DISCOURSE ONMETAPHYSICS 609
thing to exist in preference to others. Hence God’s quality of being Himself a mind
precedes all other considerations He may have with respect to creatures. Minds only are
made in His image, and it is as if they are of His race and children of His house, since
they alone can serve Him freely and act consciously in imitation of the divine nature.
One mind is worth an entire world, since it does not only express it, but knows it, and
governs itself there in the manner of God. So much so that it seems that while every
substance expresses the whole universe, other substances express the world rather than
God while minds express God rather than the world. And this natural nobility of minds,
which brings them as near to the divine as is possible for mere creatures, means that
God receives from them infinitely more glory than from other beings, or rather other
beings merely give minds matter for glorifying Him.
That is why this moral quality of God that makes Him the Lord and Monarch of
Minds, affects Him so to speak personally in a quite special manner. It is in this that He
becomes human and is willing to allow human ways of speaking about Him, and enters
into fellowship with us like a Prince with his subjects. This consideration is so dear to
Him that the happy and flourishing state of His empire, that consists in the greatest pos-
sible happiness of the inhabitants, becomes the supreme subaltern law of His conduct.
For happiness is to persons what perfection is to beings, and if the first principle of exis-
tence of the physical world is the decree giving it the greatest possible perfection, the
first principle of existence of the moral world or City of God, the most noble part of the
universe, must be to spread as much happiness as possible in it.
Hence it must not be doubted that God so ordained (not only that minds could live
forever, which is inevitable, but also that they should conserve forever their moral
nature) so that this city should lose no person just as the world loses no substance. And
consequently, they will always know what they are, otherwise they would not be liable
to reward or punishment, which however is the essence of any republic, above all of one
that is the most perfect, in which nothing can be neglected.
Finally, since God is at once the most just and the most good-natured of monarchs,
and asks only for good will, provided that it is sincere and serious, His subjects could not
hope for better conditions: to make them perfectly happy, He wants only that they love Him.
- JESUSCHRISTHASREVEALED TOMEN THEMYSTERY
ANDADMIRABLELAWS OF THEKINGDOM OFHEAVEN
AND THEGREATNESS OF THESUPREMEHAPPINESSGOD
PREPARES FORTHOSEWHOLOV EHIM
The ancient philosophers had very little knowledge of these important truths. Jesus
Christ alone expressed them divinely well and in such a clear and familiar way, that the
most crude minds came to understand them. So His gospel changed the entire face of
human affairs. He brought us knowledge of the Kingdom of Heaven or this perfect
republic of minds that merits the title “City of God” whose admirable laws he revealed
to us, and he alone shows us how much God loves us; the exactness with which He has
provided for all that concerns us; that since He cares for sparrows, He will not neglect
the reasonable creatures who are infinitely more dear to Him; that all the hairs in our
heads are counted; that heaven and earth will pass away before the Word of God and
everything belonging to the pattern of our salvation is changed; God has more concern
with the least of intelligent souls than with the whole machine of the world; that we
must not fear those who can destroy the body but are unable to harm souls, since God
alone can make them happy or unhappy; that the just are in His hand protected from all