things. (2) It would be impossible for human infirmity to follow
up the series of particular mutable things, both on account
their multitude, surpassing all calculation, and on account of
the infinitely diverse circumstances surrounding one and the same
thing, any one of which may be the cause of its existence or
non-existence. (3) Indeed, their existence has no connection
with their essence, or (as we have said already) is not an
eternal truth.

[101] (1) Neither is there any need that we should understand
their series, for the essences of particular mutable things are
not to be gathered from their series or order of existence,
which would furnish us with nothing beyond their extrinsic
denominations, their relations, or, at most, their circumstances,
all of which are very different from their inmost essence.
(101:2) This inmost essence must be sought solely from fixed and
eternal things, and from the laws, inscribed (so to speak) in
those things as in their true codes, according to which all
particular things take place and are arranged; nay, these mutable
particular things depend so intimately and essentially (so to
phrase it) upon the fixed things, that they cannot either be
conceived without them.

[102] (1) But, though this be so, there seems to be no small
difficulty in arriving at the knowledge of these particular things,
for to conceive them all at once would far surpass the powers of
the human understanding. (2) The arrangement whereby one thing is
understood, before another, as we have stated, should not be sought
from their series of existence, nor from eternal things. (3) For
the latter are all by nature simultaneous. (4) Other aids are