John Howe (1675): “We attribute to God the greatest thing that can be said or thought (and not what is wholly divers from all other perfection, but which contains all others in it) when we affirm of him that *he is necessarily of himself.* For, though when we have bewildered and lost ourselves (as we soon may) in the contemplation of this amazing subject, we readily indulge our wearied minds the ease and liberty of resolving this high excellency of self or necessary existence in a mere negation, and say that we mean by it nothing else, than that he was not from another. Yet surely if we would take some pains with our selves, and keep our slothful shifting thoughts to some exercise in this matter, though we can never comprehend that vast fulness of perfection which is imported in it (for it were not what we plead for, if we could comprehend it). Yet we should soon see and confess, that it contains unspeakably more than a negation, even some great thing that is so much beyond our thoughts, that we shall reckon we have said but a little in saying we cannot conceive it. And that, when we have stretched our understandings to the utmost of their line and measure, though we may suppose ourselves to have conceived a great deal, there is infinitely more that we conceive not.”
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