indeed, feeling most deeply impressed, we cannot refrain from paying our tribute of praise to his creating and sublime mind; but how wonderful soever these works may be, how surprising soever their principles, their consequences and their ends, still those works remain always foreign and extrinsic to the nature of the inventors. These animals, and these men, work or operate in this case as far as they are artists, not as far as they are animals or men. The nature of the inventor is always something more noble than the thing invented. But when we see a fish sporting in the waters with his young ones, a bird administering food to his exulting little offspring, a man who tenderly presses his darlings, who surround him, and lisp with him, to his bosom, then we begin more rapturously to admire that quality, that strength, that passion which the sovereign creator has infused into his creatures, by which they bring forth beings like unto themselves, and naturally operate with effects which are so much more exalted and more noble. If we have found God working in time, on a matter foreign to his nature, if we have found him a most wise architect of all his creatures, shall we not find him also operating from all eternity in his own nature? Shall we not find him a producer of a divine progeny? If we have discovered in God a less noble perfection, viz. that of producing without himself in time, shall we not admit in him the more noble perfection, namely, that of producing within himself from all eternity? He that has imparted fecundity to created beings, shall he be barren within himself?* "Shall not I, that make others to bring forth children, myself bring forth, says the Lord? Shall I, that give generation to others, be barren, says the Lord thy God?""

SECTION II.

CII. Here the reasoning on the blessed Trinity begins. The production which belongs to God as far as he is God, is more

Isaiah Lxvi. 9.

worthy of him than the production, which belongs to him as supreme artist and creator. This is undeniable from the preliminary observations. But the production of a God from God, i. e. from his own substance, belongs to God as far as he is God. Therefore, the production is more excellent and more noble than the production of the universe, which belongs to God, only as far as he is an infinitely wise architeck, a creator.* The former belongs to God in as far as he is God, because it is connatural, proper, and intrinsic to God, but the latter belongs to God as creator, because it is extrinsic to him and artificial. The creation exists; therefore there exists the less worthy and less noble production; if the less worthy and less noble production exists, shall there not have been, and shall there not be, prior to it, the more worthy, the more noble, the more excellent, the more glorious production? The perfection of the divine essence will not permit us to doubt of it. The divine nature being of infinite virtue, and of infinite vigour, is sovereignly active, and the divine perfections being all infinite, they arrive in their full energy to the highest degree possible. This once established, I reason thus: the productive force in the divine nature is better than its contrary; if it be a perfection, it will be in God infinite without boundaries, without measure, without limits, therefore the Supreme Being will be able to produce also intrinsically, within his own nature, and we shall have an incontestable right to advance that he does so, until it be clearly demonstrated that the thing is impossible, from its implying some contradiction or repugnancy.

In the first production which belongs to God as far as he is God, God acts with all the extent and power of all his perfections taken together; he acts with a strength without restriction and without limits, and thus communicates all his most perfect substance, his divinity, and his owrself entirely; but when he acts as creator, he sets boundaries and limits to himself, and does not do all that he is able to do, and communicates but in limited measure soine certain images of his beauties, and behold here the reason, why the production which belongs to God as far as he is God, is more worthy of him than the production which belongs to God as far as he is the sovereign artist and. creator.

CIII. But although God might do it, does it follow that he has done it? The inference from the power to the act, say the logicians, is not correct, is not just; a posse ad actum non valet consequentia.

To this I answer: If God had not been sweetly and actually necessitated from all eternity to that intrinsic production, this production could not, and would never have existed, because the divine nature will always be what it always was, without being subject to any revolution, or to any change; and this being a production intrinsic to the divine essence, if it had not existed from all eternity, the divine essence would be altered at the moment, it would begin to exist. This production, therefore, either was always, or it can never be, there exists, therefore, in the divine Being something useless, for in that case the power of producing intrinsically would be useless; useless would be the infinity of the productive force.* But this implies repugnancy, and is impossible; therefore the production intrinsic to the divine essence has always been. If the productive force of God in its infinity be highest, it must produce an infinite and a highest term, or else it would not produce according to its full extent, and thus it would appear frustraneous. This infinite and this highest term cannot be drawn from nothing, therefore this productive eternal, immense and great force must draw from itself or from the divine nature an eternal, an immense, a grand production, and thus you see that the most worthy and the noblest production in God must be intrinsic to his essence.

A Being actually infinite, a Being infinite in all perfections, cannot be drawn out of nothing: for if it could be drawn out of nothing, there might exist two Beings actually infinite, infinite in all perfections, a Being existing of himself, and another drawn out of nothing; but the supposed possibility of such

*If this force or power has not produced from all eternity, it is impossible that it should ever produce; it is therefore useless. On the contrary the force productive of effects foreign to the divine nature has produced, produces, and will produce, and of course will never be useless, because God made, makes, and will continue to make use of it

two infinite Beings involves contradiction, therefore an infinite Being cannot be drawn out of nothing. That the supposed possibility of two such infinite Beings involves contradiction, is clearer than noon-day, for those two Beings would be on the one hand actually infinite, and infinite in all perfections, and on the other, the one would not have the nature of the other, since the one would be a Being of himself, and the other a Being of another; therefore neither of them would be actually infinite and immense. It is, consequently, only from his own nature, without dividing it, that the supreme, immense, and great Being, can draw another supreme, immense, and great one, and if he draws him from his own nature, the production cannot but be a substantial and perfect image of the producer, since on the one side he acts with infinite vigour and force, and on the other his nature cannot be divided.

CIV. God took delight in the outward production, as is that of the universe, and the actual existence of this universe affords us an evidence of it; for if he had not been well pleased in creating it, it would never have existed: there is, therefore, complacency in God, and this complacency may be the highest, it may be infinite; and such a complacency always increases more and more, according as the object produced comes nearer to the resemblance of the producer. Hence it is that God certainly delights more in the creation of man, and derives from it greater pleasure, than from the creation of inferior creatures: but such a delight, such a complacency, cannot but be transient, accidental, and foreign to the divine essence.

But then only is God's complacency substantial ‘and infinite, when he turns his divine look on his intrinsic production, then indeed is the affluence of pleasure, of content, and joy, carried to the highest degree, to an absolute extreme or termination, for in that production he beholds not a being that resembles him, but another self, great of great, wise of wise, God of God, of his own indivisible essence, eternal, infinite, and immense; if there be in God complacency in his production, that complacency must be infinite in every respect, because he is infinite in every regard; therefore his complacency

must be in every respect and intensely infinite. But if this complacency be intensely infinite, it cannot be derived from a finite and limited object; it must therefore flow from an unlimited and infinite object-but this actually infinite and unlimited object cannot but be God; consequently if there be in God infinite complacency in producing, it cannot come but from an intrinsic production, for which only it can be intensively infinite, and that from all eternity, and antecedently to the whole creation. I say, from all eternity, because the divine essence, which at no time can undergo either change or alteration, must exist from eternity. I say next, antecedently to the whole creation, because God cannot behold any outward being before beholding his own nature; since it is in his essence he beholds all things, but when he turns his own content, his own complacency and delight to his intrinsic production, this act of complacency causes it immediately to exist, or else it would not be infinitely perfect, and intensely infinite, since it would be destitute of the first of all perfections, which is to be existing and behold! thence it is eternal, immense, intelligent, most simple, the true real, and perfect image of the living God, the only light of the light, the great of the great, God of God.

CV. God not only is well pleased at the creating act by which he draws from nothing millions of created beings, but he likewise rejoices at and delights in their perpetual society, bearing them and preserving them most amorously in his bosom. If, therefore, the society of beings called from nothing into existence, of beings circumscribed and finite, of beings which, when compared with him, what perfection soever they may possess, are no more at most than a dim spark in comparison with the sun; if, I say, the society of such beings be so sweet and pleasant to him, how much ampler redundancy of joy, how much more extensive affluence of sweetness, will he enjoy in a production from his own indivisible nature, equal to him in all things, in eternity, in immensity, in omnipotence?

Let us reflect, that if this one production were not to exist in the divine nature, God would be wanting of that infinite