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39 Now there are two properties of God which have reference to creatures, one is eminence in goodness, the other is
causality. Eminence is not subdivided further, but causality is. According to some, its divisions are: exemplar, efficient and
final cause. Such say that the exemplar cause gives a thing its essential being. But I say here (and later on in more detail) that
the exemplar cause is not to be numbered alongside of the efficient cause, for it is only as a concomitant factor of an
efficient cause that the exemplar in the mind of the artisan gives any being to a thing. And if [the exemplar in view of its
effect] can be considered as a formal cause, then it would pertain to eminence rather than to causality, for the more excellent
being contains virtually the forms of other things and contains them unitively. Hence in God there are these three: eminence,
efficiency and finality.
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