Why ens is most essential: four reasons; Bernard and Augustine on divine identity
Which is variously established. 1. God is not in a genus, but exceeds all things. But Being prescinds every generic mode of existing and leaves the significate in its infinite amplitude. For Being cannot be limited, but this and that being can. Being surpasses times, places, and modes of existing in them.
2. This vocabulary makes our mind wander to the infinite sea of the divine essence, so that we do not find where to stay the intuition. But he who thinks he finds something beyond Being has not yet had the ratio of being. 3. Being says the present of eternity, taking away future and past. For those are not in God, but in things that suffer succession. But succession is from mutability. Therefore it also indicates eternity and immutability. But no creature can be exquisitely named by this name insofar as it is a noun, but insofar as it is a participle. For they participate some entity, yet are not beings, but some beings. So man is not being, but some being. And although Being is predicated of all without addition, yet it is always understood with addition and contraction, but of God absolutely. And this is the difference between predicable being and first being, as in Thomas Aquinas in the little book On Being and Essence. For God is all things eminently. Therefore His name is every name, as Trismegistus said.
4. In every thing accident is found except in God. But accident differs from the substance of a thing. Therefore no thing can say of itself, I am what I am, since it also is otherwise than it is. For a man, besides being a man, is also white. But to be white is other than to be a man. But for God to be just is not other than to be God, to be good, to be wise — according to the judgment of Bernard to Eugenius and of Augustine, namely according to the nature of God.
Latin
Id quod varie constat. 1. Deus non est in genere, sed excedit omnia. Ens vero praescindit omnem modum exsistendi genericum & relinquit significatum in sua amplitudine infinita. Non enim potest finiri ens, sed hoc & illud ens. Ens supergreditur tempora, loca & modos in iis exsistendi. 2. Hoc vocabulum efficit ut mens nostra vagetur ad infinitum pelagus essentiae divinae, ita ut non inveniamus ubi sistamus intuitum. Qui autem putat se ultra ens aliud invenire, is entis rationem nondum habuit. 3. Ens dicit praesens aeternitatis, auferens futurum & praeteritum. Ista enim non sunt in Deo, sed in rebus patientibus successionem. Successio autem ex mutabilitate est. Idcirco indicat etiam aeternitatem & immutabilitatem. Nulla autem creatura potest hoc nomine exquisite nominari, quatenus nomen est, sed quatenus participium. Participant enim aliquam entitatem, non tamen sunt entia, sed aliqua entia. Sic homo non est ens, sed aliquod ens. Et quamvis praedicetur sine additione ens de cunctis, tamen semper intelligitur cum additione & contractione, de Deo autem absolute. Et haec est differentia inter ens praedicabile & ens primum, ut est apud Thomam Aquinatem in libello de ente & essentia. Deus enim est omnia eminenter. Quapropter ejus nomen est omne nomen, ut dixit Trismegistus. 4. In omni re invenitur accidens excepto Deo. Accidens autem differt a substantia rei. Quapropter nequit res ulla de se dicere, sum quod sum, cum & aliter sit, quam est. Est enim homo, praeter quod sit homo, etiam albus. Esse autem album, aliud est quam esse hominem. Sed esse justum Deo non est aliud quam esse Deum, esse bonum, esse sapientem, de sententia Bernhardi ad Eugenium & Augustini, nempe secundum naturam Dei.