XVIII. How if God, when he begets, does not communicate his own Substance to the Being that is begotten, according as happens among Men, for he is Unbegotten; and when he creates, he does not stand in need of any Matter, since he stands in need of nothing, and is powerful; the rejection of the word Creation is on all accounts unreasonable.

Now since from these and the like Arguments we have shewn, that we must neither attempt universally to think that the signification of Words is exactly agreeable to the Words themselves, nor to change that Agreement at random, but must attend to the Subjects we are upon; we must sute Words and their Signification together, with regard to that Agreement respectively: for the nature of things is not a Consequent of Words, but the Force of Words is, according to their respective kinds, to be suted to the nature of things. One may therefore very justly ^[17] complain of those, who believing that the Son is a Being Begotten, and a Being Made, and are also persuaded that God is a Being Unbegotten, and a Being Unmade, do yet, by the addition of other words, and by saying that they are alike in Substance, contradict what they confess'd before; while they ought, if they had had the least regard to Truth, from that difference of Characters, to have own'd the difference of their Substances; because they could only by this means preserve the just Order of Things: that is, by accommodating to each severally a sutable Acknowledgment. But if they have no consideration of this Agreeableness in the nature of things, yet ought they at least to take care, that their own Words agree with their own Notions, and not allow themselves to ascribe intirely different Characters to the same Nature; for we have demonstrated, by all our foregoing Discourse, that those Characters are significative of the Substances themselves.