Some such enigma
was probable in Reason's guess at the nature of his God. It is the
Christian way; and one entirely unobjectionable: because it is the only
insuperable difficulty as to His Nature which does not debase the notion
of Divinity. But there are also other considerations.
For, secondly. The self-existent One is endowed, as we found probable,
with abundant loving-kindness, goodness overflowing and perpetual. Is it
reasonable to conceive that such a character could for a moment be
satisfied with absolute solitariness? that infinite benevolence should,
in any possible beginning, be discovered existent in a sort of selfish
only-oneness? Such a supposition is, to the eye of even unenlightened
Reason, so clearly a _reductio ad absurdum_, that men in all countries
and ages have been driven to invent a plurality of Gods, for very
society sake: and I know not but that they are anteriorly wiser and more
rational than the man who believes in a Benevolent Existence eternally
one, and no otherwise than one. Let me not be mistaken to imply that
there was any likelihood of many coeexistent gods: that was a reasonable
improbability, as we have already seen, perhaps a spiritual
impossibility: but the anterior likelihood of which I speak goes to
show, that in One God there should be more than one coeexistence: each,
by arithmetical mystery, but not absurdity, pervading all, coeequals,
each being God, and yet not three Gods, but one God.
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