Ib. p. 127.
He proceeds to shew that this unity is without all manner of confusion and mixture, * * for the mind that loves, is in the love. * * * And the knowledge of the mind which knows and loves itself, is in the mind, and in its love, because it loves itself, knowing, and knows itself loving: and thus also two are in each, for the mind which knows and loves itself, with its knowledge is in love, and with its love is in knowledge.
Then why do we make tri-personality in unity peculiar 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 præit 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,—