Section i. A Trinity of Persons Cannot Exist in the Divine Essence Whether the Persons Be Supposed to Be Finite or Infinite: With Remarks on St. Athenasius’s Creed

Of all errors which have taken place in religion, none have been so fatal to it as those that immediately respect the divine nature. Wrong notions of a God, or of his providence, sap its very foundation in theory and practice, as is evident from the superstition discoverable among the major part of mankind; who, instead of worshipping the true God, have been by some means or other infatuated to pay divine homage to mere creatures, or to idols made with hands, or to such as have no existence but in their own fertile imaginations.

God being incomprehensible to us, we cannot understand all that perfection in which the divine essence consists, we can nevertheless (negatively) comprehend many things, in which (positively) the divine essence does not and cannot consist.

That it does not consist of three persons, or of any other number of persons, is as easily demonstrated, as that the whole is bigger than a part, or any other proposition in mathematics.

We will premise, that the three persons in the supposed Trinity are either finite or infinite; for there cannot in the scale of being be a third sort of beings between these two; for ever so many and exalted degrees in finiteness is still finite, and that being who is infinite admits of no degrees of enlargement; and as all beings whatever must be limited or unlimited, perfect or imperfect, they must therefore be denominated to be finite or infinite: we will therefore premise the three persons in the Trinity to be merely finite, considered personally and individually from each other, and the question would arise whether the supposed Trinity of finites though united in one essence, could be more than finite still. Inasmuch as three imperfect and circumscribed beings united together could not constitute a being perfect or infinite, any more than absolute perfection could consist of three imperfections; which would be the same as to suppose that infinity could be made up or compounded of finiteness; or that absolute, uncreated and infinite perfection, could consist of three personal and imperfect natures. But on the other hand, to consider every of the three persons in the supposed Trinity as being absolutely infinite, it would be a downright contradiction to one infinite and all comprehending essence. Admitting that God the Father is infinite, it would necessarily preclude the supposed God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost from the god-head, or essence of God; one infinite essence comprehending every power, excellency and perfection, which can possibly exist in the divine nature. Was it possible that three absolute infinites, which is the same as three Gods, could be contained in one and the self-same essence, why not as well any other number of infinites? But as certain as infinity cannot admit of addition, so certain a plurality of infinites cannot exist in the same essence; for real infinity is strict and absolute infinity, and only that, and cannot be compounded of infinities or of parts, but forecloses all addition. A personal or circumscribed God, implies as great and manifest a contradiction as the mind of man can conceive of; it is the same as a limited omnipresence, a weak Almighty, or a finite God.

From the foregoing arguments on the Trinity, we infer, that the divine essence cannot consist of a Trinity of persons, whether they are supposed to be either finite or infinite.

The creed-mongers have exhibited the doctrine of the Trinity in an alarming point of light, viz.: “Whoever would be saved before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith, which faith, except every one doth keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.” We next proceed to the doctrine, “The Father is eternal, the Son is eternal, and the Holy Ghost is eternal, and yet there are not three eternals but one eternal.” The plain English is, that the three persons in the Trinity are three eternals, individually considered, and yet they are not three eternals but one eternal.

To say that there are three eternals in the Trinity, and yet that there are not three eternals therein, is a contradiction in terms, as much as to say, that there are three persons in the Trinity and yet there are not three persons in the Trinity.

The first proposition in the creed affirms, that “the Father is eternal,” the second affirms that “the Son is eternal,” the third affirms that “the Holy Ghost is eternal,” the fourth affirms that “there are not three eternals,” and the fifth that there is “but one eternal.”

The reader will observe, t............