Just as intelligible things

cannot be comprehended or looked upon by sensible things, nor simple and unfigured things by fictitious and figured things. Nor does the unformed nature itself, shining forth from incorporeal things, have the touch or figure of things formed by corporeal figures. By the same reason of truth, the super-essential infinity itself excels all essences. The unity itself, superior to the intellect, also surpasses all intellects. Finally, the One, superior to thought, cannot be thought out by any thoughts. And the Good is ineffable, in excess of every word by words. ¶ The unifier of all unity, the super-essential essence, [is] by no means an intelligible intellect. The unutterable Word. The naming of the Word, of intelligence, and of name; this indeed is according to no existing thing. It is the cause to all things that they exist, but it itself is not, as superior to all essence. And finally, just as it has declared about itself, it is known properly. ¶ Therefore, about this most secret deity, which also surpasses essence, as has been said, one must dare to speak or think nothing, except those things which the sacred utterances have divinely handed down to us.

¶ No intellect can comprehend God. The blessed intellect alone can know what God is, by supernatural light alone.

Marsilius.

The intellect,

by natural light, can understand by certain reasons first that God is. Then that He is not [the same as] God Himself. Third, that and how He brings about and rules [things]. Fourth, in what condition all things stand toward God. ¶ But to know what the nature of God itself is, neither our intellect nor an angelic one can [know] by natural light. For that nature is by a long interval above all existence and intelligence, however perfect. But blessed minds understand what God is under a certain light more than natural, when God Himself joins Himself to the mind, as if it were a form which it sees and through which it sees. Hence Plotinus: the mind, he says, perfectly purged, is first made God through divine union, before it knows what God Himself is. But to comprehend God, and to apprehend His nature under all its reasons, no intellect, by any light, has the strength. Therefore, no trace occurs to us anywhere of those who have comprehended God by this absolute reason. Because it is not permitted to anyone to comprehend, nor again [is it permitted] to those to whom the divine nature itself has appeared clearly, [to be] perceiving [it] meanwhile, and not holding [it]. For these things either they themselves can express or others can grasp, what they had contemplated in the heights, or even what they contemplate. For what the apostle Paul knew in the rapture, it was not permitted to a man to speak. And Plato says that divine things cannot be spoken or taught, but in a pious soul approaching God, suddenly at last a divine light is kindled from on high. Which indeed feeds itself within. As if he denies that such a light shines from the outside.

¶ To know what God is, is the property of God Himself. Nor is any manifest trace of the divine substance found anywhere.

Dionysius.

Just as

divinity has handed down about itself in sacred letters in a most kindly way, whatever it is, contemplation of it is inaccessible to all things whatsoever. Since it is segregated from all things by a certain super-essential excellence. Now you may find many theologians who have celebrated the divinity, not only as invisible and incomprehensible, but also have said it to be inscrutable and uninvestigable. As if no trace exists of those who have approached its hidden infinity.

¶ The first cause is most separate and most present, and just as it imparts good to all, so it imparts to many divine intelligence and union.

Marsilius

Concerning the excellence

of the cause, two things seem to pertain. First, that the more excellent the cause is, the more it is segregated from the conditions of subjects. Second, that by the gifts of its own excellence, it spreads its powers and actions further and more widely. Wherefore, the first cause of all is both most separate from all things, and meanwhile most present.