gulphed within the Godhead; and that, whether evidenced in act or not:  but their corruptions have had no such original existence, but are only the same entities perverted.  Love would be love still, though there were no existent object for its exercise:  Beauty would be beauty still, though there were no created thing to illustrate its fairness:  Power would be power still, though there be no foe to combat, no difficulty to be overcome.  Hatred, ill-favour, weakness, are only perversions or diminutions of these.  Power exists independently of muscles or swords or screws or levers; love, independently of kind thoughts, words, and actions; beauty, independently of colours, shapes, and adaptations.  Just so is Wisdom philosophically spoken of by a truly royal and noble author: 

“I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and find out the knowledge of clever inventions.  Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom; I am understanding; I have strength.  The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.  I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.  When there were no depths, I was brought forth; before the mountains were fixed, or the hills were made.  When He prepared the heavens, I was there; when he set a compass upon the face of the depth; when he established the clouds above; when he strengthened the foundations of the deep:  Then was I by him, as one brought up with him:  and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; rejoicing in the habitable parts of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men.”

King Solomon well knew of Whom he wrote thus nobly.  Eternal wisdom, power, and goodness, all prospectively thus yearning upon man, and incorporate in One, whose name, among his many names, is Wisdom.  Wisdom, as a quality, existed with God; and, constituting full pervasion of his essence, was God.

But to return, and bind to a conclusion our ravelled thoughts.  As, originally, the self-existent being, unbounded, all-knowing, might take up, so to speak, if He willed, these eternal affirmative excellences of wisdom, power, and goodness; and as these, to every rational apprehension, are highly worthy of his choice, whereas their derivative and inferior corruptions would have been most derogatory to any reasonable estimate of His character; how much more likely was it that He should prefer the higher rather than the lower, should take the affirmative before the negative, should “choose the good, and refuse the evil,”—­than endure to be endowed with such garbled, demoralizing, finite attributes as those wherewith the heathen painted the Pantheon.  What high antecedent probability was there, that if a God should be (and this we have proved highly probable too)—­He should be One, ubiquitous, self-existent, spiritual:  that He should be all-mighty, all-wise, and all-good?

THE TRIUNITY.