ABSTRACT
By the Divine attributes are signified those perfections which, to employ Scholastic terminology, exist formally and necessarily in God. This chapter briefly enumerates the principal attributes, distinguishing them into the classes into which they naturally fall. It proceeds to show how they may, one and all, be deduced from the notion of Subsistent Being, which must be regarded as being for our intelligence the 'essence' of God, the primary constitutive of the Divine nature. Truth, in the primary sense of the word, is proper to the intellect: it is an attribute not of things but of thoughts. Goodness is the relation standing to the will as an object of desire or complacency. Eternity is the attribute which declares the nature of God's duration. Immensity is the attribute signifying that spatial limits and restrictions can have no application in regard of God. The attributes of truth, unity and goodness are predicate of 'things' properly, so called entities.
