54. BRIEF ANALYSIS. The rulers of the church insist, that the understanding is to be kept under obedience to faith, yea that faith, properly speaking, is a faith in what is unknown, which is blind, or a faith of the night. This is the first paradox; for faith is of truth, and truth is of faith; and truth, before it can become an object of faith, should be in its own light and be seen; otherwise what is false may be believed. The paradoxes flowing from such a faith are many; as that God the Father begat a Son from eternity, and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both: and that each is a Person by Himself, and God; that the Lord both as to His soul and body, is from the mother; that those three Persons, consequently three Gods, created the universe; and that one of them descended, and assumed the Human, to reconcile the Father, and thus to save men; and that they who by grace obtain faith, and believe these paradoxes, are saved by the imputation, application, and translation of His justice to themselves; and that man, at his first reception of that faith, is like a statue, a stock, or a stone, and that faith inflows by the mere hearing of the Word; and that faith alone without the works of the law, and not formed from charity, is saving; and that it produces the remission of sins without any previous repentance; and that, merely by virtue of such remission of sins, the impenitent are justified, regenerated, and sanctified; and that afterwards charity, good works, and repentance, spontaneously follow. Besides many similar things, which, like offspring from an illegitimate bed, have all issued from the doctrine founded on the idea of three Gods.