divine perfection, to attribute to it potentiality, that is (in English) power, and successive duration; for such attributes are often given to it in the Scripture. (_h_) “He saith moreover, that ‘he understands as little how it can be true which I say, that God is not just, but justice itself, nor eternal, but eternity itself’. It seems, howsoever he be versed in this question, that he hath not troubled his head over-much with reading School-divines, or metaphysicians.” They are unseemly words to be said of God: I will not say, blasphemous and atheistical, which are the attributes he gives to my opinions, because I do not think them spoken out of an evil mind, but out of error: they are, I say, unseemly words to be said of God, that he is not just, that he is not eternal, and (as he also said) that he is not wise; and cannot be excused by any following _but_, especially when the _but_ is followed by that which is not to be understood. Can any man understand how justice is just, or wisdom wise? and whereas justice is an accident, one of the moral virtues, and wisdom another; how God is an accident or moral virtue? It is more than the Schoolmen or metaphysicians can understand; whose writings have troubled my head more than they should have done, if I had known that amongst so many senseless disputes, there had been so few lucid intervals. But I have considered since, where men will undertake to reason out of natural philosophy of the incomprehensible nature of God, that it is impossible they should speak intelligibly, or in other language than metaphysic, wherein they may contradict themselves, and not perceive it; as he does here, when he says, “the attributes of God are not diverse virtues or qualities in him, as they are in the creatures, but really one and the same with the divine essence and amongst themselves, and attributed to God to supply the defect of our capacity”. Attributes are names; and therefore it is a contradiction, to say they are really one and the same with the divine essence. But if he mean the virtues signified by the attributes, as justice, wisdom, eternity, divinity, &c; so also they are virtues, and not one virtue, (which is still a contradiction); and we give those attributes to God, not to shew that we apprehend how they are in him, but to signify how we think it best to honour him.