)
'So are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say, There are three
Gods, or three Lords.'
That is, by the religion contained in, and given in accompaniment with,
the universal reason, 'the light that lighteth every man that cometh
into the world'.
Ib. p. 14.
This Creed (Athanasian) does not pretend to explain how there are
three Persons, each of which is God, and yet but One God, (of which
more hereafter,) but only asserts the thing, that thus it is, and thus
it must be if we believe a Trinity in Unity; which should make all
men, who would be thought neither Arians nor Socinians, more cautious
how they express the least dislike of the Athanasian Creed, which must
either argue, that they condemn it, before they understand it, or that
they have some secret dislike to the doctrine of the Trinity.
The dislike commonly felt is not of the doctrine of the Trinity, but of
the positive anathematic assertion of the everlasting perdition of all
and of each who doubt the same;--an assertion deduced from Scripture
only by a train of captious consequences, and equivocations. Thus, A.:
"I honour and admire Caius for his great learning." B.: "The knowledge
of the Sanscrit is an important article in Caius's learning." A.: "I
have been often in his company, and have found no reason for believing
this." B.: "O! then you deny his learning, are envious, and Caius's
enemy." A.: "God forbid! I love and admire him. I know him for a
transcendant linguist in the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and modern European
languages;--and with or without the Sanscrit, I look up to him, and rely
on his erudition in all cases, in which I am concerned.
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