deny the claim of someone who says that He is everywhere. For if he allows that an existent can be neither within the world nor outside it, and cannot be pointed to, then, while maintaining these negations, he cannot deny the claim of someone who says: “He is everywhere—not in the manner of one body with another, nor of an accident with another accident or a body.” If he argues against this by saying that being everywhere would entail His needing a substrate, or something similar, his opponent replies: “He is everywhere, yet He does not need a substrate. Only an accident or a body needs a substrate, and He is neither a body nor an accident. Rather, He is neither in contact with things nor separate from them, since contact and separation are properties of bodies, and He is not a body.”

Likewise, someone may say: “He is everywhere, yet He neither indwells anything, nor is in contact with anything, nor is separate from anything.” If the one denying this says, “This is inconceivable,” his counterpart, who says that He is neither within the world nor outside it, replies: “Your statement is also inconceivable.” Both positions therefore contradict what reason recognizes, and there is no more justification for invalidating one rather than the other than for doing the reverse.

Only those of sound natural disposition, who have not said anything that contradicts clear reason, can refute both groups.

It is well known that someone who says that He is within the world, in the way that something self-subsisting is within