VIII. Now when we own God to be Unbegotten, we think we ought not to do it by using that word only in our Worship, after a vulgar acceptation, but to pay in reality that Debt to God which is of all other the ^[7] most justly due, that is, the acknowledging him to be what he really is. For those Ideas which are in the Mind only, and the Words belonging to them having no real existence elsewhere, as distinct from those Names whereby we express them, are dissolv'd and vanish when we forbear to speak of them. But God, whether we are silent, or speak, and while things come into being, and before all things were made, both was, and is Unbegotten.

But then he is not such by way of Privation, seeing Privations belong to the nature of things already in being, and after the Habits to which they belong. But according to the Course of Nature, there could be no Generation as to God, nor had he therefore a Generation formerly, which when he was depriv'd of, he was stil'd, Without Generation, or Unbegotten: since this would be great Impiety, and destructive of the true Notion of God, and of his absolute Perfection. Indeed to pretend that God has been deprived of somewhat naturally belonging to him, would be a Demonstration of the Madness of the Inventors of such an Opinion. And no wise Man can say that any Being is depriv'd of such things as did not before exist. If therefore the Character of Unbegotten is not a bare Imagination, nor us'd by way of Privation, as the last reasoning has shew'd: Nor is this Character of Unbegotten apply'd to God in part only; for he is without Parts. Nor is it apply'd to him as allowing somewhat different from him, within him, that is Unbegotten; for he is simple, and uncompounded, nor is any [internal] thing different from him beside him, for he is ^[8] One and alone: he must himself be the Unbegotten Substance.