Secondly:  there would be (with especial reference to that idea of creation which doubtless at most remote beginnings occupied the Good One’s contemplation), there would be next, I repeat, in remarkable adaptation to all such benevolent views, the great idea of principle, Obedience; conforming to a Father’s righteous laws, acquiescing in his just will, and returning love for love:  such a phase could not be better shadowed out to creatures than by an Eternal Son; the dutiful yet supreme, the subordinate yet coeequal, the amiable yet exalted Avatar of our God.  This was probable to have been the second impersonation of Deity.  And is it not so?

Thirdly:  Springing from the conjoint ideas of the Father and the Son, and with similar prospection to such instantly creative universe, there would occur the grand idea of Generation; the mighty coeequal, pure, and quickening Impulse:  aptly announced to men and angels as the Holy Spirit.  This was to have been the third impersonation of Divinity.  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.

THE GODHEAD VISIBLE.