ience 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.

We have hitherto mused on the Divinity, as on Spirit invested with
attributes: and this idea of His nature was enough for all requirements
antecedently to a creation. At whatever beginning we may suppose such
creation to have commenced, whether countless ages before our present
[Greek: kosmos], or only a sufficient time to have prepared the crust of
earth; and to whatever extent we may imagine creation to have spread,
whether in those remote periods originally to our system alone and at
after eras to its accompanying stars and galaxies and firmaments; or at
one and the same moment to have poured material existence over space to
which our heavens are as nothing: whatever, and whenever, and wherever
creation took place, it would appear to be probable that some one person
of the Deity should, in a sort, become more or less concretely
manifested; that is, in a greater or a minor degree to such created
minds and senses visible. Moreover, for purposes at least of a
concentrated worship of such creatures, that He should occasionally, or
perhaps habitually, appear local. I mean, that the King of all spiritual
potentates and the subordinate Excellencies of brighter worlds than
ours, the Sovereign of those whom we call angels