Page:Short Treatise on God, Man and His Wellbeing.djvu/172


 * Moreover, we have already stated, and we shall repeat it

later, that outside God there is nothing at all, and that he is

an Immanent Cause. Now, passivity, whenever the agent

and the patient are different entities, is a palpable imperfec-

tion, because the patient must necessarily be dependent on

that which has caused the passivity from outside; it has,

therefore, no place in God, who is perfect. Furthermore,

of such an agent who acts in himself it can never be said

that he has the imperfection of a patient, because he is not


 * affected by another; such, for instance, is the case with the

understanding, which, as the philosophers also assert, is the

cause of its ideas, since, however, it is an immanent cause,

what right has one to say that it is imperfect, howsoever

frequently it is affected by itself? ‡ Lastly, since substance

is [the cause] and the origin of all its modes, it may with

far greater right be called an agent than a patient. And

with these remarks we consider all adequately answered.

It is further objected, that there must necessarily be a

first cause which sets body in motion, because when at rest


 * it is impossible for it to set itself in motion. And since it

is clearly manifest that rest and motion exist in Nature,

these must, they think, necessarily result from an external

cause. But it is easy for us to reply to this ; for we concede

that, if body were a thing existing through itself, and had no

other attributes than length, breadth, and depth, then, if it

really rested there would be in it no cause whereby to begin

to move itself; but we have already stated before ''that

Nature is a being of which all attributes are predicated'', and

this being so, it can be lacking in nothing wherewith to


 * produce all that there is to be produced.

Having so far discussed what God is, we shall say but

a word, as it were, about his attributes: that those which

are known to us consist of two only, namely, Thought and ‡ B : And although the understanding, as the philosophers say,

is a cause of its ideas, yet, since it is an immanent cause, &c.