ould this be than
openly to affirm that God, who necessarily understands what He wills, is
able by His will to understand things in a manner different from that in
which He understands them, which, as I have just shown, is a great
absurdity? I can therefore turn the argument on my opponents in this
way. All things depend upon the power of God. In order that things may
be differently constituted, it would be necessary that God's will should
be differently constituted; but God's will cannot be other than it is as
we have lately most clearly deduced from His perfection. Things
therefore cannot be differently constituted.

I confess that this opinion, which subjects all things to a certain
indifferent God's will, and affirms that all things depend upon God's
good pleasure, is at a less distance from the truth than the opinion of
those who affirm that God does everything for the sake of the Good. For
these seem to place something outside of God which is independent of
Him, to which He looks while He is at work as to a model, or at which He
aims as if at a certain mark. This is indeed nothing else than to
subject God to fate, the most absurd thing which can be affirmed of Him
whom we have shown to be the first and only free cause of the essence of
all things as well as of their existence. Therefore it is not worth
while that I should waste time in refuting this absurdity.

Before I go any farther, I wish here to explain or rather to recall to
recollection, what we mean by _natura naturans_ and what by _natura
naturata_. For, from what has gone before, I think it is plain that by
_natura naturans_ we are to understand that which is in itself and is
conceived through itself, or those attributes of substance which express
eternal and infinite essence, that is to say, God in so far as He is
considered as a free cause. But by _natura naturata_ I understand
everything which follows from the necessity of the nature of God, or of
any one of God's attributes, that is to say, all the modes of God's
attributes in so far as they are considered as things which are in God,
and which without God can neither be nor can be conceived.

... Individual things are nothing but affections or modes of God's
attributes, expressing those attributes in a certain and determinate
manner.

_General Conclusions_

I have now explained the nature of God and its properties. I have shown
that He necessarily exists; that He is one God; that from the nece