A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion/Chapter 3
III. The Divine Essence, which is Divine Love and Divine Wisdom.
AS the divine Esse of Jehovah God is in itself infinitely above the comprehension of any finite mind, and cannot become the proper subject of either human or angelic contemplation, he has therefore in mercy been pleased so to accommodate himself to the capacity of his intelligent creatures, as to exhibit before them the most evident and striking marks of his divine love and divine wisdom, which constitute his essence. Some faint idea, therefore, may be formed of the divine essence, while we consider it as the complex of all the divine goods, and all the divine truths, which flow from the great fountain of life, and encircle him as a sun of righteousness. Thus God is not only an incomprehensible esse, but at the same time also an essence in some sort comprehensible, as divine love and divine wisdom, divine good and divine truth, in each of which respects he is truly and properly life in himself, that is, life independent of every other source.
Love and wisdom in God are essentially one, though capable of being distinguished in idea the one from the other. And it being a property of the divine love, in union with the divine wisdom, to love others out of or distinct from itself, to desire conjunction with others, and to make others happy from itself, it seems highly reasonable to believe, that this threefold tendency of the divine love and the divine wisdom was the cause of the creation of the world, and also still is the cause of it's preservation.
