Its notion implies three elements:
1. A force residing dormant in a being.
2. An object.
3. A union of the force with the object, to render the development actual.
Applying this idea to the subject in question, every one can see at a glance that a faculty cannot be predicated of the Infinite without falling into pantheism.
For it would be to admit in God a force of development, a capacity of unfolding, of actualizing himself.
Now, every faculty of development necessarily begins, from the minimum degree of actuality, to travel by progressive stages of unfolding to an indefinite maximum of progression. Hence, in the supposition, we should be forced to admit that God started from the minimum of life and action, and that he travelled through numberless stages of development, and will travel indefinitely through higher stages in the direction of a maximum of progress never to be attained. Now, this is almost verbatim the pantheistic theory of Hegel.
Every one who has read Hegel will have observed that his idea of the Infinite coincides perfectly with the above. For he starts from a minimum of reality, the Being, Idea, which, through a necessary interior movement, becomes matter, organism, animality, intelligence, etc.
It would not do for Unitarians to say that the argument does not apply to their system, since they admit a substance already existing and perfect as to being, only endowed with faculties. For, in the supposition, they would admit a finite, not an infinite being.