herefore the idea of God, from which
infinite numbers of things follow in infinite ways, can be one only.

The common people understand by God's power His free will and right over
all existing things, which are therefore commonly looked upon as
contingent; for they say that God has the power of destroying everything
and reducing it to nothing. They very frequently, too, compare God's
power with the power of kings. That there is any similarity between the
two we have disproved. We have shown that God does everything with that
necessity with which He understands Himself; that is to say, as it
follows from the necessity of the divine nature that God understands
Himself (a truth admitted by all), so by the same necessity it follows
that God does an infinitude of things in infinite ways. Moreover, we
have shown that the power of God is nothing but the active essence of
God, and therefore it is as impossible for us to conceive that God does
not act as that He does not exist. If it pleased me to go farther, I
could show besides that the power which the common people ascribe to God
is not only a human power (which shows that they look upon God as a man,
or as being like a man), but that it also involves weakness. But I do
not care to talk so much upon the same subject. Again and again I ask
the reader to consider and reconsider what is said upon this subject
[above].[15] For it is not possible for any one properly to understand
the things which I wish to prove unless he takes great care not to
confound the power of God with the human power and right of kings.

_The Order and Dependence of Ideas in God_

The formal Being of ideas is a mode of thought (as is self-evident);
that is to say, a mode which expresses in a certain manner the nature of
God in so far as He is a thinking thing. It is a mode, therefore, that
involves the conception of no other attribute of God, and consequently
is the effect of no other attribute except that of thought; therefore
the formal Being of ideas recognizes God for its cause in so far only as
He is considered as a thinking thing, and not in so far as He is
manifested by any other attribute; that is to say, the ideas both of
God's attributes and of individual things do not recognize as their
efficient cause the objects of the ideas or the things which are
perceived, but God Himself in so far as He is a thinking thing.[16]

God's power of thinking is equal to His actual power of acting; that is