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could not be said to have existence before the era of

creation'.

Next, it is to be remarked, that the Jewish Scriptures introduce to our notice certain peculiar Attributes or Manifestations (as they would seem) of the Deity, corresponding in some measure to those already mentioned as conveyed to us by Natural Religion, though of a more obscure character. Such is what is called "the Spirit of God;" a phrase which denotes sometimes the Divine energy, sometimes creative or preserving power, sometimes the assemblage of Divine gifts, moral and intellectual, vouchsafed to mankind; having in all cases a general connexion with the notion of the vivifying principle of nature. Such again, is "the Wisdom of God," as introduced into the book of Proverbs; and such is the "Name," the "Word," the "Glory," of God.

Further, these peculiar Manifestations (to give them a name) are sometimes in the same elder Scriptures singularly invested with the properties of personality; and, although the expressions of the sacred text may in some places be interpreted figuratively, yet there are passages so strangely worded, as at first sight to be inconsistent with themselves, and such as would be ascribed, in an uninspired work, to forgetfulness or inaccuracy in the writer;-as, for instance, when what is first called the Glory of God is subsequently spoken of as an intelligent Agent, often with the characteristics, or even the name of an Angel. On the other hand, it

1 Origen de Principiis, i. 2, § 10.

elsewhere occurs, that what is introduced as an Angel, is afterwards described as God Himself.

Now, when we pass on to the New Testament, we find these peculiar Manifestations of the Divine Essence concentrated and fixed in two, called the Word, and the Spirit. At the same time, the apparent Personality ascribed to Them in the Old Testament, is changed for a real Personality, so clearly and explicitly marked as to resist all critical experiments upon the language, all attempts at allegorical interpretation. Here too the Word is also called the Son of God, and appears to possess such strict personal attributes, as to be able voluntarily to descend from heaven, and assume our nature without ceasing to be identically what He was before; so as to speak of Himself, though a man, as one and the same with the Divine Word who existed in the beginning. The Personality of the Spirit in some true and sufficient sense is as accurately revealed; and that the Son is not the Spirit, is also evident from the fixed relations which are described as separating Them from each other in the Divine Essence.

Reviewing this process of revelation, Gregory Nazianzen, somewhat after the manner of the foregoing account, remarks that, as Almighty God has in the course of His dispensations changed the ritual of religion by successive abrogations, so He has changed its theology by continual additions till it has come to perfection. "Under the Old Dispensation," he proceeds, "the Father was openly revealed, and the Son but obscurely. When the New was given, the Son was manifested, but the Divinity of the Spirit intimated only. Now the Spirit

dwells with us, affording us clearer evidence about Himself, . . . that by gradual additions, and flights, as David says, and by advancing and progressing from glory to glory, the radiance of the Trinity might shine out on those who are illuminated2.”

Now from this peculiar method in which the doctrine is unfolded to us in Scripture, we learn so much as this in our contemplation of it; viz. the absurdity, as well as the presumption, of inquiring minutely about the actual relations subsisting between God and His Son and Spirit, and drawing large inferences from what is told us of Them. Whether They are equal to Him or unequal, whether posterior to Him in existence or coeval, such inquiries (though often they must be answered when once started) are in their origin as superfluous as similar questions concerning the Almighty's relation to His own attributes (which still we answer as far as we can, when asked); for the Son and the Spirit are one with Him, the ideas of number and comparison being excluded. Yet this statement must be qualified from the evidence of Scripture, by two additional remarks. On the one hand, the Son and Spirit are represented to us in the Economy of Revelation, as ministering to God, and as, so far, personally subordinate to Him; and on the other hand, in spite of this personal inequality, yet, as being partakers of the fulness of the Father, they are equal to Him in nature, and in Their claims upon our faith and obedience, as is sufficiently proved by the form of baptism.

2 Greg. Naz. Orat. xxxvii. p. 603; [xxxi. 26.]

The mysteriousness of the doctrine evidently lies in our inability to conceive a sense of the word person, such, as to be more than a mere character, yet less than an individual intelligent being; our own notions, as gathered from our experience of human agents, leading us to consider personality as equivalent, in its very idea, to the unity and independence of the immaterial substance of which it is predicated.

SECTION III.

THE ECCLESIASTICAL DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.

THIS being the general Scripture view of the Holy Trinity, it follows to describe the Ecclesiastical Doctrine, chiefly in relation to our Lord, as contained in the writings of the Fathers, especially the Ante-Nicene '.

Scripture is express in declaring both the divinity of Him who in due time became man for us, and also His personal distinction from God in His pre-existent state. This is sufficiently clear from the opening of St. John's Gospel, which states the mystery as distinctly as an ecclesiastical comment can propound it. On these two truths the whole doctrine turns, viz. that our Lord is one with, yet personally separate from God. Now there are two appellations given to Him in Scripture, enforcing respectively these two essentials of the true doctrine; appellations imperfect and open to misconception by themselves, but qualifying and completing each other. The title of the Son marks His derivation

1 The examples cited are principally borrowed from the elaborate catalogues furnished by Petavius, Bishop Bull, and Suicer, in his Thesaurus and his Comment on the Nicene Creed.

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