cannot think otherwise. Since it is simple Being, it must be the
first of beings, and without beginning or end, and because it is the
first and everlasting and simple, it must be the most present. If
you can understand this, you will have been guided far into the
incomprehensible light of God's hidden truth. This pure and simple
Being is altogether in all things, and altogether outside all
things. Hence a certain doctor says: God is a circle, whose centre
is everywhere, and His circumference nowhere.

When this had been said, the maiden answered: Blessed be God, I have
been shown, as far as may be, both what God is, and where He is. But
I should like also to be told how, if God is so absolutely simple,
He can also be threefold.

The servitor answered: The more simple any being is in itself, the
more manifold is it in its energy and operation. That which has
nothing gives nothing, and that which has much can give much. I have
already spoken of the inflowing and overflowing fount of good which
God is in Himself. This infinite and superessential goodness
constrains Him not to keep it all within Himself, but to communicate
it freely both within and without Himself. But the highest and most
perfect outpouring of the good must be within itself, and this can
be nought else but a present, interior, personal and natural
outpouring, necessary, yet without compulsion, infinite and perfect.
Other communications, in temporal matters, draw their origin from
this eternal communication of the Divine Goodness. Some theologians
say that in the outflow of the creatures from their first origin
there is a return in a circle of the end to the beginning; for as
the emanation of the Persons from the Godhead is an image of the
origin of the creatures, so also it is a type of the flowing back of