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Ars Brevis | | |
1. God
1. The First Subject, God, Discussed with
the Principles
God can be discussed with the principles
and the rules. Now God is good, great etc.
Many definitions of God can be given, in
the broad sense. But here we only give
one of Him: God is the being who needs
nothing outside himself, because every
perfection is in Him.
By this definition, god is different from all
other beings, because all other beings
need something outside of themselves.
In God there is no contrariety or minority,
because these are privative and defective
principles.
Nonetheless, in God there is majority with
regard to other beings. And there is
equality, because He has equal principles,
namely goodness, greatness etc. and He
has equal relations and acts.
In God there is difference between
correlatives, without which these
correlatives have no way of existing; nor
can God have infinite and eternal intrinsic
action without them; so much so that
without them, all His reasons would
remain idle, which is utterly impossible.
In God there is concordance, with which
He is infinitely and eternally removed from
contrariety, and His correlatives convene
infinitely and eternally in one essence and
nature; and the same can be said about
His reasons.
In God there is neither quantity, nor time,
nor any accident. This is because His
substance is stripped of all accidents and
segregated from them, because it is
infinite and eternal. Now that God has
been conditioned with the four above
conditions, the intellect understands that
it is conditioned to understand God and
the things that can be said about him with
the principles and rules proper to God,
and it knows and understands that if
angels, like other creatures, have their
own innate natural power, God has much
more of it, as He is a much loftier subject,
according to the proof concluding from the
smaller to the greater.
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