True Christian Religion (Chadwick) n. 169

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169. Can anyone fail to see how the Trinity is in the Lord, if he considers the trinity in any human being? Every person has a soul, a body and activity; likewise the Lord, 'for in the Lord all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily,' as Paul said (Col. 2:9). Therefore the Trinity in the Lord is Divine, that in men human. Is there anyone who does not see that reason plays no part in this mystic belief that there are three Divine persons, yet only one God; and that this God, for all that He is one, is still not one person? When the reason is asleep, it can still force the mouth to speak like a parrot. When the reason is asleep, can the speech which comes from the mouth be anything but lifeless? If the mouth says one thing and the reason goes a different way and disagrees, speech must inevitably be foolish. As far as the Divine Trinity is concerned, human reason to-day is fettered, as completely as a prisoner shackled hand and foot. It can also be compared to a Vestal Virgin* buried alive for having let the sacred fire go out. Yet the Divine Trinity ought to shine like a lantern in the minds of the people who make up the church, since God in His Trinity and in the oneness of the Trinity is the ultimate of all holiness in heaven and the church. To make one God out of the soul, another out of the body and a third out of the activity is no different from making three separate parts out of those three essentials of a single person; and this is dismembering and killing him.

* The Vestals were Roman priestesses, whose duty was to maintain a sacred fire.


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