"God," a word which has _no significance_ except to the Reason: "as necessarily determined,"--a phrase which belongs only to the Understanding. The opposite is the truth: "to pass from absolute essence." This can have no meaning except to the Pure Reason: "to relative manifestation." This belongs to the Understanding. It contradicts the other; and the process is absurd. The mind balks in the attempt to think it. In creation there is no such process as "passing from absolute essence to relative manifestation." The words imply that God, in passing from the state of absolute essence, ceased to be absolute essence, and became "relative manifestation." All this is absurd; and is in the Understanding and Sense. God never _became_. The Creator is still absolute essence, as before creation; and the logician's this or that are both false; and his third possibility is not a contradiction, but the truth. The fact of creation may be thus stated. The infinite Person, freely according his will to the behest of his worth, and yet equally free to not so accord his will, put forth from himself the creative energy; and this under such modes, that he neither lost nor gained by the act; but that, though the latter state was diverse from the first, still neither was better than the other, but both were equally good. Before creation, he possessed absolute plenitude of endowments. All possible ideals were present before his eye. All possible joy continued a changeless state in his sensibility. His will, as choice, was absolute benevolence; and, as act, was competent to all possible effort. To push the ideal out, and make it real, added nothing to, and subtracted nothing from, his fulness. The fact must be learned that muscular action and the working of pure spirit are so diverse, that the inferior mode cannot be an illustration of the superior. A change in a pure spirit, which neither adds nor subtracts, leaves the good unchanged. Hence, when the infinite Person created, he passed neither from better to worse, nor from worse to better; but the two states, though diverse, were equally good.