illuminative power: but these less than those. There are, however, some which not only operate upon a proximate and a remote subject with a distinct action; but also with a distinct potency, one of which is so subordinated to the other that the latter does not act upon a distant object unless the former has first acted upon the proximate medium; thus, for example, the Sun through its illuminative power first fills the air with light: then through its substantial power it concurs in the production of living things, especially of certain imperfect ones, and also in the formation of minerals.

Note 2. An agent, by respect to the patient upon which it immediately operates and which it reaches, can again be distinguished as twofold; for one is immediate with the immediacy of power, another with the immediacy of supposit. The first is that which has from its own nature a power of acting proper to itself, and not begged from another. Thus the Sun obtains its illuminative power from itself; the other celestial bodies, however, borrow it from it. Hence it comes about that the higher an agent is, the more immediate it is with the immediacy of power; and therefore God is the most immediate agent, because He has the power of acting from Himself, and altogether independent, begged from none. — An agent, however, immediate with the immediacy of supposit, is that between which and the produced effect no other co-acting supposit mediates; from which it comes about that among created agents, the lower an agent is, the more immediate it is.

Note 3. Two diverse kinds of operations are distinguished in God, some of which are immanent, so named because the term produced by being remains outside the bosom of the divinity, such as the generation of the eternal Word, the spiration of the Holy Spirit, the divine intellections, volitions, etc.; others transient, so called because through them God produces something outside Himself; such as the creation of the world, its conservation, etc. The discourse here is not about the former, but about the latter, namely, whether from them it can be gathered by a formal consequence that God is present somewhere, because He operates there.

Only conclusion. — If per impossibile God were only essentially and substantially in Heaven, He could nevertheless operate with the immediacy of power in the other parts of the universe.

This is the teaching of the Doctor in the passage cited above.

It is proved first: A creature can act, and produce something, where it is not immediately, nor substantially present. Therefore much more could God operate where He would not be substantially present. The consequence is clear, for the power of God is greater than that of a creature. The antecedent is proved by various examples; for the Sun, although it resides substantially only in the fourth Heaven, nevertheless diffuses its power through all the parts of the world. Likewise the Magnet moves and attracts distant iron, Amber draws straws, the Basilisk kills distant men by its gaze, the Torpedo numbs the hand of the fisherman touching the net in which it is enclosed, and other things similar to these, by which in our Physica, Disputation, De causa efficiente, we proved that a created cause can act upon a distant object, without acting upon the medium with the same action, and we satisfied all these things that could be objected against the truth. Therefore, since from the operation of a created agent upon some patient its intimate presence according to substance does not necessarily follow; much less should the substantial presence of God be inferred by a formal consequence from His operation somewhere. — It is confirmed from the Doctor, ibid. n. 2.: A secondary cause therefore cannot act upon a distant object without acting upon the medium, either because there are in it two potencies and operations, one of which must be terminated at the medium before the other extends itself to the distant object; or because the same potency cannot produce a perfect effect in a distant object unless it has first produced a less perfect one in the nearer medium, as was said in Note 1: but in God there are neither those several subordinated potencies, one of which acts upon the remote, another upon the proximate; nor does He need, in order to produce the most perfect effect, to have first produced a less perfect one by way of disposition. Therefore, if He were not everywhere, He could act and produce upon a distant object, even by in no way acting upon the medium.

The adversaries reply: that an adequate cause has not been assigned in the major: for a cause cannot act upon a distant object without acting upon the medium, not only for this reason, that there is in it a subordination of potency and operation, but also for other reasons, to be assigned in the objections. But we shall solve them all in the responses.

Secondly: The omnipotence of God is His will itself, upon whose willing the production of the thing follows; For all things whatsoever He willed, the Lord has made in Heaven and on earth, says the Psalmist: or, as St. Paul speaks, He works all things according to the counsel of His will: but the will can will that something be done in a distant place, without willing that it be done in a nearer place: therefore God could act where He would not be; and thus from His operation His substantial presence cannot be formally inferred. The major is evident from the aforementioned places of Sacred Scripture, and will be more evidently established when treating of the Omnipotence of God. The minor is also evident, for if by my volition I could produce some thing, it is certain that I could will that it be made in a distant place, even if nothing were produced in the medium.

Thirdly: Before the production of the world, God was not present to any thing; but some thing had first to be produced by Him, before He would become present to it: therefore substantial presence to some thing is not a condition necessarily prerequired for the production of the thing itself: nor is it rightly inferred from it that God is substantially present to it. It is confirmed. By nature the creature first terminates the act of divine power, before God is present to it; for presence, since it is a relation, supposes a term and a foundation: therefore the production of a thing does not suppose the presence of the substance producing, nor is the latter legitimately inferred from the former.

Fourthly: The greater activity an agent has, the more it acts upon a distant object; for the greater fire is, the farther it diffuses its heat: but God is the most powerful agent, and of infinite power: therefore if per impossibile He were distant from some thing, He could act upon it no less, otherwise His power would be determined and limited to a place: and so it would not be infinite, nor divine.

They reply: That the major is indeed true, not absolutely but on this condition, that the agent first diffuses its power into the proximate rather than into the remote: thus, they say, fire does not diffuse its heat into a distant subject except by the benefit of the intervening air. — On the contrary: That mediation does not arise from the intrinsic notion of the agent, and inasmuch as it is an agent; but from one or other of those conditions which we assigned in the second Note; which conditions, since they have no place in God, do not prevent Him from being able to act upon a distant object independently of the medium. And since the Sun, for example, concurs in the formation of minerals and living things, which it does not form in the intervening air, it is evident that it has some action upon the remote object which it does not have upon the proximate subject. Therefore it is clear that the immediacy of subject and agent is not necessarily to be desired for the production of a thing. — All these aforementioned reasons are confirmed by the example of an Angel. One Angel can impress upon another some spiritual effect, even if they are distant from one another: but this impression is made independently of the medium, as being incapable of such a spiritual effect, because it is corporeal, as St. Thomas teaches, prima parte q. 107. art. 1. ad 3., where he affirms that Angels speak to one another, not only by willing that his own concept be made known to the other, but also, he says, by exciting the other to attend through some intelligible power impressed upon him, by which his intellect may be moved, just as the sense is moved by the sensible. Moreover, art. 2. ad 11., he teaches that Angels infuse knowledge into separated souls, by infusing, namely, intelligible species into them independently, he says, of a different medium: therefore at least an Angel, even in the opinion of the adversaries, can act upon a distant object without acting upon the medium; nor is it necessary that two spirits, speaking to one another, be so entirely immediate that not even an atom of air intervenes, as Suarez says in Metaphysica, Disputatione 18. num. 16., and consequently God could much more accomplish this, if He were absent from some thing.

You will object 1. Sacred Scripture gathers the divine presence from the operation of God somewhere: therefore it is rightly inferred from it. The antecedent is proved, first indeed from the words of the Psalmist, who, when he had said in Psalmo 138, Where shall I go from your spirit, and where shall I flee from your face? immediately infers, If I ascend into Heaven, you are there; if I descend into hell, you are present; and, opening the reason of God's ubiquity with these words, he adds: For there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me: but by the hand and right hand of God, His operation is frequently signified in Scripture: therefore Scripture gathers the presence of God in all things from His operation. — It is confirmed from Actuum 17. cap., where St. Paul, disputing with the Athenians, concludes that God is not far from each one of us, because, he says, in Him we live, and move, and are: or as Pagninus and others render it, for through Him we live, whence the gloss: because He operates in us that we live: therefore the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of David and Paul (says Molina here, Disputatione 2.) must have rendered the reason inept, and made an inefficacious argument for proving the presence of God in things: and so, he says, it must be confessed that from the immediate operation of God in some place the presence of God in things is concluded more than enough, and the contrary opinion not so. — I answer 1. by denying the antecedent, and to the first proof of it I say that the Psalmist intends there only that God is everywhere through knowledge and providence; so that there is no one who can escape His divine ordination and disposition. — To the confirmation I say that St. Paul wills only that, since we live, and move, and are in God, it follows that He is not so far from our knowledge that we cannot easily attain to the knowledge of Him. But the Apostle does not will that the substantial presence of God is rightly gathered from His operation. — I answer 2. that although Sacred Scripture and the Holy Fathers sometimes infer the substantial presence of God from His operation in things, this inference is not made through an intrinsic locus, but through an extrinsic one: namely, either because there is no greater reason that He operates everywhere than that He is present everywhere: or inasmuch as, given that it is established from elsewhere that He is present wherever He operates, it follows that He is everywhere, if He operates everywhere. And so that argument is from concomitants, such as this would be: God is infinitely powerful, therefore infinitely knowing: not that infinite knowledge directly follows from infinite power: but because knowledge and divine power, since they are perfections of the divine essence, identified with it, and hence infinite, it rightly follows that if divine power is infinite, divine knowledge is also infinite; namely, by reason of a third, that is, by reason of the divine essence, in which both agree. — Add that Sacred Scripture does not always produce an efficacious argument, but sometimes also a probable one for insinuating the truth; for it sometimes argues from human authority, which is only a probable means. Thus St. Paul in the same chapter proves that God is not like wood and stones, by the testimony of the Poet saying that we are the offspring of God: as if he said: from your authors, human nature, which is the image and offspring of God, is far more excellent than the wood and stones of which your idols consist: therefore much more does God far exceed these. Likewise to Titus, chapter one, he proves the vices of the Cretans by the very testimony of their own writer saying: The Cretans are always liars. — From these it is clear how utterly inept and ridiculous is the censure of Molina, with which he fulminates against the opinion of the Subtle Doctor; for although from the authority of Scripture it were inferred that the substantial presence of God is to be gathered from His operation, this inference would nonetheless not press the opinion of the Doctor: since the Doctor contends that the presence of God cannot be gathered from operation, because no natural reason can evince this; although perhaps some authority might persuade it.

You will object 2. The active and the passive are related as act and potency: but act and potency necessarily require presence and union in order to cause something: therefore also the agent and the patient require intimate and substantial presence. — I distinguish the major: they are related as act to be produced and productive potency, I concede: as informing act and potency to be informed, I deny. I distinguish the minor similarly; act to be produced and productive potency require intimate union and presence, I deny; for the power of creating, for example, has for its corresponding act a thing only in possible being; and hence it cannot be really present to it: informing act and potency to be informed require the presence of the act itself, because from their mutual union something one must be made, just as a physical body, for example, is made from the union of matter and form, I concede. And so this objection does not touch the present difficulty.

You will object 3. Just as being as such is related to operating as such, so being here is related to operating here: therefore just as operating as such implies a contradiction unless being as such is first supposed, so operating here implies a contradiction unless being here is supposed. — I deny the major, because being as such is related to operating as such as first act to second; but it implies a contradiction that there be a second act without the first being presupposed: but being here is not related to operating here as first act to second, because being here only signifies the relation of the presence of a thing in a place, which relation of itself is not active, nor a condition necessarily prerequired for operation, since a thing can exercise its power and produce something where it is not.

You will object 4. Action is a kind of motion: but it is repugnant that motion be in the extreme term unless it has first been in the middle, as is clear in local motion: therefore it is repugnant that any action be done upon a distant object unless it first be done in the medium. — The major can be denied: for not every action is motion; for motion supposes a movable subject, but creative action, for example, has no real subject which may be said to be moved and changed: but I deny the minor; for at least by divine power motion can be made in an instant, since motion is a passage from one extreme to the other extreme, and for this passage to occur here, it is absolutely not necessary that the movable be in the middle before it reaches the term.

The modern Thomists object 5.: An agent which operates in all things through a power not diffused from itself, but intrinsic to itself and identified with itself, must be present immediately and according to its substance in all things: but God operates in all things through a power not diffused from itself, but intrinsic to itself and identified with itself: therefore, etc. The major, they say, is supposed from 7. Physicorum, where it is said that the mover and the moved must be together: with this difference, however, that an agent acting through a power diffused from itself need not be present immediately and according to its substance to the subject upon which it acts: but only mediately, and by reason of the power which it transmits into it through some mediating supposit, as is clear in the Sun, which, since it acts through a power diffused from itself, is not substantially present in the bowels of the earth when it produces gold and other metals: but an agent acting through a power intrinsic to itself and not diffused from itself must necessarily become present immediately and according to its substance to the subject upon which it acts, and touch the patient itself suppositally; as is clear in fire, which although it acts upon a distant subject through heat diffused from itself, nevertheless through heat intrinsic to itself acts only upon the subject which it immediately touches. The minor, however, is proved: God in all things per se primo produces and conserves their being; for entity is that which is most intimate to any thing, and which inheres in all things most deeply, since it is formal with respect to all things which are in the thing: but He cannot reach that per se primo through some power diffused from Himself, but only through a power intrinsic to Himself and really identified with Himself: therefore God operates in all things through a power not diffused from Himself, but intrinsic to Himself and identified with Himself. The major is clear, both because being, since it is the most universal effect, must per se primo be reduced to the most universal cause, namely God; and also because, just as to ignite is the proper effect of fire, because fire is by essence fire, and therefore it belongs to it to make something ignited; so also, since God is being by essence, His proper effect is every participated being. — Add that since God can annihilate any created thing by the mere suspension of His influx, it is necessary that the influx of God per se primo reach the being of every created thing. The minor, however, is proved: a power which reaches being according to the proper notion of being must be creative and productive of the whole creatable being, and hence infinite, as is taught in the Metaphysica: but every power diffused from God is finite, as being caused by God and received in some subject: therefore God cannot per se primo cause and conserve being in individual things through some power diffused from Himself, but only through a power intrinsic to Himself and really identified with Himself, and consequently He cannot operate anywhere unless He essentially exists there. — I answer to the individual parts of the objection, and first indeed I distinguish the major: a corporeal and finite agent, which acts through influx, must be present immediately and according to substance to the things in which it operates, let it pass; a spiritual and infinite agent, which produces all things at the mere command and nod of its will, must be present in such a way, I deny; since, as we have already said, it can will that a thing be made in a distant place, just as it can will that it be made in a nearer place; but God is not a corporeal and finite agent, but infinite and spiritual; and consequently He does not require such presence. — To the proof of the minor I say that the entity of a thing considered precisely is not the only formal term of the productive action of God, but the thing itself total, and according to all the other predicates intrinsic to it; thus a man, who would be created immediately by God, would not be only the term of that creation according to the formal concept of being, but also according to the concept of animal, rational, risible, and of the others which concur to the integrity and constitution of man: and hence the doctrine of the Thomists, by which they contend that created being has the formal notion of term of divine production, seems less philosophical. — To the major, however, probative of that minor, I deny that created being is the most universal effect, and proper to the most universal cause alone; for any particular and secondary cause also truly produces its effect according to the formal notion of being, so that the being of that effect is attributed to the secondary cause as well as to the first. — To the minor, however, of that proof, I deny that the creative and productive power of creatable being must be infinite; for the power must be as great as the effect to be produced, and as great as the distance from the term a quo to the term ad quem; but no created effect is infinite, as is clear; likewise there is no infinite distance between nothing and created being, as the Doctor proves in 2. sentent., and hence the creative power need not be necessarily infinite.

Finally they object the authorities of several Holy Fathers, by which they gather the presence of God in all things from His operation in them. Thus Anastasius Sinaita, book 2, De rectis fidei Catholicae dogmatibus, has this: For as long as no one, if he is absent, works a work: therefore since God at no time does not effect whatever of those things which come to be, and governs and disposes all things by His continual conservation, it is wholly necessary to confess that God is in all things. Likewise Hugo Victorinus, lib. 7. Erud. Theolog., cap. 19., speaks thus: When we see that the effect of divine power is nowhere lacking, why do we doubt that the same power of God is in all things? But if the power of God is everywhere, since the power of God is not other than God, it is clear that God is nowhere lacking. Finally Anselm in Monologio, cap. 22.: Since, he says, nothing can be or be conserved without God, we are compelled to say that God is everywhere and always. — I answer that some of the Holy Fathers do indeed gather the presence of God in things from His operation; but through an extrinsic locus and a material consequence; not, however, through an intrinsic locus and a formal consequence. As if they said, God is everywhere, and therefore He operates everywhere; as has already been said.