mercy, and by various acts—such as creation, rising above, and the like—it would not, in their view, be one, but rather composite and a body.

They may then be told: What you call one has no reality outside the mind. It is merely something conceived in the mind, with no actual existence. It resembles the simple one from which you hold species to be composed. For this one which they posit among universals, and from which they say existing species are composed, resembles the One they posit in metaphysics and call the principle of existence.

Neither has any reality outside the mind. Each is merely conceived by the mind, just as it conceives universals abstracted from particular things, or abstract extension, abstract duration, and abstract matter, as maintained by Plato’s followers and those who agree with them.

Indeed, these things are closer to existing outside the mind than the one they conceive—whether the simple universal one from which species are composed in their definitions and essences, or the particular One from which existing things proceed.

Once this One of theirs is shown to be invalid, their monotheism is invalidated, and so is their negation of the attributes. Their claim that only one can proceed from the One is likewise invalidated, and thus their doctrine concerning acts, their conclusions regarding the eternity of the world, and the argument they offered in support of it all fall apart. For they said: “How can something that had not previously proceeded from Him proceed from Him, without something new subsisting