d ages have been driven to invent a plurality of Gods, for very
society sake: and I know not but that they are anteriorly wiser and more
rational than the man who believes in a Benevolent Existence eternally
one, and no otherwise than one. Let me not be mistaken to imply that
there was any likelihood of many coeexistent gods: that was a reasonable
improbability, as we have already seen, perhaps a spiritual
impossibility: but the anterior likelihood of which I speak goes to
show, that in One God there should be more than one coeexistence: each,
by arithmetical mystery, but not absurdity, pervading all, coeequals,
each being God, and yet not three Gods, but one God. That there should
be a rational difficulty here--or, rather, an irrational one--I have
shown to be Reason's prerequirement: and if such a one as I, or any
other creature, could now and here (ay, or any when or any where, in
the heights of highest heaven, and the far-stretching distance of
eternity) solve such intrinsic difficulty, it would demonstrably be one
not worthy of its source, the wise design of God: it would prove that
riddle read, which uncreate omniscience propounded for the baffling of
the creature mind. No. It is far more reasonable, as well as far more
reverent, to acquiesce in Mystery, as another attribute inseparable from
the nature of the Godhead; than to quibble about numerical puzzles, and
indulge unwisely in objections which it is the happy state of nobler
intelligences than man on earth is, to look into with desire, and to
exercise withal their keen and lofty minds.

But we have not yet done. Some further thoughts remain to be thrown out
in the third place, as to the preconceivable fitness or propriety of
that Holy Union, which we call the trinity of Persons who constitute the
Self-existent One. If God, being one in one sense, is yet likely to
appear, humanly speaking, more than one in another sense; we have to
inquire anteriorly of the probable nature of such other intimate Being
or Beings: as also, whether such addition to essential oneness is likely
itself to be more than one or only one. As to the former of these
questions: if, according to the presumption of reason (and according
also to what we have since learned from revelation; but there may be
good policy in not dotting this book with chapter and verse)--if the
Deity thus loved to multiply Himself; then He, to whom there can exist
no beginning, must have so loved, so determined, an