nes things translated from things sensed to divine things. What are the divine forms. What are the figures, members, instruments. What are the divine places. What are the ornaments. What are the furies, the sadnesses, indignations, drunkennesses, gluttonies, oaths, execrations, slumbers, awakenings. And whatever other formations signifying God that are formed by sacred reason.
¶ Concerning the degrees of cognitive powers and of things to be known, and why the discourse concerning superior things is accustomed to be true and brief.

Discourse concerning superior things

is true and, by the very nature of the things, ought to be briefer than discourse concerning inferior things, which both Plato and Plotinus affirm. This can be asserted both from the cognitive powers and from the things to be known. The imagination accomplishes with one [act] and fewer acts what the many senses accomplish with many acts. Reason, with one certain universal form, encompasses many things that are perceived singly through the imagination in many forms. The intellect sees with a certain immobile and sudden intuition what reason hunts after through varied discourse. And the more sublime the intellect is, because of the efficacy of nature and the exemplary form, the fewer things it knows and accomplishes for the many. For just as the eye judges a circular figure with one single intuition, which the blind touch perceives by handling it repeatedly, so every intellect is related to reason. And again, a superior intellect to an inferior one. ¶ Thus far concerning the cognitive powers; furthermore, the things to be known, the more superior they are, are to that extent gradually fewer in number. But they are broader in virtue. Therefore, by both reasons, a legitimate discourse concerning superior things is brief. But a broad notion, which perhaps if it were not broad, in order to measure or repeat it at least less, the discourse ought to be the briefest. Finally, in God Himself, as a superior intellect, not only does discourse, whether internal or external, cease, but even intelligence itself ceases. But what is lacking to intelligence, it compensates for with a certain love and almost gesture and touch and unity by grace. But we have already treated these things more broadly along with Plotinus in the commentaries on him.
¶ Discourse concerning higher things ought to be shorter.

Of those things, you have grasped that the extremes are more numerous in words than the summits.

It was certainly fitting that theological institutions and the explanations of divine names be treated with a shorter discourse than significative theology. For as we strive toward more sublime things, to that extent the discourses are contracted to the very perspectives of intelligibles. Just as now, entering that darkness which surpasses the intellect, we will fall not only into brevity of speech but even into silence and the complete cessation of intelligence. ¶ Now, indeed, the discourse descending from the supreme to the lowest was extending itself gradually in proportion to the breadth of the descent. Now, however, the discourse ascending from inferior things to the sublime, according to the mode of ascent, gradually becomes narrower. Therefore, after every ascent, it will become silent and will be joined completely to the ineffable.
¶ All things preferring a certain form can be affirmed of God and denied. But affirmation should be started from the superior, but negation from the inferior.

God exists as the highest

above every position, since He is infinite goodness. You cannot, therefore, apply something so good to God that a better thing does not remain to be applied further. He is also above every removal, since He is unity, eminence, and infinite simplicity. Indeed, for the first reason, He is superior to every removal. For as long as it is permitted to move something toward God as if it proceeded from Him, so long it is also lawful to remove the same as if what is from Him were not that thing. But it is always under Him, and from Him you will find whatever good you discover. Therefore, it is plausible to affirm of God whatever things have form, action, and order. But it is more plausible to affirm of the first