Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/195

Rh equal power; the certain consequence of which must be ruin and destruction. And should any one be desirous to sketch out the form or figure of such a triarchy in his imagination, he must be obliged to represent it to his fancy like a man with three heads upon one body, or with three bodies under one head; which monstrous image is nevertheless formed in the imagination of those, who believe in three divine persons, and that each by himself is God, and join these together as one God, and yet deny that God, notwithstanding his unity, is one person. This notion concerning the birth of the son of God from eternity, and that this son descended, and assumed the humanity, may be compared with the fabulous stories amongst the ancients, concerning the creation of human souls at the beginning of the world, and their entering into bodies, and becoming men; and likewise with those ridiculous conceits, that the soul of one person passeth into another, as many in the Jewish church believed, fancying that the soul of Elias had passed into the body of John the Baptist, and that David would return into his own body, or that of some other person, and reign over Israel and Judah, because it is said in Ezekiel, I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David, and he shall be their shepherd, and I Jehovah will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them, Chap, xxxiv. 23, 24. And in other places; not discerning that by David there is meant the Lord.

That a trinity of divine persons existing from eternity is a trinity of Gods, appears evidently from these