Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I

6God, then, is unity, as we have proved. He is also immovable: he is moved neither by another, since nothing is stronger than he, nor by himself, since he cannot transfer himself to something better, being the Good itself. Nothing moves itself of its own accord toward what is worse. And if God is said to flow from one thing into another, we shall ask whether he acquires something new or nothing. If he acquires nothing new, then indeed he has not changed; if he acquires something new, he did not possess all things before. What does not possess all things is not God. Because God is everywhere, he does not change place; because he is the end of all things, he does not move toward another; because he is most simple, he is immovable even within himself. For if he were moved within himself, he would either bring one part of himself toward another, or at least gather certain new things within himself together with the old. In substance he would remain what he was before, but would put on a new form besides, and so could not be most simple. Finally, God himself is unity. Unity is the foundation of his stability: just as motion advances into multiplicity, so stability rests upon unity. In any nature, a thing is said to stand when what is continuously possessed in it as one does not depart from the unity of that nature. Who would call the foundation of all stability mutable? We can confirm arguments of this kind by that Pythagorean argument from number.

7Whatever changes in relation to past and future, he says, has a certain privation mingled with it: the future does not yet exist, and the past exists no longer. In God, however, since he is the first being and supreme actuality, there is no privation; he is therefore immutable. Angel too is immovable, because from God, the fountain of all goodness, he draws the good immediately through himself, is filled from that source at a single point of eternity, and remains forever replete with goodness. Yet every effect produced outside its cause preserves something of that cause and also falls below its cause. Thus the angel, created next to God, preserves something of God and loses something as well. God possesses both unity and stability; the angel cannot retain them both.