—the Most Beautiful Names. All of this is good1; it never departs from what benefits the servants, from compassion and mercy toward them, and from kindness that perfects them through the very commands and prohibitions He has laid upon them. Every one of His commands is pure benefit, wisdom, mercy, gentleness, and grace, for its source is His Most Beautiful Names. Likewise, all of His acts fall wholly within justice, wisdom, benefit, and mercy, because they too spring from His Most Beautiful Names. Hence there is no disparity or frivolity in His creation: He did not create His creatures in vain, aimlessly, or for sport. And just as every existent other than Him comes into being solely through His act of bringing it into existence—so that the existence of what is other than Him is subordinate to His existence, as an effect is subordinate to its Maker—so knowledge of Him2 is the root of knowledge of everything besides Him.

Thus, knowledge of His Names and enumerating them is the foundation of all the sciences: whoever counts His Names as befits a created being has encompassed every branch of knowledge, for enumerating His Names is the key to enumerating everything that can be known; the objects of knowledge arise from those Names3 and are intrinsically connected to them. Reflect, then, on how both creation and command issue from His knowledge and wisdom; for that reason you will find in them neither flaw nor disparity.