in the Sephiroth, that will lead a wise man to expect the true doctrine of the Trinity in the Cabalistic scheme: for he knows that the scholastic value, the theological necessity, of this doctrine consists in its exhibiting an idea of God, which rescues our faith from both extremes, Cabalo-Pantheism, and Anthropomorphism. It is, I say, to prevent the necessity of the Cabalistic inferences that the full and distinct developement of the doctrine of the Trinity becomes necessary in every scheme of dogmatic theology. If the first three
proprietates
are God, so are the next seven, and so are all ten. God according to the Cabalists is all in each and one in all. I do not say that there is not a great deal of truth in this; but I say that it is not, as the Cabalists represent it, the whole truth. Spinoza himself describes his own philosophy as in substance the same with that of the ancient Hebrew Doctors, the Cabalists—only unswathed from the Biblical dress.
Ib. p. 61.
Similar to this is the declaration of R. Moses ben Maimon. "For that influence, which flows from the Deity to the actual production of abstract intelligences flows also from the intelligences to their production from each other in succession," &c.
How much trouble would Mr. Oxlee have saved himself, had he in sober earnest asked his own mind, what he meant by emanation; and whether he could attach any intelligible meaning to the term at all as applied to spirit.
Ib. p. 65.