an offspring generated from Him, and affirm that His offspring has a will and acts by which it brings events about in succession, then it is all the more fitting to affirm that He has a will by which He acts. Moreover, His essence necessarily entailing His attributes is more readily intelligible than its necessarily entailing things separate from Him. For these attributes are attributes of perfection, so the essence necessarily entailing them implies its perfection. But there is no perfection in the essence necessarily entailing something else, separate from it, such that it cannot be parted from it. It is well known that the higher is not perfected by the lower.

From this the eighth point becomes clear: They deny the attributes, allowing Him only a negative attribute, a relational attribute, or one combining the two. They say this is because attributes entail multiplicity and composition, which entail dependence on another, contrary to necessary existence.

Yet it is self-evident to the innate disposition that an essence from which another essence has been generated—one that can never be separated from it, whose necessary attachment to it and generation from it cannot be prevented, even if the first essence wished otherwise, for its wish would not take effect, and which cannot change anything, bring it into existence, or exercise any control over it whatsoever—is more open to objection on several grounds than an essence that is self-sufficient with the attributes it possesses.

We have already answered the extraneous objection concerning composition and explained that all these are indeterminate, equivocal expressions, and that it is impossible for an existent to