Of God and His CreaturesProvided it be not essentially incompatible with what was 'put in' originally. But if bovine nature be the original endowment, civil status and capacity cannot possibly 'impressed' upon that.
I hope I may insist upon this without disrespect to St Thomas, -- nay, without departure from his further and inner mind (Chap. XCVII), here not so clearly expressed, bent as he was for the nonce upon explaining the Augustinian quotation with which he concludes. In these days, when the great philosophic difficulty against theism is the prevalence of evil, it is of the first importance to beware of any theistic statement which seems to represent God as mere Will, arbitrary, unconditioned, and untrammelled by any regard to the eternal fitnesses and possibilities of nature. In the presence of evils such as we daily experience, to ally such sheer, imperious, overruling and overwhelming Will with Goodness, is a task which one shrinks from contemplating. Happily, it is not the task of the philosopher and the Christian. No lord paramount thumos or boulêsis can run counter to the eidê. If we might put words into the mouth of our Creator, words suggested by our great dramatist, we might fancy God saying:
I can do all that doth become a God:
Who can do more, is none.
That alone 'doth become a God,' which is consonant with the
eidê, or fixed intelligible natures of things, which are
the expression of His nature as imitable beyond Himself God is "the
first measure of every being and of every nature" by virtue of what He
is in Himself in His own being and His own nature, not by mere virtue
of His will.