Thus the Divinity, being the object of desire, must be the most desired
and the most loved, precisely because He has no figure nor shape. The
love He inspires is immense; this love is limitless, because of the
limitlessness of its object. He is infinite, because the beauty of its
object surpasses all beauty. Not being any essence, how indeed could
the (divinity) have any determinate beauty? As supreme object of love,
He is the creator of beauty.[136] Being the generating power of all
that is beautiful, He is at the same time the flower in which beauty
blooms[137]: for He produces it, and makes it more beautiful still by
the superabundance of beauty which He sheds on her. He is therefore
simultaneously the principle and goal of beauty.[138] As principle of
beauty, He beautifies all that of which He is the principle. It is not
however by shape that He beautifies; what He produces has no shape, or,
to speak more accurately, He has a shape in a sense different from the
habitual meaning of this term. The shape which is no more than a shape
is a simple attribute of some substance, while the Shape that subsists
in itself is superior to shape. Thus, that which participates in beauty
was a shape; but beauty itself has none.