Scotus Academicus, Tomus primus: De Deo in se subsistente

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.