How this Being is said to be substance: it transcends all substance and is individually whatever it is.
BUT, if what we have ascertained concerning the simplicity of this Nature is established, how is it substance? For, though every substance is susceptible of admixture of difference, or, at any rate, susceptible of mutation by accidents, the immutable purity of this Being is inaccessible to admixture or mutation, in any form.
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How, then, shall it be maintained that it is a substance of any kind, except as it is called substance for being, and so transcends, as it is above, every substance? For, as great as is the difference between that Being, which is through itself whatever it is, and which creates every other being from nothing, and a being, which is made whatever it is through another, from nothing; so much does the supreme Substance differ from these beings, which are not what it is. And, since it alone, of all natures, derives from itself, without the help of another nature, whatever existence it has, is it not whatever it is individually and apart from association with its creatures?
Hence, if it ever shares any name with other beings, doubtless a very different signification of that name is to be understood in its case.
It is not included among substances as commonly treated, yet it is a substance and an indivisible spirit.
IT is, therefore, evident that in any ordinary treatment of
substance, this Substance cannot be included, from sharing in whose essence
every nature is excluded. Indeed, since every substance is treated either as
universal, i. e., as essentially common to more than one substance, as being a
man is common to individual men; or as individual, having a universal essence
in common with others, as individual men have in common with individual men the
fact that they are men; does any one conceive that, in the treatment of other
substances, that supreme Nature is included, which neither divides itself into
more substances than one,
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Yet, seeing that it not only most certainly exists, but exists in the highest degree of all things; and since the essence of anything is usually called its substance, doubtless if any worthy name can be given it, there is no objection to our calling it substance.
And since no worthier essence than spirit and body is known, and of these, spirit is more worthy than body, it must certainly be maintained that this Being is spirit and not body. But, seeing that one spirit has not any parts, and there cannot be more spirits than one of this kind, it must, by all means, be an indivisible spirit. For since, as is shown above, it is neither compounded of parts, nor can be conceived of as mutable, through any differences or accidents, it is impossible that it is divisible by any form of division.