The system of theology represented by these extracts may, as we think, be fairly summed up as follows: We believe that God in His own nature is absolute and unconditioned; but we can only positively conceive Him by means of relations and conditions suggested by created things. We believe that His own nature is simple and uniform, admitting of no distinction between various attributes, nor between any attribute and its subject; but we can conceive Him only by means of various attributes, distinct from the subject and from each other.[I] We believe that in verum, aut bonum esse, aut omnino ipsum esse. His own nature He is exempt from all relations of time; but we can conceive Him only by means of ideas and terms which imply temporal relations, a past, a present, and a future.[J] Our thought, then, must not be taken as the measure and limit of our belief: we think by means of relations and conditions derived from created things; we believe in an Absolute Being, in whose nature these conditions and relations, in some manner unknown to us, disappear in a simple and indivisible unity. [I] This will be found most distinctly stated in the context of the extract from Beveridge, and in the citations from St. Augustine given in his notes; to which may be added the following from _De Trinitate_, vi. 7:--"Deus vero multipliciter quidem dicitur magnus, bonus, sapiens, beatus, verus, et quidquid aliud non indigne dici videtur; sed eadem magnitudo ejus est quae sapientia, non enim mole magnus est, sed virtute; et eadem bonitas quae sapientia et magnitudo, et eadem veritas quae illa omnia: et non est ibi aliud beatum esse et aliud magnum, aut sapientem, aut verum, aut bonum esse, aut omnino ipsum esse." [J] Compare the remarkable words of Bishop Beveridge, _l.c._, "And therefore, though I cannot apprehend His mercy to Abel in the beginning of the world, and His mercy to me now, but as two distinct expressions of His mercy, yet as they are in God, they are but one and the same act,--as they are in God, I say, who is not measured by time, as our apprehensions of Him are, but is Himself eternity; a centre without a circumference, eternity without time."