r 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'.

Ib. p. 133.

As for the Holy Ghost, whose nature is represented to be love, I do
not indeed find in Scripture that it is any where said, that the Holy
Ghost is that mutual love, wherewith Father and Son love each other:
but this we know, that there is a mutual love between Father and Son:
'the Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his
hands'.--John iii. 35. 'And the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him
all things that himself doeth'.-John v. 20; and our Saviour himself
tells us, 'I love the Father'.--John xiv. 31. And I shewed before,
that love is a distinct act, 'and therefore in God must be a person:
for there are no accidents nor faculties in God.'

This most important, nay, fundamental truth, so familiar to the elder
philosophy, and so strongly and distinctly enunciated by Philo Judaeus,
the senior and contemporary of the Evangelists, is to our modern divines
darkness and a sound.

Sect. VI. pp. 147-8.

Yes; you'll say, that there should be three Persons, each of which is
God, and yet but one God, is a contradiction: but what principle of
natural reason does it contradict?

Surely never did argument vertiginate more! I had just acceded to
Sherlock's exposition of the Trinity, as the Supreme Being,