D. About the Concept of Infinite Being

58. Fourth [n.24] I say that we can reach many concepts proper to God that do not belong to creatures, of which sort are the concepts of all perfections simply in their sum totality. And the most perfect concept (in which we most perfectly, in a certain quasi description, know God) is by conceiving all perfections simply and in their sum. However, a concept possible for us that is more perfect, and at the same time more simple, is the concept of ‘infinite being’. For this is more simple than the concept ‘good being’, or any similar concept, because ‘infinite’ is not a quasi-attribute, or property, of being, or of what it is said of, but it states a mode intrinsic to that entity, such that when I say ‘infinite being’ I do not have a concept composed, as it were, per accidens of subject and property, but a concept that is of the subject per se in a certain degree of perfection, namely of infinity -just as an intense whiteness does not state a concept per accidents, as ‘visible whiteness’; rather intensity states a degree intrinsic in itself to whiteness. And so the simplicity of this concept ‘infinite being’ is plain.

59. The proof of the perfection of this concept is, first, that, among all the concepts conceivable to us, this concept includes virtually more things - for just as being includes virtually in itself the true and the good, so infinite being includes the infinite true and the infinite good and every perfection simply under the idea of the infinite; second, that by a demonstration-that, the existence of an infinite being is what is ultimately proved, as appears from the first question of the second distinction [Ord. I d.2 nn.74, 111-136, 147]. And those things are more perfect that are known from creatures last of all by a demonstration-that, for to prove them from creatures is difficult, on account of their distance from creatures.

60. If you say of supreme good or supreme being that this states a mode intrinsic to being, and includes virtually the other concepts - I say that if ‘supreme’ is understood comparatively [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.41 q.2], in this way it states a respect to something outside it; but ‘the infinite’ states a concept in respect of itself. But if you understand the supreme absolutely, that is, that the perfection of it could not, from the nature of the thing, be exceeded, this is conceived more expressly in the idea of infinite being, for ‘supreme good’ does not in itself indicate whether the thing is infinite or finite. - From this the rejection becomes clear of what was said [n.20] in the preceding opinion, that it is most perfect to know the attributes by reducing them, on account of the divine simplicity, to the divine existence - for knowledge of the divine existence under the idea of the infinite is more perfect than knowledge of it under the idea of simplicity, because simplicity is shared in common with creatures, and infinity (in the way it belongs to God) is not.