44. To me, who hold that God cannot be known except by devotion, even to answer such objections seems no less unholy than to support them. What presumption to suppose that words can adequately describe His nature, when thought is often too deep for words, and His nature transcends even the conceptions of thought! What blasphemy even to discuss whether anything is lacking in God, whether He is Himself full, or it remains for Him to be fuller than His fulness! If God, Who is Himself the source of His own eternal divinity, were capable of progress, that He should be greater to-day than yesterday, He could never reach the time when nothing would be wanting to Him, for the nature to which advance is still possible must always in its progress leave some ground ahead still untrodden: if it be subject to the law of progress, though always progressing it must always be susceptible of further progress. But to Him, Who abides in perfect fulness, Who for ever is, there is no fulness left by which He can be made more full, for perfect fulness cannot receive an accession of further fulness. And this is the attitude of thought in which reverence contemplates God, namely, that nothing is wanting to Him, that He is full.

44. Deo pleno nil deest, nil accedit.---Ac mihi quidem Deum sola veneratione intelligenti, non minus 0429A his respondere impium videtur, quam adesse; et de natura, quae humani sensus conceptionem excedat, verbis quorum adhuc significatio angustior quam intelligentia sit, enuntiare se posse confidere ac primum ambigere, desitne quid Deo, an plenus ipse sit, vel pleno jam pleniorem esse reliquum sit. Quod si Deus, cui non aliunde est quod Deus semper est, profectum habeat, ut plus sit aliquando; non potest tamen ad id pervenire, ne sibi nihil 403 desit: quia cui naturae profectus est reliquus, numquam intelligitur sine aliquo incremento residuo profecisse; dum natura ad profectum spectans, proficiens licet semper, semper tamen pateat ad profectum. Quod autem in plenitudine perfecta manet, semperque est, non sibi reliquit ut plenius sit: quia accessionem 0429B plenitudinis plenioris perfecta plenitudo non capiat. Et haec quidem de Deo ita opinandi piae intelligentiae species est, Deo nihil deesse, plenumque esse.