Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

there can be nothing more magnificently expressive of the infiniteness of God to a humane conception, than this expression of God himself in the Prophet.

In the Perfection of a Creature, something still may be thought greater to be added to it; But God containing all Perfections in himself formally, if they be mere Perfections; and eminently, if they be but Perfections in the Creature, mixed with imperfection; nothing can be thought greater, and therefore every one of them is infinite.

In the Perfection of a Creature, something still may be thought greater to be added to it; But God containing all Perfections in himself formally, if they be meer Perfections; and eminently, if they be but Perfections in the Creature, mixed with imperfection; nothing can be thought greater, and therefore every one of them is infinite.

2. If his Perfections be Infinite, his Essence must be so. How God can have infinite Perfections, and a finite Essence is unconceivable by a Humane or Angelical understanding; an infinite Power, an infinite Wisdom, an infinite Duration, must needs speak an infinite Essence; since the infiniteness of his Attributes is grounded upon the infiniteness of his Essence: To own infinite Perfections in a finite Subject, is contradictory. The manner of Acting by his Power, and Knowing by his Wisdom, ⟨p. 253⟩cannot exceed the manner of Being by his Essence. His Perfections flow from his Essence, and the Principle must be of the same rank with what flows from it; and if we conceive his Essence to be the cause of his Perfections; 'tis utterly impossible that an infinite effect should arise from a finite Cause; but indeed his Perfections are his Essence, for tho' we conceive the Essence of God as the subject, and the Attributes of God as faculties and qualities in that Subject according to our weak model, who cannot conceive of an infinite God without some manner of likeness to our selves; who find Understanding, and Will, and Power in us distinct from our Substance; yet truly and really there is no distinction between his Essence and Attributes; one is inseparable from the other; his Power and Wisdom are his Essence; and therefore to maintain God Infinite in the one, and Finite in the other, is to make a Monstrous God, and have an unreasonable notion of the Deity; for there would be the greatest disproportion in his nature, since there is no greater disproportion can possibly be between one thing and another, than there is between finite and infinite: God must not only then be compounded, but have parts of the greatest distance from one another in nature; but God being the most Simple Being without the least composition, both must be equally infinite: If then his Essence be not infinite, his Power and Wisdom cannot be infinite, which is both against Scripture and Reason.