What then is Elohim? What is God?
First. Aristotle, or whoever is the author of the book On the World, addressed to Alexander: "What the helmsman is in a ship, the charioteer in a chariot, the leader in a chorus, the law in a city, the commander in an army, the same is God in the world, except that in those cases authority is laborious, disturbed, and anxious; whereas in God it is easy, ordered, and tranquil."
Second. Saint Leo, Sermon 2 On the Passion: "God is He whose nature is goodness, whose will is power, whose work is mercy."
Third. Aristotle, or whoever is the author of the book On Wisdom According to the Egyptians, book XII, chapter xix: "God is He from whom come perpetuity, place, and time, and by whose benefit all things endure; and just as the center of a circle exists in itself, and the lines drawn from it to the circumference, and the circumference itself with its points, exist in that same center: so too all natures, both those pertaining to the intellect and those pertaining to the senses, consist and are confirmed in the first agent (in God)."
Fourth. God is providence itself over all things; for, as Saint Augustine says, book III of On the Trinity, chapter iv: "Nothing happens visibly and perceptibly that is not either commanded or permitted from the interior, invisible, and intelligible court of the supreme ruler, according to the ineffable justice of rewards and punishments, graces and retributions, in that most vast and immense commonwealth of all creation."
Fifth. The same Saint Augustine: If you see, he says, a good angel, a good human being, a good heaven; take away the angel, the human being, the heaven; and what remains is the essence of good things, that is, God.
Sixth. A certain Gentile king said that God is darkness beyond all light, and that He is known by the ignorance of the mind.
Seventh. Elohim is He who reaches from end to end mightily, and orders all things sweetly, as the Wise Man says.
Eighth. Elohim is He in whom we live, move, and have our being, Acts XVII, 28.
Ninth. "God, says Saint Augustine in his Meditations, is He whom neither the mind reaches, because He is incomprehensible; nor the intellect, because He is unsearchable; nor the senses perceive, because He is invisible; nor the tongue utters, because He is ineffable; nor writing explains, because He is inexplicable."
Tenth. "God, says Saint Gregory of Nazianzus in his Treatise On the Faith, is that which, when spoken of, cannot be expressed; when appraised, cannot be appraised; when defined, grows by the very definition; because He covers the heaven with His hand, He encloses the whole compass of the world in His fist: whom all things do not know, and yet by fearing they know: whose name and power this world serves, and the momentary succession of the elements replacing one another bears witness."
Eleventh. "God is He who hangs the mass of the earth by three fingers, who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and weighed the heavens with a span. Behold, the nations before Him are like a drop from a bucket, and are counted as a speck on a balance, the islands like fine dust. And Lebanon is not sufficient for burning, and its animals are not sufficient for a holocaust. He who sits upon the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers," Isaiah chapter XL, verses 12, 15, 22.
Twelfth. God is He of whom the Wise Man says, chapter XI, verse 23: "As a speck on a balance, so is the world before You, and as a drop of early morning dew that falls upon the earth."
Thirteenth. "Matter is more subtle than air, the soul more than air, the mind more than the soul, God Himself more than the mind," says Hermes Trismegistus.
