Chapter 5, Section 1k

Hence the soul possessing God is in a state of “having nothing and yet possessing all things.” Cf. Dante, cio che per l’universa si squaderna, etc. 382 Cf. Section 5. 383 i. e. The Platonic ideas of things—their ultimate essences. But see below. 384 Cf. Blake. “Jerusalem,” ad fin. 385 i. e. If It produces the essences of things, It must first contain Essence. D. here uses the term “God” because he is thinking of the Absolute in Its emanating activity (wherein the Differentiations of the Trinity appear). 386 This is apparently the Bishop of Rome (c. A.D. 95), writer of the well-known Epistle to the Corinthians, which is the earliest Christian writing outside the New Testament, and is published in Lightfoot’s Apostolic Fathers. But no such passage as D. alludes to occurs in the Epistle, which is his one extant writing. 387 Cf. St. Augustine, Commentary on St. John, Tr. XXI., § 2: ”Ubi demonstrat Filio Pater quod facit nisi in ipso Filio per quem facit? . . . . Si quid facit Pater per Filium facit; si per sapientiam suam et virtutem suam facit; non extra illi ostendit quod videat . . . in ipso illi ostendit quod facit. . . . (3) Quid videt Pater, vel potius quid videt Filius in Patre . . . et ipse.“ (The Son beholds all things in Himself, and is Himself in the Father.) All things ultimately and timelessly exist in the Absolute. It is their Essence (or Super-Essence). Their creation from the Absolute into actual existence is performed by the Differentiated Persons of the Trinity: the Father working by the Spirit through the Son. Thus the Differentiated Persons (to which together is given the Name of God) being the manifested Absolute, contain eternally those fused yet distinct essences of things which exist in the Absolute as a single yet manifold Essence. This Essence they, by their mutual operation, pour forth, so that while ultimately contained in (or, rather identified with) the Absolute, it is in this world of relationships distinct and separate from the Differentiated Persons Which together are God, being in fact, a created manifestation of the Absolute, as God is an Uncreated Manifestation Thereof. This created Essence of the world itself becomes differentiated into the separate creatures (water, earth, plants, animals, etc.), having this tendency because it contains within itself their separate generic forms which seek expression in the various particular things. Wherever we can trace a law or purpose it is due to the presence of a generic form. Thus vapour condenses into water in obedience to the generic form of water, and an oak-tree grows to its full stature in obedience to the generic form of the oak. So too with works of art. A cathedral is built in accordance with a plan or purpose, and this plan is the pre-existent generic form of the building; whereas a fortuitous heap of stones does not (as such) manifest any plan, and therefore has no generic form. D. attributing to Clement (perhaps fictitiously) the view that generic forms can in themselves— i. e. in their created essence—be properly called Exemplars, maintains that this is not strictly accurate. Properly speaking, he says, they are Exemplars only as existent in God, and not as projected out from Him. If, by a licence, we call them Exemplars, yet we must not let our minds rest in them, but must pass on at once to find their true being in God.