cause an effect should not follow, which is absurd.
But I shall show farther on, without the help of this proposition, that
neither intellect nor will pertain to the nature of God.

I know indeed that there are many who think themselves able to
demonstrate that intellect of the highest order and freedom of will both
pertain to the nature of God, for they say that they know nothing more
perfect which they can attribute to Him than that which is the chief
perfection in ourselves. But although they conceive God as actually
possessing the highest intellect, they nevertheless do not believe that
He can bring about that all those things should exist which are actually
in His intellect, for they think that by such a supposition they would
destroy His power. If He had created, they say, all things which are in
His intellect, He could have created nothing more, and this, they
believe, does not accord with God's omnipotence; so then they prefer to
consider God as indifferent to all things, and creating nothing except
that which He has decreed to create by a certain absolute will. But I
think that I have shown with sufficient clearness that from the supreme
power of God, or from His infinite nature, infinite things in infinite
ways, that is to say, all things, have necessarily flowed, or
continually follow by the same necessity, in the same way as it follows
from the nature of a triangle, from eternity and to eternity, that its
three angles are equal to two right angles. The omnipotence of God has
therefore been actual from eternity, and in the same actuality will
remain to eternity. In this way the omnipotence of God, in my opinion,
is far more firmly established.

My adversaries, indeed (if I may be permitted to speak plainly), seem to
deny the omnipotence of God, inasmuch as they are forced to admit that
He has in His mind an infinite number of things which might be created,
but which, nevertheless, He will never be able to create, for if He were
to create all things which He has in His mind, He would, according to
them, exhaust His omnipotence and make Himself imperfect. Therefore, in
order to make a perfect God, they are compelled to make Him incapable of
doing all those things to which His power extends, and anything more
absurd than this, or more opposed to God's omnipotence, I do not think
can be imagined.

Moreover--to say a word, too, here about the intellect and will which we
commonly attribute to God--if intellect an