4. Let us, therefore, contemplate this Divinity who is not present
here, and absent there, but who is everywhere. All those who have
any idea of the divinities admit that they, as well as that supreme
Divinity, are present everywhere. Reason compels this admission. Now,
since the Divinity is everywhere, He is not divided; otherwise, He
would not be present everywhere; He would have His parts, one here,
and another there. He would no longer be a unity; He would resemble an
expanse divided into a number of parts; He would be annihilated in this
division, and all His parts would no longer form the whole; in short,
He would have become body. If that be impossible, we shall have to
admit that to which before we refused assent, to which all human nature
testifies, namely, that the Divinity is everywhere simultaneously
present, entire, and identical. If we acknowledge such a nature as
infinite, since it has no limits, this will be granting that it lacks
nothing. Now if it lack nothing, it must be present to every essence;
if it could not be essence, there would be places, where it did not
exist, and it would lack something. The essences which exist beneath
the One exist simultaneously with Him, are posterior to Him, refer
to Him, and reattach themselves to Him as His creatures; so that to
participate in what is posterior to Him is to participate in Himself.
As, in the intelligible world, there is a multitude of beings which
there occupy the first, second, or third ranks, in that they depend
from that only centre of a single sphere; and as they coexist there
without any separating distance between them, the result is that the
essences which occupy the first or second ranks are present there even
where are the beings that occupy the third rank.