Now will is the true principle of identity, of selfness, even in our common language. The will, therefore, being indistinguishably one, but the possessive powers triply distinguishable, do perforce involve the notion expressed by a Trinity of three Persons and one God. There are three Persons eternally coexisting, in whom the one Will is totally all in each; the truth of which mystery we may know in our own minds, but can understand by no analogy. For "the wind ministrant to divers at the same moment" — thence, to aid the fancy — borrows or rather steals from the mind the idea of 'total
in omni parte
,' which alone furnishes the analogy; but that both it and by it a myriad of other material images do enwrap themselves
in hac veste non sua,
and would be even no objects of conception if they did not; yea, that even the very words, 'conception,' 'comprehension,' and all in all languages that answer to them, suppose this trans-impression from the mind, is an argument better than all analogy.
Serm. XXXV. Mat. xii. 31. p. 341.
Ib.
p. 342. B.
First then, for the first term, sin, we use to ask in the school, whether any action of man's can have rationem demeriti; whether it can be said to offend God, or to deserve ill of God? for whatsoever does so, must have some proportion with God.
This appears to me to furnish an interesting example of the bad consequences in reasoning, as well as in morals, of the