PART I: CONCERNING GOD.
Page: 30

essence are identical, it follows that, if God had had a
different actual intellect and a different will, his essence
would also have been different; and thus, as I concluded at
first, if things had been brought into being by God in a
different way from that which has obtained, God's intellect and
will, that is (as is admitted) his essence would perforce have
been different, which is absurd.

As these things could not have been brought into being by God in
any but the actual way and order which has obtained; and as the
truth of this proposition follows from the supreme perfection of
God; we can have no sound reason for persuading ourselves to
believe that God did not wish to create all the things which were
in his intellect, and to create them in the same perfection as
he had understood them.

But, it will be said, there is in things no perfection nor
imperfection; that which is in them, and which causes them to be
called perfect or imperfect, good or bad, depends solely on the
will of God. If God had so willed, he might have brought it
about that what is now perfection should be extreme
imperfection, and vice versa. What is such an assertion, but
an open declaration that God, who necessarily understands that
which he wishes, might bring it about by his will, that he
should understand things differently from the way in which he
does understand them? This (as we have just shown) is the height
of absurdity. Wherefore, I may turn the argument against its
employers, as follows:--All things depend on the power of God.
In order that things should be different from what they are,
God's will would necessarily have to be different. But God's
will cannot be different (as we have just most clearly
demonstrated) from God's perfection. Therefore neither can
things be different. I confess, that the theory which subjects
all things to the will of an indifferent deity, and asserts that
they are all dependent on his fiat, is less far from the truth
than the theory of those, who maintain that God acts in all
things with a view of promoting what is good. For these latter
persons seem to set up something beyond God, which does not