understanding of man.

2. And although I have, on other occasions, taught and written on
this article fully and frequently enough, still I must say a few
words in general concerning it here. True, it is not choice German,
nor has it a pleasing sound, when we designate God by the word
"Dreifaltigkeit" (nor is the Latin, Trinitas, more elegant); but
since we have no better term, we must employ these. For, as I have
said, this article is so far above the power of the human mind to
grasp, or the tongue to express, that God, as the Father of his
children, will pardon us when we stammer and lisp as best we can, if
only our faith be pure and right. By this term, however, we would say
that we believe the divine majesty to be three distinct persons of
one true essence.

3. This is the revelation and knowledge Christians have of God: they
not only know him to be one true God, who is independent of and over
all creatures, and that there can be no more than this one true God,
but they know also what this one true God in his essential,
inscrutable essence is.

4. The reason and wisdom of man may go so far as to reach the
conclusion, although feebly, that there must be one eternal divine
being, who has created and who preserves and governs all things. Man
sees such a beautiful and wonderful creation in the heavens and on
the earth, one so wonderfully, regularly and securely preserved and
ordered, that he must say: It is impossible that this came into
existence by mere chance, or that it originated and controls itself;
there must have been a Creator and Lord from whom all these things
proceed and by whom they are governed. Thus God may be known by his
creatures, as St. Paul says: "For the invisible things of him since
the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through
the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity."
Rom 1, 20. This is (a posteriori) the knowledge that we have when we
contemplate God from without, in his works and government; as one,
looking upon a castle or house from without, would draw conclusions
as to its lord or keeper.

5. But from within (a priori) no human wisdom has been able to
conceive what God is in himself, or in his internal essence. Neither
can anyone know or give information of it except it be revealed to
him by the Holy Spirit. For no one knoweth, as Paul says (1 Cor 2,
11), the things of man save the spirit of man which is in him; even
so the things of God no