And
is it not so?
Of all these--under illumination of the fore-known fact, I speak, in
their aspect of anterior probability. With respect to more possible
Persons, I at least cannot invent one. There is, to my reflection,
neither need nor fitness for a fourth, or any further Principle. If
another can, let him look well that he be not irrationally demolishing
an attribute and setting it up as a principle. Obedience is not an
attribute; nor Generation; nor Will: whilst the attribute of Love,
pervading all, sets these only possible three Principles going together
as One in a mysterious harmony. I would not be misunderstood; persons
are not principles; but principles may be illustrated and incorporative
in persons. Essential Love, working distinctively throughout the Three,
unites them instinctively as One: even as the attribute Wisdom designs,
and the attribute Power arranges all the scheme of Godhead.
And now I ask Reason, whether, presupposing keenness, he might not have
arrived by calculation of probabilities at the likelihood of these great
doctrines: that the nature of God would be an apparent contradiction:
that such contradiction should not be moral, but physical; or rather
verging towards the metaphysical, as immaterial and more profound: that
God, being One, should yet, in his great Love, marvellously have been
companioned from eternity by Himself: and that such Holy and United
Confraternity should be so wisely contrived as to serve for the bright
unapproachable exemplar of love, obedience, and generation to all the
future universe, such Triunity Itself existing uncreated.
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