The Omniscience of God

God perceives, sees, and knows all things, even to the most minute, that are done according to order; because order is uni­versal from things the most single. For the single things taken together are denominated the universal; as the particulars taken together are denominated a general. The universal together with its most single things is a work cohering as one, insomuch that one part cannot be touched and affected without some sense of it being communicated to all the rest. It is from this quality of order in the universe that there is something similar in all created things in the world. But this shall be illustrated by comparisons taken from things that are visible. In the whole man there are things general and particular, and the general things there include the particulars, and adjust themselves by such a connection that one thing is of another. This is effected by the fact that there is a common covering about every member of the body, and that this insinuates itself into the single parts therein, so that they make one in every office and use. For example, the covering of every muscle enters into the single moving fibres therein, and clothes them from itself; in like manner the coverings of the liver, the pancreas, and the spleen, enter into the single things of them that are within; so the covering of the lungs, which is called the pleura, enters into their interiors; likewise the pericardium enters into all and the single things of the heart; and generally the peritomum, by anastomoses with the coverings of all the viscera; so also the meninges of the brain; these, by fibrils emitted from them, enter into all the glands below, and through these into all the fibres, and through these into all parts of the body. Thence it is that the head, from the brains, governs all and the single things subordinate to itself. These things are adduced merely in order that, from visible things, some idea may be formed as to how God perceives, sees, and knows all things, even to the most minute, which are done according to order.

God, from those things which are according to order, perceives, knows, and sees all and single things, even to the most minute, that are done contrary to order; because God does not hold man in evil, but withholds him from evil; thus does not lead him [in evil] but strives with him. From that perpetual striving, struggling, resistance, repugnance, and reaction of the evil and the false against His good and truth, thus against Himself, He perceives both their quantity and quality. This follows from the omnipresence of God in all and the single things of His order; and at the same time from His omniscience of all and the single things therein; comparatively, as one whose ear is in harmony and accord exactly detects every discordant and inharmonious sound, how much and in what manner it is discordant, as soon as it enters. (TCR n. 60, 61)