Ib. p. 126.

But to do St. Austin right, though he do not name this consciousness, yet he explains this Trinity in Unity by examples of mutual consciousness.  I named one of his similitudes before, of the unity of our understanding, memory, and will, ‘which’ are all conscious to each other; that we remember what we understand and will; we understand what we remember and will; and what we will we remember and understand; and therefore all these three faculties do penetrate and comprehend each other.

‘Which’!  The ‘man’ is self-conscious alike when he remembers, wills, and understands; but in what sense is the generic term “memory” conscious to the generic word “will?” This is mere nonsense.  Are memory, understanding, and volition persons,—­self-subsistents?  If not, what are they to the purpose?  Who doubts that Jehovah is consciously powerful, consciously wise, consciously good; and that it is the same Jehovah, who in being omnipotent, is good and wise; in being wise, omnipotent and good; in being good, is wise and omnipotent?  But what has all this to do with a distinction of Persons?  Instead of one Tri-unity we might have a mille-unity.  The fact is, that Sherlock, and (for aught I know) Gregory Nyssen, had not the clear idea of the Trinity, positively; but only a negative Arianism.

Ib. p. 127.

He proceeds to shew that this unity is without all manner of confusion and mixture, * * for the mind that loves, is in the love. * * * And the knowledge of the mind which knows and loves itself, is in the mind, and in its love, because it loves itself, knowing, and knows itself loving:  and thus also two are in each, for the mind which knows and loves itself, with its knowledge is in love, and with its love is in knowledge.

Then why do we make tri-personality in unity peculiar to God?

The doctrine of the Trinity (the foundation of all rational theology, no less than the precondition and ground of the rational possibility of the Christian Faith, that is, the Incarnation and Redemption), rests securely on the position,—­that in man ’omni actioni praeit sua propria passio; Deus autem est actus purissimus sine ulla potentialitate’.  As the tune produced between the breeze and Eolian harp is not a self-subsistent, so neither memory, nor understanding, nor even love in man:  for he is a passive as well as active being:  he is a patible agent.  But in God this is not so.  Whatever is necessarily of him, (God of God, Light of Light), is necessarily all act; therefore necessarily self-subsistent, though not necessarily self-originated.  This then is the true mystery, because the true unique; that the Son of God has origination without passion, that is, without ceasing to be a pure act:  while a created entity is, as far as it is merely creaturely and distinguishable from the Creator, a mere ‘passio’ or recipient.  This unicity we strive, not to ‘express’, for that is impossible; but to designate, by the nearest, though inadequate, analogy,—­’Begotten’.