Devotions of Saint Anselm Archbishop of Canterbury

CHAPTER VII

BUT again, how canst Thou be omnipotent, if Thou canst not do all things? Yet if Thou canst not suffer corruption, canst not lie, canst not make what is true to be false, or what 18is done, undone, and so forth; how canst Thou do all things? Or shall we say that to be capable of these would be not power but rather impotence? For he who can do these, can do what is not expedient for him, and what he ought not; and the more he can do what is not expedient for him and what he ought not, the more power have evil and wickedness over him, and the less power hath he against them. He therefore that can do such things, can do them in virtue not of power but of impotence. For he is said to be able to do them, not because he himself has power in doing them, but because his impotence gives something else power to work in him; or else in an improper way of speaking, such as we often use when we put to be for not to be, and to do for not to do or to do nothing. For we often say to one who says that a thing is not such-and-such: It is as you say it is; when it would seem more proper to say, It is not as you say it is not. Again we say: This man sits, as that man does; or This man rests as that man does: though sitting is a kind of not doing, and resting is doing nothing. Thus then when a man is said to have the power of doing or undergoing what is not expedient for him or what he ought not, the word power signifies impotence; since the more power of this sort he hath, the more power have evil and wickedness against him, and the less hath he against them. Therefore, O Lord God, Thou art all the more truly omnipotent, that Thou 19canst do nothing that is done through impotence, and nothing hath any power against Thee.